“Perhaps you think Starhaven’s metaspells will protect your students,” the creature said. “They won’t. They might keep me from spellwriting within your walls, but I can lure the whelps into the woods or onto these bridges. It won’t be hard to do now that the convocation has begun. If I must, I’ll snuff out your students one by one. You could prevent all these deaths by speaking one name.”
She did not move.
“Tell me his name,” the white figure hissed, “and I will let you die quickly.”
Nora glanced at the railing. An idea bled across her mind like an ink stain. It might work if she moved quickly enough.
“No answer?” The creature stepped away. “Then yours will be a slow death.”
Nora felt a tug on the magical sentence running through her chest.
“I’ve just infected you with a canker spell. It forces a portion of a spellwright’s body to forge misspelled runes. As we speak, the first canker is forming in your lungs. Soon it will spread into your muscles, compelling you to forge dangerous amounts of text. An hour will see your body convulsing, your arteries bleeding, your stomach ruptured.”
Nora pressed her palms against the cold cobblestones.
“But the strongest of your cacographers will survive such an infection,” the creature sneered. “That’s how I’ll find him. He’ll survive the cankers; the others will die screaming. I’ll spare you this torture if you tell me-”
But Nora did not wait to hear the rest. Soundlessly she pushed herself up and leaped over the railing. For a moment, she feared a swarm of silvery paragraphs would wrap about her ankles and hoist her back up to the bridge.
But the force of her fall snapped the golden sentence running through her chest… and she was free.
She closed her eyes and discovered that her fear of death had become strange and distant, more like a memory than an emotion.
The prophecy had come to pass. The knowledge would perish with her, but that was the price she had to pay: her death would keep a small, flickering hope alive.
Still falling, she opened her eyes. In the east, the crimson sky shone above the mountain’s dark silhouette. The setting sun had shot the peaks full of red-gold light and, by contrast, stained the alpine forests below a deep, hungry black.
CHAPTER One
Nicodemus waited for the library to empty before he suggested committing a crime punishable by expulsion.
“If I edit you, we can both be asleep in an hour,” he said to his text in what he hoped was a casual tone.
At twenty-five, Nicodemus Weal was young for a spellwright, old for an apprentice. He stood an inch over six feet and never slouched. His long hair shone jet black, his complexion dark olive-two colors that made his green eyes seem greener.
The text to whom he was speaking was a common library gargoyle. She was a construct, an animated being composed of magical language. And as Starhaven constructs went, she was a very plain spell.
More advanced gargoyles were animalistic mishmashes: the head of a snake on the body of a pig, limbs profuse with talons and tentacles or fangs and feathers. That sort of thing.
But the gargoyle squatting on the table before Nicodemus took the shape of only one animal: an adult snow monkey. Her slender stone torso and limbs were covered with stylized carvings representing fur. Her bare face presented heavy cheeks and weary eyes.
Her author had given her only one augmentation: a short tail from which protruded three hooked paragraphs of silvery prose. As Nicodemus watched the spell, she picked up three books and, using their clasps, hung them on her tail paragraphs.
“You edit me? Not likely,” she retorted and then slowly climbed onto a bookshelf. “Besides, I was written so that I can’t fall asleep until daylight.”
“But you have better things to do than reshelve books all night,” Nicodemus countered, smoothing out his black apprentice’s robes.
“I might,” the spell admitted, now climbing laterally along the shelf.
Nicodemus cradled a large codex in his left arm. “And you’ve let apprentices edit you before.”
“Rarely,” she grunted, climbing up two shelves. “And certainly never a cacographer.” She pulled a book from her tail and slipped it onto the shelf. “You are a cacographer, aren’t you? You misspell magical texts simply by touching them?” She looked back at him with narrowed stone eyes.
Nicodemus had anticipated such a question; still, it felt like a kick in the stomach. “I am,” he said flatly.
The gargoyle climbed another shelf. “Then it’s against library rules: constructs aren’t to let cacographers touch them. Besides, the wizards might expel you for editing me.”
Nicodemus took a slow breath.
To either side of them stretched rows of bookshelves and scrollracks. They were on the tenth and top floor of the library known as the Stacks-a square building that housed many of Starhaven’s manuscripts.
Presently the building was empty save for Nicodemus and the gargoyle. Some light came from moonbeams falling on the paper window screens, more from the incandescent flamefly paragraphs flitting about above Nicodemus.
He stepped closer to the gargoyle. “We’ve been reshelving so long that you’ve slowed down. So it’s only your energetic prose that needs rewriting. I don’t have to touch you to do that. All the other apprentices edited their constructs; that’s why they and their gargoyles finished hours ago.”
“All the other apprentices weren’t cacographers,” the spell replied, reshelving another book. “Don’t cacographers always have to stay this late for Stacks duty?”
Trying not to scowl, Nicodemus laid his books back down on the table. “No, usually we don’t need to rejuvenate our gargoyles. It’s this damn convocation; the wizards are pulling every manuscript they can think of to impress their guests.”
The gargoyle grimaced at their pile of unshelved books. “So that’s why we’ve four times as much work tonight.”
Nicodemus gave the construct his most haggard look. “It’s worse than you know. I’ve still got an anatomy text to review and two spelling drills to complete before morning class.”
The gargoyle laughed. “You want empathy from a primary construct? Ha! You might be a cacographer, but you can still think freely.”
Nicodemus closed his eyes and realized that they stung from lack of sleep. Half an hour had already passed since midnight, and he had to wake with the dawn bell.
He looked at the gargoyle. “If you let me rejuvenate your energetic prose tonight, I’ll find you a modification scroll tomorrow. Then you can change yourself however you like-wings, claws, whatever.”
The textual construct began to climb back toward the table. “Wonderful, wings from a cacographer. What good would a scroll written by a retarded-”
“No, you pile of clichéd prose!” Nicodemus snapped. “I didn’t say ‘write.’ I said ‘find,’ which means ‘steal.’”
“Ho ho, the boy has some spirit after all.” The gargoyle chuckled. She stopped climbing to look back at him. “Steal a scroll from whom?”
Nicodemus pulled a lock of black hair away from his face. Bribing constructs was an illegal but common practice in Starhaven. He disliked it, but he disliked the idea of another sleepless night even more. “I am Magister Shannon’s apprentice,” he said.
“Magister Agwu Shannon, the famous linguist?” the gargoyle asked excitedly. “The expert on textual intelligence?”
“The same.”
A slow stone smile spread across the gargoyle’s face. “Then you’re the boy who failed to live up to prophecy? The one they thought was the Halcyon until he turned out to be retarded?”
“Do we have a deal or not?” Nicodemus retorted hotly, his hands clenched.
Still smiling, the gargoyle climbed onto the table. “Are the rumors about Shannon true?”
“I wouldn’t know; I don’t listen to hearsay,” Nicodemus growled. “And if you speak one word against Magister, heaven help me but I’ll knock you into sentence fragments.”