Spellwright Part 16

"I see. Thank you, druid, for your time." Amadi stood and stepped toward the door.

Deirdre rose with her. "If there is any other way I can help, you have only to ask."

Amadi paused by the threshold. "Perhaps..." she said, turning back. "I wonder if you could tell me...do the druids know of a construct that appears to be made of flesh, but once deconstructed becomes clay?"

The strength seemed to drain from Deirdre's legs. "Have you encountered such a creature?" she asked in what she hoped was a tone of disbelief, not shock.

The sentinel was studying her face. "I surprise you. Don't think me mad for asking such a question. Magister Shannon and I were debating if such a thing was possible."

Deidre forced her lips to smile. "I do not think it mad to wonder such things. We must always seek new understandings." She paused. "What if Nicodemus truly is the dangerous spellwright of your counter-prophecy?"

The sentinel shook her head. "There is no need to be alarmed. In less than a quarter hour, I will have two guards following the boy night and day. His tower will be textually sealed at night. The moment we have evidence that he is dangerous or connected to the counter-prophecy, we'll censor his mind and lock him up in a cell below the Gate Towers."

"Thank you for telling me." Deirdre bowed.

Amadi returned the gesture and left. Slowly the sentinel's footsteps faded down the hall.

"How much of that did you hear?" Deirdre asked.

"Enough," Kyran said from behind her. "So it seems the black-robeshave encountered the demon-worshiper you guessed was nearby. Do I need to explain about the creature turning from flesh to clay?"

She turned and saw his silhouette glimmer as he let the invisibility subtext deconstruct. "No, you b.l.o.o.d.y don't."

The subtext fell from Kyran's head, revealing a stern expression. "We should take the boy now. Our G.o.ddess can protect him once we get him to the ark."

Deirdre rubbed her eyes. "We can't. You heard the sentinel; she's placing guards around the boy." The pressure on her eyelids caused floating orange-black splotches across her vision. "Ky, do you think we could find the author's body, kill the demon-worshiper while the creature is sneaking about?"

"No. The true body could be anywhere."

Deirdre swore. "And if Amadi Okeke gets it into her head that Nicodemus is this Petrel, she'll censor him and send him to his death in that prison cell."

"He wouldn't be safe from the creature when locked up?"

She dropped her hands and gave him an exasperated look. "What would happen if you tied up a lamb and left it in the sheep pen?"

He grimaced. "The lycanthropes would come out of the woods."

CHAPTER Seventeen

Nicodemus stared at the flecks of stew that spangled his emptied lunch bowl.

Midday sunlight was streaming into the refectory-a wide Lornish hall lined with tapestries and clear-gla.s.s windows. Above, broad rafters marched across the ceiling and provided hanging posts for the academy's banners. Farther down the table, several librarians whispered about the horrible news from Trillinon.

Using his spoon, Nicodemus began to flatten the drops of congealing stew on the inside of his bowl. A mash of conflicting emotions seethed within his mind.

Half an hour before, he had hurried into the refectory, heart pounding. The nightmare had been as vivid as the previous night's dragon dream. He had been sure it had also come from the murderer, but he couldn't imagine why the villain would send him such strange visions.

He had mulled over the nightmare's images while fetching his stew and finding a private s.p.a.ce to sit. The more he thought about the dream, the more it seemed that the episodes of the neophyte and the turtles were incongruous. That had calmed him somewhat. Mundane nightmares were filled with nonsensical shifts. Perhaps the bizarre sequence meant that the dream was simply a dream.

Whatever the case, Nicodemus had told himself, Shannon would know what to do about it; there was no use in worrying now.

He had tried to think about his successful first composition lecture but ended up fretting about the sentinels who had been spying on him. Did they still think him capable of murder? The question had made him think about James Berr, the murdering cacographer who had lived so long ago. Did the sentinels think he was a second James Berr?

Then he had thought about what the druid had told him. Her words had awakened a dormant longing in his heart. Could he actually be the Halcyon? After all these years of coming to terms with his disability, could his cacography be removed?

Half of him wanted to lose himself in dreams of what life might be likeif the druid were correct. But the other half was wary and more than a little frightened. What if he dared to believe that he was not crippled and then, once again, discovered that it was all a lie? Could he survive a second disappointment?

He felt his belt-purse for the magical artifact Deirdre had given him. A Seed of Finding, she had called it. Even through cloth, the object made his fingers tingle.

The artifact's power spoke to the druid's sincerity. However, she was clearly after something more than curing his cacography. The more Nicodemus thought about it, the more he questioned her motives.

"Fiery blood," he grumbled, flattening another drop of stew with extra force.

Then there was the advice he had given to the smart-mouthed cacographic boy in his cla.s.s: "Accept your disability and you will be free," had been the essence of his message. It had seemed true at the time, but here he was, fervently hoping that his own disability could be erased.

Did that make him a hypocrite? He brought the spoon to his lips and tapped its tip against his front teeth. "Yes," he grunted, "it b.l.o.o.d.y well does."

Suddenly Nicodemus wished everything would just go away. If only he could crawl back to his room and spend the rest of the day reading the knightly romance stored under his bed.

Abruptly Devin thumped her lunch bowl down on the table and sat next to him. "Heard the news?" she asked. "That why you look like you've seen Erasmus's ghost?"

Nicodemus dropped his spoon with a wooden clatter. "Dev, thank heaven you're here! I need to tell..." his voice died as he remembered his promise to Shannon not to trust anyone. "...need to tell you that I taught my first cla.s.s on spellwriting. It went well. But the news was so shocking that...I don't know how to feel."

"None of us does," she grumbled, sinking a battered wooden spoon into her stew. "Nico, do you think Starhaven takes care of us?"

"Of course. Most likely we'd have magical literacy permanently censored from our minds if we were in Astroph.e.l.l."

"But maybe that wouldn't be so bad. Do you think common folk are distressed by a fire in Trillinon? What's foreign news to a pig farmer?"

"But, Dev, you'd be illiterate."

She shrugged. "I don't read anything but janitorial texts. Sometimes I feel like we're just ants in an anthill, crippled ants at that. And here comes King Ant now." She nodded at the raised stage on the far side of the hall. Several deans and foreign spellwrights were standing around a long table.

The provost, sitting in a high-backed wooden chair, floated onstage. Even from his present distance, Nicodemus could make out the muris spell billowing under the arch-wizard's seat. If he had been closer, he would have seen an obscenely old man who had been half folded over by time. He also would have seen the grizzled old racc.o.o.n the provost kept as a familiar.

"Behold," Devin intoned, "Provost Ferran Montserrat: the only independent mind in this stone heap. That man doesn't answer to anybody but our G.o.d and his avatar. The rest of us are bound, antlike, to his will."

Nicodemus watched the provost float to the table's head. With surprising dexterity, the ancient arch-wizard landed his chair and picked up a fork. The deans and their guests sat and began eating.

"Everything is so d.a.m.n complicated," Nicodemus grumbled before swearing softly, "blood of Los."

"p.i.s.s and blood in a silver bowl!" Devin hissed. "I forgot!"

Nicodemus jumped slightly in his seat. "Forgot what?"

Devin's pale face flushed red as she visibly struggled to contain a salvo of obscenity. "Two days ago Magistra Highsmith caught me napping on duty. The old hussy of a historian is making me give a short lecture about Los to the rest of the girls on janitorial. It's her idea of a penance. The old shrew knows cacographers never study theology. I was supposed to look it up but didn't."

Nicodemus raised his eyebrows. "When do you lecture?"

"In half an hour," Devin said with a glare that dared him to chide her. Fortunately, he knew enough to keep his mouth shut. When she spoke again, it was in a calmer voice. "Nico, tell me everything you know about Los."

"I'm a cacographer too, you know. I never took theology either."

"But you memorize everything Shannon says and fawn-"

"All right, all right. Back on the ancient continent there was a golden age when the Solar Empire...and that's not the Neosolar Empire, which formed on this continent. Anyway, the original Solar Empire existed in peace with the G.o.ds. But someone committed a grave sin that enabled Los, then a powerful earth G.o.d, to become the first demon."

"But what sin-"

Nicodemus shrugged. "Every religion has a different answer. Probably no one's right; probably that knowledge was lost when our ancestors crossed the ocean. As wizards we hold to no belief and so are not bound to a religion or kingdom. All you need to know is that Los took a third of the deities to Mount Calax and turned them into demons. He made an army of all the demons and called it the Pandemonium. That's where the word comes from: Pan, all, demonium, demons. So when we say the cla.s.s was pandemonium we're using hyperbole to-"

"Blasted p.i.s.ser-" Devin cut herself short and calmed down. "Nico, I get it. Could you just give me the history without your linguistic ramblings?"

Nicodemus grumbled about history and linguistic ramblings being the same thing before continuing. "So after Los formed the Pandemonium, there was a war between deities and demons called the Apocalypse. When it became clear the demons would win, the human deities built huge Exodus ships to cross the ocean. Somehow-no one's sure how-a group of human heroes turned Los into stone. This bought the ships enough time to get out to sea. The demons, being bound to the ancient continent, couldn't follow. Then a powerful wind called the Maelstrom scattered the Exodus ships. That's why each of the current landfall kingdoms has people of different shapes and colorings."

Devin narrowed her eyes. "In ancient kingdoms everyone looked the same?"

"More or less. Certainly someone like me with black hair and olive skin would not have come from the same kingdom as someone with your red hair and freckles."

"There's no need to be snotty, Nico. Cacographers aren't taught this stuff. And I don't hang on Magister's every miniature lecture like you do. When wizards gossip, I'll listen. But I'd rather chew gravel that listen to most of their academic babble." She sniffed. "Just another reason why it'd be better if I were illiterate."

"I'm sorry, Dev, I didn't mean...But don't be so unhappy. Even if they permanently censored you, it's not as if you would be free. You've told me yourself, magical illiterates are bound to the land or their trade. They have to work in the fields for lords or barons or whatnot."

She only shrugged and turned back to her stew. "Couldn't be worse than it is here."

Nicodemus leaned forward. "Dev, you'd have no spells to wash your face or clean your teeth. No constructs to empty the night pot. And you'd be short-lived."

Suddenly her brown eyes burned with their characteristic fire. "Well f-" Again she visibly suppressed an obscenity. "I don't care a fig for that! Not all of us are as strong as you, Nico. I'll barely see a century. And I'm nearly fifty already. I might not look it, but I am. If I were illiterate, at least I wouldn't outlive my family."

Nicodemus started to protest but then stopped. "You'd want to get married?"

"Oh, a b.l.o.o.d.y donkey's a.s.s-crack on that!" she snapped. "I d.a.m.ned well don't want to get married." She began stirring her stew with trembling hands.

Nicodemus could not think of what to say, so he sat in silence and waited until she appeared calmer.

"Dev," he said at last. "Last night I asked you what Smallwood meant when he called me Shannon's new pet cacographer."

"Forget it. It's nothing important." She scowled. "Though it proves my point about being illiterate."

Nicodemus touched her elbow. "Tell me? Please?"

Devin looked at him. "It's all hearsay."

He nodded.

After laying her spoon down, she scooted a conspiratorial half-inch closer on the bench. "Well, years ago Magister was a rising star in Astroph.e.l.l, both in research and politics. He was also an oddity because his father came from Dral, but his mother from Trillinon. That's why his names sound so different-Agwu Shannon. Anyway, his faction, The Sons of Ejindu, wanted the wizards to take a more active role in keeping any rogue spellwrights from joining the Spirish Civil War. Shannon was their Long Council speaker. And..." Devin lowered her voice. "And...he got the provost's grandniece pregnant!"

Nicodemus looked dubious. "But spellwrights can't conceive. We're all sterile."

Devin smiled at him. "Nico, sometimes I forget how young you are. That's what we tell the acolytes. Together we're all barren. No two spellwrights have ever conceived. But every so often, a spellwright and an illiterate produce a child."

"Shannon got an illiterate pregnant!"

"Shhhh!" She swatted his shoulder. "Not so loud. Now you see why we authors swear off families. We would outlive them and have to watch them die. That's why it was a huge scandal when Shannon got the provost's grandniece with child."

Nicodemus could only shake his head.

She continued, "So Shannon tried to hide the baby, but his opponents discovered the boy and started the scandal. The provost of Astroph.e.l.l was furious and made Shannon Master of the Drum Tower in Starhaven. To get rid of him, you see."

"And then?"

"No one knows exactly. Some say Magister did something desperate with his research, hoping a breakthrough would earn him forgiveness. Some say he's blind because his research spell burned out his mundane vision. But whatever happened Magister ended up here at Starhaven. He couldn't visit Astroph.e.l.l for twenty years or so. By then his wife had died and his son was married. Magister tried to patch things up, but apparentlyhis son hated him for abandoning the family and denounced Magister in public."

Nicodemus blew out a long breath.

"So Magister came back here and became a champion of cacographers." Her wide eyes darted up for a moment. "He chooses one cacographic boy from every generation and tries to help him earn a hood. Before you it was Tomas Rylan. Tom lived with John and me. Magister helped him become a lesser wizard in Starfall Janitorial."

Nicodemus felt his face burn. Had Shannon chosen him as an apprentice only because he wanted a new pet cripple?

Devin stirred the dregs of her stew. "From the moment you came to the Drum Tower, you were Magister's favorite. We weren't surprised when he moved you into the top floor with John and me years before you had earned it."

"Oh" was all Nicodemus could bring himself to say.

Devin looked at him. "So that's what Smallwood meant."

Nicodemus's mind reeled. Shannon had taken him as an apprentice only out of pity? He felt sick. "Thank you, Dev," he said quietly.

"Nico, you shouldn't hold it against Magister; he only wants to help."

He stood. "I should go."

Devin caught his hand and squeezed. "Nico, everyone loves you in the Drum Tower. John and I...Don't feel bad."

"I have to meet the old man in the compluvium." He squeezed her hand in return. "I don't want to be late."

"Okay."

He picked up his bowl and cup. "See you tonight," he said and walked away.