Authors: Blake Charlton
Deirdre stepped beside Nicodemus. “Hold your tongue.” She leveled her greatsword at the monster’s head. “Or I’ll cut it out.”
“Nicodemus, Boann is traitorous,” Fellwroth replied hotly. “She wants to control you.”
Shannon stepped forward and pulled Deirdre’s sword arm down. “We need to handle this carefully,” he muttered.
Fellwroth continued to glare at the woman. “Boann and I made an arrangement. The goddess agreed to serve the Disjunction if she could become a powerful demon.”
“You lie!” Deirdre growled.
Shannon laid a hand on her shoulder. “Easy,” he murmured.
Fellwroth laughed. “Stupid girl. You were the one who negotiated the agreement. You offered to capture Nicodemus for me because I did not then know his identity.”
Deirdre looked at her two companions. “Don’t listen. He’s trying to trick you into distrusting Boann.”
Nicodemus met her gaze. “Deirdre, how did he know where Boann’s ark was?”
Fellwroth was the one who answered. “The girl begged for her life when I cornered her in that Chthonic tower. She told me where I could find the ark and how to surprise the druids protecting it. How else could I have gotten it here so quickly?”
Deirdre shook her head. “It’s a lie.”
Nicodemus’s fingers tightened around the emerald. Something was wrong. “But why did you bring it here, Fellwroth? The spell that knocked the emerald from your hand came from the ark.”
The creature sneered in disgust. “Boann suggested that I bring the ark here to reassure me of her allegiance. If I had her ark, she could not break her word and run away with you, Nicodemus.”
The monster sniffed in disdain. “Even though I was foolish enough to agree, I took a precaution: I sealed the ark with protective text. It was a strong shield, but one short spell could slip through if the ark knew exactly how my prose was written. Somehow the emerald plucked that knowledge from my mind and fed it into the deity inside the stone. Somehow the emerald told the ark exactly when to strike so that I would drop the stone.”
Nicodemus’s brow furrowed. “But Boann shouldn’t know about the emerald. Only you, Fellwroth, knew about the emerald. Well, you and…” He stopped himself from saying “Typhon.”
Cold terror spread through Nicodemus.
“You see, neither the girl nor the goddess can be trusted.” Fellwroth insisted.
“You can’t believe him, Nicodemus,” Deirdre insisted, her chest heaving. “It’s been a year since I sinned against Boann, and we are so close to redeeming—”
“Deirdre, something’s wrong,” Nicodemus interrupted. “Listen, a year ago Fellwroth killed Typhon. You started having seizures just after that.”
Deirdre shook her head again. “We knew that, Nicodemus. We knew that Boann saw Fellwroth killing the demon. That’s how she learned of you. That’s why she sent me to rescue you.”
“No, Deirdre,” Nicodemus said, taking a cautious step closer. “We don’t know that for fact; that’s what we suspected. But what if it isn’t true? Whatif Typhon succeeded in infecting Boann when he was in her waters? You told us that Boann kept her ark in the Highland rivers.”
Fellwroth’s crimson eyes bulged. “Boann inhabited that river? Deirdre said the goddess was of the city. Nicodemus, quickly, we must get away from the ark. She’s not Boann’s avatar anymore!”
Deirdre’s sword arm was trembling.
Nicodemus began composing restraining Magnus sentences.
Fellwroth kept talking. “Nicodemus, Shannon, we need to get away. There are fates worse than death! She’s not Boann’s avatar! We have to escape Typhon!”
“Deirdre…” Shannon started to say.
But Deirdre, moving with inhuman speed, slammed her elbow into Shannon’s face and then thrust her blade into Fellwroth’s skull.
The Numinous rectangle on the creature’s forehead exploded and sent a wall of force careening through the cavern. When the shockwave hit Nicodemus, everything went black.
Then he was lying on his back staring at a torrent of blazing Numinous prose streaming from Fellwroth’s corpse to the ark.
Nicodemus extemporized a disspell along his forearm and cast it at the textual stream.
But his text crumpled in the air and fell.
Numbing shock filled Nicodemus as he watched the disspell shatter on the floor. How could he have misspelled?
He looked down at his hands and found them empty.
The emerald was gone.
A rumble shook the stairs under Amadi’s feet.
Slowly the sentinels pushed open the giant iron doors that led onto the Spindle Bridge’s landing. Before her stretched the moonlit bridge and the dark mountains beyond. “Secure the landing,” she ordered.
The twelve sentinels who had volunteered for the expedition began to spread out. They were all excellent spellwrights: ten wizards and two grand wizards. Three bore caesura wands, another a tundern wand. The rest carried spellbooks full of wartexts.
The dean of libraries and the rector had accompanied the party to observe.
Simple John stepped beside her and pointed. “There!”
Amadi’s gaze followed his finger to where the Spindle Bridge met the mountainside. A hole seemed to have been blasted in the Spindle. Out of it shone a golden blaze.
The sentinels muttered. Someone was casting a powerful Numinous spell from inside the mountain.
“Kale,” Amadi ordered, “stay here with John and the provost’s officers. The rest of you, advance slowly and keep closed ranks. Subdue anything dangerous, and kill anything nonhuman.”
D
EIRDRE STOOD FROZEN
in her thrust—legs bent, arms extended, hands locked around the sword hilt. Fellwroth’s unmoving body lay before her.
When Nicodemus said Deirdre’s name, her eyes moved but her body remained as stiff as stone.
Shannon lay behind her, bleeding from his nose and a wound on his shoulder. Azure had disappeared.
Nicodemus went to the wizard and turned him over. He took care to touch only the old man’s robes, never his skin. Without the emerald, he was once again the mutagenic Storm Petrel.
Shannon looked up at him with a dazed expression. “Fellwroth…is dead?”
“He is,” Nicodemus croaked, crouching beside the old wizard.
“And Deirdre is…Typhon’s avatar?”
“She didn’t know.” Nicodemus shoved his arm under the wizard’s back.
“But how did you figure it out?” Shannon gasped as Nicodemus tried to lift him.
“Magister, now is not—”
“No…” the old man said between rapid breaths. “You have to tell me.”
Nicodemus grimaced. “Fellwroth cut Typhon in Boann’s river. After that Deirdre started having seizures and seeing visions of Fellwroth attacking Typhon. Something of the demon must have infected Boann’s ark and later her avatar. Deirdre didn’t recognize the change because she thought it was Boann’s punishment for having an affair with Kyran.”
Only four flamefly paragraphs remained; they hovered above Shannon, shedding a small pool of wan incandescence.
Shannon shook his head. “But how do you know that?”
“Fellwroth’s words,” Nicodemus answered. “The creature was terrified that Typhon was after us.”
Shannon inhaled sharply as Nicodemus sat him up.
The younger man continued to explain as he draped the old man’s arm over his shoulder. “Typhon knew Fellwroth would have to find me when the emerald needed replenishing. So he pretended to be Boann and sent Deirdre here. She was to bring me to the ark; that way Typhon could invest his soul into me and use me to defeat Fellwroth. But when Fellwroth caught Deirdre alone, the demon changed his plan. He tricked Fellwroth into bringing the ark up here, next to his real body, knowing that Fellwroth would bring me here.”
The old wizard groaned as Nicodemus hoisted him to his feet. “But why,” Shannon asked as Nicodemus wrapped his arm around the old man’s waist, “did the demon want you in the same place as Fellwroth and the ark?”
Nicodemus was now half-walking, half-hauling the wizard toward the Spindle Tunnel. “The demon knew that if Fellwroth died near the ark, he could steal the creature’s power. So Typhon waited for me to arrive, and then cast a spell to tear the emerald from Fellwroth’s hand and give it to me. He knew I could defeat Fellwroth when the emerald completed my mind. But now he’s taken the emerald back. I can’t find it.”
Nicodemus stumbled and nearly fell. Warmth spread across his cheeks. “All the things that’ve happened in the past few days, they’ve all been part of Typhon’s plot to kill Fellwroth and recover the emerald.”
A slow clapping sound echoed through the cavern. Nicodemus stopped.
In the darkness before the Spindle’s entrance stood a man—seven feet tall with a silken mane of red hair and a beard to match.
Two amused all-white eyes stared down at Nicodemus. The newcomer’sobsidian skin was black and glossy, making it hard to see his narrow nose and high cheeks. The broad muscles on his torso bulged as he clapped, and out from his back spread two long wings, checkered with red and black feathers. A loincloth covered his groin but not his thick, powerful legs.
When the demon spoke, his voice rumbled. “Impressive that you managed to understand so much.” His calm laughter sounded like distant thunder. “Nicodemus Weal, you’ve grown.”
T
HE DEMON WORE
a friendly, almost avuncular, grin. “You’ve gleaned my plan almost exactly, save for one thing.”
“Typhon,” Nicodemus said breathlessly.
The demon nodded. “Set the old one down. I’ve censored him.”
With a start Nicodemus realized that Shannon had gone slack in his arms. Careful not to touch the old man’s skin, he laid the old linguist on the ground.
“Have you ever seen a deity before?” Typhon rumbled, his checkered wings fluttering.
Nicodemus shook his head.
The demon nodded sympathetically. “It is overwhelming for most mortals. But my boy, I want you to overcome this. I want you to think for me. Think of when Fellwroth discovered you and Deirdre in the Drum Tower. What should I have done?”
“You could have sent Deirdre into a fit,” Nicodemus said automatically. “If she had given me to Fellwroth, the creature would have taken us here right away.”
Typhon’s crimson beard split into a smile. “Correct. After Fellwroth captured the ark, he enclosed it with a Numinous shield. I had not anticipated this. The spell almost completely blocked my control over Deirdre. That’s why she continued to execute my previous instructions—which were to seduce you and bring you to Gray’s Crossing.”
The demon paused. “Nicodemus, it is the shame of the world we had to meet this way. I am your creator. I brought your parents together, and I ensured that you would end up as a Starhaven cacographer.”
The demon’s black lips grimaced. “It hasn’t been the best home, I realize. For one of your talents, being a cacographer must have been difficult. But the alternative was to watch an Alliance assassin take you from me.” He shivered. “And I couldn’t watch another of my Imperial boys die.”
Nicodemus blinked.
The demon was studying him. “Fellwroth told you of the Alliance of Heretics, yes? About the clandestine human deities also trying to breed a Language Prime spellwright? They have been murdering your cousins forcenturies. And they will kill you in a heartbeat. That is why you must let me protect you.”
Nicodemus stood paralyzed by shock. The demon’s tone was one of genuine concern.
Typhon took a step closer. “We are so close to our goal now that we no longer need to hide you in wretched Starhaven. Join me now and you will help me compose a new dragon. With Fellwroth dead and the emerald restored to its full power, we will need only seven or eight years to write a new wyrm. Then you will become the first dragon lord, a new kind of being invulnerable to the attacks of the Alliance.”
This last startled Nicodemus out of his paralysis. “In a dream I was your dragon. I’d rather cut my own throat than help you create such a monster.”
Typhon shook his massive head. “You were not my dragon; you were Fellwroth’s dragon. That slave turned my draft into a clichéd, fire-breathing lizard. Fellwroth never understood what a true dragon is. Nicodemus, they are texts more glorious than you can now imagine. I could give you the spells needed to understand how glorious dragons are and how glorious you and I shall become.”
Rather than answer, Nicodemus looked around for an escape or a weapon. He saw only Deirdre, frozen still as a statue.
“She can’t help you yet,” Typhon rumbled. “She is my avatar now and possesses most of my soul. It will take time to win her over, but you and I will win her.”
When Nicodemus took a step back, Typhon flicked his hand out as if casting a spell. Nicodemus flinched, but nothing happened.
The demon frowned. “Curious,” he said. “The censoring text I just cast around your mind misspelled and deconstructed. Does your cacography influence language unknown to you?”
Nicodemus’s mind filled with images of the night terrors that had hidden him from Fellwroth. He took another step back.
Typhon flapped his wings once. “I do not want to restrain you. We are not enemies.”
He held out a massive obsidian hand, in the center of which sparkled the Emerald of Arahest. “When I trust you, you shall have this back. You shall survive the War of Disjunction and live with Deirdre. You two will become the first dragon lords. From your children shall come a race to replace humanity. Demonkind will reward—”
“You crippled John!” Nicodemus heard himself shout. “You crippled me! You and I shall only and ever be enemies!”
The demon sighed. “Fathers and sons, authors and texts, they often clash before reconciling. I am going to restrain you now. If you struggle—”
Typhon’s next words were drowned out by an earsplitting thunderclap. A brilliant spray of Magnus flew up from the demon’s back to splash against the ceiling. Someone had dashed a wartext against the malicious deity.
Nicodemus spun around and ran for the kobold caves at the back of the cavern. Behind him, Magistra Amadi Okeke’s voice rang out. There was a brief silence, which was broken by a blast of sound so low and loud that it vibrated Nicodemus’s chest like a drum.