“Oh,” an embarrassed Nicodemus said as he recognized the man as one of the neophyte preceptors. “Of course, we can end now.”

The warmth was slowly fading from his cheeks and his heart was slowing. He turned to the class. “Well, I congratulate you on surviving my first lecture. Now please form a line heading out the door for your preceptor. Derrick, I will speak with you privately.”

AS THE EXCITEMENT of teaching began to dissipate, Nicodemus rubbed his eyes and again felt the sting of exhaustion. He wondered who had been watching his lecture and what impression he had made.

“Am I in trouble?” a sullen voice asked.

Nicodemus looked up. The classroom was empty except for Derrick, who stood before him staring at the floor, his arms crossed.

“Not in the least.” Nicodemus sat and withdrew paper and quill from one of the student desks. On one side of the page he wrote “angel,” on the other “angle.”

“Have a seat, Derrick, and read this.” He held out the paper.

Derrick complied without looking him in the face. “Angel,” he said after glancing at the paper.

Nicodemus turned the sheet over. “And this?”

“Angel,” Derrick repeated.

Nicodemus handed Derrick a blank piece of paper and the quill. “Now write the word ‘angle’ on this paper.” The boy scrawled out “angel.”

Nicodemus exhaled slowly. “Derrick, stop me if I am wrong, but you have not been doing well in your studies, even though you understand everything that’s going on.”

The boy’s face darkened, but he did not speak.

Nicodemus continued in a softer tone. “You’re a sharp lad. It was difficult to keep up with you as a teacher, and I’m sorry if I was hard on you.”

“You weren’t-” the boy started to say.

“My guess is you use your wit, your ability to disrupt a lecture, to distract others from seeing that there is something wrong with you. I say this because I was once in a similar situation. Do you understand?”

The boy’s mouth softened. He glanced up. “No.”

Nicodemus held up the paper. “This reads ‘angle.’” He turned it over. “This reads ‘angel.’ I can easily distinguish between them only because when I wrote them down, I put a dot on a corner of the angel side. If someone else had written them and asked me to read them, as I did to you, I would have seen the difference only with great concentration. I have tried my whole life to be different and have failed. I still misread and misspell. Do you understand now?”

“A little.”

“Good. Now listen to me: there is something wrong with you, just as there is something wrong with me. Half the world will tell you that you’re worthless and stupid; the other half will tell you that there’s nothing wrong with you at all. A few might even say your disability is a gift.”

Nicodemus paused as he considered how all the listeners in the room might interpret his words. “The truth is that you are neither broken nor gifted; you are only what you make yourself into. In that regard, you and I are no different than any other student. No amount of classroom antics will protect you from the world until you realize this.”

“I… I don’t understand, Magister.”

“Don’t call me Magister. I’m not a wizard, and maybe they’ll never let me become one. And it’s fine that you don’t understand. I didn’t understand it myself until just now when I had to express it in words. And at your age, I don’t know if I could have understood or cared. But can you remember what I said?”

The boy nodded.

“Repeat it for me.”

He repeated Nicodemus’s words verbatim.

“The fact that you can remember my speech so precisely means that you are not without certain talents, which some of us have. In any case, promise that you will always keep what I said in your mind.”

The boy promised, and suddenly Nicodemus had to stifle a yawn. Silently, he thanked Shannon for ordering him to nap before lunch.

“May I go now?” the boy asked glumly.

Nicodemus nodded. “Yes, yes. Catch up with your classmates. You don’t have to mention this conversation. If the preceptor asks, tell him I scolded you for being disrespectful.” He smiled at the boy.

Without a word, Derrick leaped up from his seat and hurried away.

Nicodemus yawned again and sat for a moment with his elbows on the desk, resting his exhausted head. He was about to stand when a sound made him look up toward the door.

He expected to see more evidence of subtextualized sentinels. Instead he saw that Derrick hadn’t left but was standing in the threshold.

“Is something wrong?” he asked.

“No,” the boy said, looking Nicodemus in the eye for the first time. “But… thank you, Magister.”

CHAPTER Fourteen

When Deirdre regained consciousness, she was lying on the floor, crying.

Kyran knelt beside her, running his hands through her hair and telling her that everything would be all right.

Above him stretched a blank stone ceiling. They were back in their Starhaven quarters.

Slowly her eyes dried. “What happened?” she asked. Her stomach ached and her mouth and throat burned.

“We were subtextualized and spying on the boy’s lesson when another subtexualized spellwright, most likely Amadi Okeke, arrived,” Kyran rumbled. “You fell into a seizure and I carried you here.”

She sat up. “Did the sentinel detect us?”

He shook his head.

“And do the other druids suspect anything?”

Again a head shake.

“Thank Bridget and Boann both,” she mumbled while wiping her mouth. The back of her hand came away covered with soggy bits of bread.

She looked at her protector.

“Vomit. Came up when you were seizing. You inhaled some of it. I had texts on hand to clear your lungs. But I can’t promise your safety if the fits grow worse.”

“Such is the divine illness,” Deirdre said, staring at the filth. “It is the goddess’s will.”

He sniffed. “Is it the goddess’s will that you should die?”

“Fitting punishment for what I did.”

Kyran’s hand appeared under her chin and turned her face to his. “For what we did.”

She looked away. “Ky, let’s not argue again about if I’m a fool or if you’re a fool or…”

He pulled her close. He had undone the wooden buttons of his sleeve to expose his arms for spellwriting, and now she pressed her cheek against his bare skin.

“Ky, I don’t know who I am,” she mumbled into his shoulder. “When I was seizing this time, I had horrible visions. I was standing on the banks of a Highland river when this wolf with a man’s head and red eyes jumped on me. And somehow I was stabbed again and again. I melted like oil and went flowing down the river.”

With gentle hands, Kyran smoothed her hair until she was calm again.

They both stood, he favoring his left leg as always. After a tremulous sigh, Deirdre looked around their austere room: a chest, a washstand, a chamber pot, two beds, Kyran’s oak walking staff leaning against the wall by the door.

She sat down by her pillow.

As Kyran joined her, a rat scurried within a nearby wall. “Tell me of your interview with the boy before he taught,” Kyran said while handing her a clean tunic.

“Frustrating.” She wiped her face. “He’s frightened and resists manipulation. Likely he’ll tell Shannon. But at least he understood what I said. It’s a seed that will grow later.”

Kyran’s eyes narrowed. “Grow when?”

She sighed. “The demon-worshiper who cursed him can’t be far. I don’t like it, but when the fighting starts he’ll see that I was telling the truth.”

Kyran shook his head and began to button up his sleeves. “You’re courting battle with a demon-worshiper merely to manipulate this boy?”

“I court nothing.” She stood. “I’d rather smuggle the boy from the fastness tonight, but he’s too frightened by his disability to leave his life here.” She began to pace. “Don’t look at me like that, Ky. A clash would be good for him. It will strengthen him for the coming struggles.”