Blake Charlton - Spellwright

Shannon had spent too many decades sharpening his prose to leave behind such obvious evidence.

With the disspell complete, Shannon drew the text from his palm so it could fold into its proper conformation. This done, he wrote a brief handle onto the blade.

Then, holding the disspell as if it were a paintbrush, he leaned forward and chivvied its cutting edge between two of the door’s sentences. With slow, patient pressure he teased apart the subtext’s outer sentences to reveal its knotted central passage. Two quick strokes split one of its paragraphs.

With a high grinding whine, the door’s golden sentences began to churn as they detected the intrusion and sought to clamp down on Shannon’s hand.

But with calm determination, he edited two new Numinous sentences into the split paragraph. The grinding sound died and the subtext quieted.

With steady pinching motions, he darned the central passage. As his hand slowly withdrew, the glassy sentences flowed back into their original conformation.

A smile curled Shannon’s lips. The arch-chancellor himself wouldn’t know the subtext had been edited. The door clicked softly as it unlocked and swung open. Behind it stood a small space filled with the multichromatic gleam of a magical library.

Shannon cast a quick spell to Azure asking if she had seen anything. The parrot answered negatively and complained of the late hour. Smiling at her snappishness, Shannon left her on the windowsill to keep lookout and then stepped into Nora’s private library. He would not need mundane vision in such a textual environment.

It was a small space: five feet wide, ten deep. Though Shannon could not see the bookshelves that lined the walls, he recognized many of the texts they held. Nora had been studying textual exchanges between Starhaven’s gargoyles-a subject that provided insight into how magical constructs learned and thought. Shannon’s research also focused on textual intelligence; as a result, he possessed many of the same books that Nora had in her private library.

One unfamiliar codex attracted his eye. It lay alone at the back of the room, apparently on a low shelf or chest. Carefully he stepped to the library’s end and retrieved the manuscript. It was Nora’s personal research journal.

He flipped through the first few pages. Here lay a detailed study of how gargoyles selected information to share with each other. If he could take this book to his study for just one hour, his own research would leap forward. He had made any number of offhand remarks to other wizards about how much he should like to peruse Nora’s notes.

Virtue briefly fought ambition in his heart. “I’ll regret this tomorrow,” he grumbled as morality forced him to continue to flip through the book rather than take it away. Toward its end, he found a personal journal with dated entries.

The majority were complaints about librarians, apprentices, colleagues. Twice he scowled at disparaging remarks about “ that blustering Shannon. ”

It wasn’t until he reached a date eleven years past that an entry lifted his eyebrows: “ Missive from Spirish noble. Wanted ‘to see his sleeping boy.’ His father? Boy new to D.Tower. Payment in gold sovereigns. ”

The next winter, Nora had written, “ Spirish master to see sleeping boy in D.Tower. ” Two days later, “ Spirish payment. ”

“Los’s fiery blood! Nora was in a noble’s purse?” Shannon whispered. The bribing of wizards was rampant in Astrophell and Starfall Keep. But Starhaven, as the only academy removed from the human kingdoms, had known little of such corruption.

Shannon wondered if he’d become soft. Despite competing academically with Nora, he had stopped investigating her private affairs-something he would have found unthinkable in Astrophell.

He reread the journal entries. The “D.Tower” clearly was the Drum Tower. But why would someone pay to see a sleeping boy? It seemed that Nora had supposed the man to be his father.

Shannon frowned at the phrase “Boy new to D.Tower” and thought about which cacographers had moved into the Drum Tower eleven years ago.

A sudden chill ran through his veins. Nicodemus was the only one.

Worse, that was the year the academy had judged Nicodemus’s cacography to be proof that he wasn’t the Halcyon.

“Creator be merciful,” Shannon whispered. Perhaps the academy had misjudged Nicodemus’s connection to the Erasmine Prophecy. If so, then these were the last days before the War of Disjunction-the final battle to save human language from demonic corruption.

Shannon continued to flip through the book. Two more entries, each four years apart, read “ Master to see boy ” and were followed by “ Spirish Payment. ” The final entry, dated two days ago, read “ Master’s msg confused? No meeting but Strange Dreams about such. ”

Whoever had been bribing Nora had changed how he was to meet her. Had he then pushed her off the Spindle Bridge?

Shannon turned the final page and drew a sudden breath. Written hastily across the page was a sharply worded spell. The dangerous text shone with the brilliant silvery light of Magnus.

On their flat sides, Magnus runes were as hard as steel; on their edges, sharp as razors. Depending on their conformation, a Magnus sentence could become a nearly unbreakable rope or a deadly blade. Even a casual Magnus attack spell could kill, and the one before Shannon was far from casual. He had not seen such linguistic weaponry since the Spirish Civil War.

“Burning heaven, Nora,” he swore while closing the journal. “What viper’s nest did you wander into?”

He reached down to touch the wood that the research journal had lain upon. It was a bed chest. His hands felt around the object and found it unlocked.

The hinges creaked as the lid opened. His fingers felt for the chest’s contents and found coins of an unmistakable weight. There was enough gold to buy a Lornish castle.

After closing the chest, he stood and tried to think systematically. Nora had attached herself to an exceedingly wealthy nonacademic, one who wanted to see a sleeping Drum Tower boy, beginning just when Nicodemus had been declared a cacographer. That implied, but did not prove, that Nicodemus was the one Nora’s master wanted.

Shannon also knew that Nora’s master was either a Spirish noble or had convinced Nora that he was.

Shannon blinked. The only Drum Tower boy descended from Spirish nobility was Nicodemus.

This still did not prove that Nora had been selling access to Nicodemus, but it made it highly probable. And if the academy had been wrong and Nicodemus was indeed connected to the Erasmine Prophecy…

“Heaven defend us all,” Shannon whispered and turned to leave the library, but as he moved some instinct stopped him.

As before, the corridor of spellbooks appeared as a wall of multicolored light to his magically sensitive eyes, while the mundane world was black to him. He had received no warning from Azure, nor had he heard anything unusual. But somehow, he knew.

“Who’s there?” he whispered.

At first only silence answered him. But then came a slow intake of breath and a low, crackling voice: “Write not a sentence,” it rasped before drawing another breath, “or you’ll eat your words.”

SHANNON DID NOTmove. Nora’s research journal was still in his hands.

“Lay the book down,” the voice said, “slowly.”

Shannon bent over to obey, but just before dropping the codex he let his hands slip so that he held only the back cover. He set it on the floor. “You are Nora’s murderer?” he asked and straightened.

“The shrew killed herself before I had the chance.” A grunt. “It’s a recurring problem for me. I killed my master before he named the boy. I won’t make the same mistake with you.”