Spellwright

Nicodemus ran to help the old man with the last few steps. “Magister,” he scolded, “you should have told me you were coming up. I would have walked with you.”

“Then you would have wasted your time walking with an old man,” the wizard huffed. Nicodemus helped him sit.

“Fiery blood, but I’m tired,” Shannon said, putting Azure in his lap and surrounding her with his cloak. The parrot stuck her head out of her new cloth nest so she could continue seeing for them both. “What a wonderful view!” the old man said with a wrinkled smile.

Far ahead of them, the Erasmine Spire shone with the sunset’s glow. Gradually Shannon’s breathing slowed.

A colaboris spell erupted from the Spire and flew over the eastern horizon and into the coming night.

“A boy is trapped in an academy,” Nicodemus said softly. “He learns he is incomplete. He sees those around him suffer. For a moment he glimpses himself entirely before he escapes. But no matter where he goes, no matter what he becomes, he will cause or witness suffering. Still, he wants nothing more than to try to end the suffering.”

Shannon said nothing for a while. “You know that I have begun to ghostwrite?” he asked.

“An impressing matrix shines about your head when you sleep,” Nicodemus said without looking over. “It shines in Azure’s mind as well. I think it has something to do with dreaming. Have the cankers grown worse?”

To see them with his Language Prime fluency, Nicodemus would have had to touch the old man. He dared not.

Shannon took a long breath. “No. In fact, I’ve been feeling better. I suppose this improvement is temporary. There’s no way of telling. I believe we will recover the emerald in time to cure the thing growing in my gut. But… I don’t want to be caught unawares. I’m ghostwriting… as a precaution.”

Nicodemus nodded. “It is a race, then, between my training and your disease. If I lose, you die.”

Shannon sighed. “There is no race, Nicodemus. To help fight the Disjunction, you must learn to control your Language Prime fluency. You must do that alone; I cannot teach it to you. And now that the Index is misspelled, only you can use it to learn about Typhon. Those tasks will take years if not decades. Leave this valley before then and you won’t be able to oppose the demons. You won’t even be able to survive.”

“Magister, the kobolds say I am the most powerful spellwright they have ever known. And I command a small army of their warriors.”

The old man shook his head. “Kobolds rarely leave their underworld. A kobold army would be helpless on the war field. And, Nicodemus, your spells only function in the dark. You must continue to train in the wizardly languages. If you run after Deirdre and the emerald before then, it won’t take Typhon or your half-sister long before they realize you’re powerless in daylight.”

“I won’t watch you die!” Nicodemus replied hotly. “I know what I must do now.”

Shannon opened his mouth as if to object but then shook his head. They both fell silent.

Gradually the sun sank below the horizon and the stars made their slow debut. A wind picked up and began to sing its whistling song among the bare branches.

“Nicodemus, you haven’t escaped Starhaven,” Shannon said. “You think you’re out here. You think your strength lies in your Chthonic texts or in your skill as a commander. You think you’re incomplete without the emerald. You can’t see that your true strength is already inside of you. And that means you’re still in that academy.” He nodded toward the spire. “You’re still running from golems.”

Nicodemus pursed his lips but said nothing.

“You must realize that you are complete now.”

The young man shook his head. “You are dying. Deirdre is enslaved. The purpose of my life is to regain the emerald and end my disability. Nothing will be right until then.”

Shannon began to protest but then stopped.

They sat together, in silence.

AN ICY WIND curled around Nicodemus and Shannon and flew away north.

It blustered about on the white mountains and then split itself among Starhaven’s many towers. It howled over the bridges and sprayed dry snow into the gargoyles as they pushed drifts from eaves and cleared ice from the gutters.

The wind circled the Drum Tower and rattled its paper window screens. Simple John-now Lesser Wizard John of Starhaven-removed a screen and looked into the night. He took a long tremulous breath and again thought about his dead friends: Devin, Nicodemus, Magister Shannon.

Behind John someone knocked, likely a young cacographer. As the new Master of the Drum Tower, John replaced the screen and turned away from his sadness to see to the little one.

Outside, the wind swirled away from the Drum Tower before dropping into the Spirish stable yard to ruffle Amadi’s thick cloak. She was overseeing her sentinels as they prepared for the long journey back to the North.