Spellwright

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Nicodemus and Shannon stared at the Chthonic carvings.

They were now certain that Nicodemus’s second nightmare was meant to connect the murderer to the Spindle Bridge; however, neither man could guess how the two were connected. The body wrapped in white, the emerald, the turtles, the ivy-it was all too disjointed.

Their boot heels echoing loudly on the bridge stones, they hurried back to the Chthonic carvings to reexamine the rock face. Shannon fashioned several Numinous texts to search the mountainside for a hidden spell or a magical door that opened into the mountain.

But once again he found nothing but solid rock.

By this time, the sentinels had hiked back up from ground level. All four of them began marching down the Spindle, their feet clacking out a distant tattoo. “Here they come,” Shannon said. “We mustn’t talk of your dreams or the murderer. They’re from Amadi’s train and will be looking for evidence of the counter-prophecy.”

Nicodemus took a deep breath. If the sentinels interpreted one of his misspells as evidence that he was the Storm Petrel, they would leave him bound and censored in some prison. In a cell, the murderer would find him easily; he’d be as helpless as a caged bird.

“We will pretend to be interested only in research,” Shannon whispered. “Follow my lead. We must learn more about the creature made of clay. So when I signal, you’re to distract the sentinels and Smallwood long enough for me to use the Index.”

“But, Magister, how can I distract five wizards. And what is this Index you-”

Shannon cut him off, calling out to the approaching sentinels. The old man launched into a show of anger and scholarly enthusiasm, scolding the sentinels for dawdling, threatening to complain to Amadi, and rambling about his research.

He hurried the party down to ground level and back into Starhaven’s inhabited quarters, all the while griping about his primary research spell and the need to hurry so as not to keep Magister Smallwood waiting.

Sure enough, when the party returned to Shannon’s study, Magister Smallwood was standing outside the door, a mass of scrolls in his arms. “Agwu, who are all these people?” Smallwood asked in surprise.

“Timothy, I brought some extra arms.” Shannon unlocked his door. “Come, Magisters, we’ve much to carry.” Shannon shooed the sentinels into his study and began piling books into their hands. One tried to protest but was overpowered by Shannon’s threat to tell Amadi of their uncooperative attitude.

After a few moments, every sentinel bore a stack of books piled from elbows to eyeballs. Shannon loaded an avalanche of scrolls into Nicodemus’s arms. To keep the manuscripts from toppling over, Nicodemus had to clamp his chin down upon the pile.

Meanwhile, Smallwood was gathering a stack of books into his own arms and advising the sentinels on the best way to hold their stacks.

“Well then, we are ready,” Shannon announced when he held his own pile of scrolls. “Nicodemus, would you use your young eyes to open the door?”

“Of course, Magister.” Nicodemus wrote a simple Magnus sentence along his right forearm and used his index finger-his only free digit-to flick the spell around the door latch. With some shuffling, he worked the latch and pulled. “It’s open, Magisters. Where are we going?”

“To the Main Library,” Smallwood replied from behind his stack of scrolls. “Shannon, I thought you had told your apprentice about our research spell.”

Led by Nicodemus, the two grand wizards stepped out into the hallway. The sentinels followed close behind.

Shannon clicked his tongue in annoyance. “Timothy, it has been an unusual day. I haven’t had time.”

“There’s no need to be defensive, Agwu,” Smallwood said. “I was merely asking a question.”

The party reached the staircase and began negotiating the narrow steps.

“Well, Nicodemus and visitors from the North, let me explain,” Smallwood said with his usual professorial enthusiasm. “Years ago, Magister Shannon and I conceived of a research spell to visualize the texts surrounding the Index, but we didn’t receive permission to proceed until the other day, when-”

“Timothy,” Shannon interrupted, “Nicodemus doesn’t know what that artifact is, and you must remember to speak of it only in secure environments.”

“Quite right,” Smallwood said. “Forgive my forgetfulness. Nicodemus, would you cast a murmur spell so we may speak freely?”

Traditionally, apprentices cast any commonplace spells their wizards required. Shannon usually excused Nicodemus from this duty. Smallwood, in his typical fashion, had forgotten this fact.

With a deep breath, Nicodemus began forging the needed runes within his right forearm. Though written in a simple common language, the murmur spell called for complex sentence structures and an elaborate conclusion.

When finished, Nicodemus disliked his rendition, but there was nothing to do but cast it with another flick of his index finger.

Rather than expanding into a sound-deadening cloud, the glowing white misspell fell to the ground and shattered. The sentence fragments danced upon the floor stones like water beads on a hot skillet. Nicodemus’s cheeks flushed with shame. “My apologies, but I-”

“I believe an issue this sensitive requires a Magnus language text, perhaps a subrosa spell,” Shannon said. A grateful Nicodemus glanced back at the old man.

The party continued downward as Shannon wrote. The sentinels murmured among themselves. Then came the wet sound of Shannon spitting out the subrosa spell. Instantly a soundproof sphere of interlocking petals encased the group.

Smallwood cleared his throat. “So, Nicodemus, Magisters, as I was saying, we have many a codex in Starhaven but only one Index. To the naked eye, the Index seems a mundane book of usual size. But the spells coursing within its covers are extraordinary; they connect the Index to every scroll, book, and tome within Starhaven’s walls.”

Smallwood paused to shift the scrolls in his arms. “To search the Index for mundane text, all one need do is think of a subject and open the book. Simply pick up the codex intending to read about synaesthesia or magical advantage or whatever, and the artifact’s spells will reproduce all available information on the subject.”

Just then the party entered the Women’s Atrium, whose ceiling held mosaic depictions of famous female wizards. Nicodemus regarded the doglike guardian spells that flanked the Main Library’s vaulted entrance.

The constructs’ Numinous bodies stood eight feet tall and possessed long canine fangs, muscular shoulders, and burning eyes. Thick, curly fur covered the creatures’ fearsome heads but not their sleek bodies. Under her gateward paw, each spell controlled a large Magnus ball.

As the party approached, the two constructs pulled back their lips, but Shannon calmly began casting them the necessary passwords.

Smallwood continued his lecture unfazed. “Conversely, to conduct a search for magical text with the Index, you simply lay a hand on any of the illuminated pages, and your mind is brought into contact with the book’s spells. Just thinking of what you are looking for will cause the book to list all known spells that fit your criteria. Once you select a spell-and here is the truly fantastic aspect-the book infuses knowledge of that text into your mind. So you see why the Index is so valuable: through it, a search that might have taken weeks is completed in moments.”

Appeased by the passwords, each guardian stretched her paws forward into a dog bow, signaling that the wizards could pass.

As they walked in, Nicodemus looked up into the splendor of the Main Library; he had seen it only a few times before. Beside him, a sentinel murmured amazement.

Floor upon floor of ornate wood paneling and leather-bound books stretched up far as the eye could see. On every level, arching windows allowed long shafts of sunlight to fall through the warm and dusty air. Almost impossibly far above them, a few wooden bridges spanned the library’s cavernous space.

On the ground floor, a two-story stone structure in the room’s center acted as a headquarters to the librarians who tended the books at all hours. A maze of waist-high reference shelves radiated out from this building and surrounded ordered ranks of long study tables. The hundred or so studying wizards filled the air with the sounds of turning pages and hushed conversations.

Smallwood lectured on. “Now, about the Index, there is tremendous demand for the thing. The Council on Artifact Use must approve every query to make sure the book is never endangered. It is a difficult job, especially considering that, even though we know how to use the Index, we don’t know what makes it work. Its operative spells are written in an unknown language.” The wizard laughed. “There is also the matter of private libraries. Because the Index can search any codex within Starhaven’s walls, many grand wizards who illegally keep private libraries worry that their secrets might be discovered by rivals using the Index.”

The party continued with Shannon and Smallwood in the lead, Nicodemus in the middle, and the four sentinels trailing behind.

They reached the library’s rear wall and ventured into one of the many alcoves. Nicodemus had never noticed this particular inlet before. It stretched on for at least a hundred yards and seemed like a long, book-lined cave.

“You see, Nicodemus,” Smallwood said as they walked, “our research spell seeks to learn how the text around the Index works, for clearly the artifact possesses some form of textual intelligence. It might tell us much about quaternary cognition-how certain spells allow us to think with text. Some speculate the Index might be a Chthonic creation.”

Just then the party came to the cavern’s end and beheld a guardian spell sleeping in front of a wide metal door. The golden construct’s massive head rested upon her spherical Magnus passage. Slowly a single canine eyelid rose to reveal a burning eye. Suddenly the construct was on all fours, growling fiercely. Shannon tossed a thick stack of passwords at it.

The guardian snapped the text out of the air as if it were a ham steak. After a long distrustful stare, it bowed. Behind the spell, the door swung open to reveal a windowless room with stone walls. At the chamber’s center, a marble podium held the Index.

Polished brown leather covered the book’s face. Two brass bands wrapped around its spine, securing themselves to the board with three steel studs apiece. A single brass fore-edge clasp held the book shut, and triangular steel tabs protected its corners. As Nicodemus drew closer, he saw innumerable sunbursts etched into the brass. There was no ornate boss upon the face or jewels encrusted in the metalwork, but still it was one of the handsomest books he had ever seen.

After putting down his stack of manuscripts, Smallwood began to undo the buttons that ran down his sleeves, all the while instructing the sentinels to unload their books onto the empty shelves that lined the walls.

Shannon had already unbuttoned his sleeves to reveal arms that constant spellwriting had kept muscular in spite of his age. “Our research spell is named traseus,” he explained to Nicodemus. “It’s a Numinous and Magnus hybrid designed to visualize the movement of the artifact’s language as it searches for a mundane text. The only problem is that traseus is an expansive spell; that is why we need your assistance.”

Nicodemus cringed as he slipped his arms out of his apprentice sleeves. If Shannon and Smallwood required more runes than the two could produce on their own, it was going to be an onerous task indeed. He looked back at the sentinels, who presently were suffering one of Smallwood’s lectures. “Might we ask them to help?” Nicodemus asked Shannon softly.

“As fully invested wizards they would be offended. Besides I’d rather have them lounging about. If they become bored they’re more likely to be distracted.” He cleared his throat meaningfully.

Nicodemus nodded. “And how much of the spell has been written?” Most often grand wizards wrote long research spells over several days, storing subspells in scrolls or books. Then, at casting, they would peel off the subspells and splice them together.

“None,” Shannon admitted. “We’ve only drawn up outlines.”

“And how many runes will we require?”

“Several hundred thousand in each language,” Shannon said with a sigh. “I’m sorry, my boy, but this might tire you.” He stepped closer, a green sentence conspicuously draped across his forearm.

Nicodemus took the common language spell and translated it: “Don’t forget; your to distract Smlwd and wtch-hntrs.”

Nicodemus whispered, “Yes, Magister. Do you have any ideas how to sidetrack them?”

The old man shook his head slightly. “Do you?”

Nicodemus’s heart beat faster. “Not yet.”