Spellwright

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.

“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.

With a backhand jerk, Fellwroth pulled the whip taut. The force ripped the Magnus sentences from the gargoyle’s arm and tore them into frayed ends.

Now deprived of its linguistic skeleton, the gargoyle’s lower arm froze into immobile stone.

With a scream, the hawk-headed construct struck out with both its left arms. Fellwroth ducked again, but this time the gargoyle’s lower fist struck his shoulder.

With a resounding clang, the blow sent Fellwroth skidding across the landing. He slid across the stones, a trail of white sparks spraying behind.

“Celestial Canon!” Nicodemus swore. “It’s a golem made of metal.”

Remembering the Index, Nicodemus opened it and planted his hand on a page. Instantaneously the book renewed his knowledge of the spell Shannon had written to trap Fellwroth’s spirit within the golem.

With a thundering rumble, the giant gargoyle charged. But the golem quickly regained his feet and rewrote his Numinous whip.

Nicodemus started forging Shannon’s spell along his left forearm. “No!” a voice cried from behind.

He turned to see Kyran hoisting himself over the railing. The druid must have created some ropelike spell and hauled himself back up. “We don’t fight,” Kyran growled. “We run!”

There was a sudden crash. Nicodemus looked back. With its three good arms, the gargoyle had grabbed hold of Fellwroth and hoisted the monster over its head. With a scream, the gargoyle hurled its foe against the wall.

The metal golem crashed into the stones with enough force to crack two of them.

“Now! Run!” Kyran commanded, pulling Nicodemus along the landing and back into the tunnel. They sprinted through the darkness to the compluvium.

Kyran stopped at the stairwell and looked up at the wall that could lead them back to Starhaven proper. Then he looked out into the compluvium’s myriad gables, gutters, and shadows. “What kind of body?” he asked.

“Metal,” Nicodemus panted.

“It will last too long. We can’t hide out there in the compluvium. So we run back to the wizards and search for another way down to Gray’s Crossing.”

Before Nicodemus could agree, the other man turned and sprinted up the stairwell, his blond hair glinting in the double moonlight. Nicodemus followed.

They were halfway up the stairs when a golden flash made Nicodemus look downward. Fellwroth was backing out of the tunnel. The monster was hurling curses back the way he had come. An avian screech echoed out of the tunnel; the war-weight gargoyle wasn’t far behind.

Nicodemus and Kyran topped the stairs and dashed along the wall. They had to reach the steps down to the Sataal Landing.

Suddenly the moonlight ahead of them shivered as if it were full of hot air. A horrible idea flashed through Nicodemus’s mind. “Kyran, wait!” he called, skidding to a stop. The druid ignored him. Nicodemus peered over the wall’s far side. “Kyran, it’s a trap!”

The druid stopped. “What?”

Nicodemus pointed over the wall. Below him stood the Sataal Landing’s last cloister and the steep stairs nestled between the wall and the Karkin Tower. “The second war-weight gargoyle should be down there. But there’s only a pile of rubble. Fellwroth already deconstructed it. And that”-he pointed ahead to the shimmering patch of moonlight-“is a subtextualized spell. A large one. Likely a stasis trap. Fellwroth drove us up here so we’d run into that spell!”

“I see nothing. Can you glean the sentences?”

Behind them the remaining gargoyle screamed.

“No,” Nicodemus said. “I can only glean its presence.”

“I’ll try to disspell or spring it,” Kyran said. Synaesthetic warmth flushed across Nicodemus’s cheeks as the older man began to spellwrite in a druidic language.

But an explosion made both men turn. Fellwroth had gained the wall and was running toward them. The hawk-headed gargoyle was limping behind. Both its wings were now shattered, and its lower right and upper left arms were frozen.

“Stay behind me,” Kyran barked as he pushed Nicodemus aside. The druid tore a seed-button from his sleeve and pulled back his arm. From his fist sprang thousands of thorny branches. Blue flames blossomed from their tips.

Bellowing, Kyran cast the spell with an overhand throw. As it flew, the tangle of thorns and fire burned bright enough to dazzle Nicodemus’s eyes.

There was a crash and a scream. When Nicodemus’s vision returned, he saw that Kyran’s spell had struck Fellwroth’s side. The resulting blast had burnt a wide hole in the golem’s robe. The creature’s maggot-white torso was now covered with gashes that exposed its metal flesh.

With panicked determination, Nicodemus returned to writing Shannon’s anti-golem spell along his left forearm. Farther down the wall, the hawk-headed gargoyle screeched as it hobbled toward them.

Kyran pulled his arm back, and again fiery branches bloomed from his fist.

But it was too late. Fellwroth had cracked open a spellbook and now flicked out a net of Numinous and Magnus.

The censoring text enveloped Kyran and knocked him onto his back. The burning branch spell rolled out of his hand and lost its fire.

“Kyran!” Nicodemus cried. Fellwroth’s luminescent Numinous passages had intertwined about the druid’s head, censoring him completely. He began to thrash.

Fellwroth rushed forward. Nicodemus peeled his rendition of Shannon’s spell from his forearm and cast it. A comet-like spell shot through the air but splashed against the golem’s chest. Nothing happened.

It had misspelled.

Nicodemus cursed. He had failed Magister Shannon. The old man had worked so hard to get him the anti-golem spell and his cacography had made a mess of it.

The golem laughed. “There’s nothing you can do, whelp. This body is solid iron.”

Nicodemus ground his teeth. He could not reproduce Shannon’s spell, but he’d be damned before he gave up.

He extemporized a Magnus lash along his thigh and pulled it free. But with a turn of his hand, Fellwroth cast a Numinous wave that shattered Nicodemus’s text into phrases.

Nicodemus began to write a second lash, but the monster’s pale hand flicked out and grabbed his throat.

Fellwroth’s touch made the keloid on Nicodemus’s neck flare up with scalding pain. It felt as if the scars had caught fire.

The world dissolved into blackness.

Before Nicodemus blazed the image of his last nightmare. He was again in the low cavern, staring at a body shrouded in white. “Fellwroth’s true body,” a boyish voice said.

A small tear-shaped emerald sat in the monster’s hands. The voice spoke again. “I dream your dreams; you dream mine.”

With shock, Nicodemus recognized the voice as his own childhood voice. It was coming from the emerald.

And then everything changed and Nicodemus was far away. He was in a dark room looking at his father-a tall man with long black hair and olive skin. An infant lay on a table.

“This was how we were separated,” his boyhood voice said as Nicodemus’s father pressed an emerald against the back of the infant’s neck. The child shrieked as white light erupted from the gem and cut into his neck.

When the light died the child was left with an angry keloid scar shaped like a Braid rune marred by an Inconjunct rune.

Nicodemus inhaled sharply. His father had branded him. He had not been born with a keloid as the Halcyon was prophesied to be. He could not be the Halcyon!

“Think no more on that,” the emerald voice said. “Think on this.” Suddenly Nicodemus was in a strange land surrounded by rolling highlands. It was night and a wide river stretched before him.

“This is how Fellwroth took possession of us,” the emerald said.

A giant was standing thigh-deep in the dark water. He had long red hair and skin that shone glossy black like a raven’s wing. From John’s description, Nicodemus recognized the demon Typhoneus.

Suddenly Fellwroth appeared behind the demon and brandished a blade of white light. Silently, Fellwroth stabbed Typhon in the side-stabbed him again and again until the demon collapsed and transformed into a ball of glowing red language. Fellwroth hacked the red language into bits that floated down the river.

Again everything dissolved into blackness. “Beware the scar,” the emerald’s voice said. “It will betray you to Fellwroth.”

The vision disappeared and Nicodemus was again standing on the wall before the compluvium.

Fellwroth’s golem had pulled back his hand as if burned by Nicodemus’s skin. The monster’s ragged white hood still concealed his eyes, but the thin bloodless lips had parted in shock.

Suddenly Nicodemus understood. “The emerald is the stolen half of my mind,” he said. “It’s the one sending me these dreams. Sending me dreams of where your true body is, dreams of your crimes. Before I saw the dragon and what you did to Eric. Now I’ve seen what you did to Typhon.”

Fellwroth’s lips worked soundlessly.

“You were the demon’s slave!” Nicodemus exclaimed.

Fellwroth struck out with his hand and screamed: “I cut him in the river!”

Nicodemus jumped back and caught Fellwroth’s blow on his shoulder. Pain exploded through his chest, and the world spun round. His back hit the ground.

When he looked up, Fellwroth was standing over him with clenched fists. A golden Numinous spike jutted out from the monster’s right hand, a Magnus spike from his left.

“I’ll hew your retarded mind in half!” Fellwroth snarled and drew back his right fist.

Suddenly Kyran was above them both. Blood covered the druid’s face. Again the magically burning branches were growing from his hands. With a snarl, he grabbed hold of Fellwroth’s raised fist.

The branches snaked down the golem’s arm. Their flames flared into a blaze that burnt off the golem’s sleeve and began to melt his arm into quicksilver.

With a metallic howl, Fellwroth turned and slammed his right fist, and its long Magnus spike, into Kyran’s stomach.

Nicodemus cried out and struggled to find his feet.

Blood spread across Kyran’s belly, but the druid only grasped Fellwroth’s arm more tightly. The blue flames roared louder as the burning branches spread down the creature’s shoulder.

The monster’s howl became a gasp as he squirmed away from Kyran and fell backward onto the cobblestones.

Somehow Kyran yanked Nicodemus to his feet. “For Deirdre,” he grunted, and cast a common language sentence into Nicodemus’s shoulder.

The now writhing golem was trying desperately to pull the burning thorny branches from his flesh. His right arm had melted down to a thin, useless stalk.

“Don’t be like me, boy.” Kyran pulled Nicodemus away. “Be anything: be wild, be saintly, be wicked. Love all or love none, but don’t be like me.”

Suddenly the war-weight gargoyle was before Nicodemus. “Get him to safety at any cost,” Kyran commanded.

Before Nicodemus could protest, the hawk-headed gargoyle grabbed hold of him and-as if he weighed no more than a kitten-hoisted him into the air. Nicodemus clutched the Index to his chest.

An inhuman scream turned Nicodemus’s eyes back to see the metal golem. The monster had extinguished the blue flames and was now on his feet and charging. A long Magnus lash glittered in his waxy hands. Kyran moved to meet the creature, blue fire again blazing from his fists.

“Kyran, no!” Nicodemus yelled.

With a vicious strike, Fellwroth brought his Magnus lash around, tearing through Kyran from shoulder to hip.

Nicodemus cried out.

The golem charged forward and raised his Magnus lash to strike at the gargoyle.

But then Nicodemus was in the air, falling at tremendous speed. His stomach clenched.

The hawk-headed gargoyle had leaped from the wall.

Nicodemus had only a glimpse of the impluvium’s glassy surface before they splashed into it. The moment the gargoyle’s feet hit water, its arms lifted Nicodemus up over its head to reduce the shock of impact. Even so, the crash of water seemed to jar the wits from Nicodemus’s mind.

His first lucid thought, ludicrously, was for the Index’s safety. He tightened his grip on the book even though the water was surely destroying its pages.

His next thought was of the golem. He opened his eyes and felt the shock of icy water on his eyeballs.

The gargoyle’s weight was fast pulling them down into the impluvium’s depths. But after craning his neck around, Nicodemus could see a blurry white column of bubbles created as the golem hit the surface.

Suddenly a stone face covered with fish scales loomed before Nicodemus. The aquatic gargoyle’s rough hands grabbed hold of Nicodemus’s robes and pulled. Then dozens more of the tiny hands set upon him, pulling him somewhere. He fought the urge to scream.

Above him the metal golem was sinking fast, its white cloak billowing in the water.

A high-pitched whine filled the water and abruptly many gargoyle hands were shoving Nicodemus into a dark hole. He fought to escape but there were too many.

They stuffed him into a small, black space. A sheet of metal closed above him and there followed a second whine.

In complete darkness, Nicodemus prepared to die.

But the whine grew louder and then Nicodemus was falling, tumbling, banging against the sides of some long tube. He shouted and felt the cold water fill his mouth. The tube began to bend and he slid along its algae-coated bottom.

Suddenly he fell into a mixture of air and water. Something was roaring like a waterfall.

He splashed down into what seemed to be a waist-deep underground river. His mouth opened and drew in long gulps of air.

He let the powerful current pull him along. Slowly the waterfall’s roar faded and he could hear things moving in the darkness above him-small, rustling things that spoke with creaking voices.

And then, without warning, he was outside. Above him shone a crystalline night sky. Around him stood a forest of dark towers. A few bats flitted about in the chilly air. Nearly two hundred feet below stretched the weed-covered gardens and stone walkways of the Chthonic Quarter.

The gargoyles had dropped him into an aqueduct, Nicodemus realized, as he floated into another tunnel. The icy current carried him northwest through several towers and across the high aqueducts until it dropped him into a massive brass cistern in the Spirish Quarter.

Whispering thanks to every deity and gargoyle he knew, Nicodemus pulled himself out of the water and ran.

At first he fled aimlessly. He feared that Fellwroth might have followed him down the aqueduct. But once sure that he had escaped, Nicodemus snuck into an old janitorial closet to catch his breath and dry off.

To his shock, he discovered that the Index was miraculously dry. He turned the codex over again and again, looking for some reason why it had not so much as a damp page.

He found no clue. But as he turned the book over, the thrill of escape faded. The keloid scars on his neck began to burn, and his hands began to shake.

At first he thought only of Kyran’s horrible death. But then he remembered the sentence the druid had cast into his shoulder before dying.

He pulled the line free and translated it.

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.