the wellspring of con-structive, healing texts.
But now it seemed that his disability, his monstrosity, was exactly what was meant to have happened. He came from a family of demon-worshipers. He had been bred to be a monster.
It was possible that Fellwroth had lied. But some instinct deep inside Nicodemus knew that the golem had been telling the truth.
“I won’t be a demon’s puppet!” Nicodemus growled, clenching his hands. The golem had said that those of Imperial blood could be tools used to assist or resist the Disjunction.
Well then, he would become a weapon for the resistance.
He closed his eyes and imagined the Emerald of Arahest. Its brilliant,lacriform shape appeared before him. Here was his salvation. He would focus his every desire on recovering the gem. And when he had it back, his mind would be complete. Then he could oppose the Disjunction.
Suddenly the keloid scars on his neck grew hot. “Fiery heaven!” he swore.
Fellwroth had said that the keloids were betraying his location by broadcasting spells written in a language he couldn’t see. But the golem had also said that some force was diffusing these same spells. He supposed the night terrors now carrying him were the force interfering with the keloids’ spells. But despite the diffusion, Fellwroth could still approximate his whereabouts.
There was no escape.
And there was the dragon to think of. What if Fellwroth truly had used the emerald to create the dragon that attacked Trillinon? Could Nicodemus continue to live knowing his death would delay another such attack? Did he have a responsibility to kill himself?
No, he silently vowed, he would not be ruled by fear.
He closed his eyes and cleared his mind. The image of the emerald returned, instantly, vividly. A warm tingling spread across his face. Instinctively, he knew then that what Fellwroth had said was true—the gem was seeking to return to him.
The thought of regaining the emerald made his heart race.
“Calm yourself,” he whispered, struggling to control his roiling emotions. He needed to think logically. His next step should be to find Deirdre and learn what he could from her.
Just then the monsters carried him into a pine thicket so dense that they were surrounded by complete blackness. Even midday sunlight would not penetrate here.
Garkex puffed small flames from his horns. The resultant light pierced the gloom to reveal a small cliff face that extended in both directions. The night terrors tramped directly toward it as if it weren’t there. Nicodemus had just enough time to throw his arms up before they crashed into the rock face.
Nothing happened.
When he lowered his hands, Nicodemus saw that they had passed right through the small cliff face onto a moonlit promontory. He swore and looked back. The rock wall had been a fiction, an ingeniously written subtext.
Garkex let out a screech, and the night terrors gently set Nicodemus down on a patch of moss.
The party now stood on a knoll that overlooked a moonlit clearing scattered with ivy-covered stone arches, low towers, and crumbling walls.
Nicodemus stared. Once this must have had been one of Starhaven’soutlying Chthonic villages. He had read of how the Neosolar Legion had destroyed all such settlements during the Siege of Starhaven.
But why had these ruins been hidden by a subtext?
Garkex began talking rapidly and gesticulating at Nicodemus and the Index. The other monsters bowed. Suddenly Garkex’s right arm dissolved into a cloud of indigo runes.
“You’re constructs!” Nicodemus exclaimed. “Written in the Index’s purple language.”
The firetroll marched up to Nicodemus and held out his right hand. Tentatively Nicodemus placed his own palm on top of the construct’s. Garkex said something softly as he shook his partially deconstructed arm. A glowing sentence fell from the troll’s text. The violet words landed on the back of Nicodemus’s hand and bore into his skin.
He cried out and jerked his hand back.
But the firetroll was whispering softly and pointing to his arm. In amazement, Nicodemus turned his hand over and saw that the sentence had been tattooed onto his skin.
Nicodemus knew that every magical language could inscribe itself into only one type of medium. The common and wizardly languages took only to paper or parchment. Druids set their higher languages only into wood. The highsmiths etched their spells only on metal. And apparently whoever had created the Index’s violet language had tattooed their prose into living skin.
Slowly Garkex disintegrated into prose and wrote himself onto Nicodemus’s forearm. It was unsettling, but painless, to watch the spell slip under his skin.
When it was finished, Nicodemus marveled at the