mind as well. I think it has something to do with dreaming. Have the cankers grown worse?”
To see them with his Language Prime fluency, Nicodemus would have had to touch the old man. He dared not.
Shannon took a long breath. “No. In fact, I’ve been feeling better. I suppose this improvement is temporary. There’s no way of telling. I believe we will recover the emerald in time to cure the thing growing in my gut. But…I don’t want to be caught unawares. I’m ghostwriting…as a precaution.”
Nicodemus nodded. “It is a race, then, between my training and your disease. If I lose, you die.”
Shannon sighed. “There is no race, Nicodemus. To help fight the Disjunction, you must learn to control your Language Prime fluency. You must do that alone; I cannot teach it to you. And now that the Index is misspelled, only you can use it to learn about Typhon. Those tasks will take years if not decades. Leave this valley before then and you won’t be able to oppose the demons. You won’t even be able to survive.”
“Magister, the kobolds say I am the most powerful spellwright they have ever known. And I command a small army of their warriors.”
The old man shook his head. “Kobolds rarely leave their underworld. A kobold army would be helpless on the war field. And, Nicodemus, your spells only function in the dark. You must continue to train in the wizardly languages. If you run after Deirdre and the emerald before then, it won’t take Typhon or your half-sister long before they realize you’re powerless in daylight.”
“I won’t watch you die!” Nicodemus replied hotly. “I know what I must do now.”
Shannon opened his mouth as if to object but then shook his head. They both fell silent.
Gradually the sun sank below the horizon and the stars made their slow debut. A wind picked up and began to sing its whistling song among the bare branches.
“Nicodemus, you haven’t escaped Starhaven,” Shannon said. “You think you’re out here. You think your strength lies in your Chthonic texts or in your skill as a commander. You think you’re incomplete without the emerald. You can’t see that your true strength is already inside of you. And that means you’re still in that academy.” He nodded toward the spire. “You’re still running from golems.”
Nicodemus pursed his lips but said nothing.
“You must realize that you are complete now.”
The young man shook his head. “You are dying. Deirdre is enslaved. The purpose of my life is to regain the emerald and end my disability. Nothing will be right until then.”
Shannon began to protest but then stopped.
They sat together, in silence.
AN ICY WIND curled around Nicodemus and Shannon and flew away north.
It blustered about on the white mountains and then split itself among Starhaven’s many towers. It howled over the bridges and sprayed dry snow into the gargoyles as they pushed drifts from eaves and cleared ice from the gutters.
The wind circled the Drum Tower and rattled its paper window screens. Simple John—now Lesser Wizard John of Starhaven—removed a screen and looked into the night. He took a long tremulous breath and again thought about his dead friends: Devin, Nicodemus, Magister Shannon.
Behind John someone knocked, likely a young cacographer. As the new Master of the Drum Tower, John replaced the screen and turned away from his sadness to see to the little one.
Outside, the wind swirled away from the Drum Tower before dropping into the Spirish stable yard to ruffle Amadi’s thick cloak. She was overseeing her sentinels as they prepared for the long journey back to the North.
Though her expression was calm, her heart teemed with fear and anticipation. Colaboris spells had carried reports of Fellwroth and Typhon to the other academies. Not everyone believed the news, but no one deniedits effect. Thoughts of prophesy were now on every wizard’s mind, political speculations on every wizard’s lips. And now she was returning to Astrophell, where the game of factions was being played with murderous intensity.
Inside the stable, she put politics and prophesy aside long enough to inspect every pack, saddle, and horse her party would take on their journey. Then she dismissed the sentinels and walked alone into the snowy stable yard to look up at the stars.
Once back in Astrophell, she would owe loyalty to no faction. Alone, she would have to navigate the infighting and gather information useful to Shannon and Nicodemus once they emerged. Doing so would undoubtedly incur the distrust of every major faction. The slightest