Spellwright

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.

The second spell shone Numinous gold. Nicodemus recognized the latere subtext-a favorite of Magister Shannon, who sometimes demonstrated a love of practical jokes rare for a grand wizard. This spell formed a halo that continuously showered light-bending runes on its wearer. Laterecasters became invisible so long as they remained still. Slow movement made the air shimmer; rapid movement revealed glimpses of the caster’s legs or arms. More important, not even a grand wizard could glean its presence.

“This subtext is truly wonderful,” Master Shannon had once mockingly lectured. “For when one packs a friend’s shoes full of snow, one does want to be there when he puts them on.”

Fear and guilt assailed Nicodemus as he thought of Shannon imprisoned.

But with grim determination, he focused on recovering the emerald and forced himself to consider the latere subtext. It might work; he would have to move slowly and be sure not to stand where the guards might walk. However, it was very complex.

The third spell burned with the violet light of the Index’s language. It was written in a terse, self-reflexive style and possessed a brief description:

The words of sceaduganga cover the body, allowing our authors to walk unseen in shadow but not bright light. It deadins the sound of footsteps.

This was precisely what Nicodemus needed. With a flash, the sceaduganga spell crashed into his mind.

Having gotten what he sought, Nicodemus removed his hand from the Index and felt his mind drop back into his skull. As before, the transition from book to brain made his thoughts feel strangely confined.

Nicodemus closed the Index. On the gate, the two guards were discussing an ongoing bookworm infection. Apparently there were supposed to be other guards on the front gate, but the provost had pulled them away to help hunt the worms.

One of the stronghold’s cats now prowled the other side of the corridor. Nicodemus glared at the feline, willing it not to come his way and by purring reveal his presence. Another breeze set the torches to guttering.

After a long breath, Nicodemus turned his mind to the sceaduganga spell. Because the text had come from the corrupted Index, it was already slightly misspelled. And for that reason, Nicodemus concentrated on keeping his cacographic mind from further distorting the newly learned spell. After another long breath, he set to writing the subtext along his right forearm.

Although each violet rune required a surprising amount of energy, writing the spell took only moments. When finished, the sceaduganga solidified into a transparent cylinder on his palm. He frowned at his first attempt in a new language. Most likely it was misspelled. He cast the text into the air, expecting it to crash onto the floor.

But it did not fall.

It shot upward and smashed against the ceiling. “Fiery blood!” he whispered as violet sentence fragments snowed about him. His second attempt behaved like a proper misspell and plummeted to the ground. The third spell shot across the corridor to strike the cat and render it invisible. The rats wouldn’t like that at all.

The fourth spell crashed onto the floor like the second, and the fifth deconstructed before leaving his hand. Nicodemus’s face grew hot with frustration. He badly wanted to break something other than another sceaduganga subtext.

Suddenly his keloid came alive with pain. Clapping a hand onto the scars, he discovered that they were almost as hot as boiling water. This had happened twice before when he was making his way to the front gate. It made him worry about the last thing the emerald had said: “Beware the scar; it will betray you to Fellwroth.”

What that meant, Nicodemus couldn’t imagine. And he couldn’t waste time thinking about it now. He needed to get out of Starhaven.

So he took slow breaths and waited for the scar to cool. When it did, he bent down to inspect the decaying halves of his last two subtext attempts. Both spells had split at the same point in their primary sequence. Undoubtedly, he had made the same cacographic error in both.

“Los damn my cacography,” he hissed, fighting a fresh wave of self-hatred. “If only I had that emerald!”

He forced himself to think logically. Was there a way to rewrite the spell to avoid the commands that contained difficult spellings?

He grunted. Perhaps there was. But that would mean deliberately re-spelling, deliberately misspelling. His whole life he had waged war on his cacography. True, intentionally misspelling the shielding spell back in the Index’s chamber had increased his control of that text. But now he was considering something more egregious-willfully composing a misspell.

But the present situation afforded few options: he could either try a respell or lurk around Starhaven until the sentinels or the golem discovered him.

So he made another attempt at the subtext, this time deliberately altering the fractious paragraph. When finished, the respelled text glowed deep purple.

Wincing, Nicodemus cast the pale cylinder into the air, where it floated and began to spin faster and faster until it seemed as if it might split apart.

But the misspelled subtext did not break; rather it cast out a sentence from either side of its body. The whirling lines covered Nicodemus’s feet and wove a textual sheet up his leg. Within moments, he was enclosed from boot heel to top hair in light-bending prose. The spell left two thin slits open for his eyes so he might see out from the disguising words.

Elation flushed through Nicodemus.

Slowly, he stepped from behind the tapestry. His boots made no sound on the cobblestones. But as he drew near a torch, the sentences nearest the light began to fray and deconstruct.

This was strange; light shouldn’t damage magical language. He moved away from the torch and fed more purple sentences to the subtext. The deconstruction stopped and the spell regained its integrity.

Carefully Nicodemus stepped through the gate and past the guards. A nervous smile began to curl his lips. The guards could not see him; they could not hear him.

It was a wonderful feeling. He had respelled the ancient sceaduganga. Perhaps, one day, he would publish his creation and name it the shadowganger subtext.

His smile grew as he slipped across the drawbridge and onto the mountain road. “Dear heaven, I’m free,” he whispered as Starhaven’s lofty towers came into view, black against the starry sky.

With a laugh, he turned away from the academy of strict wizardly language and knew that he was safe under his disguise-safe under an epic of concealing, respelled prose.