Authors: Blake Charlton
On the border between foothills and grassland, the Westernmost Roadstretched its dusty length from Dar in the north down to the City of Rain in the south.
By the time Nicodemus’s party emerged from the forest to stand on the highway, all three moons had risen. The combined glow bathed the savanna in milky blue light.
As he hugged the Index to his chest, Nicodemus surveyed the few farms and oaks that dotted the landscape. Several trees had died and become wiry skeletons.
Save for the homesteads, waist-high savanna grass covered the earth from road’s edge to distant horizon. Here the wind transformed the grassland into an ocean of rolling waves.
Deirdre took their only horse and galloped ahead to scout for danger.
The three men walked in a close huddle, the wind blowing color into their cheeks and tossing Nicodemus’s long raven hair. Azure often ruffled her feathers and issued low, plaintive squawks.
Nicodemus’s keloid began to burn. Shannon had wrapped the scars with distorting Numinous spells. Nevertheless, he watched as a sphere of Language Prime flew away from him in all directions. The broadcast was diffuse; it wouldn’t reveal his precise location to Fellwroth. But it would tell the monster that he was on the move.
Thinking about this made Nicodemus’s heart beat faster. He closed his eyes and focused on recovering the emerald—of transforming himself from Petrel to Halcyon—until his icy determination returned.
Just then Shannon had to pause to vomit silvery logorrhea bywords.
When they continued their trek, Shannon showed him how to write several common language sentences around the Index so that it would float in a slow circle around the younger man’s waist.
“When wizards must fight,” the old linguist said gravely, “we float our spellbooks like this.”
A moment later, Deirdre returned with auspicious news: there was no sign of wizards in Gray’s Crossing. She had learned from a town watchman that shortly after sundown all the black-robes had run up to Starhaven.
After another quarter hour walking, the town came into view around a bend. It was not much to look at: a huddle of round Lornish cottages clustered around two inns, a smithy, a fuller, and a small common. At the hamlet’s center sat the intersection of the Westernmost Road and the smaller road that ran up to Starhaven. Most of the inhabitants were farmers or shop-keepers who sold to the wizards.
With Deirdre leading the way, the party hurried off the road and into the trees. Cautiously, they picked their way so as to emerge behind the stables of a dilapidated inn named the Wild Crabtree.
Deirdre hustled them into the back of the building and up a flight of rickety stairs. Shannon wrote a flamefly spell and scattered the incandescent paragraphs around the party so as to light the way.
“The inn’s owner is a Highlander,” Deirdre whispered. “He rents the top floor to Dralish smugglers who buy weapons in Spires and run them down to the Highland rebels. There’s a secret compartment in the floor where they hide the blades.”
She stopped before a door. “Be quiet now; I have to let the other devotees of Boann know we are friends.” She knocked twice and then froze.
Her hand had pushed the door open slightly. Inside it was dark and silent.
“Careful,” Shannon whispered, a spherical Magnus spell appearing in his hand.
Deirdre drew the greatsword from her back and then pushed the door wide to let the light from Shannon’s flamefly spell fall into the dark room.
Peering past her shoulder, Nicodemus saw—sprawled across the floor—a motionless body.
T
HERE WERE EIGHT
dead men, three women. Not a drop of blood on any of them.
Shannon found a slowly deconstructing Numinous paragraph lodged behind the ear of one victim. “Fellwroth,” he said, inspecting the text. “Attacked maybe twenty hours ago.”
The three connected rooms were spacious and sparsely furnished. Nicodemus walked into the farthest room and noticed a bowl of stew sitting on a table. “The monster took them by surprise,” he noted, looking at the fat congealing at the bowl’s edge. “No sign of struggle.”
John went to each of the bodies and closed their staring eyes.
Meanwhile Nicodemus studied the ceiling. With his new knowledge of the original languages, he could see the cyan auras of rats as they scurried among the rafters.
Deirdre stood unmoving by the door. Her lips pressed white against each other. “It makes no sense,” she said. “There’s no way Fellwroth could have known the ark was here.”
“Deirdre,” Shannon said from across the room, “I am sorry for your loss. I don’t know if you knew these souls well, but—”
“Boann’s ark is missing,” she interjected. “I must get it back!”
The grand wizard looked at her. “What does the ark look like? Could it have been hidden?”
“It is a standing stone, six feet tall, two wide, two deep. The edges are smooth. It is a water ark—most of the year it rests in one of the Highlandrivers sacred to Boann. Three parallel lines flow down from its top; they symbolize her rivers.”
Nicodemus looked at Deirdre. Something about the ark’s description stirred his memory.
Deirdre began pacing around the room and looking down at the wooden floor. “There is a chance it was hidden. The tavern’s owner built a secret compartment in the floor. The other devotees may have concealed the ark in it.”
She bent down and knocked on the wooden planks. “We have to be quiet. But we can find the compartment by listening for an echoing knock. One of the druids told me so.”
Again something pulled at Nicodemus’s memory. His hands were wringing each other. He glared at the tattooed things and willed them to stop.
Both John and Shannon had joined Deirdre in rapping softly on the floor. “If we can’t find the ark,” Shannon said, “then we have no choice but to flee for Starfall Keep.”
“I won’t leave my goddess behind,” Deirdre insisted.
Shannon shook his head. “But if Fellwroth has stolen the ark, it could be anywhere.”
The avatar continued to knock on the floor. “Then I will make Fellwroth tell me where it is.”
John was tapping the floor by the window.
Shannon grunted in annoyance. “Even if you captured a golem, the monster would simply disengage his spirit. And we haven’t a clue where Fellwroth’s true body might be.”
“Then I will find the true body,” Deirdre said while knocking again.
The old linguist grimaced. “Deirdre, we must get Nicodemus to safety.”
“We go nowhere, Magister,” Nicodemus said coldly, “unless it’s to recover the emerald or disspell your curse.”
Shannon folded his arms. “It’s not enough that I must die? You two want to join me?”
Before Nicodemus could respond, one of John’s knocks produced a hollow echo.
“Sweet heaven!” Nicodemus swore, taking a step backward. His cold focus was shattered. Now his frightened mind teemed with memories of his dreams: the dying nightmare turtles, the pale ivy, the body shrouded in white. He remembered walking on the Spindle Bridge with Shannon, their boot heels clacking unusually loudly on the bridge stone.
“Sweet heaven,” he swore again and grabbed the Index from the sentences that had been floating it around his waist. He sat heavily in an empty chair.
The others went to John and helped him hoist up a trap door.
“It’s empty,” Nicodemus heard himself say as Deirdre, John, and Azure peered down into the secret compartment.
Deirdre stared at him. “How did you know?”
Memories flashed through Nicodemus’s mind so quickly they made him dizzy.
“We’ll need a distraction.” His words were quick and anxious. He was trying to speak as fast as he was thinking. “With the signal text from my keloid diffused, he’ll never realize we’re so near. We can slay his living body. But the distraction will have to make him use a golem and…when the living body is dead, I can use the emerald to disspell Magister’s canker. Or Boann might…but I’ll have the emerald.”
A wave of heat washed through his body. “I’ll have the emerald.” He stood and dropped the Index back into its floating orbit around his waist. “I’ll be complete!”
All three of them were staring at him now. “What under heaven are you talking about?” Shannon asked.
Nicodemus went to the far window and removed its paper screen. The room looked out on the forest. High above the skyline, cutting a black silhouette against the stars, stood Starhaven’s many towers.
“We can recover the emerald,” he said, “because I know where to find Fellwroth’s true, living body.”
N
ICODEMUS PURSED HIS
lips. “I should have known when I was replenishing the ghosts’ book and saw through the young Chthonic’s eyes. I knew the Chthonic’s thoughts; I knew that the Chthonic people first emerged from the underworld up there.”
He nodded out the window toward Starhaven. “They came out of a cave high up on the rockface. I learned that the Chthonics protected themselves from the attacks of an older race they called the blueskins by filling the cave mouth with powerful metaspells. And the blueskins filled the cave mouth with tortoise-like constructs.”
“But we know this,” Deirdre said. “You saw in a later vision that the Chthonics had collapsed the cave.”
Nicodemus looked back at the avatar. “I saw that the cave was gone, but the Chthonic whose eyes I was seeing through never thought about the cave. His mind was preoccupied by the human army laying siege to Starhaven.”
“The cave wasn’t closed?” Shannon asked.
Nicodemus shook his head. “And Fellwroth’s true body lies in that cave. In a dream I saw ivy—representing the Chthonic metaspell—and the turtles—representing the blueskin constructs—attacking Fellwroth’s body.They must represent the ancient spells still resisting Fellwroth’s intrusion into the cave.”
Shannon made a low, disapproving sound. “But we know that Starhaven’s Chthonic metaspells prevent Fellwroth from creating a golem within the stronghold’s walls.”
Nicodemus clenched his fists. “But the cave isn’t within Starhaven’s walls. The cave is filled with metaspells much older than those in Starhaven.”
He turned to Deirdre. “Boann’s ark is also in that cave. I saw it in my dream standing behind Fellwroth’s body in the second nightmare. I didn’t know what it was at the time. But just now, Deirdre, when you described it to me, I realized what it must be.”
“So the cave is hidden?” John asked slowly. “Some ancient spell opens the mountain?”
Nicodemus shook his head. “Think of the Spindle’s shape. All other Chthonic bridges are thin and flat. The Spindle is as round as a tree bough. And when we walked on it, our footsteps echoed. Remember, Magister, the racket the sentinels made when marching toward us? And, Deirdre, what did it sound like when the war-weight gargoyle walked on the Spindle’s landing?”
She nodded. “Like a drum…like the sound was moving down the bridge.”
“Exactly,” Nicodemus said. “And in one of my nightmares, I was moving through a tunnel that ended in the chamber with Fellwroth’s body. When I was going down that tunnel, I heard my own voice talking to Magister about the Chthonic carvings. I heard that voice pass above me.”
“So the Spindle Bridge—” Shannon started to say.
“Isn’t a bridge at all,” Nicodemus finished. “It’s a tunnel. The wizards haven’t found anything in the mountain face because they’re searching only the rock in front of them. Don’t you see? The tunnel covers the cave’s mouth.”
Deirdre was nodding, but Shannon and John still wore frowns.
“It makes perfect sense,” Nicodemus insisted. “The Chthonic languages deconstruct in sunlight. And while the Chthonic people could tolerate sunlight, their blueskinned ancestors could not. The Spindle Tunnel must have been a diplomatic structure—a place where the Chthonics could meet the blueskins in darkness.” He snatched the Index out of its orbit.
“Here, I’ll find a mundane text that…” He began to undo the book’s clasp.
“No, no,” Shannon said. “I don’t doubt your logic; I simply wonder what we do with the information.”
Deirdre spoke quickly. “We do exactly what the boy suggested. We cut our way into the Spindle and tear Fellwroth’s body to pieces while the fiend’s mind is still in the golem.”
“Is the Fool’s Ladder still in place?” Nicodemus asked. “If we hike around to the back of Starhaven, could it take us up to the Spindle’s landing?”
The grand wizard scowled. “It could, but this plan is too dangerous. What if Fellwroth is not in his golem?”
“Running wouldn’t be safer,” Nicodemus insisted. “Fellwroth can follow me because of my keloid scars. And, Magister, my dreams were sent to me by the emerald. It wants to be rescued.”
Shannon shook his head. “Nicodemus, you and I are linguists, not sentinels.”
Deirdre rested a hand on Shannon’s shoulder. “Only this plan will rescue my goddess’s ark. It is the only one I will accept.”
Nicodemus closed his eyes. “It is the only plan that will recover the emerald.” He opened his eyes and stared at Shannon. “And it is the only plan that will disspell your curse.”
“And me,” said John. “It is the only plan I will accept.”
All eyes turned to the big man.
“For decades, I lived under the demon’s curse. If I have a chance to end this monster, a chance for revenge, I will accept no other.”
Shannon started to say something but then stopped.
“Besides,” John said slowly, “I think I know how to reach Fellwroth.”
Shannon drew in a long breath and let it out through his nose. “You know how to reach the monster?”
“It depends, Magister,” John said with a solemn stare. “I need to know exactly what Fellwroth said when he set you free.”
In a new clay golem, Fellwroth stood on a balcony near the top of the Erasmine Spire.
A squat gargoyle with a monkey’s body and goat’s head sat on the railing. Fellwroth had rewritten the construct to siphon encrypted messages from the wizards’ colaboris spells. The agents of the Disjunction had long ago learned how to tack their texts onto wizardly communications.
So far the goat-faced gargoyle had performed perfectly. In Fellwroth’s hands glowed several golden passages from other important demon-worshipers. “When were these received?”