Spellwright

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

A sharp knock woke Amadi in her cot. For a confused moment she stared at the stark white walls of her Starhaven cell. In her dream she had been wrestling a giant bookworm. Her now bandaged forearm ached.

The knock came again and she struggled up from her pallet. Outside her window the sky was still black. “Who knocks?”

“Kale, Magistra.”

“Enter,” she called to her secretary and pulled on a night robe.

The young Ixonian slipped into the room.

“Kale, I shudder to see you. I can’t have slept more than an hour. Has the bookworm infection returned?”

“No, Magistra.” The man’s eyes were wide. “Another death, one of the cacographers.”

Amadi drew in a sharp breath. “Shannon escaped?”

“No, he’s still imprisoned beneath the Summer Tower. Nicodemus’s female floormate, Devin Dorshear, is dead. Both Nicodemus and the big man they call Simple John are missing. Near midnight the young cacographers heard shouting. Until a quarter hour ago, they were too frightened to leave their rooms.”

Amadi swore. “But the wards. No one should be able to get in or out of that tower.”

Kale pressed a hand to his mouth. “I take full responsibility, Magistra. I was the one who suggested we leave the tower unguarded. It seems Shannon somehow slipped Nicodemus a key to lift the wards. I take full responsibility.”

“Nonsense,” Amadi snapped. “I had the command.” She turned to her bed chest. “Rouse the sentinels. Alert all the guards. I want a search begun before I’m fully dressed. I’ll personally go to the provost’s officers.”

Kale nodded and turned to go.

“But Kale, I’ll first examine the dead cacographer. I want two of our sentinels on hand. Where did the murder happen?”

The man paused at the door and looked back. “Drum Tower, top floor. I’ll send two spellwrights straight away. Nothing’s been touched… but the body, Magistra, it’s… gruesome.”

A quarter hour after being awakened with news of Nicodemus’s disappearance, Amadi found herself in the Drum Tower frowning at a dead lesser wizard.

The girl’s face had been crushed by blunt words. A puddle of drying blood surrounded her body. “The killer was a clumsy spellwright,” Amadi said to the sentinels behind her. “Must have used a leadshot spell or something simple.”

Amadi clenched her teeth. She was almost certain Shannon was guilty of some foul play. Surely the old wizard was in the pay of a magically illiterate noble. Why else would he have hidden so much money in his quarters? Why else would he be connected to the bookworm infestation?

However, now it seemed she was dealing with two murderers. “A cacographer did this,” she said. “Nicodemus or the big one.”

She wondered if Nicodemus had killed Nora Finn at Shannon’s behest. “You there,” she said to one of sentinels. “Go to the Summer Tower and rouse Shannon. I need some questions answered.”

With a nod, the man ducked out of the common room.

“Another strange thing is all this dust,” Amadi grumbled, now pacing about. Mostly the powder was scattered across the room, but next to the door lay a pile of the stuff covered by what looked like a white bed sheet. Even stranger, one corner held a small mound of splinters.

“You,” Amadi said to the remaining sentinel, a tall woman with gray hair. “Search the other Drum Tower residences. Tell me if you find similar dust or splinters in any other room.”

As the woman hurried through the door, Kale appeared. He was chewing his lower lip. A bad sign. “What is it, Kale?”

“Word from the librarians, Magistra. One of Starhaven’s most valuable artifacts is missing.”

“Destroyed by a bookworm?” she asked.

The secretary shook his head. “It was in a secure chamber and the Main Library was never infested.”

Amadi closed her eyes and took a long breath. “Let me guess: either Shannon or Nicodemus was the last one to use this artifact.”

Kale nodded. “There’s more. The artifact is a reference codex called the Index; it can access all text stored in Starhaven. And whoever has the artifact has looked up the touch spell.”

“And how do we know this?”

“Every copy of the touch spell in the academy is now misspelled.”

Amadi frowned. “By accessing texts through this artifact the user is misspelling them?”

Kale nodded. “And all the misspelled touch scrolls are infectious. They cause manuscripts touching them to misspell. An entire pedagogical library in the Marfil Tower has been destroyed.”

“Nicodemus!” Amadi growled. “If the boy accesses a text in the Stacks or the Main Library, he could destroy all of Starhaven’s holdings.”

Kale nodded again.

Amadi swore. “First the bookworm infestation, now this. Chaos incarnate has come to Starhaven.”

“Magistra… are you saying-”

“Do you doubt it, Kale? Think of the disorder that has spread across Starhaven. Think of the murders, the deaths, the corruption. Think of the scar-an Inconjunct breaking the Braid. The boy seems destined to spread chaos.”

Kale took a long breath. “We cannot be certain the counter-prophecy is coming to pass.”

“Cannot be certain, but we now have enough evidence that we must act.”

She made for the door. “I will question the librarians. I want to learn more about this artifact. You will go to the Erasmine Tower and tell the on-duty officers what has happened. If we don’t catch the boy, his mind will rot the pages from our books as a tumor rots flesh. They must wake the provost and tell him that most likely we’ve found the Storm Petrel.”

Fellwroth, more comfortable now in a new clay golem, stole through the forest south of Starhaven. Two hours until dawn. The air was cold, the sky black. The strengthening wind roared through the woods.

Roughly an hour ago, the signaling texts from Nicodemus’s keloid had ceased entirely. At the time, Fellwroth had still been forming a new golem and so had missed the chance to determine the boy’s location more precisely.

However, it was clear that the last signal had come from somewhere in this forest-hence Fellwroth’s current, systematic combing of the mountainside. Presently, he followed a deer trail into an elm thicket. He had hoped the keloid’s signal texts would recommence, but now it seemed the boy’s new protector was blocking them indefinitely.

Here the wind was producing a continuous snow of falling leaves. Fellwroth scowled; without another keloid signal, his current search was unlikely to reveal anything other than more autumnal foliage.

A few hours ago he had spoken to a subtextualized Nicodemus on the road to Gray’s Crossing. Had his words convinced the boy? Likely not. If Nicodemus meant to surrender, the whelp should have returned to Starhaven by now, and none of Fellwroth’s rewritten gargoyles had reported such.

Fellwroth snatched a falling leaf out of the air and wondered why Nicodemus had not accepted his offer.

Only two possibilities suggested themselves: first, threats against Nicodemus’s life might be insufficient to win the boy’s surrender; or second, the whelp might feel safe now that he had a protector to block the keloid’s signals.

Fellwroth crushed the leaf and considered who might be concealing Nicodemus. Not a deity; he would have sensed another divine presence by now. Nor could it be the girl druid acting alone.

Perhaps it did not matter who was hiding Nicodemus. Perhaps he could threaten something other than the boy’s life.

He looked toward Starhaven. The dark elm trees blocked everything from view but the lofty Erasmine Spire. A slow smile pulled on his pale lips as a plan formed in his mind.

He would need to use his true body, and it would take a day to move everything into place. Even so, the plan was perfect.

The leaves were falling faster now. Fellwroth laughed. He knew of at least one thing Nicodemus valued more than his life.

“YOU GAVE HIM access to the Index?” Amadi squawked.

Shannon was sitting calmly on his prison cell cot. The guards had written a weblike censoring spell around the old man’s head, blocking him from all magical language. Now his blindness would be complete.

Though he must have been exhausted, the old wizard wore a calm expression. “Without my anti-golem spell, Nicodemus would have been helpless.”

“Magister, the provost himself suspects Nicodemus is the Storm Petrel, the champion of chaotic language. I can have no more stories of your clay-”

Shannon learned forward. Thick Magnus texts kept his wrists and legs spellbound to the wall, but there was enough slack on the fettering spells to make Amadi step backward.

“Do you find anything strange in the Drum Tower?” he asked. “Maybe not clay, but any earthen metal, granite or steel or-”

“Dust,” she said automatically. “There was a smaller mound of splinters, but dust was all about the common room and especially in a pile with a torn white sheet.”

Shannon’s blank eyes widened. “The arm I cut off the clay golem had a white sleeve.”

Amadi shook her head. “Magister, this tale of golems is too much to swallow. Texts from the ancient continent?”

“Amadi, by naming him the Storm Petrel, you admit that the bonds holding the demons to the ancient continent are loosening. And yet you refuse to accept the possibility that magic from the ancient continent has already crossed the ocean.”

Amadi said nothing.

“If you had guarded the boy properly, none of this would have happened,” Shannon said sternly. “The least you can do now is-”

“Enough,” Amadi snapped. “I did guard the boy properly given the bookworm infestation. You slipped him the key needed to escape the Drum Tower. It is you who must clear his name. And there’s only one way to do that: help us find the boy. Magister, please. Help us recover the Index and capture the Storm Petrel.”

He scowled.

Amadi took a long breath. Perhaps the old man was right. Perhaps she should not have withdrawn the guards from the Drum Tower. If the provost discovered that she had wasted the chance to contain Nicodemus, she might soon join Shannon in a prison cell. “Can you find the boy?” she asked patiently. “Do you know where he might be?”

He shook his head. “If I did, I wouldn’t take you to him. By invoking the counter-prophecy, you have ensured that he cannot be safe in Starhaven. The provost is likely to censor magical literacy out of the boy the instant he’s found.”

“But you must have taught him a cipher for a broadcast spell.”

“If I did, I should never use it,” Shannon snapped. “You could pretend to pardon me or even stage a prison escape. You could watch me then and see if I go to him. But I will never seek him out so long as I have the slightest suspicion that you are following me.”

Amadi began to pace the tiny cell. “Why do you protect the boy?”

“Have you considered that he might truly be the Halcyon?”

“What under heaven could suggest that he is the champion of order in language?” she asked. “His cacographic mind that is infecting the entire stronghold with misspells? His keloid that symbolizes increasing chaos? The death and ruin that follow him as a storm follows a petrel at sea?”

“Open your eyes, Amadi! A construct of ancient language was murdering my students one by one to reach him. Who else could bring ancient language to this continent but a demon?”

Amadi pursed her lips.

The old man continued. “Amadi, it is this demonic construct that has led you to suspect me wrongly. A demonic construct that has you worrying about the counter-prophecy when you should be worrying about the true one.”

Amadi opened her mouth, but a sharp knock at the cell door interrupted her. “Enter,” she called. The door swung wide to reveal one of the guards, a short man with a curly red beard.

“What is it?” Amadi demanded.

“Message from your secretary,” the guard replied and looked down at a green paragraph in his hands.

“Magistra,” he read, “the druids Deirdre and Kyran cannot be found. The druids of the Silent Blight delegation claim no knowledge of their disappearance.” The guard looked up. “It’s signed by Magister Kale.”

“Los’s fiery blood!” Amadi swore. “What else can go wrong?”