"So let's gossip. I'd forgotten about Amy Hern. She left for Starfall, right? Why don't you write her on the next colaboris spell?"

Nicodemus waited for Devin to finish drying her face. "Dev, the rumors."

She examined his face. "Not now, Nico; it's late."

"I'm not going to forget."

"No." She sighed. "You won't."

CHAPTER Eight

The Gimhurst Tower stood at the southern edge of Starhaven's inhabited quarters. Long ago, during the Lornish occupation, it had hosted the Lord Governor's court. Now, save for the scriptorium at its top, the place was abandoned.

With Azure perched on his shoulder, Shannon stole down the tenth floor's outer hallway. Through the parrot's eyes, he regarded the pale moonbeams that slanted through the windows and splashed against the slate floors. The reflected glow lit the hallway's opposite wall and its many sculpted panels. The low-relief carvings presented typical Lornish sensibility-bold and graceful figures without fine detail.

Slowly Shannon pa.s.sed carved knights, serpents, and seraphs-these last wreathed with tattered gold leaf halos.

A half hour before, Azure had returned to his study after delivering his message to Nicodemus. She had seen nothing unusual on the rooftops. This had only increased Shannon's anxiety for information and so prompted his current expedition.

To his left a s.p.a.ce between two panels presented a short, wooden door. Shannon placed Azure on a windowsill opposite and instructed her to send a warning if anyone appeared. A rook's croaking voice came from somewhere out in the night. He turned back to the door. Behind it lay Nora Finn's "private library."

Many academics, rightly distrustful of their peers, hid their most important ma.n.u.scripts in well-defended secret archives. Maintaining such "private libraries" violated scores of academy bylaws, but the practice was so widespread that no dean or provost dared enforce any of those laws.

Fifty years ago, a newly arrived Shannon had suspected Nora of spying on him for his enemies in the North. He had been brash then, still accustomed to Astroph.e.l.l's infighting, and so had secretly pried into every aspect of Nora's life. His search had disproved his suspicions and uncovered the location of this private library.

Slowly Shannon ran his finger down the door before him. Blindness prevented him from seeing the pine boards that felt so hard under his fingers.

This was just as well; the boards weren't really there. They were subtexts-prose crafted to elude even the trained eye. Most spellwrights struggled to glean subtexts if only because they believed their eyes. When encountering a door's texture or image, a human mind rarely accepted any conclusion other than that the door existed. Only with knowledge of the author's purpose could a reader hope to see past a subtext's semblance to its true meaning.

Shannon, however, was free of vision's tyranny. He stared into the dark before him and considered how Nora would have written the subtext. First she would have chosen a primary language. Numinous was the obvious choice-it possessed the ability to create illusions by bending light. To the spell's central pa.s.sages, Nora must have added a few Magnus paragraphs to provide a physical barrier and give texture to the illusion.

After choosing her languages, Nora would have chosen particular sentence structures and diction to help her hide the spell.

Shannon ruminated on Nora's prose style. As he did so, he saw faint golden runes float downward in ordered columns. Now he deduced what must be written between the lines. The faint sentences brightened. Slowly the text's central argument revealed itself, and Shannon gazed upon a door-shaped waterfall of golden prose interlaced with silver sentences.

Out of habit, he undid the silver and gold b.u.t.tons that ran down his sleeves. His eyes could now see through cloth, but it still felt more natural to spellwrite with arms bare.

Once ready, he wrote a short disspell in his right forearm and slipped it into his hand. This disspell, though composed of powerful Numinous runes, was thin and delicate. Lesser authors would have crafted their most powerful disspell and hacked through the door-subtext like a peasant chopping a tree trunk. Such a crude style would have produced a mangled subtext.

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 pa.s.sage. 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 pa.s.sage. As his hand slowly withdrew, the gla.s.sy 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 s.p.a.ce 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 s.p.a.ce: 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 ma.n.u.script. 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 bl.u.s.tering Shannon."

It wasn't until he reached a date eleven years past that an entry lifted his eyebrows: "Missive from Spirish n.o.ble. 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 n.o.ble's purse?" Shannon whispered. The bribing of wizards was rampant in Astroph.e.l.l 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 Astroph.e.l.l.

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 " " 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'scontents 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 n.o.ble or had convinced Nora that he was.

Shannon blinked. The only Drum Tower boy descended from Spirish n.o.bility 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 NOT move. Nora's research journal was still in his hands. move. 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."

Shannon tried to discern where the voice was coming from. "Your master was the n.o.ble 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 ac.u.men, 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 ac.u.men. 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 theoriginal 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.