fronds swaying in a sea breeze, not gold leaves quaking in thin mountain air.”
Kale smiled. “It is odd to think of the royal Spirish colonizing this place. They must have been miserable when it snowed.”
Amadi nodded. “Three kingdoms tried to remake this chunk of Chthonic rock in their image. All failed, and now we wizards play in the ruins.”
Kale chuckled. But before he could say what he found funny, the sound of running feet filled the courtyard.
Amadi turned around to see a young Starhaven acolyte skid to a halt. “Magistra Okeke, you’re to come to Engineer’s library immediately!”
Amadi frowned. “On whose command?”
The boy shook his head. “Don’t know her name, Magistra. A grand wizard, she wears a white badge and three stripes on her sleeves.”
Amadi swore. Only a deputy provost could wear such marks. “Take us there quickly,” she said.
The boy turned and ran. Amadi hiked up her robes and followed.
They pursued the young page through a blur of hallways to an archway large enough to admit seven horses running abreast.
Beyond sat an extraordinarily wide library. Long ago Starhaven engineers had filled the place with a row of limestone bridges that spanned the width of the room.
Along each arch stretched wooden facades decorated in the ornate Spirish style and converted into bookshelves. A labyrinth of traditional bookshelves flowed beneath the bridges like a river’s convoluted currents.
The place was alive with yelling librarians. Teams of black-robes rushed across bridges and among the bookshelves. A sudden, golden jet of Numinous prose exploded from one bridge and was quickly followed by a chorus of shouts.
“Mother ocean!” Kale issued the Ixonian curse. “What’s happening?”
Suddenly a nearby bookshelf burst into a molten ball of silvery Magnus. Amadi had just enough time to turn away and cover her face before a shockwave of fragmented prose and manuscripts struck.
When Amadi looked back, she saw a pile of rubble where the shelf had stood. “Firey blood of Los!” she swore. Amid the detritus now wriggled four pale-skinned constructs that took the shape of giant worms or grubs.
Each was roughly a foot long, possessing huge eyes and a segmented body. Just below each spell’s bulbous head sprouted three pairs of legs that ended in childlike human hands. More distressing were the bulging hind portions; in those segments speckled bits of half-digested text shone through their translucent carapaces.
“Disspell them before they reach a shelf!” Amadi barked and drew her arm back. Within moments she had filled her fist with a lacerate disspell.
Already the nightmare constructs were scurrying for nearby books. Their grasping, childlike hands moved them over the debris with alarming speed.
Beside her, Kale extemporized a spear made of common magical language. With an ululating war cry, he charged.
Amadi cast her disspell with her best overhand throw. The lacerate text—a whirling mass of Magnus shards—shot through the air to slice through a monster’s abdomen. The spell wailed as its carapace split open and disgorged its textual viscera.
Kale leaped over the deconstructing monster and gracefully thrust at the next worm. The thing jumped back to avoid the spear’s blade.
Kale, like many Ixoanians, was an excellent spearman. The instant his boots touched ground, he leaped and thrust again.
The worm retreated again but too slowly. Kale’s spearhead plunged into its abdomen. The thing shrieked and tried to pull away, but Kale had twisted his spear and caught the thing’s carapace with the spearhead’s barbs.
“Magistra,” he called, improvising a club of blunt passages. “By the bridge!” With a powerful club stroke, he split the construct’s head with a crack.
Amadi looked beyond the secretary and saw another construct scampering toward the bridge. By this time, she had composed another lacerate disspell. “Where’s the fourth?” she shouted. “Find it.”
As she had written it to do, her lacerate dispersed midair and bom-barded the unfortunate monster with a storm of blades. The thing clicked and squealed as it began to writhe into deconstruction.
“I can’t find the fourth!” Kale called. “I can’t find it!” He was turning around frantically, looking for the fourth monster.
Amadi’s heart went cold. Not eight feet behind him, one of the monsters had reached a bookshelf. It reared up on its abdomen and used its childish hands to pull a heavy codex from the shelves.
“Behind you!” Amadi shouted.
As Kale spun around, the giant worm opened the book. Its head unraveled itself into a cloud of glowing golden prose.
Kale lunged. But even as his spear whistled through the air, the creature jammed its textual head into the book. Instantly, the thing’s body textualized and dove into