Spellwright

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 Perhaps she should not have withdrawn the guards from the Drum Tower.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?”

CHAPTER

Thirty-four

As Nicodemus followed the ghostly Chthonic down into the ruined village, he reviewed everything he knew about ghostwriting.

He knew it was something powerful spellwrights did when nearing death. He knew the process involved an advanced form of what Shannon had called impressing: a complex Numinous matrix was written within a ghostwriter’s head; over time the matrix became a magical copy of the ghostwriter’s mind. A textual body was then written around this magical mind and never allowed outside of the author’s living body. Eventually, author and text became one being.

Wizards ghostwrote in Numinous, and the few ghostwriters Nicodemus had seen glowed golden from heel to head.

Nicodemus also knew that when ghostwriters died, their ghosts lived on in a text-preserving resting place. Starhaven’s ghosts dwelled below the stronghold in the necropolis.

Nicodemus also remembered that there were several types of misspelled ghosts. A “ghast” was a ghost that attacked other texts or the spellwrights who tended the necropolis. A “ghoul” was a ghost that refused to leave its body, often resulting in a half-animated corpse.

Fortunately, the ghost walking ahead of Nicodemus was not misspelled. Though transparent, its image and textual integrity seemed uncorrupted-a shocking feat for prose that had to be nearly a thousand years old.

Presently, Nicodemus was following the ghost down a steep, crumbling stairway to the ruined Chthonic village. Above them a growing wind was blustering through the trees.

“Magister,” Nicodemus said to the ghost as they descended, “How should I address you?”

The Chthonic soul stopped to smile at Nicodemus and hand him three purple sentences. They read, “You may call me Tulki. In our language, ‘Tulki’ is the masculine form of the word for ‘interpreter.’ In life, I was an ambassador between our people and your ancestors.”

When Nicodemus looked up from this message, he saw the ghost studying him with wide amber eyes. Tulki formed another two sentences in his arm and held them out. “I am assuming your ancestors were of the Neosolar Empire. You wear the black robes.”

After reading this, Nicodemus hugged the Index closer to his chest. The Neosolar Empire had slaughtered the Chthonics with the help of a young Numinous Order. “I was born Spirish,” he said.