CHAPTER Forty-six
The party walked through most of the night. The labyrinthine kobold caverns stretched before them. Some were adorned with luminescent blue lichen. Others housed pools of water that reflected the light of Shannon ’s flamefly spells.
They stopped in a round cavern near the surface. A fissure in the ceiling revealed a sliver of starry sky. Thick moss made a bed for the weary spellwrights, but Nicodemus’s sleep brought only nightmares of Deirdre convulsing as Typhon watched.
In the late morning, they pressed on. Nicodemus argued that they should chase after Deirdre as soon as possible.
At first his words met silence. Then Boann explained why they could not. She was weak and would not grow stronger until reunited with Deirdre. Shannon still suffered from their encounter with Fellwroth; there was no telling how his body would react to the cankers still seeded in his gut.
“And you, Nicodemus, are healthy but unprepared,” the goddess explained. “We must heal and build our forces. You must train and study.”
“But for how long?” he asked.
“As long as is needed,” the goddess replied.
Shannon agreed. “Patience is necessary. Think of the emerald. By touching you, the gem regained its full strength. With it, Typhon would be powerful beyond our comprehension. But after four years away from you, the gem will lose its power. If we remain hidden long enough, we deprive Typhon of his most powerful weapon.”
Nicodemus objected. “But he might start another dragon spell.” Shannon replied. “There’s no ‘might’ about it. He will begin another dragon, but he won’t complete the wyrm. As he said when trying to woo you, he needs seven or eight years with the replenished emerald. So long as we hide from him, he will only have four.”
Sighing deeply, Nicodemus let himself be convinced.
Three more days of walking passed. They lived off spring water and mushrooms Boann showed them how to find. Twice the goddess led them up to the surface. Shannon cast Magnus traps to pull trout from the streams. Boann and Nicodemus searched the sparse alpine forests for autumnal nuts and berries.
Each night they sat around a campfire, but they never found much to say. Nicodemus stole into the dark to study the magical languages of the Chthonics.
Using the Index, he taught himself Pithan. A powerful language, it produced luminous indigo runes that, like Magnus, could affect the physical world. Because of its logical grammar and spelling rules, Nicodemus’s cacography did not impair his ability to spellwrite in Pithan. For that reason he began tattooing wartexts all across his body.
Most nights this work kept him up late, which suited him; his sleep was plagued by bad dreams of Deirdre or Devin.
Often he woke with a pain in his chest. It felt as if his beating heart were wrapped in stiff leather. At such times he closed his eyes and thought of the emerald. Determination and discipline, he decided, were the new guiding stars of his life; they would help him rescue the missing part of himself. Then he could free Deirdre, cure Shannon.
At the beginning of the fifth day, Nicodemus realized that his keloid scars had not cast a Language Prime text to the emerald since he encountered Typhon. When he mentioned this to Boann, she nodded. “When imprisoned by Typhon I learned that your scars seek to communicate with the emerald only when they are within fifty miles or so of each other. Fellwroth might have used that capability to track you, had you fled Starhaven. But now that that Typhon has taken the gem far away, you needn’t worry about your scars betraying us while we are in the Pinnacle Mountains.”
Nicodemus scowled. “But that means, when we pursue the demon, he will know I am coming.”
Boann nodded.
“Might we cut out the scars?”
Boann shook her head sadly. “Not without killing you. When it was extracting your ability to spell, the emerald made the scars to extend down into your spine.”
Nicodemus shivered and resisted the urge to touch the back of his neck. The party continued on in silence.
At the end of the seventh day, they camped in a small cavern with a sandy floor. That night, Boann woke them with loud but calm words: “Shannon, Nicodemus, rise quickly. Three kobolds have smelled our fire. They are a mile away and running fast. We don’t have long before they attack.”
Instantly, Shannon was on his feet, forming a textual connection with Azure and extemporizing powerful Magnus spells. The campfire embers filled the place with a shifting red light.
Nicodemus cast a Shadowganger subtext on himself and was about to cast another on Shannon when three humanoids burst into the cavern.
Loping on all fours, the muscled creatures moved with shocking speed. Their skin was such a deep shade of blue it seemed darker than black. Their long blond ponytails matched their wide golden eyes. Their black claws matched their jagged black teeth.
Shannon cast a blaze of Magnus at each attacker. Two of his wartexts found their mark and detonated. The blasts tossed one kobold into the air and knocked the other flat. But the third monster produced an ax-like spell that shone with indigo light. With a quick swing, the creature burst Shannon’s wartext into silver sentence fragments.
Nicodemus’s heart went cold. The monster was a kobold spellwright.
Bellowing, the creature stood on his hind feet and rushed at Shannon. The old man tried to cast another Magnus spell but dropped it. Nicodemus threw himself forward and slammed his shoulder into the monster’s hip. They tumbled to the ground. Then he was on the kobold, jamming his knee into the monster’s throat. The kobold drew his arm back as if to strike with his claws, but Nicodemus pulled a dagger-like Pithan tattoo from his chest. The indigo spell illuminated the kobold’s golden eyes now wide with terror. Nicodemus jammed the spell into the monster’s shoulder and felt it pierce muscle and sinew.
Shrieking, the kobold thrashed violently enough to shove Nicodemus off. The world spun and then Nicodemus was lying on the sandy ground.
The cavern echoed with howls. Nicodemus pushed himself up to see the kobold spellwright clawing at his massive chest. Everywhere the monster had touched Nicodemus, his blue skin bulged with black cankers. Beside the terrified monster were his two companions. Shannon’s Magnus spells had covered them with short lacerations, but not killed them.
Nicodemus stood and pulled a long tattooed wartext from his hip. The indigo sentences folded themselves into a jagged broad sword whose spikes danced like flames.
All three kobolds fell perfectly silent and still. The wrestling had dispelled part of Nicodemus’s subtext, making him visible only from the waist up. He took a step toward the monsters and raised his textual sword.
The kobolds turned and sprinted away.
“Kobolds have prophecies as well,” Boann observed when all was quiet again. “They will come back for you, Nicodemus. And when they do, I will have work for them.”
But the monsters did not return that night or any other during their journey.
Three days later, toward midday, the party emerged from a tunnel to behold the Heaven Tree.
FIVE MILES IN diameter and almost perfectly circular, Heaven Tree Valley sat within a tight ring of mountains. Indeed the valley walls were so steep that in many places they became small cliffs. Atop these sudden drops stood grassy plateaus that were home to small herds of white goats.
On the valley’s far side, a narrow stream tumbled down, pausing in places to form pools and short waterfalls. A lush covering of ferns grew on the surrounding rocks.
The stream flowed into a crescent lake that lay along the valley’s northern edge.
Giant roots-each as thick around as a Starhaven tower-grew from the dark waters to stretch toward the valley’s center. All across the valley floor the land heaved and bulged among the roots. Small stone walls wound across the valley, enclosing empty fields and ruined shade gardens.
Near the valley’s perimeter, stone houses were clustered into homesteads. But the closer the buildings stood to the valley’s center, the greater they became in number and size. Around the Heaven Tree’s trunk stood a small abandoned city bristling with diminutive towers.
