Spellwright

Tulki nodded and wrote his reply: “Yes, I realize the Neosolar Empire collapsed long ago. I heard once that it was modeled after the Solar Empire on your ancient continent. I would like to have learned more. But now, follow me.”

The ghost’s silken ponytail flew over his shoulder as he turned and loped forward on all three limbs. Nicodemus followed the soul into the rubble and ivy.

As they went, the ghost tossed a paragraph over his shoulder. Nicodemus nearly slipped as he hurried to catch and read the passage. “You should know that our magical languages will be rough on your skin. When those constructs leave your body, they will score welts on you. Nothing permanent. That is why Chimera, our goddess, gave my people such delicate and pale skin. When alive, we could painlessly write and remove spells from our skin. But this made our hides weak. It was one reason why your ancestors eradicated us so easily.”

Reading this made Nicodemus slow down.

The ghost stopped and looked back at Nicodemus before tossing him a short text. “Don’t be alarmed; I am not angry. I assume you are a scholar as well. Aren’t you here for research?”

After he finished reading, Nicodemus looked up. “Research?”

Tulki quickly offered another paragraph. “You are a eugrapher researching eugraphic languages, no? Both our languages-Wrixlan and Pithan-are eugraphic. What else would bring you here? You have a living tome there in your hand.”

Nicodemus looked at the Index. “Living tome?”

The ghost frowned as he produced another reply. “That Index’s parchment is kept alive by its First Language prose. Maybe you don’t know: our languages can be written only on living skin. Your constructs chose to store themselves on your body rather than in the Index; they will be much stronger for it. That is the beauty of our languages: we can make our bodies textual.”

Nicodemus looked from the Index to the ghost. “I don’t understand.”

The ghost’s chest rose and fell in a silent sigh before he held out a reply: “Your living tome taught you Wrixlan, one of our languages, because you are a eugrapher, yes?”

“I am a cacographer.”

Tulki shook his head as he wrote a response. He flicked it to Nicodemus. “That is what our last visitor said so long ago. But consider that all eugraphers misspell in the wizardly languages. They try to make the spelling logical. That is why your mind is attracted to Wrixlan; it is logical and therefore eugraphic. Do you not spell more accurately in Wrixlan?”

“I… I did respell a subtext,” Nicodemus said and then stopped as something occurred to him. He looked back at his translation of the ghost’s message. Surprisingly, it seemed to have no misspellings. True, his disability prevented him from recognizing many misspelled words; however, when he translated in Numinous, he produced so many errors that even his cacographic mind could identify the resulting misspellings.

“Celestial Canon,” he swore softly. “Does this mean I’m not a cacographer in your purple language?”