working draft. At nearly eight thousand characters, it occupied twenty-four pages of his research journal. His fingers ached from gripping the smooth runes. He set about putting in a few expository notes so that he wouldn’t forget how the trickier passages operated.
“Shannon, you’re still a linguist,” he congratulated himself when the spell was finished. “But you’re getting old.” He leaned back and let himself feel the soreness in his arms, the aching in his knees. The only thing keeping him awake was the knowledge that, if he cast his new spell on the golem, it would trap the author’s sprit inside the clay body.
Shannon sat back in his chair and listened to its familiar wooden creaking. Just then he realized he had to get a copy of this spell to Nicodemus immediately. Should he take it over to the Drum Tower now? It was vital that the boy have the spell. But how could he get it to him?
Azure made a low, two-note whistle. Shannon cast an inquiring sentence to her and received an instant reply: she had heard something unusual.
Shannon squinted at his door. No one was spellwriting in the hallway, but farther away, in what must have been a stairwell, shone a ten-foot trail of golden text. He had seen such a thing before: it was a train of a half dozen wizards, all casting flamefly spells to illuminate the dark stairs.
Something was wrong. Deadly wrong.
Shannon scooped up Azure and formed with her the textual exchangethat allowed him to see through her eyes. Back at his desk, he stared at the spell he had just written.
He had to get the text to Nicodemus; the boy’s life depended on it. Even more frightening, Nicodemus’s connection to prophecy meant that his survival might be essential for the fight against the Disjunction and hence for the preservation of human language.
“Hakeem, help me!” he whispered.
Glancing up, he saw the train of flamefly spells begin to wink out as their casters came closer.
He looked back at his spell. It was too long for Azure to carry in her body. And he didn’t have time to transfer it to a scroll and have Azure to fly it over. He needed something that was already written.
After scanning his desk, his blind eyes fell on familiar Numinous paragraphs. Azure provided a mundane image of the manuscript: it was the scroll that had, just a day and a half ago, granted him permission to begin research on the Index.
Hushed voices sounded in the hallway.
With shaking hands, Shannon found an inkhorn and a serviceable quill. He rarely wrote mundane letters and he did not trust his exhausted fingers to produce anything legible now. So he dipped the quill’s feathered end in ink and used it to paint a wide, sticky stripe over the mundane writing which had granted permission for his research.
Quickly he forged the Numinous paragraphs that would lift the ban on the Drum Tower’s door. He slapped these onto the head of the scroll along with a common language note which when translated would read “key for wards.”
Knocking sounded at the door. “Magister Shannon,” Amadi’s voice called.
“A moment!” Shannon replied. He had to write something more to Nicodemus about the other passages—had to do it before the sentinels could interfere. Amadi would never allow Nicodemus to have such a powerful text.
“Shannon,” Amadi called, “you must open this door!”
Shannon went blank with fear. How could he let Nicodemus know what he was thinking?
Suddenly his mind leaped forward with thought. He forged a few phrases that when translated would read “Research ***” and slapped it at the top of the scroll. Then he forged what would translate into the single word “Dogfood,” copied it once, and then thumbed one word above the first paragraph and the other above the second.
A wall of silvery text shown from the other side of the door; doubtless the sentinels were preparing to knock it down.
Shannon rolled up the scroll and bound it with a Magnus sentence. “To Nicodemus,” he whispered, binding the Magnus sentence to Azure’s foot. “And beware of the sentinels guarding the Drum Tower.” He repeated these instructions in Numinous.
Behind him came a crash as a spell ripped his door from its hinges.
He leaped forward and punched the wooden screen out of his window.
“Magister!” Amadi called. “Do not move!”
Azure made her high two-note whistle and with a clatter of wings flew out the window.
SHANNON LET OUT a long, relieved breath. Amadi began shouting and rough hands grabbed his shoulders and