Spellwright

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Though Shannon had been sincere when he told Nicodemus to rest while it was still possible, the grand wizard found himself walking not to his quarters, but to his study. Neither of the sentinels following him objected; they would be up all night no matter if he was lying in bed or sitting at a desk.

After leaving the guards outside and locking the door, Shannon put Azure on a perch and assured her she could sleep. He knew his study well enough to move about without mundane vision.

Though he was exhausted, the idea of a golem had roused his curiosity. How could magical language create such a being? As he pondered this question, habit prompted him to retrieve his research journal and absently finger the three asterisks embossed on its face.

As far as he knew, a spell could gain intelligence only from one of two processes: “direction” and “impression.”

Authors creating “direct” textual intelligence had to write clever prose. At its simplest level, this required strings of instructions: if this happens, then do that; if that does not happen, then do this and so on. More complex methods directed constructs to recognize patterns or develop evolving webs of decision-making sentences.

However, any “directly” intelligent spell fell short of an “impressed” counterpart. Descended from an ancient spell that survived the Exodus, “impression” used two Numinous matrices. The first matrix inhabited a living mind; the second, a spell’s executive language. If physically close, an impressing matrix began to mimic the thought processes of a living mind. In this way spellwrights could “impress” aspects of their own intelligence into texts.

Shannon had given Azure fluency in Numinous through impression, and most gargoyles and all ghosts required a living mind after which to model their thoughts.

What excited Shannon about the golem spell was its implicit connection to impression. To animate a golem, a spellwright had to invest his textual “spirit” into earthen body. To form a spirit spell, an author would have to use a radical form of impression that translated his mind into a text. That would leave the author’s body an empty husk until its spirit returned.

So before investing his spirit into a golem, a spellwright would have to plan for his spirit’s return to his body. Therefore, a golem would need an escape subspell allowing a spirit to eject itself from a wounded golem.

What Shannon wanted to do was write a linguistic attack that would hinder or destroy a golem’s escape subspell. If he could do that, he might slay the golem’s author without finding the fiend’s living body.

Shannon worked with an excitement he had not known for a half century. After skimming the relevant texts, he had an idea of what functions an escape subspell would have to perform. That left him the task of deducing how a text might fulfill those functions and how an attack spell might interrupt those same functions.

In an hour, he had an outline.

Writing the spell proved more difficult. He worked in Numinous and stored the early drafts on older scrolls. The latter drafts he wrote onto his best parchment. At times his hands shook with excitement and made it difficult to place the lines.

After four hours, he had finished a working draft. At nearly eight thousand characters, it occupied twenty-four pages of his research journal. His fingers ached from gripping the smooth runes. He set about putting in a few expository notes so that he wouldn’t forget how the trickier passages operated.

“Shannon, you’re still a linguist,” he congratulated himself when the spell was finished. “But you’re getting old.” He leaned back and let himself feel the soreness in his arms, the aching in his knees. The only thing keeping him awake was the knowledge that, if he cast his new spell on the golem, it would trap the author’s sprit inside the clay body.

Shannon sat back in his chair and listened to its familiar wooden creaking. Just then he realized he had to get a copy of this spell to Nicodemus immediately. Should he take it over to the Drum Tower now? It was vital that the boy have the spell. But how could he get it to him?

Azure made a low, two-note whistle. Shannon cast an inquiring sentence to her and received an instant reply: she had heard something unusual.

Shannon squinted at his door. No one was spellwriting in the hallway, but farther away, in what must have been a stairwell, shone a ten-foot trail of golden text. He had seen such a thing before: it was a train of a half dozen wizards, all casting flamefly spells to illuminate the dark stairs.

Something was wrong. Deadly wrong.

Shannon scooped up Azure and formed with her the textual exchange that allowed him to see through her eyes. Back at his desk, he stared at the spell he had just written.

He had to get the text to Nicodemus; the boy’s life depended on it. Even more frightening, Nicodemus’s connection to prophecy meant that his survival might be essential for the fight against the Disjunction and hence for the preservation of human language.

“Hakeem, help me!” he whispered.

Glancing up, he saw the train of flamefly spells begin to wink out as their casters came closer.

He looked back at his spell. It was too long for Azure to carry in her body. And he didn’t have time to transfer it to a scroll and have Azure to fly it over. He needed something that was already written.

After scanning his desk, his blind eyes fell on familiar Numinous paragraphs. Azure provided a mundane image of the manuscript: it was the scroll that had, just a day and a half ago, granted him permission to begin research on the Index.

Hushed voices sounded in the hallway.

With shaking hands, Shannon found an inkhorn and a serviceable quill. He rarely wrote mundane letters and he did not trust his exhausted fingers to produce anything legible now. So he dipped the quill’s feathered end in ink and used it to paint a wide, sticky stripe over the mundane writing which had granted permission for his research.

Quickly he forged the Numinous paragraphs that would lift the ban on the Drum Tower’s door. He slapped these onto the head of the scroll along with a common language note which when translated would read “key for wards.”

Knocking sounded at the door. “Magister Shannon,” Amadi’s voice called.

“A moment!” Shannon replied. He had to write something more to Nicodemus about the other passages-had to do it before the sentinels could interfere. Amadi would never allow Nicodemus to have such a powerful text.

“Shannon,” Amadi called, “you must open this door!”

Shannon went blank with fear. How could he let Nicodemus know what he was thinking?

Suddenly his mind leaped forward with thought. He forged a few phrases that when translated would read “Research ***” and slapped it at the top of the scroll. Then he forged what would translate into the single word “Dogfood,” copied it once, and then thumbed one word above the first paragraph and the other above the second.

A wall of silvery text shown from the other side of the door; doubtless the sentinels were preparing to knock it down.

Shannon rolled up the scroll and bound it with a Magnus sentence. “To Nicodemus,” he whispered, binding the Magnus sentence to Azure’s foot. “And beware of the sentinels guarding the Drum Tower.” He repeated these instructions in Numinous.

Behind him came a crash as a spell ripped his door from its hinges.

He leaped forward and punched the wooden screen out of his window.

“Magister!” Amadi called. “Do not move!”

Azure made her high two-note whistle and with a clatter of wings flew out the window.

Shannon let out a long, relieved breath. Amadi began shouting and rough hands grabbed his shoulders and turned him around. The room was ablaze with censoring texts. There must have been seven sentinels in the room.

“Amadi,” he said coolly, “I hope you can justify this breach of law and custom.”

“Magister,” she replied from somewhere to his left, “I’m afraid I can.”

He looked in her direction. “And how is that?”

She told him about the bookworm infection and the private library filled with incriminating manuscripts. She then explained about a wounded construct that had been trying to return to his quarters.

“You think I would be foolish enough to write a curse that would return to my own quarters?” he asked incredulously.

A different voice responded. It took a moment for Shannon to recognize it as Kale’s. “The chances of the bookworm being wounded in just that way-losing its ability to subtextualize and its homing protocol-are very slight. You could have safely assumed you would never be identified. But unfortunately, Magister, chance conspired against you.”

Shannon snorted. “Or the true villain has fooled you into accusing me of his crimes.”

Amadi responded dryly. “We’ve searched your quarters more thoroughly than before. We swept the room for subtexts.”

Kale spoke. “We found a subtextualized chest strapped to your ceiling. It holds a fortune in Spirish gold.”

For a moment Shannon could not understand what he was hearing. How could the golem have gotten that much coin into his room? The thing couldn’t spellwrite within Starhaven’s walls.

“So who was it, Magister?” Kale asked. “What Spirish noble was paying you to disrupt this convocation and why?”

“Amadi, you’re making a grave error,” Shannon said hoarsely.

His former student let a moment pass before replying. “Did you know that Nora Finn was also taking bribes from a Spirish noble?”

He nodded. “I read of it in her journal.”

“Why did you not tell me?” Amadi asked.

Shannon scowled. “Because I was more concerned with convincing you of the true villain’s existence.”

Amadi let another silent moment pass. “Or perhaps you were glad to be free of a competing spy. Tell me, Magister, how did the Spirish gold come to be in your quarters?”

“It was put there.”

“By your clay monster? Impossible. As I told you: I had a sentinel watching your quarters. What’s more, all the doors and windows were warded and then protected by robust, bisecting texts. Even if your monster did sneak past my guards, the thing would have been cut in half at the waist. It would have had to hide the chest and escape with half a body.”

Shannon’s blind eyes widened. A clay golem could do just such a thing. “Amadi!” he blurted. “The thing must have done its spellwriting in the Bolide Garden and then used prewritten texts to sneak in and hide the chest. Search the surrounding area. Somewhere you’ll find a deposit of clay.”

“Magister,” Amadi said in a low tone, “the Bolide Gardens are being renovated. Do you want me to slop through all that mud for a lump of clay that looks like a monster?”

Shannon took a deep breath. The monster had planned well. After planting the research journal in his quarters, it must have thrown itself down into the garden. There the golem could have deconstructed amid the dirt piles.

But Shannon couldn’t convince Amadi of that. Not here at least. “So you suspect I’m a spy,” he said, changing tactics. “Do you also believe I killed Eric and Adan, my own students?”

The room grew quiet. “Some remember how vicious a politician you were back in Astrophell; more than one voice has suggested that-”

“That I murdered my own students to disrupt this convocation?” Shannon growled. “That I sold my soul to some illiterate lord? Amadi, I have never heard such a foul suggestion. And I’ll swear under any power you like that I-”

“The witch trial hasn’t begun yet,” her cold voice interrupted. “Do nothing rash. In this room stands every free sentinel under my command.”

Shannon began to respond but then stopped. “You mean, every sentinel but those you sent to guard the Drum Tower and Nicodemus?”

“Still trying to convince me that the clay man is after your cacographers?” Amadi asked. “I think you’d better hold your tongue, Magister. We have wards on the tower’s doors and windows. No one’s getting to a cacographer tonight. Besides, I couldn’t spare the spellwrights to guard the place if my life depended on it. The libraries need every free author to contain the bookworm infection. Unless of course, you can tell us how to eradicate the infestation?”

“I have nothing to do with the bookworms!” Shannon exclaimed. “You can’t leave the Drum Tower defenseless!”

No one replied.

Shannon was breathing hard. “Amadi, listen to me! When researching the Index today, I learned of an ancient construct called a golem which is made of clay but contains its author’s mind-”

“Magister, some of us here will help decide your witch trial,” Kale said. “It would help your cause if you refrained from saying anything foolish.”

Shannon realized that there would be no reasoning with the sentinels. He leaped for his bookcase, hoping to reach a stun spell he kept in a hidden scroll.

But before he had taken two steps, a wave of censoring language flashed toward him. Netlike texts wrapped around his mind.

The world seemed to spin and then the lines of glowing text disappeared. Everything went black.