What that meant, Nicodemus couldn’t imagine. And he couldn’t waste time thinking about it now. He needed to get out of Starhaven.

So he took slow breaths and waited for the scar to cool. When it did, he bent down to inspect the decaying halves of his last two subtext attempts. Both spells had split at the same point in their primary sequence. Undoubtedly, he had made the same cacographic error in both.

“Los damn my cacography,” he hissed, fighting a fresh wave of self-hatred. “If only I had that emerald!”

He forced himself to think logically. Was there a way to rewrite the spell to avoid the commands that contained difficult spellings?

He grunted. Perhaps there was. But that would mean deliberately re-spelling, deliberately misspelling. His whole life he had waged war on his cacography. True, intentionally misspelling the shielding spell back in the Index’s chamber had increased his control of that text. But now he was considering something more egregious-willfully composing a misspell.

But the present situation afforded few options: he could either try a respell or lurk around Starhaven until the sentinels or the golem discovered him.

So he made another attempt at the subtext, this time deliberately altering the fractious paragraph. When finished, the respelled text glowed deep purple.

Wincing, Nicodemus cast the pale cylinder into the air, where it floated and began to spin faster and faster until it seemed as if it might split apart.

But the misspelled subtext did not break; rather it cast out a sentence from either side of its body. The whirling lines covered Nicodemus’s feet and wove a textual sheet up his leg. Within moments, he was enclosed from boot heel to top hair in light-bending prose. The spell left two thin slits open for his eyes so he might see out from the disguising words.

Elation flushed through Nicodemus.

Slowly, he stepped from behind the tapestry. His boots made no sound on the cobblestones. But as he drew near a torch, the sentences nearest the light began to fray and deconstruct.

This was strange; light shouldn’t damage magical language. He moved away from the torch and fed more purple sentences to the subtext. The deconstruction stopped and the spell regained its integrity.

Carefully Nicodemus stepped through the gate and past the guards. A nervous smile began to curl his lips. The guards could not see him; they could not hear him.

It was a wonderful feeling. He had respelled the ancient sceaduganga. Perhaps, one day, he would publish his creation and name it the shadowganger subtext.

His smile grew as he slipped across the drawbridge and onto the mountain road. “Dear heaven, I’m free,” he whispered as Starhaven’s lofty towers came into view, black against the starry sky.

With a laugh, he turned away from the academy of strict wizardly language and knew that he was safe under his disguise-safe under an epic of concealing, respelled prose.

CHAPTER Thirty-one

Nicodemus walked into the cold autumn night.

Wind rushed through the evergreens and tore leaves of scarlet and yellow from the aspens. The crisp air smelled of damp earth, moldy leaves. Before him a steep mountain road curved down to the hamlet of Gray’s Crossing. Behind him rose Starhaven’s black silhouette.

Even though Nicodemus had seldom left the academy and never traveled this road at night, he noticed little of the dark beauty; his mind was too distracted by recent memories and new emotions.

At first he felt only exhilaration. His cacography had helped him escape! But then he turned a bend and saw a rotting log that resembled a woman’s body, curled up and facing away. A shiver ran down his body. The toppled trunk grew larger in his vision, revealing pale mushrooms scattered like warts across the wood, their roots eating into the rot.

Devin’s half-crushed face flashed before his eyes. He tried to think of the emerald, but his fear and grief would not dissipate. Devin and Kyran were dead. The demon Typhon had turned John into an unwitting killer. Far worse, the monstrous Fellwroth was still alive. The damage Kyran had done to the metal golem was of no consequence. Fellwroth might already be forming another body.

Nicodemus closed his eyes and again sought the emerald’s image, but again he failed. Fellwroth would keep coming, no matter how many times he escaped, no matter how many golems he deconstructed.

And yet, when the golem had grabbed his throat, he had heard the emerald’s voice as his own childhood voice. He had learned that the gem was the missing part of himself. He had learned that his nightmares had contained visions of Fellwroth’s living body.

But could that knowledge do him any good? He wasn’t the Halcyon. Prophecy dictated that the Halcyon would be born with a Braid-shaped keloid. Nicodemus’s keloid had been created after his birth, when his father had branded him with the emerald.

Worse, Nicodemus still had no idea where Fellwroth’s true body might be. True, he knew it was lying in a cavern with a standing stone… and inhabited by nightmare turtles? It was nonsensical.

His fear grew and the keloid began to burn again. The scars grew so hot he feared they might singe his hair. He paused to fan the back of his neck.

While he waited for the keloid to cool, he pulled the Seed of Finding from his belt-purse and tore off its encircling root. As before, part of the artifact melted and then re congealed on the back of his hand as barklike skin. Now Deirdre could find him.

However, the Fool’s Ladder had landed her on Starhaven’s eastern side. She would have to make a long hike around Starhaven to the road Nicodemus now traveled. Even if the druid had set out at once, she could not find him before morning. Until then, he needed a safe hiding place.

He started down the road again, hoping to reach Gray’s Crossing quickly.

But the night was not the same; he was not the same. The forest loomed larger and blacker. In the blue moon’s light, once familiar meadows became otherworldly landscapes. All around him lurked the loneliness of the road. He shook his head and tried to push away thoughts of Kyran and Devin.

But the night was not to be denied; it had his imagination as an ally. Everything changed. A stump took on a lycanthrope’s shape; a leafless branch opened gnarled fingers and hung ready to grab; the wind in the trees began to talk of Chthonic footsteps.

For most of his life, Nicodemus had dreamed of venturing into these woods, of battling monsters on this very road. But he never guessed that he could feel so alone, or that it could be so dark.

And then the blue moon slipped behind a cloud, leaving only the white moon in the sky. The world grew darker still.

Every falling leaf made him jump. Every snapping twig conjured images of lurking horrors. He felt as if his heart were beating an inch behind his eyes. The road seemed to shake. He dropped the Index and fell to his knees.

Behind boughs and under bushes, nightblue terrors grew legs and teeth; they slunk through the tall meadow grass and hid in the shadows. They began to chant in croaking voices, telling stories of how they had drifted among the woods as impalpable wraiths for many long years. They chanted about how Nicodemus’s long-awaited journey on the night road was making them stronger.

The night creatures congregated at the forest’s edge. And when he looked away, they darted across the road to the trees on the other side. They went mostly unseen, but every so often he glimpsed a gnarled elbow or two shining violet eyes. No two were alike, and they were all around him, muttering and spitting their low chant.

Now breathing hard, Nicodemus realized he was in mortal danger. He realized that he could go back to Starhaven. He looked up at the dark towers. If he returned, the sentinels would imprison him. But what of that? Other people would pass him in the halls, and he would know that the world was constant. He could explain about the golems. The academy would protect him. It would give him a place to lay down his language in the tracks of literary convention.