Authors: Blake Charlton
Shannon blinked. The only Drum Tower boy descended from Spirish nobility was Nicodemus.
This still did not prove that Nora had been selling access to Nicodemus, but it made it highly probable. And if the academy had been wrong and Nicodemus was indeed connected to the Erasmine Prophecy…
“Heaven defend us all,” Shannon whispered and turned to leave the library, but as he moved some instinct stopped him.
As before, the corridor of spellbooks appeared as a wall of multicolored light to his magically sensitive eyes, while the mundane world was black to him. He had received no warning from Azure, nor had he heard anything unusual. But somehow, he knew.
“Who’s there?” he whispered.
At first only silence answered him. But then came a slow intake of breath and a low, crackling voice: “Write not a sentence,” it rasped before drawing another breath, “or you’ll eat your words.”
S
HANNON DID NOT
move. Nora’s research journal was still in his hands.
“Lay the book down,” the voice said, “slowly.”
Shannon bent over to obey, but just before dropping the codex he let his hands slip so that he held only the back cover. He set it on the floor. “You are Nora’s murderer?” he asked and straightened.
“The shrew killed herself before I had the chance.” A grunt. “It’s a recurring problem for me. I killed my master before he named the boy. I won’t make the same mistake with you.”
Shannon tried to discern where the voice was coming from. “Your master was the noble who paid to see the sleeping cacographer?”
There came another whistling inhalation and a short, dry laugh. “So the old beast replenished the emerald when the boy was asleep? Yes, it was he who had an agreement with Magistra Finn. One she didn’t renew with me for…squeamish reasons.”
Shannon narrowed his eyes. The room’s echo made it difficult to guess the murderer’s location. “Squeamish because you’re not human?”
“How could you tell?”
“You inhale only before speaking,” Shannon replied as calmly as he could. “The rest of us find that difficult.”
The creature laughed. “Full marks for acumen, Magister. I am not human, nor was master. Though he could fool your kind into thinking so.”
“The subtextualization of your prose is impressive. Which faction wrote you?”
The creature laughed louder. “Perhaps I spoke too soon about your acumen. I am not a construct, nor do I care a whit for the wizardly factions.”
“You’re a demon, then?”
“Not a demon either, but I don’t have time for this. What matters now is your name. My guess is that you are Magister Agwu Shannon, Master of the Drum Tower. If so, I have an offer for you.”
“I am Magister Shannon,” he replied slowly. “And I’m afraid I might share Nora’s squeamishness.”
“I’d rather the boy lived,” the voice croaked. “The stronger he is, the more I gain from the emerald. I’m telling you this so you can understand how…lucrative it would be to align yourself with me. Tell me the boy’s name and you and I might continue as master and Nora Finn did. Let me visit the boy when he’s sleeping—as you put it—and I’ll pay you twice Finn’s wages. Refuse and I will kill you now. What’s more, I’ll cripple the boy or be forced to kill him outright.”
Shannon swallowed hard. He had not considered that Nicodemus’s life, as well as his own, might end tonight.
“You care for the boy,” the voice observed wryly. “More than I can say about the grammarian. She cared for what he is, not who.”
“And what is he? Is he the one of the Erasmine Prophecy?”
The murderer grunted. “Few things are more annoying than ignorance.”
Shannon laughed “And yet you are ignorant of the boy’s name.”
“I might not know his name, but I will kill every male cacographer in this academy to find him. I can wield dreams as you might wield a net. So unless you want every boy in the Drum Tower murdered, you’ll accept my offer.”
Shannon glanced down at Nora’s research journal. Its back cover lay open. The grammarian’s sharply worded spell glowed on the exposed page.
“Do you need more incentive?” the voice asked. “There are rewards brighter than gold. With the emerald, I am master of Language Prime. I could tell you how the Creator made humanity.” There was a pause. “You do know what Language Prime is, don’t you?”
Shannon responded automatically. “Language Prime is blasphemy.”
A dry laugh. “Magister, you lack conviction! You must know that theoriginal language exists. Interesting. What might your connection to the first language be? I could teach you more.”
Shannon shook his head. “Villain, you have no spell written, no attack ready. My synaesthetic reaction is very sensitive. I would have felt you forging.”
There came a shuffling noise. “True; I haven’t a text ready, nor can I spellwrite within Starhaven’s walls. The Chthonics filled this place with too many metaspells. But it’s not words with which I threaten you; it’s a half foot of sharpened iron I’ll drive through your skull before you can extemporize two words.”
The murderer was right. Shannon could not dash off a spell in time.
“Enough banter,” the creature hissed. “You can accept my offer or force me to kill every boy in—”
Shannon dove to the floor. Something whistled above his head and struck the wall behind him with a clang. He grabbed hold of the Magnus spell in Nora’s book and pulled.
The wartext leaped from the page into an effulgence of silver runes. Shannon did not know the spell’s name or how to wield it, so he blindly threw his arm out toward the voice. The text uncoiled into a long, liquid lash and struck with serpentine quickness.
The murderer cried out with surprise as the silvery text struck a bookshelf. The spell cut through several leather-bound codices with a loud ripping sound.
With a blast of air, each severed spellbook exploded into a blazing nimbus of sentence fragments. Shannon flinched, the brilliance dazzling his text-sensitive eyes.
Then the murderer was on top of him. The universe became a seething blackness of elbows and knees as they rolled over one another. A hand was trying to pull the Magnus spell from Shannon’s hand, and then a hard object cut a line of pain across his forehead.
Yawping savagely, Shannon jerked his right hand free and whipped the Magnus spell around. It cut though something with a soft swish.
Instantly the weight lifted from Shannon’s chest. The room filled with a high, keening scream. When Shannon sat up, a page of golden text shot toward him. He recognized the page as belonging to Nora’s research journal the instant before it smashed into his nose. The murderer must have struck him with the book.
Suddenly he was on his back and struggling to get up. His head felt full of cotton and his ears were ringing. Deconstructing sentence fragments coated every inch of the private library’s floor and walls. The fragments were squirming, spinning, and leaping into the air.
Beyond the chaos, Shannon saw Nora’s research journal flying away into a patch of darkness that must be the hallway. The inhuman scream began to fade.
Slowly he realized what he was seeing: the murderer had taken Nora’s journal and fled.
All around Shannon the deconstructing fragments began to burst. Each small explosion flung phrases across the room. The sharp language cut into his mind and body with hot shards of pain.
Desperately, Shannon felt around the floor for any clue as to why the murderer had fled. His fingers found something long and partially surrounded by cloth. He picked up the strange object and ran out of the library.
Behind him the decomposing sentences began to tear open the other spellbooks. Soon they would spill their contents into the growing textual storm. Shannon pulled the subtextualized door shut.
The hallway went black. Shannon could hear the deconstructing literature crackle and hiss behind the subtext.
But he was safe now. The chaotic language, left in the private library, would deconstruct into nothing.
Something wet and hot was running down his face. Blood.
He was still holding the mysterious cloth-covered object. Perhaps Azure could look at it for him.
Azure!
Fear tore into his gut. What had the murderer done to his familiar?
“Azure!” he called hoarsely. “Azure!” He had turned and was running blindly, arm stretched out. His hand struck a wall and he nearly fell. There came a faint whistle from behind.
He spun around and saw with intense relief a coil of Numinous censoring texts lying on what he assumed to be the windowsill. The murderer had bound the bird magically but had not killed her. The villain must have known hurting Azure would have made recruiting him impossible.
Shannon hurried to pick up the censored bird.
In her fear, Azure bit his pinky hard enough to draw blood. But Shannon wouldn’t have cared if she had snapped his finger in two. Cooing softly, he unwound the censoring texts from the bird’s head.
Once her mind was free, Azure cast to him a deluge of terrified text: a white-cloaked figure appearing in the hallway and a blazing Numinous spell that came from outside the tower to envelop her mind.
It seemed odd that the murderer had written the censoring text to strike from outside the tower; then Shannon remembered the thing’s claim that it could not spellwrite within Starhaven’s walls.
“Los damn it, but what could the creature be?” he hissed while scooping Azure up as if she were a loaf of bread.
In his left hand, he still gripped the strange cloth-covered object he had picked up in the private library.
On trembling legs and looking through Azure’s eyes, he hurried down the Gimhurst Tower. His breath became ragged as he ran into Starhaven’s inhabited quarter.
Twice, mangy cats scattered before him. He did not slow until flickering torches appeared along the walkways. Only then did he take the time to look at himself through Azure’s eyes.
The deconstructing sentence fragments had torn holes in his robes and cut small bloody lines into his hands and face. More shocking was the gash that slanted down his left brow. Two of his silvery dreadlocks had been cut by whatever blade had made that wound.
After hurrying through several buildings and across the Grand Courtyard, Shannon reached the Erasmine Spire. Thankfully there were no other wizards about to see him trot up the stairs and into his study.
Still panting, he set Azure on the back of his chair and the strange cloth-covered object on his writing desk. Though she still sent him frightened memories of the attack, Azure was beginning to calm down.
Shannon cast a few flamefly paragraphs above his desk. Once there was enough light, he coaxed Azure into standing on his shoulder. After saying a brief prayer to the Creator, he turned Azure’s eyes to the strange object he had taken from Nora’s library.
At first he could not understand what he was seeing.
It lay on his desk, wrapped in what was left of a white sleeve. He must have cut it off with the Magnus spell.
Slowly, tentatively, he turned the thing over.
It had been detached just above the elbow joint. There was no blood. Its curled fingers were perfect, down to the hairs growing on the back of the thumb.
“Heaven defend us,” Shannon whispered in shock. “The days of prophecy are upon us!”
Patches of the object seemed to be made of pale skin. But even as he watched, these slowly darkened into clay.
Save for this strange fact, the thing was an exact replica of a man’s severed forearm.
Nicodemus mounted the last few steps to stand panting before a tower door. It was identical to the one he had seen in his dream the previous night.
Contrary to his expectations of danger and intrigue, the day had been long and tiresome, full of busywork for Magister Shannon’s research. Moments earlier he had wolfed down his dinner so that he could find a view of the sunset he had seen in his sleep. It had been a strange dream—one that did not fade after waking but grew more vivid.
He pulled the door open to reveal a narrow stone bridge and, beyond, the Erasmine Spire. The sunset bathed the Spire in vermillion light.
Nicodemus smiled and stepped outside; now he would have time to sit on the bridge and read the knightly romance tucked under his arm. A warm breeze picked up as he turned westward.
Starhaven was built halfway up the Pinnacle Mountains. From a distance the stronghold’s crenellated walls and massive gatehouse made it look something like a great Lornish castle. But unlike a castle, Starhaven possessed a forest of towers, each an impossibility of height. The mightiest among them—the Erasmine Spire—stood so tall that from its top an observer could peer down on the Pinnacle Mountains.
Even from Nicodemus’s present height, halfway up a lesser tower, he could see for miles. Tan patchwork fields of small farms dotted the near landscape. Away from these homesteads, lush oak savanna spread out to the horizon.
To Nicodemus, the long view made the bridge an ideal spot for dreaming and reading.
He smiled again as he opened his knightly romance and heard the familiar creak of a new spine. The pages smelled like childhood.
Nicodemus’s smile grew sad. He would like to sit on the bridge all evening. But soon he would have to return to his chores. He looked eastward across Starhaven to the abandoned Chthonic Quarter. Already the evening air above the flat-topped towers was filling with bats.
What a strange sight the Chthonic people must have been, Nicodemus thought. Some stories described them as childlike creatures with bulbous eyes and teeth like needles. Others spoke of clawed monsters with armored plates covering their skin.
Nicodemus looked beyond the Chthonic Quarter. Only a few slivers of sunlight found their way through Starhaven’s myriad towers. Most such columns of light landed on the mountains, but just then one illuminated the Spindle Bridge, which arched between the stronghold and the nearest cliff face.
All other Starhaven bridges were wafer-thin testaments to Chthonic stonework. But the Spindle was a thick, round affair, like the bough of an enormous tree. Nicodemus leaned forward.