Spellwright

Nicodemus nodded and thought about what it would feel like to finally earn a hood. Then he remembered something. “Dev, have you ever worked with Magister Smallwood?”

“That sweet old linguist who’s got less common sense than a drunken chicken? Yeah, I used to run Shannon’s messages to him back when you were still trying to undress that Amy Hern girl. Do you ever hear from her?”

Nicodemus folded his arms. “I don’t, but never mind that. I had a conversation with Smallwood today. Nothing important. But he said I was Shannon’s ‘new cacographic project’ or his new ‘pet cacographer.’ Do you know if there are current rumors going around about Magister?”

Devin dropped her braid and hopped out of bed. “Ignore it. Smallwood’s just being a ninny.” She went to her washstand and began to scrub her face. “So what class do you want to teach?”

“Anything to do with composition. But you’re avoiding my question. What are the rumors about Shannon and ‘pet cacographers’?”

Devin toweled her face. “Just academics gossiping and being petty.”

“Dev, not once in the past nine years have I known you to refrain from gossiping.”

“So let’s gossip. I’d forgotten about Amy Hern. She left for Starfall, right? Why don’t you write her on the next colaboris spell?”

Nicodemus waited for Devin to finish drying her face. “Dev, the rumors.”

She examined his face. “Not now, Nico; it’s late.”

“I’m not going to forget.”

“No.” She sighed. “You won’t.”

CHAPTER

Eight

The Gimhurst Tower stood at the southern edge of Starhaven’s inhabited quarters. Long ago, during the Lornish occupation, it had hosted the Lord Governor’s court. Now, save for the scriptorium at its top, the place was abandoned.

With Azure perched on his shoulder, Shannon stole down the tenth floor’s outer hallway. Through the parrot’s eyes, he regarded the pale moonbeams that slanted through the windows and splashed against the slate floors. The reflected glow lit the hallway’s opposite wall and its many sculpted panels. The low-relief carvings presented typical Lornish sensibility-bold and graceful figures without fine detail.

Slowly Shannon passed carved knights, serpents, and seraphs-these last wreathed with tattered gold leaf halos.

A half hour before, Azure had returned to his study after delivering his message to Nicodemus. She had seen nothing unusual on the rooftops. This had only increased Shannon’s anxiety for information and so prompted his current expedition.

To his left a space between two panels presented a short, wooden door. Shannon placed Azure on a windowsill opposite and instructed her to send a warning if anyone appeared. A rook’s croaking voice came from somewhere out in the night. He turned back to the door. Behind it lay Nora Finn’s “private library.”

Many academics, rightly distrustful of their peers, hid their most important manuscripts in well-defended secret archives. Maintaining such “private libraries” violated scores of academy bylaws, but the practice was so widespread that no dean or provost dared enforce any of those laws.

Fifty years ago, a newly arrived Shannon had suspected Nora of spying on him for his enemies in the North. He had been brash then, still accustomed to Astrophell’s infighting, and so had secretly pried into every aspect of Nora’s life. His search had disproved his suspicions and uncovered the location of this private library.

Slowly Shannon ran his finger down the door before him. Blindness prevented him from seeing the pine boards that felt so hard under his fingers.

This was just as well; the boards weren’t really there. They were subtexts-prose crafted to elude even the trained eye. Most spellwrights struggled to glean subtexts if only because they believed their eyes. When encountering a door’s texture or image, a human mind rarely accepted any conclusion other than that the door existed. Only with knowledge of the author’s purpose could a reader hope to see past a subtext’s semblance to its true meaning.

Shannon, however, was free of vision’s tyranny. He stared into the dark before him and considered how Nora would have written the subtext. First she would have chosen a primary language. Numinous was the obvious choice-it possessed the ability to create illusions by bending light. To the spell’s central passages, Nora must have added a few Magnus paragraphs to provide a physical barrier and give texture to the illusion.

After choosing her languages, Nora would have chosen particular sentence structures and diction to help her hide the spell.

Shannon ruminated on Nora’s prose style. As he did so, he saw faint golden runes float downward in ordered columns. Now he deduced what must be written between the lines. The faint sentences brightened. Slowly the text’s central argument revealed itself, and Shannon gazed upon a door-shaped waterfall of golden prose interlaced with silver sentences.