Spellwright

The avatar continued to knock on the floor. “Then I will make Fellwroth tell me where it is.”

John was tapping the floor by the window.

Shannon grunted in annoyance. “Even if you captured a golem, the monster would simply disengage his spirit. And we haven’t a clue where Fellwroth’s true body might be.”

“Then I will find the true body,” Deirdre said while knocking again.

The old linguist grimaced. “Deirdre, we must get Nicodemus to safety.”

“We go nowhere, Magister,” Nicodemus said coldly, “unless it’s to recover the emerald or disspell your curse.”

Shannon folded his arms. “It’s not enough that I must die? You two want to join me?”

Before Nicodemus could respond, one of John’s knocks produced a hollow echo.

“Sweet heaven!” Nicodemus swore, taking a step backward. His cold focus was shattered. Now his frightened mind teemed with memories of his dreams: the dying nightmare turtles, the pale ivy, the body shrouded in white. He remembered walking on the Spindle Bridge with Shannon, their boot heels clacking unusually loudly on the bridge stone.

“Sweet heaven,” he swore again and grabbed the Index from the sentences that had been floating it around his waist. He sat heavily in an empty chair.

The others went to John and helped him hoist up a trap door.

“It’s empty,” Nicodemus heard himself say as Deirdre, John, and Azure peered down into the secret compartment.

Deirdre stared at him. “How did you know?”

Memories flashed through Nicodemus’s mind so quickly they made him dizzy.

“We’ll need a distraction.” His words were quick and anxious. He was trying to speak as fast as he was thinking. “With the signal text from my keloid diffused, he’ll never realize we’re so near. We can slay his living body. But the distraction will have to make him use a golem and… when the living body is dead, I can use the emerald to disspell Magister’s canker. Or Boann might… but I’ll have the emerald.”

A wave of heat washed through his body. “I’ll have the emerald.” He stood and dropped the Index back into its floating orbit around his waist. “I’ll be complete!”

All three of them were staring at him now. “What under heaven are you talking about?” Shannon asked.

Nicodemus went to the far window and removed its paper screen. The room looked out on the forest. High above the skyline, cutting a black silhouette against the stars, stood Starhaven’s many towers.

“We can recover the emerald,” he said, “because I know where to find Fellwroth’s true, living body.”

NICODEMUS PURSED HIS lips. “I should have known when I was replenishing the ghosts’ book and saw through the young Chthonic’s eyes. I knew the Chthonic’s thoughts; I knew that the Chthonic people first emerged from the underworld up there.”

He nodded out the window toward Starhaven. “They came out of a cave high up on the rockface. I learned that the Chthonics protected themselves from the attacks of an older race they called the blueskins by filling the cave mouth with powerful metaspells. And the blueskins filled the cave mouth with tortoise-like constructs.”

“But we know this,” Deirdre said. “You saw in a later vision that the Chthonics had collapsed the cave.”

Nicodemus looked back at the avatar. “I saw that the cave was gone, but the Chthonic whose eyes I was seeing through never thought about the cave. His mind was preoccupied by the human army laying siege to Starhaven.”

“The cave wasn’t closed?” Shannon asked.

Nicodemus shook his head. “And Fellwroth’s true body lies in that cave. In a dream I saw ivy-representing the Chthonic metaspell-and the turtles-representing the blueskin constructs-attacking Fellwroth’s body. They must represent the ancient spells still resisting Fellwroth’s intrusion into the cave.”

Shannon made a low, disapproving sound. “But we know that Starhaven’s Chthonic metaspells prevent Fellwroth from creating a golem within the stronghold’s walls.”

Nicodemus clenched his fists. “But the cave isn’t within Starhaven’s walls. The cave is filled with metaspells much older than those in Starhaven.”

He turned to Deirdre. “Boann’s ark is also in that cave. I saw it in my dream standing behind Fellwroth’s body in the second nightmare. I didn’t know what it was at the time. But just now, Deirdre, when you described it to me, I realized what it must be.”

“So the cave is hidden?” John asked slowly. “Some ancient spell opens the mountain?”

Nicodemus shook his head. “Think of the Spindle’s shape. All other Chthonic bridges are thin and flat. The Spindle is as round as a tree bough. And when we walked on it, our footsteps echoed. Remember, Magister, the racket the sentinels made when marching toward us? And, Deirdre, what did it sound like when the war-weight gargoyle walked on the Spindle’s landing?”

She nodded. “Like a drum… like the sound was moving down the bridge.”