Spellwright

Fellwroth’s crimson eyes bulged. “Boann inhabited that river? Deirdre said the goddess was of the city. Nicodemus, quickly, we must get away from the ark. She’s not Boann’s avatar anymore!”

Deirdre’s sword arm was trembling.

Nicodemus began composing restraining Magnus sentences.

Fellwroth kept talking. “Nicodemus, Shannon, we need to get away. There are fates worse than death! She’s not Boann’s avatar! We have to escape Typhon!”

“Deirdre…” Shannon started to say.

But Deirdre, moving with inhuman speed, slammed her elbow into Shannon’s face and then thrust her blade into Fellwroth’s skull.

The Numinous rectangle on the creature’s forehead exploded and sent a wall of force careening through the cavern. When the shockwave hit Nicodemus, everything went black.

Then he was lying on his back staring at a torrent of blazing Numinous prose streaming from Fellwroth’s corpse to the ark.

Nicodemus extemporized a disspell along his forearm and cast it at the textual stream.

But his text crumpled in the air and fell.

Numbing shock filled Nicodemus as he watched the disspell shatter on the floor. How could he have misspelled?

He looked down at his hands and found them empty.

The emerald was gone.

CHAPTER

Forty-four

A rumble shook the stairs under Amadi’s feet.

Slowly the sentinels pushed open the giant iron doors that led onto the Spindle Bridge’s landing. Before her stretched the moonlit bridge and the dark mountains beyond. “Secure the landing,” she ordered.

The twelve sentinels who had volunteered for the expedition began to spread out. They were all excellent spellwrights: ten wizards and two grand wizards. Three bore caesura wands, another a tundern wand. The rest carried spellbooks full of wartexts.

The dean of libraries and the rector had accompanied the party to observe.

Simple John stepped beside her and pointed. “There!”

Amadi’s gaze followed his finger to where the Spindle Bridge met the mountainside. A hole seemed to have been blasted in the Spindle. Out of it shone a golden blaze.

The sentinels muttered. Someone was casting a powerful Numinous spell from inside the mountain.

“Kale,” Amadi ordered, “stay here with John and the provost’s officers. The rest of you, advance slowly and keep closed ranks. Subdue anything dangerous, and kill anything nonhuman.”

DEIRDRE STOOD FROZEN in her thrust-legs bent, arms extended, hands locked around the sword hilt. Fellwroth’s unmoving body lay before her.

When Nicodemus said Deirdre’s name, her eyes moved but her body remained as stiff as stone.

Shannon lay behind her, bleeding from his nose and a wound on his shoulder. Azure had disappeared.

Nicodemus went to the wizard and turned him over. He took care to touch only the old man’s robes, never his skin. Without the emerald, he was once again the mutagenic Storm Petrel.

Shannon looked up at him with a dazed expression. “Fellwroth… is dead?”

“He is,” Nicodemus croaked, crouching beside the old wizard.

“And Deirdre is… Typhon’s avatar?”

“She didn’t know.” Nicodemus shoved his arm under the wizard’s back.

“But how did you figure it out?” Shannon gasped as Nicodemus tried to lift him.

“Magister, now is not-”

“No…” the old man said between rapid breaths. “You have to tell me.”

Nicodemus grimaced. “Fellwroth cut Typhon in Boann’s river. After that Deirdre started having seizures and seeing visions of Fellwroth attacking Typhon. Something of the demon must have infected Boann’s ark and later her avatar. Deirdre didn’t recognize the change because she thought it was Boann’s punishment for having an affair with Kyran.”

Only four flamefly paragraphs remained; they hovered above Shannon, shedding a small pool of wan incandescence.

Shannon shook his head. “But how do you know that?”

“Fellwroth’s words,” Nicodemus answered. “The creature was terrified that Typhon was after us.”

Shannon inhaled sharply as Nicodemus sat him up.

The younger man continued to explain as he draped the old man’s arm over his shoulder. “Typhon knew Fellwroth would have to find me when the emerald needed replenishing. So he pretended to be Boann and sent Deirdre here. She was to bring me to the ark; that way Typhon could invest his soul into me and use me to defeat Fellwroth. But when Fellwroth caught Deirdre alone, the demon changed his plan. He tricked Fellwroth into bringing the ark up here, next to his real body, knowing that Fellwroth would bring me here.”

The old wizard groaned as Nicodemus hoisted him to his feet. “But why,” Shannon asked as Nicodemus wrapped his arm around the old man’s waist, “did the demon want you in the same place as Fellwroth and the ark?”