“Not quite, boy.” Fellwroth produced a toothy smile. “Typhon and I established hidden cults in every human kingdom, each of which will continue trying to breed a true Imperial. If you want to prevent the War of Disjunction, you will need me. I can help you destroy the cults or rule them. You can choose to do either, but to have any hope of discovering them you must protect me from the wizards and from that vile woman.” Fellwroth nodded to something behind Nicodemus. “I won’t have a betrayer near me.”

Deirdre approached. Her green eyes shone with a wild energy. She had recovered her goddess, her pure love. “How could I have betrayed you, monster?” she asked. “When from the beginning I sought nothing but your death?”

Something occurred to Nicodemus. “Fellwroth, how did you find Boann’s ark? Why bring it here?”

The creature laughed and looked at Deirdre. “You mean she doesn’t know? Her hussy of a goddess never told her?”

Deirdre stepped beside Nicodemus. “Hold your tongue.” She leveled her greatsword at the monster’s head. “Or I’ll cut it out.”

“Nicodemus, Boann is traitorous,” Fellwroth replied hotly. “She wants to control you.”

Shannon stepped forward and pulled Deirdre’s sword arm down. “We need to handle this carefully,” he muttered.

Fellwroth continued to glare at the woman. “Boann and I made an arrangement. The goddess agreed to serve the Disjunction if she could become a powerful demon.”

“You lie!” Deirdre growled.

Shannon laid a hand on her shoulder. “Easy,” he murmured.

Fellwroth laughed. “Stupid girl. You were the one who negotiated the agreement. You offered to capture Nicodemus for me because I did not then know his identity.”

Deirdre looked at her two companions. “Don’t listen. He’s trying to trick you into distrusting Boann.”

Nicodemus met her gaze. “Deirdre, how did he know where Boann’s ark was?”

Fellwroth was the one who answered. “The girl begged for her life when I cornered her in that Chthonic tower. She told me where I could find the ark and how to surprise the druids protecting it. How else could I have gotten it here so quickly?”

Deirdre shook her head. “It’s a lie.”

Nicodemus’s fingers tightened around the emerald. Something was wrong. “But why did you bring it here, Fellwroth? The spell that knocked the emerald from your hand came from the ark.”

The creature sneered in disgust. “Boann suggested that I bring the ark here to reassure me of her allegiance. If I had her ark, she could not break her word and run away with you, Nicodemus.”

The monster sniffed in disdain. “Even though I was foolish enough to agree, I took a precaution: I sealed the ark with protective text. It was a strong shield, but one short spell could slip through if the ark knew exactly how my prose was written. Somehow the emerald plucked that knowledge from my mind and fed it into the deity inside the stone. Somehow the emerald told the ark exactly when to strike so that I would drop the stone.”

Nicodemus’s brow furrowed. “But Boann shouldn’t know about the emerald. Only you, Fellwroth, knew about the emerald. Well, you and…” He stopped himself from saying “Typhon.”

Cold terror spread through Nicodemus.

“You see, neither the girl nor the goddess can be trusted.” Fellwroth insisted.

“You can’t believe him, Nicodemus,” Deirdre insisted, her chest heaving. “It’s been a year since I sinned against Boann, and we are so close to redeeming-”

“Deirdre, something’s wrong,” Nicodemus interrupted. “Listen, a year ago Fellwroth killed Typhon. You started having seizures just after that.”

Deirdre shook her head again. “We knew that, Nicodemus. We knew that Boann saw Fellwroth killing the demon. That’s how she learned of you. That’s why she sent me to rescue you.”

“No, Deirdre,” Nicodemus said, taking a cautious step closer. “We don’t know that for fact; that’s what we suspected. But what if it isn’t true? What if Typhon succeeded in infecting Boann when he was in her waters? You told us that Boann kept her ark in the Highland rivers.”

Fellwroth’s crimson eyes bulged. “Boann inhabited that river? Deirdre said the goddess was of the city. Nicodemus, quickly, we must get away from the ark. She’s not Boann’s avatar anymore!”

Deirdre’s sword arm was trembling.

Nicodemus began composing restraining Magnus sentences.

Fellwroth kept talking. “Nicodemus, Shannon, we need to get away. There are fates worse than death! She’s not Boann’s avatar! We have to escape Typhon!”

“Deirdre…” Shannon started to say.

But Deirdre, moving with inhuman speed, slammed her elbow into Shannon ’s face and then thrust her blade into Fellwroth’s skull.

The Numinous rectangle on the creature’s forehead exploded and sent a wall of force careening through the cavern. When the shockwave hit Nicodemus, everything went black.

Then he was lying on his back staring at a torrent of blazing Numinous prose streaming from Fellwroth’s corpse to the ark.

Nicodemus extemporized a disspell along his forearm and cast it at the textual stream.

But his text crumpled in the air and fell.

Numbing shock filled Nicodemus as he watched the disspell shatter on the floor. How could he have misspelled?

He looked down at his hands and found them empty.

The emerald was gone.

CHAPTER Forty-four

A rumble shook the stairs under Amadi’s feet.

Slowly the sentinels pushed open the giant iron doors that led onto the Spindle Bridge ’s landing. Before her stretched the moonlit bridge and the dark mountains beyond. “Secure the landing,” she ordered.

The twelve sentinels who had volunteered for the expedition began to spread out. They were all excellent spellwrights: ten wizards and two grand wizards. Three bore caesura wands, another a tundern wand. The rest carried spellbooks full of wartexts.

The dean of libraries and the rector had accompanied the party to observe.

Simple John stepped beside her and pointed. “There!”

Amadi’s gaze followed his finger to where the Spindle Bridge met the mountainside. A hole seemed to have been blasted in the Spindle. Out of it shone a golden blaze.

The sentinels muttered. Someone was casting a powerful Numinous spell from inside the mountain.

“Kale,” Amadi ordered, “stay here with John and the provost’s officers. The rest of you, advance slowly and keep closed ranks. Subdue anything dangerous, and kill anything nonhuman.”

DEIRDRE STOOD FROZEN in her thrust-legs bent, arms extended, hands locked around the sword hilt. Fellwroth’s unmoving body lay before her.

When Nicodemus said Deirdre’s name, her eyes moved but her body remained as stiff as stone.

Shannon lay behind her, bleeding from his nose and a wound on his shoulder. Azure had disappeared.

Nicodemus went to the wizard and turned him over. He took care to touch only the old man’s robes, never his skin. Without the emerald, he was once again the mutagenic Storm Petrel.

Shannon looked up at him with a dazed expression. “Fellwroth… is dead?”

“He is,” Nicodemus croaked, crouching beside the old wizard.

“And Deirdre is… Typhon’s avatar?”

“She didn’t know.” Nicodemus shoved his arm under the wizard’s back.

“But how did you figure it out?” Shannon gasped as Nicodemus tried to lift him.

“Magister, now is not-”

“No…” the old man said between rapid breaths. “You have to tell me.”

Nicodemus grimaced. “Fellwroth cut Typhon in Boann’s river. After that Deirdre started having seizures and seeing visions of Fellwroth attacking Typhon. Something of the demon must have infected Boann’s ark and later her avatar. Deirdre didn’t recognize the change because she thought it was Boann’s punishment for having an affair with Kyran.”

Only four flamefly paragraphs remained; they hovered above Shannon, shedding a small pool of wan incandescence.