“Not a warlord,” Boann corrected, “but a commander. His half-sister is presently being tutored by Trillinonish generals and Ixonian admirals. She is the one who will lead humanity’s forces in the War of Disjunction. But before she does that, she must track down and kill the Language Prime spellwright who enabled Typhon to write the dragon that attacked Trillinon. I doubt she knows that she is training to kill her half-brother.”
Just then the kobolds yelped as Nicodemus cast an indigo shockwave that knocked them over. Wasting no time, the boy sprinted away down the lake shore. The kobolds struggled to their feet and hallooed a hunting call as they ran in pursuit.
“Compared to her agents, these kobolds will seem mild as kittens. And don’t forget that Typhon will have a half-completed dragon at his command,” Boann said to Shannon. “We must do this to keep him alive long enough to fight in the War of Disjunction.”
Shannon pulled a silvery dreadlock from his face. “Perhaps this training will keep his body alive, but what will it do to his soul?”
Boann looked back to the lake and thought about this. “Shannon, my new friend,” she said after a moment, “I don’t know.”
A DARK MOOD came over Shannon as life in the Heaven Tree Valley took on a new, more urgent rhythm. Each morning, Nicodemus came stumbling in, often bleeding and always chattering about what he had learned in warplay. One night it was how to scale a city wall with Chthonic spells. Another night it was how to outflank a hostile force or how to attack an enemy camp or some other blood-minded action.
The boy also talked about his discovery that kobolds could briefly touch him. Their blue skins were remarkably resilient to the cankers his touch produced. The monsters could simply rip them off without consequences other than minor bleeding. Though such contact came only during fighting, the boy was relieved to touch another living creature without killing it.
After describing the night’s warplay, Nicodemus would sleep until late afternoon and then study the wizardly languages with Shannon.
But the boy’s cacography was indeed getting worse. The spelling drills had no effect. Worse, when asked to compose an original spell, the boy would write a tattooed draft on his forearm before attempting a wizardly version.
Some days Shannon despaired of teaching and took Nicodemus for long walks around the valley. He told the boy about his childhood, of his diplomatic service during the Spirish Civil War, of his disastrous love and the loss of his wife.
Nicodemus listened carefully. At times, to Shannon’s surprise, he found himself being consoled by his student. It gave him a hollow feeling.
Worse, Shannon’s old body began to suffer from bouts of severe fatigue. Often his stomach hurt after meals and sometimes he had difficulty in the privy. As the days got colder, he spent more and more time sleeping before the fire.
One day, he felt too weak even to walk with Nicodemus. The result was an argument: Nicodemus insisted that he would soon be strong enough to pursue Typhon. Shannon had refused to listen and pointed out that Nicodemus’s precious Chthonic language functioned only in the dark and neither Typhon nor his half-sister’s agents would do him the favor of attacking only at night.
Shannon tried to emphasize the importance of learning to harness his new Language Prime fluency and using the Index to research Typhon. But Nicodemus had only stormed out of the house, yelling that he would not watch Shannon die when there was a chance he could recover the emerald.
That evening, both student and teacher apologized. But nothing was resolved.
Shannon did know moments of happiness when he saw flashes of the boy he had known back in Starhaven. Toward late autumn, during one chill afternoon, snow sifted down through the Heaven Tree’s boughs.
Shannon and Nicodemus set out to wage a snowball fight. Azure acted as Shannon’s eyes, and Boann-not being tangible enough to pick up a snowball-judged the contest. But so few flakes made it to the valley floor that Nicodemus and Shannon soon resorted to the traditional Jejunus cursing match. Shannon, having a linguist’s trove of dirty words, easily won.
But the flashes of boyish Nicodemus grew rarer as his warplay training grew more intense. He was befriending the kobolds, coming to trust them in the way that soldiers came to trust one another. It was a bond that Shannon had never known.
Nicodemus talked incessantly of the New Moon War: a ceremonial gathering of all the kobold tribes. On the night when the three moons were dark, they would emerge from the underground to occupy a plateau deep in the Pinnacle Mountains. The plateau had held the kobold capital city before the Neosolar Empire destroyed it.
Each tribe would send a party of ten warriors into the ruins to hunt for a golden bough that a kobold priest had hidden. The party that returned with the bough won their tribe the right to protect for the year the crown of the last kobold queen.
When the winter solstice approached, and the Heaven Tree’s scarlet leaves began to fall, Nicodemus left with his kobold warriors for the New Moon War. Boann went with them, but Shannon had to stay behind. It would be hard enough, claimed the kobold chieftain, to bring one human to the gathering. Two would be impossible.
Left alone, Shannon found his days passed slowly. His appetite and energy had improved, but he slept poorly and spent most hours nervously walking the valley.
After the longest fortnight of Shannon’s life, the kobold party returned with Nicodemus on their shoulders. He wore a jagged gash on his jaw, a large bandage around his chest, and an ancient band of steel on his head.
He had won the New Moon War and had brought home fifty more kobold followers.
As luck would have it, Nicodemus returned the night before Midwinter’s Day. The kobolds held a feast around the bonfire. Shannon sat next to the boy during dinner. He wanted to hear everything about the New Moon War, but the kobolds kept up such a racket with their singing and dancing and boasting that no communication was possible. Two of the blueskins started to fight before Nicodemus stopped them with a barked command.
Later that night it began to snow. Again few flakes made it to the valley floor, but it was enough to end the feast. The kobolds all bowed to Nicodemus and retreated to their caverns.
Shannon took his student back into their house, checked on his wounds, which were not worrisome, and fell into a deep sleep of relief.
He awoke to a bitterly cold and dark morning with an inch of snow on the valley floor. While they ate, Nicodemus recounted the war among the kobold ruins. One kobold tribe had disbelieved that Nicodemus was the prophesied savior. Their party had ambushed his during the New Moon War. At first Nicodemus bragged of how his warriors had rebuffed the attack, then he grew solemn as he remembered the enemy kobolds he had killed. Shannon made him retell everything twice.
After they ate, Nicodemus went back to sleep. He awoke when it stopped snowing in the afternoon. “It’s Midwinter’s Day,” he said, looking out a window to the clearing sky beyond the Heaven Tree. “They’ll be celebrating back in Starhaven.”
Shannon agreed that they would be. “Doesn’t seem right that there’s so little snow on this holiday.”
Nicodemus was silent for a moment. “Maybe I’ll hike up to the topmost canopy and see the snow. There’s a small Chthonic fortress among the boughs. Its watchtower has a splendid view.”
Shannon had never been up that high, but he did not think he could keep up with the younger man. He told Nicodemus to go alone.
WHEN NICODEMUS REACHED the watchtower at the top of the Heaven Tree, he took in the vast panorama of snowy mountains. Far to the north stood the slim black silhouette of the Eversong Spire.
The Chthonic watchtower had long ago lost its roof and now a foot of snow covered the place. He cleared off what had once been a table and settled in to watch what was left of the year’s shortest day melt into dark.
When the setting sun bathed the world in a burgundy light, Shannon’s loud breaths sounded from the stairs.
Nicodemus ran to help the old man with the last few steps. “Magister,” he scolded, “you should have told me you were coming up. I would have walked with you.”
“Then you would have wasted your time walking with an old man,” the wizard huffed. Nicodemus helped him sit.
