“I have nothing to do with the bookworms!” Shannon exclaimed. “You can’t leave the Drum Tower defenseless!”

No one replied.

Shannon was breathing hard. “Amadi, listen to me! When researching the Index today, I learned of an ancient construct called a golem which is made of clay but contains its author’s mind-”

“Magister, some of us here will help decide your witch trial,” Kale said. “It would help your cause if you refrained from saying anything foolish.”

Shannon realized that there would be no reasoning with the sentinels. He leaped for his bookcase, hoping to reach a stun spell he kept in a hidden scroll.

But before he had taken two steps, a wave of censoring language flashed toward him. Netlike texts wrapped around his mind.

The world seemed to spin and then the lines of glowing text disappeared. Everything went black.

CHAPTER Twenty-six

A low, grating screech jolted Nicodemus awake. Sweat had soaked through his robes. “Who’s there?” He struggled out of bed. His candle had burnt to a dark stub.

The screech came again along with the flapping of wings. A golden flash made him look at the window. “Azure!” he exclaimed, pulling out the paper screen.

The parrot flew into his chest. Squawking with surprise, man and bird tumbled onto the sleeping cot. “Shannon! Shannon!” Azure called in a terrified, pitiful voice. “Shannon!”

The familiar was standing on his stomach. Her tiny chest heaved; her head bobbed. A small scroll was bound to her leg by a Magnus sentence. “It’s all right,” Nicodemus cooed, pulling the scroll free.

Azure scrambled onto his shoulder, and he sat up to read the scroll. His brows knitted in confusion. “Azure, this makes no sense. There’s a key for the front door ward. Magister said he’d send that. But there’s ink all over the mundane text and these other Numinous paragraphs are gibberish.”

He translated the common language words above the gibberish: “Research ***” and “Dogfood.”

“Shannon!” the bird called and cast a Numinous sentence into Nicodemus’s head.

Shannon, having impressed his linguistic abilities into the bird, could have made perfect sense of this sentence. But Nicodemus’s translation yielded “My-old-home-ones ate Shannon!”

Nicodemus’s palms began to sweat. Azure had hatched in Trillinon. Those from her “old home” must be Northerners.

Nicodemus went to the window and peered down into the Stone Court. The sentinels who had been guarding its door were gone.

“Ate” to Azure meant consumed, enveloped. The Northern sentinels must have seized Shannon. “Demigods of the Celestial Canon defend us!” Nicodemus whispered.

Azure leaped from his shoulder and flapped into the night. No doubt she was going in search of where the sentinels were holding Shannon.

Nicodemus turned back to his room and shivered as he remembered his most recent nightmare. “Fly from Starhaven!” April had said. “Fly and don’t look back!”

He took a clean apprentice robe over to the fireplace’s clicking embers. With trembling fingers, he changed out of his sweat-soaked night robe and thought about the nightmare.

Like the others, this dream had made little sense. The cavern and the body, the episodes from his childhood, April’s warning-none of it seemed to fit together.

However, unlike the others, this nightmare provided a clear warning: “The white beast has your shadow!” April had said.

No doubt the “white beast” was the pale monster Nicodemus had seen attacking Eric. That monster must have been the murderer’s golem. Therefore, it would make sense if the shrouded body in the cavern was their enemy’s true, living body.

But that still left the question of the cavern’s location.

Nicodemus thought of the nightmare turtles he had seen in his first cavern nightmare. Then he thought about the hexagonal pattern carved at the end of the Spindle Bridge. The hidden body had to have something to do with the Spindle. But what? Shannon’s texts had found nothing but rock in the mountain.

And who might be sending him the dreams? Not the murderer: all evidence indicated the fiend did not know Nicodemus’s identity, and even if he did, the villain wouldn’t want to reveal any hint of his body’s location.

But then again, Shannon had said the nightmares came from special spells that ancient authors knew how to write. Who else besides the golem-wielding murderer had knowledge of ancient texts?

Perhaps there was a clue in the dream? April’s voice had spoken directly to him. No one had spoken to him in previous dreams.

The wound on Nicodemus’s cheek throbbed again as he remembered April’s warning: “The white beast will find you unless you fly from Starhaven!”

Normally such an indication of danger would have sent him running to Shannon, but now the old man was locked up.

Nicodemus noticed that the scroll Azure had brought had fallen to the floor. He picked it up. “Dogfood,” Shannon had written above each paragraph-and at the top: “Research ***.”

Had the old man not had time to tell him what to research? Had he meant to come back and edit the phrase? Perhaps Nicodemus was supposed to research three stars. Or something about Starhaven? But where could Nicodemus research anything?

He began to pace. He tried to breathe on his hands but accidentally brushed the Magnus stitches on his cheek. Pain lanced into his skull and brought with it a sudden memory of his nightmare: “Fly and don’t look back!” April had warned him. “Never look back!”

Nicodemus looked at the door. He should run, he thought, taking a step forward. But then he realized that even if he ran, the murderer would continue killing male cacographers. He turned back to the fire. He had to stay.

But he couldn’t ignore the dreams. He looked back at the door. Perhaps he should take the other male cacographers up to the compluvium? But if Shannon had wanted him to do that, he would have said so on the scroll.

Again Nicodemus raised his hands to breathe on them, and again he brushed the wound on his cheek.

“Fiery blasted blood!” he swore out loud, the pain igniting his frustration and anger. “I was supposed to be the Halcyon! I was supposed to be sure and decisive. And now I’m afraid to do anything!”

He sat before the fire and held his hands toward the coals.

He must have been cursed. He wasn’t supposed to be like this. The golem’s author must have stolen his strength and his ability to spell.

But if that were true, it would mean that he could restore his ability to spell. It would mean he could end his cacography.

Nicodemus focused all of his attention on the hope of completing himself. He fed it all of his fear and uncertainty. His desire grew and began to radiate heat. He wasn’t going to pace about like a dithering boy. The monster had stolen part of his mind. Hatred blazed within him. He would get the missing part of himself back!

He stood up and decided that he would take the male cacographers up to the compluvium; from there he could plan his next move. Perhaps he would seek to free Shannon. Perhaps he would find a way to strike back against the golem.

Again the most recent nightmare returned to him. “The white beast will find you unless you fly from Starhaven,” April had said. “Fly with anything you have!”

In a way, he was fleeing out of Starhaven proper to the compluvium. The dream must have predicted this. But what to take with him? He looked around at his cot, his robes, his books, his endless pages of spelling drills. What would help protect the boys or harm the golem? His eyes fell on Shannon’s open scroll and its radiant Numinous paragraphs.

Abruptly, he realized he couldn’t take the boys to the compluvium.

Not yet.

The meaning of Shannon’s words was suddenly clear. The old man was a linguist after all, and linguists studied all aspects of language… even metaphor.