“So the cave is hidden?” John asked slowly. “Some ancient spell opens the mountain?”

Nicodemus shook his head. “Think of the Spindle’s shape. All other Chthonic bridges are thin and flat. The Spindle is as round as a tree bough. And when we walked on it, our footsteps echoed. Remember, Magister, the racket the sentinels made when marching toward us? And, Deirdre, what did it sound like when the war-weight gargoyle walked on the Spindle’s landing?”

She nodded. “Like a drum… like the sound was moving down the bridge.”

“Exactly,” Nicodemus said. “And in one of my nightmares, I was moving through a tunnel that ended in the chamber with Fellwroth’s body. When I was going down that tunnel, I heard my own voice talking to Magister about the Chthonic carvings. I heard that voice pass above me.”

“So the Spindle Bridge -” Shannon started to say.

“Isn’t a bridge at all,” Nicodemus finished. “It’s a tunnel. The wizards haven’t found anything in the mountain face because they’re searching only the rock in front of them. Don’t you see? The tunnel covers the cave’s mouth.”

Deirdre was nodding, but Shannon and John still wore frowns.

“It makes perfect sense,” Nicodemus insisted. “The Chthonic languages deconstruct in sunlight. And while the Chthonic people could tolerate sunlight, their blueskinned ancestors could not. The Spindle Tunnel must have been a diplomatic structure-a place where the Chthonics could meet the blueskins in darkness.” He snatched the Index out of its orbit.

“Here, I’ll find a mundane text that…” He began to undo the book’s clasp.

“No, no,” Shannon said. “I don’t doubt your logic; I simply wonder what we do with the information.”

Deirdre spoke quickly. “We do exactly what the boy suggested. We cut our way into the Spindle and tear Fellwroth’s body to pieces while the fiend’s mind is still in the golem.”

“Is the Fool’s Ladder still in place?” Nicodemus asked. “If we hike around to the back of Starhaven, could it take us up to the Spindle’s landing?”

The grand wizard scowled. “It could, but this plan is too dangerous. What if Fellwroth is not in his golem?”

“Running wouldn’t be safer,” Nicodemus insisted. “Fellwroth can follow me because of my keloid scars. And, Magister, my dreams were sent to me by the emerald. It wants to be rescued.”

Shannon shook his head. “Nicodemus, you and I are linguists, not sentinels.”

Deirdre rested a hand on Shannon ’s shoulder. “Only this plan will rescue my goddess’s ark. It is the only one I will accept.”

Nicodemus closed his eyes. “It is the only plan that will recover the emerald.” He opened his eyes and stared at Shannon. “And it is the only plan that will disspell your curse.”

“And me,” said John. “It is the only plan I will accept.”

All eyes turned to the big man.

“For decades, I lived under the demon’s curse. If I have a chance to end this monster, a chance for revenge, I will accept no other.”

Shannon started to say something but then stopped.

“Besides,” John said slowly, “I think I know how to reach Fellwroth.”

Shannon drew in a long breath and let it out through his nose. “You know how to reach the monster?”

“It depends, Magister,” John said with a solemn stare. “I need to know exactly what Fellwroth said when he set you free.”

In a new clay golem, Fellwroth stood on a balcony near the top of the Erasmine Spire.

A squat gargoyle with a monkey’s body and goat’s head sat on the railing. Fellwroth had rewritten the construct to siphon encrypted messages from the wizards’ colaboris spells. The agents of the Disjunction had long ago learned how to tack their texts onto wizardly communications.

So far the goat-faced gargoyle had performed perfectly. In Fellwroth’s hands glowed several golden passages from other important demon-worshipers. “When were these received?”

The gargoyle’s reply was slow and monotone. “Two hours past the dawn bell.”

There were several emerging situations that would sour without attention. Dar in particular was concerning; the demon-worshipers there were becoming increasingly unresponsive. Likely they were hiding something.

“Reply to Dar,” Fellwroth commanded. “They are to expect my arrival within a twelve night. And they are-”

A rat gargoyle with a dog’s ear growing from its back scurried up the railing. Fellwroth smiled. “My newest creation, what have you overheard?”

The stony canine ear flattened against the rat’s back. “Three sentinels came to the gatehouse moments ago,” the small construct squeaked. “They were patrolling the road to Gray’s Crossing. They told the guards they have Nicodemus Weal.”

Fellwroth’s lips curled into a smile. This was expected. The emerald had known Nicodemus was on the move. “Did they say where they are taking him?”

“To the stasis spell in the stables,” the rat replied. “Until a prison cell is chosen.

He nodded. “Very good. Now I want-”

Another of the stone rats scurried onto the ledge. “Noises in the Spindle,” it squeaked.

“What kind of noises?”

The rat began to wash its whiskers. “Scraping noises. Grating noises. Like we make.”

Fellwroth grunted in annoyance. “Remind me to edit your sensitivity. I don’t want to be notified every time you overhear a rat’s nest. But we can deal with that in a moment. For now, all of you back to your functions. I have a Language Prime spellwright to collect.” With that Fellwroth let the clay golem deconstruct.

The world dissolved into blackness as his spirit-which had been animating the golem-leaped into the air and then shot down to Starhaven’s Spirish Quarter. Though subtextualized, Fellwroth needed to avoid even the remotest chance of detection; without a body, a spirit was exceedingly vulnerable.

The spirit floated among the towers to descend into an abandoned alleyway. Earlier that day, Fellwroth had commanded a gargoyle to place a bag of sand there.

The spirit found the bag lying under several weather-worn boards. Inside the sack sat three golem scrolls. The spirit slipped its narrow sentences into the sand and pulled the spells free.

The new body began as a speck of pain that blossomed into a beating heart, a breathing chest, a head, two legs, two arms. The bag split and with a long sigh spilled its excess sand onto the cobblestones.

Fellwroth struggled to sit up in the new, brittle body. Vision was always the last sense a golem acquired. At first the world appeared only as fuzzy blotches.

For this reason Fellwroth always placed a white cloak or sheet near the incarnation site. It was vital to cover a golem with cloth while it was still fresh; otherwise bits of the body would rub off on the surrounding environment.

With some fumbling, Fellwroth found the white cloak. Old tattered boots sat under it.

Once his golem was dressed, Fellwroth trotted off toward the Spirish stables. There was no time to lose.

His vision had returned completely by the time the Spirish stables came into view. The black-robed fools were protecting the place with only four guards-all male, only one with a grand wizard’s hood. In one of the stalls gleamed a silvery Magnus column. That would be the stasis spell holding Nicodemus.

Fellwroth wrote four quick, subtextualized censor spells. “Hold, druid,” the hooded guard called upon seeing Fellwroth’s white robes. “These stables are now out of bounds, we’ve-”

Fellwroth threw a censor spell into the man’s face. The netlike text dug into the man’s mind and set his eyes rolling back as he fainted.

The other three guards called out, but it was too late. Fellwroth caught them with the remaining censor spells.

“Nicodemus Weal,” Fellwroth said with a laugh, and stepped into the stables. “You are not as foolish as I thought.”