hold him steady. An ancient greatsword, nearly as tall as she, was strapped to her back.
Dazed, Nicodemus looked around. “I can’t…I don’t understand…” He tried to take a step toward his bedroom but the floorboards felt pliable, as if his boots were sinking into them.
Deirdre tightened her grip on his arm. “Nicodemus, forgive us,” she whispered. “We thought the sentinels were guarding you. So we slept. We came as fast as we could.”
“So the giant was a conspirator?” Kyran said from behind them. “I didn’t expect that.”
The words hit Nicodemus like a hammer. John! With a few lurching steps, he turned around to see Kyran looking down on his friend’s body. “Dead?” was all he could say.
“No,” Kyran said. “I’ve a stun spell around his head. It’s a dangerous text, might damage his ability to spellwrite. And it’s odd; some kind of spell was already around the man’s mind. It was written in a strange language. Now my stun spell seems to have removed it.”
Nicodemus exhaled in relief. “Someone took advantage of him. Someone he kept calling Typhon or Fellwroth. The spell you dislodged must have been cast by Typhon or Fellwroth. John wasn’t a conspirator. He didn’t mean to endanger me.”
Kyran’s expression softened. “I wasn’t talking about what he did to you. I didn’t see you until after I disspelled the spider.”
“Then…” Nicodemus asked, “what…” He saw the other body.
Deirdre tried to turn him away. “This,” she whispered, “is an evil night.”
As she moved, Deirdre drew her moonshadow away from the second body. Nicodemus could now clearly see the side of Devin’s face that had not been crushed by Simple John’s spell.
CHAPTER
Twenty-eight
Air was still flowing into Nicodemus’s lungs, blood still coursing through his heart. But as he stared at Devin’s body, his own body no longer seemed connected to his senses.
He touched his fingers to his lips without feeling his fingers touching his lips. He closed his eyes without seeing the blackness of his eyelids; the image of Devin’s body remained.
Deirdre led him to a nearby chair. “Tell me what happened,” she said, sitting him down.
Numbly Nicodemus recounted how Shannon had discovered that a golem was killing cacographic boys and how John had tried to stop him from evacuating the Drum Tower.
“But, I don’t…why…” Nicodemus stammered when finished. “I don’t understand.” He grabbed the druid’s arm. “Tell me how to understand.”
She squeezed his hand. “The name Fellwroth is a mystery to me. But Typhon, or Typhoneus, was a powerful demon of the ancient world. He commanded the Pandemonium and was second only to Los himself. The word ‘typhoon’ is derived from his name. He created the Maelstrom that scattered the human ships during the Exodus.”
Kyran appeared at Deirdre’s shoulder. “We must hurry,” he said, and handed her the Seed of Finding. “I’ve rewritten its texts.” An invisibility subtext was wrapping around the druid’s legs.
Deirdre took the Seed and stuffed it into Nicodemus’s belt-purse. “If anything separates us, pull the root from the artifact as you did before. Do you understand?”
Nicodemus nodded but then shook his head. “But about Typhon…I don’t…I mean John can’t have encountered a demon; that would mean that a demon has crossed the ocean.”
Deirdre nodded solemnly. “That is exactly what it means. Nicodemus, the power of the Disjunction is growing. Soon the Pandemonium will cross as well. That must be the truth. Think on it: what spell other than demonic godspell could have warped John’s mind so?”
From the shadows, a now invisible Kyran whispered, “Deirdre, hurry!”
Nicodemus was breathing hard. An overwhelming desire to make sense of things filled his brain. If he could only understand, he might begin to feel again.
“So,” he said, determined not to be put off by Kyran, “a demon used a godspell to distort John’s mind and make his disability worse?” He shuddered. “Yes, that must be it. John had only a three-phrase spoken vocabulary but could spellwrite simple texts in the common languages. He even learned to see Numinous and Magnus. I’ve never heard of another cacographer like that. Someone distorted his mind so that it would display all the stereotypical traits of retardation.”
Kyran spoke quickly. “A curse must have been infesting the poor man’s mind, forcing him to keep you here in Starhaven. It seems my stun text has removed that curse. But none of this changes the fact that we must hurry.”
Nicodemus shook his head. “John said that every four years the demon would visit me when I was sleeping. But why?”