“I’m not the Storm Petrel anymore,” he whispered to himself. “I won’t curse him. I’m the Halcyon now.”

It wasn’t supposed to be like this. He had the emerald. His doubt and fear should have vanished with his disability.

“I am the Halcyon now,” he assured himself and pressed his palm against his teacher’s cheek. The old wizard drew in a sharp breath.

Suddenly Nicodemus was looking through Shannon ’s skin and sinew to the old man’s stomach. It was not pink flesh he saw, but the cyan glow of the organ’s Language Prime text. Five knobs stood out on the otherwise regular folds. They glowed brighter than the rest of the stomach.

Nicodemus set about disspelling the cankers. It was difficult work; Fellwroth had cruelly restructured Shannon ’s Language Prime prose. Worse, the old man flinched every time Nicodemus made a major textual change.

“Is it done?” Shannon asked when Nicodemus removed his hand. The pain had made his face shine with sweat.

“I disspelled the worse curses around your stomach, but I saw smaller cankers on other organs. They’re not growing quickly. And I want to study them more before-”

“Disspell them later,” Shannon said while restoring Azure to her perch on his shoulder. “We haven’t long before Starhaven realizes we’re here and comes for us.”

Nicodemus helped his teacher stand. “Why do we need to worry about the other wizards?”

Shannon took a step on unsteady legs. “When the provost learns the truth about you, Nicodemus, we’ll land in the largest embroilment in the history of academic politics. If we want to avoid becoming the provost’s political prisoners, we must learn everything we can from that monster.”

Nicodemus turned to look at Fellwroth, still spellbound and lying on the floor.

Deirdre had picked herself up and gone to Boann’s ark. Fellwroth had written a Numinous shield around the object, but the avatar had forced her arms through the prose to lay her hands against the stone.

The contact seemed to be strengthening the ark; a red aura was growing around the stone and gradually deconstructing Fellwroth’s Numinous shield.

“Monster, I’ll have the truth from you.” Shannon limped over to stand above Fellwroth. “What do you know about the Disjunction?”

The creature glared with bloody eyes. When Shannon disspelled the gag, the thing laughed. “With what do you threaten me, Magister? Torture? Death? Neither will work. You, old goat, will never have my obedience.” The bloody eyes swiveled to Nicodemus. “But the boy might.”

Nicodemus frowned. “What are you playing at?”

Fellwroth grinned. “You may not need me to disspell the old man’s curses. But I command the forces of the Disjunction. Let me live and I will put all the resources of the demon-worshipers at your command. You can rule as a new emperor.”

“Don’t be stupid,” Nicodemus snapped. “I’d rather rot in hell than be your ally.”

The monster continued to stare at Nicodemus. “Think on it. You can’t go to the wizards; they will never overcome their belief that you’re the Storm Petrel. They will imprison and manipulate you. And you can’t trust that girl dressed up like a druid; she betrayed me and will betray you.”

Nicodemus’s heart grew cold. “Deirdre betrayed you?” he asked, remembering his first encounter with Fellwroth in the Drum Tower. The monster had acted surprised when Deirdre had resisted.

Fellwroth ignored this. “We do not have to serve the demons, Nicodemus. You can use me to resist the Disjunction. Think of the opportunities. I can show you how to find the demon-worshiping cults. I can help you eliminate them or manipulate them. Nicodemus, if you want to protect humanity, you cannot afford to destroy me.”

Nicodemus looked at Shannon.

The old linguist began to scratch Azure’s neck. He took a long moment before nodding.

“Very well,” Nicodemus said, turning back to the monster. “Tell me everything you know about the Disjunction.”

“TALK FAST,” SHANNON said. “The sentinels will be here soon. How did Typhon cross the ocean?”

Fellwroth’s red eyes darted between teacher and student. “I am neither human nor a construct, something in between. By combining dust with demonic godspells, Los sought to create a new race to replace humanity. I was to be the first of the new men. He gave me life, but he never completed me. The Pandemonium was away at war on the coast, trying to stop the humans from escaping across the ocean. They had left Mount Calax empty but for Los and my unfinished self. A party of powerful human avatars surprised the arch-demon. Sacrificing their lives, they combined their godspells to drain Los of all strength until he became solid rock. I was left incomplete and forgotten in Los’s mountain palace.”

Fellwroth shifted uncomfortably beneath the restraining Magnus sentences. “Having no devotees, the demons could not pursue humanity across the ocean. And only Los knew how to break their bonds to the earth of the ancient continent. But I am part of the ancient land-a being made from godspells and dirt. So when-centuries after Los’s demise-Typhoneus accidentally discovered me, he knew I could be his vessel to the new world. The demon implanted himself inside of me, made me his ark. We built a crude ship and sailed to this land.”

“And why did you cross?” Shannon asked. “Were you going to ferry the demons across one by one?”

Fellwroth shook his head. “Only an Imperial’s fluency in Language Prime can reanimate Los’s frozen body, so we crossed the ocean to breed one. Typhon had reconstructed the genealogy charts of the Imperial blood-lines. That’s how he created you, Nicodemus. And once we had your Language Prime fluency, we set about creating a dragon that could carry us back to the ancient continent.”

Nicodemus frowned. “Why not simply sail back?”

“Can’t be done,” Fellwroth replied. “Being trapped on the ancient continent has driven the demons mad with bloodlust. Mindless, they stalk the southern shores and will destroy any approaching ship. Typhon and I escaped by sail only because the demons did not imagine it was possible. Now their fury is whetted; even Typhon would not have survived a landing by ship.”

“So you need a dragon to fly over them?” Nicodemus asked.

The monster shook his head. “The flying helps, but it wouldn’t be sufficient. The dragon I completed could fly, but the demons would have torn it into pieces. A true dragon is more than wings and scales. True dragons can change the nature of a mind; they make their victims think unthinkable thoughts.”

Shannon exhaled. “A true dragon is a type of quaternary cognition spell?”

Fellwroth answered without taking his eyes from Nicodemus. “Precisely. Only a true dragon can travel past the demons to Mount Calax. There we could reanimate Los with your ability to spell in Language Prime. Los could then tame the feral demons and break their ties to the ancient continent. Then the War of Disjunction would begin at last.”

“So then why send your dragon to burn in Trillinon?” Shannon asked before laughing dryly. “No, let me guess. You killed Typhon before the dragon was finished. When you tried to complete the wyrm on your own, you failed to make it powerful enough to get past the demons. So you sent the dragon against Trillinon to cause havoc.”

Fellwroth bared his teeth at the grand wizard.

Shannon responded with a humorless smile. “So I am right. But tell me why you killed Typhon. Why sabotage your own plan?”

The monster hissed. “Typhon was a fool. The old goat was so bent upon reconstructing Los that he failed to see that I am Los’s legacy. He jeopardized my life for trifling matters. So when the emerald showed me how to kill him in the river, I did so and stole part of the demonic godspell. That’s how I learned to manipulate dreams.”

“There are no more demons on this continent, then?” Nicodemus raised his eyebrows. “So to stop the Disjunction, all we need do is kill you?”