Index, it was already slightly misspelled. And for that reason, Nicodemus concentrated on keeping his cacographic mind from further distorting the newly learned spell. After another long breath, he set to writing the subtext along his right forearm.
Although each violet rune required a surprising amount of energy, writing the spell took only moments. When finished, the sceaduganga solidified into a transparent cylinder on his palm. He frowned at his first attempt in a new language. Most likely it was misspelled. He cast the text into the air, expecting it to crash onto the floor.
But it did not fall.
It shot upward and smashed against the ceiling. “Fiery blood!” he whispered as violet sentence fragments snowed about him. His second attempt behaved like a proper misspell and plummeted to the ground. The third spell shot across the corridor to strike the cat and render it invisible. The rats wouldn’t like that at all.
The fourth spell crashed onto the floor like the second, and the fifth deconstructed before leaving his hand. Nicodemus’s face grew hot with frustration. He badly wanted to break something other than another sceaduganga subtext.
Suddenly his keloid came alive with pain. Clapping a hand onto the scars, he discovered that they were almost as hot as boiling water. This had happened twice before when he was making his way to the front gate. It made him worry about the last thing the emerald had said: “Beware the scar; it will betray you to Fellwroth.”
What that meant, Nicodemus couldn’t imagine. And he couldn’t waste time thinking about it now. He needed to get out of Starhaven.
So he took slow breaths and waited for the scar to cool. When it did, he bent down to inspect the decaying halves of his last two subtext attempts. Both spells had split at the same point in their primary sequence. Undoubtedly, he had made the same cacographic error in both.
“Los damn my cacography,” he hissed, fighting a fresh wave of self-hatred. “If only I had that emerald!”
He forced himself to think logically. Was there a way to rewrite the spell to avoid the commands that contained difficult spellings?
He grunted. Perhaps there was. But that would mean deliberately respelling, deliberately misspelling. His whole life he had waged war on his cacography. True, intentionally misspelling the shielding spell back in the Index’s chamber had increased his control of that text. But now he was considering something more egregious—willfully composing a misspell.
But the present situation afforded few options: he could either try a respell or lurk around Starhaven until the sentinels or the golem discovered him.
So he made another attempt at the subtext, this time deliberately altering the fractious paragraph. When finished, the respelled text glowed deep purple.
Wincing, Nicodemus cast the pale cylinder into the air, where it floated and began to spin faster and faster until it seemed as if it might split apart.
But the misspelled subtext did not break; rather it cast out a sentence from either side of its body. The whirling lines covered Nicodemus’s feet and wove a textual sheet up his leg. Within moments, he was enclosed from boot heel to top hair in light-bending prose. The spell left two thin slits open for his eyes so he might see out from the disguising words.
Elation flushed through Nicodemus.
Slowly, he stepped from behind the tapestry. His boots made no sound on the cobblestones. But as he drew near a torch, the sentences nearest the light began to fray and deconstruct.
This was strange; light shouldn’t damage magical language. He moved away from the torch and fed more purple sentences to the subtext. The deconstruction stopped and the spell regained its integrity.
Carefully Nicodemus stepped through the gate and past the guards. A nervous smile began to curl his lips. The guards could not see him; they could not hear him.
It was a wonderful feeling. He had respelled the ancient sceaduganga. Perhaps, one day, he would publish his creation and name it the shadowganger subtext.
His smile grew as he slipped across the drawbridge and onto the mountain road. “Dear heaven, I’m free,” he whispered as Starhaven’s lofty towers came into view, black against the starry sky.
With a laugh, he turned away from the academy of strict wizardly language and knew that he was safe under his disguise—safe under an epic of concealing, respelled prose.
CHAPTER
Thirty-one
Nicodemus walked into the cold autumn night.
Wind rushed through the evergreens and tore leaves of scarlet and yellow from the aspens. The crisp air smelled of damp earth, moldy leaves. Before him a steep