Spellwright

“No, we sit in this silver chair; there’s a train of gargoyles back there. They’ll hand it down.”

“Silver chair?” Kyran repeated.

Nicodemus had forgotten. “You can’t see it because it’s written in Magnus. I’ll show you where to sit.”

There followed a brief argument about the order in which they should descend.

As the druids talked, Nicodemus glanced at the iron doors that led onto the Spindle Bridge’s landing. It was good to see the hawk-headed gargoyle was also watching the doors.

In the end, Deirdre insisted that she go down first. Nicodemus showed her where to sit and where to hold on. The cold autumn breeze smelled of pine resin.

“Are you sure I’m secure?” she asked nervously. “I don’t like holding on to something I can’t see. How do you know I won’t fall when-” She yelped as the chair tipped backward and slowly sank over the bridge.

Nicodemus ran to the railing and anxiously watched as the muscular gargoyle handed the silver chair down to its neighbor. Deirdre had shut her eyes and was squeezing the chair arms with white-knuckled determination. The next gargoyle took the chair and handed it down again.

Kyran appeared at Nicodemus’s side and produced a single slow laugh. “She hates high places. But she’s got steel in her soul. Anyone else that scared of heights would be shrieking.” He paused. “How old are you, boy?”

Nicodemus looked over, but the man was staring down at Deirdre’s descent. “Twenty-six on Midwinter’s Day.”

“Just a weanling. Ever been in love?”

Nicodemus thought of Amy Hern and the things they had said to each other and what little it had come to. “I hope there’s more to it than what I’ve known.”

Kyran produced another humorless laugh. “A good answer.”

Nicodemus stood in awkward silence as Deirdre finished the descent. The gargoyles brought the chair up faster than they had handed it down.

John was next. Surprisingly, when Nicodemus directed him to sit in the chair, the big man calmly obeyed. “Why isn’t he more distressed?” Nicodemus asked.

Kyran sighed. “It was the stun spell. He can’t remember anything now. It should wear off in a few hours.”

“I’m worried he might get confused halfway down. Is there any spell you can-”

His voice died when Kyran tore a button from his sleeve and pressed it to John’s chest. A globe of verdant light bloomed from the druid’s hand and then condensed into a many-tendriled vine.

“Wondrous spell!” Nicodemus whispered as synaesthetic warmth flushed across his face.

The leafy vine spread across Simple John, binding his arms to the chair’s arms, his legs to the chair’s legs. With dazed calmness, the big man watched the magical plant grow until he was completely entwined. At that point, the vine produced several pendulous bunches of blue wisteria blossoms.

“Flowers,” the big man said with difficulty.

Nicodemus squinted at Kyran’s sleeve.

“Those aren’t buttons, are they?” The druid shook his head. “Seeds augmented with druidic texts.”

Just then the chair tipped over the railing. John yelled and began to squirm, but Nicodemus called out reassurance and the big man stopped struggling.

As before, the gargoyles handed the Magnus chair down at a controlled pace. “Deirdre will cut him free when he reaches the bottom,” Kyran explained.

The uncomfortable silence returned as the two men watched the chair carry John down to the forest. When the gargoyles returned the chair, relief washed over Nicodemus. He told Kyran how to sit in it.

“I’ll see you on the ground,” the druid said as the spell tipped over the railing and began to descend.

Nicodemus nodded and was about to reply when the world erupted into a blaze of silver light. A roar like that of a landslide filled the night.

Nicodemus spun around in time to see the gargoyle’s right wing disintegrate into a roiling Magnus effulgence.

“NICODEMUS!” KYRAN CALLED from beyond the bridge.

Nicodemus looked down and saw the druid on the Magnus chair, already seven feet below. Green bolts of light crackling around his hands, he pulled another seed-button from his sleeve.

Suddenly, a shrill scream drowned out all other sound.

Nicodemus spun around to see the giant gargoyle turning so it could swing its remaining wing forward with deadly force. Before the gargoyle stood a white-robed figure.

Fellwroth in a new golem!

A hood covered the monster’s face but his ashen hands were bare and holding a thick spellbook.

As the stone wing whistled forward, Fellwroth calmly peeled a Magnus spell from the book. With a wrist flick, the monster cast the spell onto the ground. It bloomed into a row of thick, silvery poles. The gargoyle’s wing struck the shafts with an ear-grating chirp.

Fellwroth ran forward, pulling a whiplike Numinous disspell from the spellbook. With a screech, the gargoyle swung its two right arms. Fellwroth dodged under the blows and flicked out his golden whip. The long, luminous sentences wrapped around the gargoyle’s lower right bicep, cutting deep into the construct’s Magnus skeleton.