Spellwright

“Kale, you’re upset that I withdrew some authors from your investigations. But we are terribly shorthanded, and we must guard the Drum Tower and Shannon.” She exhaled in exasperation. “I’m still amazed by his story of a creature turning from flesh into clay.”

Kale shrugged. “Maybe the old man’s lost his wits.”

“Or maybe he only wants us to think he’s lost his wits. Or maybe Nicodemus truly is the Storm Petrel and has corrupted the old fool’s mind. It’s all too dangerous with those two.”

Kale looked at her. “And what of the provost’s request to post more sentinels around the delegates’ sleeping quarters?”

Amadi rubbed her eyes. “Sweet heaven, that’s right. If a delegate ends up dead, the provost will have me skinned alive. But how can we come up with any more authors?”

“I’ve inspected the wards on the Drum Tower,” Kale said carefully. “It would take a master spellwright to disspell them. Perhaps the guards are superfluous?”

Amadi chewed her lip as they turned a corner. “Tempting, but no; we’ll leave the guards until I know more about Shannon’s story. There’s a chance he’s telling the truth.”

Kale said nothing.

Amadi looked back at the courtyard. “Starhaven must be the strangest bit of architecture humans have ever inhabited.”

“Why’s that?”

She gestured first at the courtyard in general and then at the aspen trees in its center. “Look at these interlacing arches, these brightly tiled fountains. We’d have to ride clear up to Dar for a better example of royal Spirish architecture. And yet at the center of all these minarets are aspens. Aspens! There should be palm fronds swaying in a sea breeze, not gold leaves quaking in thin mountain air.”

Kale smiled. “It is odd to think of the royal Spirish colonizing this place. They must have been miserable when it snowed.”

Amadi nodded. “Three kingdoms tried to remake this chunk of Chthonic rock in their image. All failed, and now we wizards play in the ruins.”

Kale chuckled. But before he could say what he found funny, the sound of running feet filled the courtyard.

Amadi turned around to see a young Starhaven acolyte skid to a halt. “Magistra Okeke, you’re to come to Engineer’s library immediately!”

Amadi frowned. “On whose command?”

The boy shook his head. “Don’t know her name, Magistra. A grand wizard, she wears a white badge and three stripes on her sleeves.”

Amadi swore. Only a deputy provost could wear such marks. “Take us there quickly,” she said.

The boy turned and ran. Amadi hiked up her robes and followed.

They pursued the young page through a blur of hallways to an archway large enough to admit seven horses running abreast.

Beyond sat an extraordinarily wide library. Long ago Starhaven engineers had filled the place with a row of limestone bridges that spanned the width of the room.

Along each arch stretched wooden facades decorated in the ornate Spirish style and converted into bookshelves. A labyrinth of traditional bookshelves flowed beneath the bridges like a river’s convoluted currents.

The place was alive with yelling librarians. Teams of black-robes rushed across bridges and among the bookshelves. A sudden, golden jet of Numinous prose exploded from one bridge and was quickly followed by a chorus of shouts.

“Mother ocean!” Kale issued the Ixonian curse. “What’s happening?”

Suddenly a nearby bookshelf burst into a molten ball of silvery Magnus. Amadi had just enough time to turn away and cover her face before a shockwave of fragmented prose and manuscripts struck.

When Amadi looked back, she saw a pile of rubble where the shelf had stood. “Firey blood of Los!” she swore. Amid the detritus now wriggled four pale-skinned constructs that took the shape of giant worms or grubs.

Each was roughly a foot long, possessing huge eyes and a segmented body. Just below each spell’s bulbous head sprouted three pairs of legs that ended in childlike human hands. More distressing were the bulging hind portions; in those segments speckled bits of half-digested text shone through their translucent carapaces.

“Disspell them before they reach a shelf!” Amadi barked and drew her arm back. Within moments she had filled her fist with a lacerate disspell.

Already the nightmare constructs were scurrying for nearby books. Their grasping, childlike hands moved them over the debris with alarming speed.

Beside her, Kale extemporized a spear made of common magical language. With an ululating war cry, he charged.

Amadi cast her disspell with her best overhand throw. The lacerate text-a whirling mass of Magnus shards-shot through the air to slice through a monster’s abdomen. The spell wailed as its carapace split open and disgorged its textual viscera.

Kale leaped over the deconstructing monster and gracefully thrust at the next worm. The thing jumped back to avoid the spear’s blade.

Kale, like many Ixoanians, was an excellent spearman. The instant his boots touched ground, he leaped and thrust again.