Authors: Blake Charlton
“Tell Nicodemus that if he submits to me, I will grant him partial use of the emerald. Tell him I will cure your canker.”
Shannon shook his head. “You’re a fool.”
The footsteps in front of him stopped. “Twenty paces ahead is a meadow where a horse is tethered to a low branch. I’ve spellbound your blue parrot to your saddle.”
“Azure,” Shannon said involuntarily.
Fellwroth laughed. “The sentinels had caged the bird in the stables with childish prose. Now go and tell the whelp what I have told you.”
“I’ll never—”
Two cold hands yanked Shannon forward by the wrists and peeled the fetters from his arms and legs. The old wizard gasped as the hands tore the censoring text from his head. His mind, restored to magic, reeled with shock. It felt as if icy needles were scraping across every inch of his skin.
“Tell the boy!” Fellwroth snarled, giving Shannon a shove.
The old wizard stumbled backward. His foot caught and he fell onto his back.
The only sound was that of footfalls on pine needles.
“I’ll die before I tell him!” Shannon shouted after the monster.
No reply.
“I
T’S JUST IN
here,” the elderly sentinel said.
Amadi was standing in the hallway of a small storage tower. Outside the evening sky was bruising purple.
The gray-haired woman standing before Amadi was a Starhaven sentinel, not one of her trusted Astrophell authors. “Magistra,” Amadi said, “I haven’t much time. The provost has demanded I prepare a report—”
“One of my younger riders found it on the road up from Gray’s Crossing,” the woman interrupted. “It was in the ditch, so it’s not surprising no one else saw it. Unfortunately, when the rider reported it, the guards didn’t believe him.” The old woman cast a short Numinous password into the door before her.
A frown creased Amadi’s brow. “Didn’t believe him about what?”
The old sentinel shook her head. “Best if I show you. I put it in here to prevent rumors.”
They walked into a room lit by candles. A young male lesser wizard was staring wide-eyed at something large and dark on the floor.
At first Amadi thought the object was a body. It was lying stomach down. Its left arm had been melted into a thin rod. Small pools of metallic blood had frozen around the thing’s shoulder and chest.
“Los in hell!” Amadi approached it. The thing’s face was human but for the rectangular window opening into its brow. She bent closer. The head was hollow.
“Pure iron,” the woman behind her said. “Took two wizards and a mule-drawn cart to haul it up here.”
“Shannon, it seems I owe you an apology,” Amadi murmured. “Monsters made of clay and metal.”
“Magistra Okeke!” Amadi turned back to the door. “Magistra!” It was Kale.
Amadi groaned. “Every time I see you, Kale, I get more horrible news. So before you tell me something else, let’s take care of this.” She nodded to the iron carcass. “I need three trusted sentinels to carry it up to the provost’s grand hall. And I want Shannon awake and ready to answer more questions.”
“That’s just it,” Kale panted. “Shannon’s gone.”
“Gone?”
“Someone took him. The guard is dead. The text about the cell was disspelled and the door was knocked down from the outside.”
Amadi’s mind came alive with questions. Who would want to take Shannon from her? The golem monster? How was she going to explain this to the provost? “Do we know where his captor took him? What direction they went?”
Again Kale nodded. “Out the front gate.”
“How is that possible?” the gray-haired sentinel asked. “The front gate is too well guarded.”
Kale’s frightened eyes turned to the woman. “Many sentinels and guards were wounded fighting the bookworm infestation. The rest were spread out across the stronghold, searching for Nicodemus. There were no guards in the gate house and only two before the drawbridge. Both are dead.”
“Raise the alarm,” Amadi commanded. “Call the searchers up from Gray’s Crossing and in from the forests. No one is to leave Starhaven’s occupied towers and halls. And see that the slain guards are prepared for a proper burial.”
Kale nodded.
“And tell the digger to make another grave,” Amadi added. “After I tell all this to the provost, you’ll have to put me in it.”
Raindrops cut icy flecks of life into Deirdre’s wind-numbed face. Billowing clouds blanketed the sky save for a few rents that poured city-sized sun-beams onto the Highlands.
Deirdre was laughing as she galloped down the Highridge Road. To either side, the mountains dropped into deep valleys. Some dells were criss-crossed with stone walls and speckled with Highland sheep. Ravens there were too, clouds of them flapping through the dark sky or filling the few trees like a harvest of noisy, black-feathered fruit.
Topping the next ridge, Deirdre looked down the road to the watchtowers guarding the entrance to Glengorm: one of her clan’s fortified homesteads.
As she galloped, sunlight swept across the road and glinted on her armor. The guards cheered as she tore through the open gates.
Down into the glen she flew, barely noticing the fortified houses or the wooden barricades meant to keep livestock in and lycanthropes out. At the bottom of the glen lay a narrow lake. A small stone fort stood on a jetty that extended into the gray water.
Deirdre did not rein in her mare until she was in the fort’s stable yard. Her clansmen in the stalls shouted joyously. Others appeared at the windows.
Deirdre swung down and threw her reins to the nearest boy. “Treat her well,” she said through a wry smile. “She’s had a bit of a run.”
The men within earshot laughed at her understatement.
She raised a fist and yelled, “The White Fox has escaped to Dral! Confusion to the Lornish Crown!” The men echoed her cry at near deafening volume.
She led another cheer and then hurried into the fort and up three flights of narrow wooden stairs. When she pushed the door open, Kyran was pacing by the window.
His limp was less pronounced now, but still he favored his left leg, probably would for the rest of his life. His long hair hung across his shoulders in a golden curtain.
Her wry smile renewed itself. “Only half a year ago Paladin Garwyn nearly cut that limb off.” She nodded to his bandaged right leg. “Perhaps you shouldn’t be troubling it so.”
Kyran turned around, his brown eyes alight with expectation. “Great Soul,” he said, sinking to his left knee.
She closed the door and went to him. His freshly shaven face turned up toward her. The scar below his ear was little more than a red line now. “My cousin?” he asked. “Did he make it safely to Dral?”
Deirdre suppressed a laugh. “Always so serious, Kyran. The White Fox runs in feral woods tonight. A fist of rangers met us at the river. If they can avoid the lycanthropes, they shall reach Kerreac in less than a fortnight.”
Relief drew Kyran’s thin lips into a dimpled smile. He took her hand and bent over it. “I swear on Bridget’s name that you have my undying love.”
His touch made Deirdre’s head feel as light as smoke.
There was nothing to indicate it, but she knew that he had meant “you” to be plural, to include her goddess. Her hands trembled as she turned his chin up. “And you shall have ours.”
He stood and pressed his lips to hers. Her heart throbbed to an irregular rhythm. She felt as if she were having an aura.
She had thought of this for so long, known how forbidden it was. “From the first,” he whispered, “I loved you always.”
Laughing, she pulled him closer and stopped his words with her tongue.
She could tell by his kiss that this time he had meant the word “you” to be singular; his love was for her only.
His arms closed around her.
“Do you love me still?” she murmured into his neck. “Love me only?”
“Yes.” His voice the briefest susurration by her ear. “I loved you always; I love you still.”
Her face tingled with warmth as she pulled back far enough to kiss him again.
Slowly the world tilted so that they lay facing each other. The room dimmed. Her hands trembled badly. His face lost its bristles and became as smooth as a boy’s. His long golden hair, flowing all about them, darkened until it was as black as her own. Her hands clenched as an ecstatic warmth flushed down her back. Silently, she prayed she would not fall into a seizure now.
Her lover’s eyes lightened from dark brown to deep green. They were not Kyran’s eyes.
She was not falling into a seizure but waking from one.
Kyran was dead.
With a shriek, she threw out her arms and turned away from Nicodemus.
D
EIRDRE’S SHOVE TOSSED
Nicodemus into the air.
Arms flailing, he turned a half-flip and landed on his back. All the air rushed from his lungs.
He tried to inhale but couldn’t. Suddenly Deirdre, her druid robes streaked with dirt, was kneeling over him and apologizing.
Long airless moments passed, each one an agonizing eternity. Deirdre took his tattooed hands. “Are you hurt? Why did you do that?”
At last Nicodemus’s lungs expanded. “I didn’t do anything!” he panted. “You were the one who—”
He stopped.
Only the faint light of dusk came down the cellar stairs, but it was enough to illuminate her tears.
“What did I do?” she asked in a shaky voice. “It was a seizure, Nicodemus; my goddess took control of me. I don’t remember a thing.”
Nicodemus’s throat tightened. He glanced over and saw that John had slept through their exchange so far. Nervously, he turned back to Deirdre. “You…you and I were talking about what we should do next. You argued that we need to run to Gray’s Crossing and find Boann’s ark. I thought it was too dangerous. By now the sentinels will be looking for me.”
Deirdre shook her head. “The ark sits in an inn at the town’s edge. It won’t be difficult to reach undetected.”
Nicodemus sat up. His head throbbed where it had struck ground. “Deirdre, I’ve stolen the Index. Every wizard south of Astrophell must be editing their attack spells and forming witch hunts to find me. Listen, Shannon gave me more than enough gold to see us to Dar or the City of Rain. You must have allies in the Highlands who can help us.”
Deirdre was shaking her head. “Nicodemus, it doesn’t matter where you run; without divine protection Fellwroth will find you.”
Nicodemus winced as his hand brushed his cheek. Shannon’s Magnus stitches were holding, but the wound was still tender. “This is where the argument stopped before. But you began to speak of your goddess’s beauty and then…” He looked away. “And you told me…”
“Nicodemus,” she whispered, squeezing his hand, “whatever flattery came from my mouth, it was Boann’s. She knows how important you are; she wants to protect you.”
Nicodemus looked her in the eye. “So she uses your body to manipulate me? That hardly sounds like a…Deirdre, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to…”
She dried her eyes. “Nicodemus, don’t oppose her will. My desires arenot my own. She’ll control me again. She’ll make me overpower you and drag you to her ark.”
Nicodemus let go of the woman’s hand. “Don’t threaten me, Deirdre. I am no wizard, but I am a spellwright.”
She retook his hand. “Nicodemus, you might cut me to pieces with your words, but Boann—”
“Let go of me.” He tried to pry off her fingers.
Her other hand clamped around his tattooed wrist. “Don’t do this; you will lose.”
Nicodemus extemporized a common language constricting spell along his tongue and spat the sentences around her elbows.
Surprised, Deirdre weakened her grip just enough for Nicodemus to slip his right hand free. He threw his arm back and wrote along it a short Magnus club. The text most likely was misspelled and would break after a single stroke, but he could deliver at least one blow.
Meanwhile, Deirdre heaved with her great strength and snapped the sentences wrapped around her elbow.
“Deirdre, stop, I’ve a spell in my—” He fell silent.
She now held the greatsword in her right hand. They locked eyes.
“Please,” she whispered, her eyes full of fear, “I cannot yield.”
“Then you will have to—” He stopped as a wall of faint golden light washed through the cellar. He jumped.
“What is it?”
A second wall of light flew through the cellar. Nicodemus dropped his Magnus club and caught one of the tiny Numinous words that made up the strange light.
Realization came with a surge of excitement. “It’s a broadly cast spell!” He began to translate the golden text. “It’s like a magical beacon.”
Deirdre lowered the greatsword. “But who would send a beacon to us?”
Nicodemus struggled to his feet. “We have to go. Let go of me.” When she did, he ran to pick up the Index.
“What happened?”
He grabbed her forearm as if to pull her along. “I’ll explain as we go. Now hurry!”
As they ran up the stairs, Nicodemus looked down at the translated word that glowed faintly gold on his palm. It read “
nsohnannanhosn.
”
D
EIRDRE FROWNED.
A
GAIN
Shannon doubled over and vomited nothing. Again Nicodemus went to his side and held the old man’s dreadlocks back from his face. The Index lay beside them. Azure, perched on a nearby rock pile, bobbed her head nervously.
Deirdre was sitting with Simple John in front of their campfire. Around them stretched the nighttime Chthonic ruins. The horse that Shannon had been riding was grazing somewhere out in the dark.
Above them, the forest’s branches tossed in the cold autumn wind; they made a soft rushing sound that was in sharp contrast to Shannon’s violent retching.
“What’s happening?” she whispered to Simple John.
The big man’s face paled. “Magister’s throwing up bywords. Bad words. Too many small, repeated words.”
They had found Shannon in the forest not an hour ago; he had seemed healthy then. In fact, the old linguist had launched into a story about his escape from the sentinels. He kept urging Nicodemus to turn and flee from Starhaven and travel to another wizardly academy called Starfall Keep.