EVERYTHING BLAZED WHITE and then faded into black. Suddenly Nicodemus was not himself. Nor was he in his own time.
He was a young Chthonic male pausing from his early evening spell work. His bare feet stood on the newly built tower bridge. Its stones were still warm from the summer sunlight. He looked east. Before him stretched the dusty expanse of felled trees and rock piles.
Soon they would build towers there as well, and the city would grow even larger. Farther away stood the moonlit mountains. In the middle of the sheer rock face gaped a wide tunnel that ran into the mountain.
He remembered that long ago his ancestors had built that tunnel to escape the underworld. But sometimes, blueskin raiders had come screaming out of the tunnel to steal food, tools, and females. His people had led counterstrikes down the tunnel to kill the offending blueskins and take others as slaves.
But now a truce had been made. Wards had been written within the cave mouth to restrict passage. His people had filled the entrance with their metaspells, and the blueskins had matched this with thousands of their digging tortoise constructs. Now only official delegations could pass between the upperworld and the underworld.
In celebration of this truce, his people were decorating the rockface. A carving of ivy leaves was to represent his people’s metaspells because ivy, like his kind, grew from stony soil and could climb to great heights. A carving of a tortoise shell was to represent the blueskin’s war constructs.
The truce required both his people and the blueskins to meet at the cave mouth every year to renew the agreements of the peace. Some of his people were displeased with the truce; they wanted easier access to the Heaven Tree homestead.
But most were content, and the yearly renewal of the truce was a celebrated holiday. Some even spoke of building a bridge out to the tunnel.
However, a growing number of elders-remembering the horrors they had seen before they left the underworld- argued that they should abandon the Heaven Tree and collapse the tunnel. Only this, they said, would end all contact with the blueskins and so permanently stop the raids.
Without warning the world again dissolved into blinding white light. For a moment Nicodemus was himself again… but then everything changed.
He was now a Chthonic elder standing on a sunlit bridge in a completed Starhaven. Many years had passed. Before him stretched the Spindle Bridge. It reached out from Starhaven to land against the solid cliff face. He could see the ivy pattern and the tortoise pattern carved into the rock.
But the tunnel was gone. The bridge ran into solid stone. He tried to remember what had happened to the tunnel but found his mind was filled with terror. He shifted his palette limb underneath his tunic and looked westward. Moving across the oak savanna were two red squares, each a mile in width and length.
Sunlight glinted off helmets and spear points. These were the Fifth and the Ninth Neosolar Legions. They had come to lay siege to Starhaven.
He pulled his palette closer and cursed the sunlight. The hour had come at last. In a matter of days, he and all his people would die.
“Nicodemus!” someone called faintly. “Niiicooodeeemus!”
Abruptly Nicodemus was himself again, standing in the small Chthonic cellar. His hand was hovering above the living codex that held the Wrixlan ghosts. Tulki was gone. Looking back, he saw sunlight shining on the steps that led up to the ruined Chthonic outpost. It was morning.
“Niiicooodeeemus!” His name came again from a distant female voice. His heart tightened. How had she found him? He was supposed to be hidden.
Then he remembered the Seed of Finding. The last signal text it would have cast would have been from just outside the ruins. She must have reached that spot and started calling out.
“Niiicooodeeeeeemus!” she yelled again.
Deirdre!
CHAPTER Thirty-six
Nicodemus woke to see Deirdre padding down the cellar stairs. A lone sunbeam had slipped through the tattered ceiling to land on the steps. As the druid walked through the light, the sword strapped to her back glinted solar white. She was holding up the front of her robes to make a basket; on the pale cloth rested small pieces of darkness. Nicodemus picked up the Index and went to her.
“Clear sky, cold and windy,” she whispered as they squatted by the nearby wall. “Reminds me of the bright autumn days in the Highlands.” She had folded her legs so the nest of blackberries sat in her lap.
Nicodemus set down the Index and watched with single-minded anticipation as her dark fingers extracted a mound of berries and overturned them into his cupped hands.
“John will need some too,” he said.
On the other side of the cellar, the big man was curled up on Nicodemus’s cloak. Getting him to sleep that morning had been a struggle.
Shortly after Nicodemus had brought Deirdre and John back to the ruins, the big man’s wits had returned with a squall of terror and tears. At first, he had screamed every time Nicodemus had touched him. But eventually he let the younger man pull him into an embrace. Then John had begun to repeat the name “Devin… Devin… Devin…” over and over.
Nicodemus had wept with him until exhaustion pulled them both into sleep.
“I set several rabbit snares,” Deirdre whispered, feeding herself a berry between words. “With luck, evening will see us with dinner.” She searched Nicodemus’s face. “Now that we know more about the Chthonics, have you discovered anything about that dream you told me of-the one of Fellwroth surrounded by ivy and turtles? Any clue where the monster’s true body is now?”
Nicodemus shook his head. “I thought the body must be in a cave where the Spindle Bridge meets the mountain. There must be some connection to the ivy and hexagon patterns carved into the mountain face. But in the Chthonic visions, I saw that the cave into the mountain had disappeared after the Spindle Bridge was built. And Shannon probed the rock before the bridge and found nothing. There must be some other connection. It’s frustrating. I can’t consult the ghosts again until tonight.”
He popped a blackberry into his mouth and stared down at the tattoos that covered his hands and forearms. It was strange to think about Garkex and the other night terrors being written across his body.
Deirdre was still studying him. “The dreams might not matter. We’ll be safe when we reach my goddess’s ark. When will you be ready to run to Gray’s Crossing?”
Nicodemus paused, a berry at his lips. “When I met the golem, it was coming up from Gray’s Crossing.”
He had told Deirdre about his strange dreams, his encounter with Fellwroth, and his dealings with the Chthonic ghost. But he had not told her what Fellwroth had said about the struggle between two factions-one demonic, one divine-to breed a Language Prime spellwright.
“Fellwroth must be watching Gray’s Crossing,” he continued. “He might anticipate our trying to reach your goddess’s ark.”
Deirdre shook her head; her raven hair gleamed even in the half-light. “A dozen armed devotees-two of them druids-guard the stone. And it’s well hidden; Fellwroth wouldn’t know where to find it.”
Her wide eyes widened; her dark cheeks flushed darker. “Nicodemus, we are so close now. My goddess can sense you nearing. She longs to protect you.”
Nicodemus put the blackberry in his mouth and chewed it slowly. “Deirdre, who is your goddess?”
A soft smile curled her lips. “She is Boann of the Highlands, not a powerful deity, but a water goddess of unsurpassed beauty, a dweller of the secret brooks and streams that flow among the boulders and the heather.”
Nicodemus thought about what Fellwroth had told him. “Does she have many Imperials-those that look like us- in her service?”
“A few,” she said, eating another berry. “My family has done so for time out of mind. In the Lowlands, my cousins serve her. But you must understand that she is a Dralish deity. The Lornish occupy the Highlands still. Those of us holding to the old ways must hide-”
