She pulled, but the door would not budge. She heaved… and with a metallic scream the thing swung a quarter way through its arc.

Suddenly Deirdre’s head felt light. “Goddess, no!” she whispered, slipping into the dark chamber. “Not now!” Her hands began to tremble.

The room was rectangular; the black mass of an ancient stone bed crouched beside one wall. A chorus of terrified rats chattered in one corner. Deirdre yanked the door shut with another loud screech.

Her hands were shaking now. Her stomach felt distended. “No, no,” she whimpered, staggering toward the stone bed. Her heart was pounding out a slow, irregular rhythm.

She was having an aura!

Her face and neck began to tingle as if a summer breeze were blowing across her skin. Her breath came in long, involuntary gulps. The world seemed to be filling with beauty. She wanted to cry out with joy. Her legs faltered and she fell onto the floor.

A low, crackling laugh sounded behind her.

With numb hands, she managed to push herself around.

All was blackness save for the door’s small, barred window. Through the opening streamed intense white light. The creature was standing outside.

The door shrieked as the creature pulled upon it. A vertical sliver of light grew along the portal’s side. The creature heaved once more. Again the hinges screamed, and the sliver of light grew brighter. He was laughing again. Soon he would work the door all the way open.

Deirdre tried to scream, tried to stand. But she was too far into her aura. Her hands shook violently as an ecstatic warmth spread down her back.

“No, we can negotiate,” she heard herself groan. “We can negotiate!”

Through the window she saw the creature pause. His pale hands lifted his hood. She squinted, trying to make out his face.

But the world exploded into light and she fell unconscious-lost to the violence of her seizure.

CHAPTER Nineteen

Nicodemus and Shannon stared at the Chthonic carvings.

They were now certain that Nicodemus’s second nightmare was meant to connect the murderer to the Spindle Bridge; however, neither man could guess how the two were connected. The body wrapped in white, the emerald, the turtles, the ivy-it was all too disjointed.

Their boot heels echoing loudly on the bridge stones, they hurried back to the Chthonic carvings to reexamine the rock face. Shannon fashioned several Numinous texts to search the mountainside for a hidden spell or a magical door that opened into the mountain.

But once again he found nothing but solid rock.

By this time, the sentinels had hiked back up from ground level. All four of them began marching down the Spindle, their feet clacking out a distant tattoo. “Here they come,” Shannon said. “We mustn’t talk of your dreams or the murderer. They’re from Amadi’s train and will be looking for evidence of the counter-prophecy.”

Nicodemus took a deep breath. If the sentinels interpreted one of his misspells as evidence that he was the Storm Petrel, they would leave him bound and censored in some prison. In a cell, the murderer would find him easily; he’d be as helpless as a caged bird.

“We will pretend to be interested only in research,” Shannon whispered. “Follow my lead. We must learn more about the creature made of clay. So when I signal, you’re to distract the sentinels and Smallwood long enough for me to use the Index.”

“But, Magister, how can I distract five wizards. And what is this Index you-”

Shannon cut him off, calling out to the approaching sentinels. The old man launched into a show of anger and scholarly enthusiasm, scolding the sentinels for dawdling, threatening to complain to Amadi, and rambling about his research.

He hurried the party down to ground level and back into Starhaven’s inhabited quarters, all the while griping about his primary research spell and the need to hurry so as not to keep Magister Smallwood waiting.

Sure enough, when the party returned to Shannon’s study, Magister Smallwood was standing outside the door, a mass of scrolls in his arms. “Agwu, who are all these people?” Smallwood asked in surprise.

“Timothy, I brought some extra arms.” Shannon unlocked his door. “Come, Magisters, we’ve much to carry.” Shannon shooed the sentinels into his study and began piling books into their hands. One tried to protest but was overpowered by Shannon’s threat to tell Amadi of their uncooperative attitude.

After a few moments, every sentinel bore a stack of books piled from elbows to eyeballs. Shannon loaded an avalanche of scrolls into Nicodemus’s arms. To keep the manuscripts from toppling over, Nicodemus had to clamp his chin down upon the pile.

Meanwhile, Smallwood was gathering a stack of books into his own arms and advising the sentinels on the best way to hold their stacks.

“Well then, we are ready,” Shannon announced when he held his own pile of scrolls. “Nicodemus, would you use your young eyes to open the door?”

“Of course, Magister.” Nicodemus wrote a simple Magnus sentence along his right forearm and used his index finger-his only free digit-to flick the spell around the door latch. With some shuffling, he worked the latch and pulled. “It’s open, Magisters. Where are we going?”

“To the Main Library,” Smallwood replied from behind his stack of scrolls. “Shannon, I thought you had told your apprentice about our research spell.”

Led by Nicodemus, the two grand wizards stepped out into the hallway. The sentinels followed close behind.

Shannon clicked his tongue in annoyance. “Timothy, it has been an unusual day. I haven’t had time.”

“There’s no need to be defensive, Agwu,” Smallwood said. “I was merely asking a question.”

The party reached the staircase and began negotiating the narrow steps.

“Well, Nicodemus and visitors from the North, let me explain,” Smallwood said with his usual professorial enthusiasm. “Years ago, Magister Shannon and I conceived of a research spell to visualize the texts surrounding the Index, but we didn’t receive permission to proceed until the other day, when-”

“Timothy,” Shannon interrupted, “Nicodemus doesn’t know what that artifact is, and you must remember to speak of it only in secure environments.”

“Quite right,” Smallwood said. “Forgive my forgetfulness. Nicodemus, would you cast a murmur spell so we may speak freely?”

Traditionally, apprentices cast any commonplace spells their wizards required. Shannon usually excused Nicodemus from this duty. Smallwood, in his typical fashion, had forgotten this fact.

With a deep breath, Nicodemus began forging the needed runes within his right forearm. Though written in a simple common language, the murmur spell called for complex sentence structures and an elaborate conclusion.

When finished, Nicodemus disliked his rendition, but there was nothing to do but cast it with another flick of his index finger.

Rather than expanding into a sound-deadening cloud, the glowing white misspell fell to the ground and shattered. The sentence fragments danced upon the floor stones like water beads on a hot skillet. Nicodemus’s cheeks flushed with shame. “My apologies, but I-”

“I believe an issue this sensitive requires a Magnus language text, perhaps a subrosa spell,” Shannon said. A grateful Nicodemus glanced back at the old man.

The party continued downward as Shannon wrote. The sentinels murmured among themselves. Then came the wet sound of Shannon spitting out the subrosa spell. Instantly a soundproof sphere of interlocking petals encased the group.

Smallwood cleared his throat. “So, Nicodemus, Magisters, as I was saying, we have many a codex in Starhaven but only one Index. To the naked eye, the Index seems a mundane book of usual size. But the spells coursing within its covers are extraordinary; they connect the Index to every scroll, book, and tome within Starhaven’s walls.”