Nicodemus dropped his hand and looked away. Spikes of pain lanced into his head as Smallwood scrubbed the wound with his sleeve; nevertheless, Nicodemus couldn’t suppress a small, self-satisfied smile.
“THAT STUNT WITH the shield was exceedingly foolish and…” Shannon muttered to Nicodemus.
Four sentinels were accompanying them back to the Drum Tower, and one of the Northern spellwrights was now frowning at the old man.
Shannon waited for the Northerner to look away before finishing his sentence. “Exceedingly foolish, Nicodemus, and exceedingly brave.”
Nicodemus started to smile but agony lanced across his wounded cheek. Despite being placed with care, Shannon’s Magnus stitches were extraordinarily painful. “What did you learn?” he asked.
Sitting on Shannon’s shoulder, Azure raised her head to inspect the nearby sentinels. The party was now marching along a wide Spirish arcade in Starhaven’s northern quarter. Presently none of the sentinels was close enough to overhear.
“Nothing about a gem or emerald and Language Prime. And nothing about the Chthonics, ivy, or turtle shells.” Shannon paused. “I am sorry, Nicodemus; I just realized I forgot to search for remedies for cacography.”
A sinking sensation filled Nicodemus. “That’s not important right now. What of our enemy?”
A smile formed beneath the wizard’s short beard. “I discovered what manner of creature we face.”
Nicodemus turned to the grand wizard. “Magister!” he whispered before remembering himself and returning his gaze to the ground. “What is our enemy?” he asked more quietly.
“We face a golem,” the wizard whispered. “They are spells of the ancient world. According to the literature, no one has encountered or created one on this side of the ocean.”
“Los in hell,” Nicodemus quietly swore. “So we face an author with knowledge of the ancient texts. Perhaps a demon-worshiper after all. What else, Magister? What kind of construct is a golem?”
Again Azure examined the sentinels; they were still too far to overhear. “To create a golem text,” Shannon whispered, “an ancient spellwright had to convert his mind into complex text called a ‘spirit,’ which contained all of an author’s magical and mental abilities. This spirit was then invested into a golem body made of earth-most were clay, but there was mention of metal or rock. While animate, a golem is not a construct but a living creature. A golem’s durability depended on its substance: an iron golem would outlive a brass golem, a brass golem would outlive a mud golem, and so on. But the sturdier the golem, the more text and time it required to form.”
Nicodemus held his tongue as a turn in the arcade brought a sentinel within earshot. Only when the man had moved away did he reply: “And that’s why cutting off the murderer’s arm didn’t slow him down?”
Shannon nodded. “The author’s spirit simply disengaged from the wounded body and then formed a new one. But from what I understand, any golem entering Starhaven would suffer from the stronghold’s Chthonic metaspells. A clay golem shouldn’t last five hours in this place. And one couldn’t spellwrite within our walls.”
Nicodemus eyed the nearest sentinel. “So the malicious author is not in the stronghold. He could be anywhere.”
“Anywhere close by,” Shannon corrected.
Fear began to cool Nicodemus’s excitement. “We must find the author himself. We could slay the man or creature or whatever it is while its spirit is still in the golem.”
Shannon shook his head. “If we knew where the author’s body was hidden, we could do just that. But we’ve no way of finding the fiend.”
“But then how can we fight it?”
Shannon started to reply but then stopped as the sentinels stepped in close. Ahead of the party stood the entrance to one of the long halls that separated the Spirish Quarter from the Imperial Quarter. The Drum Tower wasn’t far off now.
Once inside the hall, the sentinels spread out, giving Nicodemus and Shannon enough room to whisper.
Shannon explained in a murmur: “If a golem deconstructs before its author’s spirit can disengage, then the author dies along with the body. Different golems have different vulnerabilities. Clay golems, being malleable, are impervious to all but the most severe crushing and piercing attacks. However, as I discovered, they can be easily cut.”
“But a golem made of granite?”
“Would be slower, stronger, and endangered by blunt attacks of sufficient force.” The wizard took Azure onto his hand. “Nicodemus,” he said loudly, “would you hold my familiar for a moment? I need to readjust my hood.”
Nicodemus held out his hand and was not surprised when the parrot pressed a short Numinous sentence into his palm. “Take a good look at that sequence,” Shannon murmured while pretending to fuss over his hood. “Do you think you could recognize it?”
Nicodemus shifted Azure to his other hand and squinted down at the line. If translated it would read, “
The old man chuckled. “You can’t spell out the ingredients for ham and eggs, but you can glean that?”
Nicodemus shrugged. “Order never mattered to me.”
“You may hand Azure back now,” Shannon announced for the sentinels’ benefit.
When Nicodemus obliged, the wizard whispered. “That will be my cipher for any broadcast I send. If anything should happen we can find each other using… what’s the matter?”
“I’m sorry, Magister, I know most apprentices can cast broadly, but I’ve never-”
“It’s a ball of short messages that’s cast into an ever-expanding sphere. Spellwrights use them to find each other when lost. They’re forbidden in Starhaven because of the confusion they’d cause. However, in an emergency, I’ll begin casting many of them so you can find me. Some will have the correct cipher, some a decoy cipher. Each one is an expanding sphere. You are to follow only the correct cipher to its source.”
The party climbed a short, wide stairway.
“One more thing,” the wizard said: “that furrow in my Numinous shield back by the Index, how did you make it?”
Nicodemus explained how he had deliberately used his cacography to misspell the shield’s smooth sentences into crinkled conformations. He didn’t mention the strange sensation of increased control he had felt when corrupting the text; that still confused and troubled him. So instead, he focused on how his misspelled sentences had pulled the furrow down into the shield and so distracted Smallwood.
Shannon raised his eyebrows. “You did that by misspelling?”
“No, Magister,” Nicodemus said, grinning despite the pain. “When I did that, I couldn’t have spelled more correctly.”
Shannon chuckled. “Well done, my boy.”
The party filed out through a door and into the Stone Court. Nicodemus was shocked to see that the Drum Tower’s main door and the ground floor windows were covered by blazing Numinous bars.
The old man explained: “The spells blocking the doors and windows are wards. They can be lifted by applying a key, much like a door’s passwords. I’ve convinced Amadi to give me a key. I’d like you to have a copy in case you need to leave the tower. If possible, I will send Azure with a key to your window tonight. Otherwise I’ll give you the key tomorrow.”
Nicodemus nodded. “The wards are to protect us cacographers from the murderer?”
“I wanted more, but the provost doesn’t want the convocation’s attendees to know about the murderer. I don’t know if the wards will stop an author capable of composing a golem. But there will be two sentinels guarding the tower. There will also be two of them watching my quarters. So at least we will be safe tonight.”
Nicodemus glanced at the old man. “But we haven’t talked about everything in my last nightmare. There’s the cave I saw with the body and the strange turtles and the hexagonal pattern at the end of the Spindle Bridge. Perhaps our enemy has something to do with the Spindle. Some door in the mountainside or something about moving the mountain…”
Shannon motioned for Nicodemus to quiet down. “I’ve thought of that too. But there’s nothing we can do tonight. Now we need to rest while it’s still possible.”
The old man paused. “Tonight I want you to pay special attention to your dreams.”
