Spellwright

Reading Kyran’s final words made him feel numb for a while. Then he thought of Deirdre and then of Devin. He thought of John and of Magister Shannon. He thought of his father, branding his infant self.

When the tears came, he did not try to stop them.

CHAPTER

Thirty

Hugging the Index to his chest, Nicodemus peered around the tapestry he was hiding behind.

He stood at Starhaven’s westernmost point, in the main hall of its gatehouse. The academy’s entrance lay beyond. Two guards, both women, paced the drawbridge.

Each woman was casting, from her waist, a white sentence that held a spellbook open beside her. This action, called “floating a spellbook,” gave each spellwright quick access to her book’s prewritten offensive language.

Slinking back behind the tapestry, Nicodemus closed his eyes and envisioned the emerald he had seen in his dreams. The stone was a small, flawless teardrop. At the gem’s center glowed a verdant spark. This was the missing part of himself.

He shuddered.

If not for this gem, he wouldn’t be cacographic. More important, Kyran and Devin wouldn’t be dead.

In his imagination, the gem shone brighter and his determination to recover the missing part of his mind grew. Summoning this mental image was how he had stopped the tears in the janitorial station. It was how he would prevent them now.

He let the emerald’s light burn away all his sorrow, all his doubt, all his weakness. He must find a way to regain the emerald, to complete himself.

He felt his belt-purse for Deirdre’s Seed of Finding. Once away from the stronghold, he would tear the root from the artifact to let the druid know where he was.

Again glancing from behind the tapestry, Nicodemus inspected the two guards. The younger one had long black hair and a pale face. She was unknown to him. But the elder guard’s silver hair and dark face were vaguely familiar. If he remembered correctly, she was one of Starhaven’s foremost Numinous authors.

Biting his lip, Nicodemus leaned back into his hiding place. Perhaps he should chance a return to the Fool’s Ladder; he was never going to escape Starhaven through the front gate. To get past these guards he’d have to be invisible.

An idea grew in his mind.

Perhaps he could find an invisibility subtext so simple that he could repair any misspellings the corrupted Index might introduce into it.

He opened the book. At first he could not make sense of what he saw. It seemed to be the chapter of an old treatise, but why it had appeared was a mystery.

From Towards a Uniform Spelling by Gaius Rufeus

Many today argue that tolorence for alternative spellings encurages creativity. I conseed that for many texts there are a few alternative spellings that are not only functional but also superior to the conventional spelling. But the number of these fortunate mistakes is dwarfed by the number of alternative spellings (or we should call them misspellings) that are nonfunctional and, in certin cases, dangerous. If wizards are to survive as useful members of the Neosolar Empire then a standard for…

Nicodemus frowned. He had been thinking of subtexts, not spelling. The Index was supposed to provide information on whatever subject he wanted to find. He reached to turn the page but then stopped.

Maybe the Index was correct: he hadn’t been thinking about subtexts themselves; he had been wondering if he could manage to rewrite a subtext.

He reread the page. So what if a few misspells worked? He’d known that for years. He couldn’t deliberately misspell a subtext; the text might flay his face off.

Irritated, he flipped the page to shut the book up. The sheet he turned to contained a treatise on self-doubt and its effect on spellwriting. “I’m supposed to be reading you,” he half-whispered, half-growled.

The book didn’t answer.

Nicodemus planted a palm on the page and sent his mind flying up into the book’s starry sky of spells.

From the darkness, three comet-like subtexts approached, each presenting an explanation of its function.

The first glowed green. It was a long and common language spell named madide. According to its description, the subtext blurred the image of those who cast it, making them difficult to see or strike. There was also a warning:

Note that madide’s inverted structure prevents most spellwriters from seeing this subtext; however, a spellwright posessing mastery of the comon langeuge may glean the rune sequenses and hense visualize the subtext.

That wouldn’t do; the guards had certainly mastered the common languages.