Spellwright

Kyran chuckled. “Didn’t you recognize me?”

“But that’s impossible. Only a godspell could-”

Kyran laughed. The druid’s long, blond hair was also stirring in the breeze. “It wasn’t truly a bear but a partial construction, made of the druidic languages and oak. It was wrapped around my body like magical armor.”

Nicodemus raised his brows. That explained the bear’s wooden face and coat of splinters. “But where did you find oak in Starhaven?”

“I’m going to miss that walking staff,” the druid said with a sigh and a nod at his limp.

“You had already written a spell on the staff? But how can your languages animate wood? It should be impossible to-”

Kyran cut him off. “The druidic languages come to us from the ancients. Our languages connect to living tissue-especially that of trees-in a way that is difficult to explain.” He smiled. “Besides, Nicodemus, there is more possible with language than can be imagined within your rules of spelling.”

CHAPTER

Twenty-nine

Sinking fast but still gloriously bright, the nearly full blue moon sat just above the Pinnacle Mountains. The white moon, in the identical phase as her smaller blue sister, hung high in the western sky.

From their different angles, the moons filled the compluvium with half-shadows of ivory and lapis. Nicodemus-still holding the Index in one hand and Simple John’s hand in the other-led the druids across the wall overlooking the compluvium. “The way to the Fool’s Ladder is just down that stairwell.” He motioned across the wall.

Kyran took the lead.

Far below them glistened the impluvium. The aquatic gargoyles that operated the reservoir’s valves were still at work despite the hour. Their movement slowly churned the water, transforming its surface into a coruscation of reflected moonlight.

Deirdre spoke. “That hawk-headed construct with the four arms, the one we passed to get into this place, if it obeys your commands, why didn’t you have it follow us?”

“So it can guard our backs,” Nicodemus replied, giving John’s hand an encouraging squeeze. “There are only two ways into the compluvium.”

Together the party hurried down the spiral stairs to the tunnel Shannon had opened. The image of Shannon bound and censored in a sentinel prison haunted Nicodemus as they sloshed through the tunnel to the other side.

When they emerged onto a walkway on Starhaven’s easternmost wall, John made a few soft noises. On the landing before the Spindle Bridge stood the second hawk-headed gargoyle. Behind it, the Spindle stretched out through the air to the mountainside. Far below them swayed the dark boughs of the forest.

“I am Nicodemus Weal,” Nicodemus told the four-armed gargoyle. “You are to obey my commands and the commands of my companions in white.” He nodded to the druids. “We must use the Fool’s Ladder.”

The construct tilted its head first to one side and then to the other. Its multi-jointed wings snapped open. They stretched nearly fifteen feet in either direction, presenting a solid flank of stone feathers.

With four heavy steps, the gargoyle plodded away from the bridge. The thing’s crashing footfalls sent rattling echoes running down the Spindle Bridge.

Starhaven’s easternmost wall had two massive iron doors that opened onto the landing. The giant gargoyle took a defensive stance facing the doors. “Could Fellwroth have formed another golem yet?” Nicodemus asked, turning to the druids.

Kyran studied the massive gargoyle. “It depends on what earth the monster is using. He could have formed a clay body long ago.”

Deirdre moved to stand next to Kyran. Beside her, John squatted down and pressed his hands against his face; it seemed his wits had not yet recovered from Kyran’s stun spell. Nicodemus wondered what the big man would be like now that the demonic curse had been dislodged from his mind.

A silvery glow drew Nicodemus’s eyes back to the bridge. Beside the railing now stood a Magnus spell in the shape of a straight-backed chair. Nicodemus walked over to inspect the text. Five feet in height and three in width, the thing could comfortably seat even John’s girth.

Curious as to how the spell would carry them to the ground, Nicodemus peered over the bridge’s railing. “Fiery blood!” he swore.

A foot below him-its stomach growing directly into the bridge’s stones-was half a gargoyle, as if someone had bisected the construct and fused the abdomen to the bridge.

The gargoyle wrinkled its porcine snout and stared at Nicodemus with tiny black eyes. Despite its bestial face, the spell’s muscular torso was the same shape as a man’s. “One at a time,” it creaked.

Just behind the construct grew its exact twin. Another such grew behind it, and so on all the way down to the forest.

Nicodemus blinked. “Do we just sit in the chair?” he asked. “You hand it down among yourselves to the ground?”

The pig-faced thing nodded. “Sit down and hold on.”

When Nicodemus straightened and looked back, he found the two druids looking at him. “Is the ladder over the side?” Deirdre asked.