Blake Charlton - Spellwright

Shannon tried to discern where the voice was coming from. “Your master was the noble who paid to see the sleeping cacographer?”

There came another whistling inhalation and a short, dry laugh. “So the old beast replenished the emerald when the boy was asleep? Yes, it was he who had an agreement with Magistra Finn. One she didn’t renew with me for… squeamish reasons.”

Shannon narrowed his eyes. The room’s echo made it difficult to guess the murderer’s location. “Squeamish because you’re not human?”

“How could you tell?”

“You inhale only before speaking,” Shannon replied as calmly as he could. “The rest of us find that difficult.”

The creature laughed. “Full marks for acumen, Magister. I am not human, nor was master. Though he could fool your kind into thinking so.”

“The subtextualization of your prose is impressive. Which faction wrote you?”

The creature laughed louder. “Perhaps I spoke too soon about your acumen. I am not a construct, nor do I care a whit for the wizardly factions.”

“You’re a demon, then?”

“Not a demon either, but I don’t have time for this. What matters now is your name. My guess is that you are Magister Agwu Shannon, Master of the Drum Tower. If so, I have an offer for you.”

“I am Magister Shannon,” he replied slowly. “And I’m afraid I might share Nora’s squeamishness.”

“I’d rather the boy lived,” the voice croaked. “The stronger he is, the more I gain from the emerald. I’m telling you this so you can understand how… lucrative it would be to align yourself with me. Tell me the boy’s name and you and I might continue as master and Nora Finn did. Let me visit the boy when he’s sleeping-as you put it-and I’ll pay you twice Finn’s wages. Refuse and I will kill you now. What’s more, I’ll cripple the boy or be forced to kill him outright.”

Shannon swallowed hard. He had not considered that Nicodemus’s life, as well as his own, might end tonight.

“You care for the boy,” the voice observed wryly. “More than I can say about the grammarian. She cared for what he is, not who.”

“And what is he? Is he the one of the Erasmine Prophecy?”

The murderer grunted. “Few things are more annoying than ignorance.”

Shannon laughed “And yet you are ignorant of the boy’s name.”

“I might not know his name, but I will kill every male cacographer in this academy to find him. I can wield dreams as you might wield a net. So unless you want every boy in the Drum Tower murdered, you’ll accept my offer.”

Shannon glanced down at Nora’s research journal. Its back cover lay open. The grammarian’s sharply worded spell glowed on the exposed page.

“Do you need more incentive?” the voice asked. “There are rewards brighter than gold. With the emerald, I am master of Language Prime. I could tell you how the Creator made humanity.” There was a pause. “You do know what Language Prime is, don’t you?”

Shannon responded automatically. “Language Prime is blasphemy.”

A dry laugh. “Magister, you lack conviction! You must know that the original language exists. Interesting. What might your connection to the first language be? I could teach you more.”

Shannon shook his head. “Villain, you have no spell written, no attack ready. My synaesthetic reaction is very sensitive. I would have felt you forging.”

There came a shuffling noise. “True; I haven’t a text ready, nor can I spellwrite within Starhaven’s walls. The Chthonics filled this place with too many metaspells. But it’s not words with which I threaten you; it’s a half foot of sharpened iron I’ll drive through your skull before you can extemporize two words.”

The murderer was right. Shannon could not dash off a spell in time.

“Enough banter,” the creature hissed. “You can accept my offer or force me to kill every boy in-”

Shannon dove to the floor. Something whistled above his head and struck the wall behind him with a clang. He grabbed hold of the Magnus spell in Nora’s book and pulled.

The wartext leaped from the page into an effulgence of silver runes. Shannon did not know the spell’s name or how to wield it, so he blindly threw his arm out toward the voice. The text uncoiled into a long, liquid lash and struck with serpentine quickness.

The murderer cried out with surprise as the silvery text struck a bookshelf. The spell cut through several leather-bound codices with a loud ripping sound.

With a blast of air, each severed spellbook exploded into a blazing nimbus of sentence fragments. Shannon flinched, the brilliance dazzling his text-sensitive eyes.

Then the murderer was on top of him. The universe became a seething blackness of elbows and knees as they rolled over one another. A hand was trying to pull the Magnus spell from Shannon’s hand, and then a hard object cut a line of pain across his forehead.

Yawping savagely, Shannon jerked his right hand free and whipped the Magnus spell around. It cut though something with a soft swish.

Instantly the weight lifted from Shannon’s chest. The room filled with a high, keening scream. When Shannon sat up, a page of golden text shot toward him. He recognized the page as belonging to Nora’s research journal the instant before it smashed into his nose. The murderer must have struck him with the book.

Suddenly he was on his back and struggling to get up. His head felt full of cotton and his ears were ringing. Deconstructing sentence fragments coated every inch of the private library’s floor and walls. The fragments were squirming, spinning, and leaping into the air.

Beyond the chaos, Shannon saw Nora’s research journal flying away into a patch of darkness that must be the hallway. The inhuman scream began to fade.

Slowly he realized what he was seeing: the murderer had taken Nora’s journal and fled.

All around Shannon the deconstructing fragments began to burst. Each small explosion flung phrases across the room. The sharp language cut into his mind and body with hot shards of pain.

Desperately, Shannon felt around the floor for any clue as to why the murderer had fled. His fingers found something long and partially surrounded by cloth. He picked up the strange object and ran out of the library.

Behind him the decomposing sentences began to tear open the other spellbooks. Soon they would spill their contents into the growing textual storm. Shannon pulled the subtextualized door shut.

The hallway went black. Shannon could hear the deconstructing literature crackle and hiss behind the subtext.

But he was safe now. The chaotic language, left in the private library, would deconstruct into nothing.

Something wet and hot was running down his face. Blood.

He was still holding the mysterious cloth-covered object. Perhaps Azure could look at it for him.

Azure!

Fear tore into his gut. What had the murderer done to his familiar?

“Azure!” he called hoarsely. “Azure!” He had turned and was running blindly, arm stretched out. His hand struck a wall and he nearly fell. There came a faint whistle from behind.

He spun around and saw with intense relief a coil of Numinous censoring texts lying on what he assumed to be the windowsill. The murderer had bound the bird magically but had not killed her. The villain must have known hurting Azure would have made recruiting him impossible.

Shannon hurried to pick up the censored bird.

In her fear, Azure bit his pinky hard enough to draw blood. But Shannon wouldn’t have cared if she had snapped his finger in two. Cooing softly, he unwound the censoring texts from the bird’s head.

Once her mind was free, Azure cast to him a deluge of terrified text: a white-cloaked figure appearing in the hallway and a blazing Numinous spell that came from outside the tower to envelop her mind.