upon him, pulling him somewhere. He fought the urge to scream.
Above him the metal golem was sinking fast, its white cloak billowing in the water.
A high-pitched whine filled the water and abruptly many gargoyle hands were shoving Nicodemus into a dark hole. He fought to escape but there were too many.
They stuffed him into a small, black space. A sheet of metal closed above him and there followed a second whine.
In complete darkness, Nicodemus prepared to die.
But the whine grew louder and then Nicodemus was falling, tumbling, banging against the sides of some long tube. He shouted and felt the cold water fill his mouth. The tube began to bend and he slid along its algae-coated bottom.
Suddenly he fell into a mixture of air and water. Something was roaring like a waterfall.
He splashed down into what seemed to be a waist-deep underground river. His mouth opened and drew in long gulps of air.
He let the powerful current pull him along. Slowly the waterfall’s roar faded and he could hear things moving in the darkness above him—small, rustling things that spoke with creaking voices.
And then, without warning, he was outside. Above him shone a crystalline night sky. Around him stood a forest of dark towers. A few bats flitted about in the chilly air. Nearly two hundred feet below stretched the weed-covered gardens and stone walkways of the Chthonic Quarter.
The gargoyles had dropped him into an aqueduct, Nicodemus realized, as he floated into another tunnel. The icy current carried him northwest through several towers and across the high aqueducts until it dropped him into a massive brass cistern in the Spirish Quarter.
Whispering thanks to every deity and gargoyle he knew, Nicodemus pulled himself out of the water and ran.
At first he fled aimlessly. He feared that Fellwroth might have followed him down the aqueduct. But once sure that he had escaped, Nicodemus snuck into an old janitorial closet to catch his breath and dry off.
To his shock, he discovered that the Index was miraculously dry. He turned the codex over again and again, looking for some reason why it had not so much as a damp page.
He found no clue. But as he turned the book over, the thrill of escape faded. The keloid scars on his neck began to burn, and his hands began to shake.
At first he thought only of Kyran’s horrible death. But then he remembered the sentence the druid had cast into his shoulder before dying.
He pulled the line free and translated it.
Reading Kyran’s final words made him feel numb for a while. Then he thought of Deirdre and then of Devin. He thought of John and of Magister Shannon. He thought of his father, branding his infant self.
When the tears came, he did not try to stop them.
CHAPTER
Thirty
Hugging the Index to his chest, Nicodemus peered around the tapestry he was hiding behind.
He stood at Starhaven’s westernmost point, in the main hall of its gatehouse. The academy’s entrance lay beyond. Two guards, both women, paced the drawbridge.
Each woman was casting, from her waist, a white sentence that held a spellbook open beside her. This action, called “floating a spellbook,” gave each spellwright quick access to her book’s prewritten offensive language.
Slinking back behind the tapestry, Nicodemus closed his eyes and envisioned the emerald he had seen in his dreams. The stone was a small, flawless teardrop. At the gem’s center glowed a verdant spark. This was the missing part of himself.
He shuddered.
If not for this gem, he wouldn’t be cacographic. More important, Kyran and Devin wouldn’t be dead.
In his imagination, the gem shone brighter and his determination to recover the missing part of his mind grew. Summoning this mental image was how he had stopped the tears in the janitorial station. It was how he would prevent them now.
He let the emerald’s light burn away all his sorrow, all his doubt, all his weakness. He must find a way to regain the emerald, to complete himself.
He felt his belt-purse for Deirdre’s Seed of Finding. Once away from the stronghold, he would tear the root from the artifact to let the druid know where he was.
Again glancing from behind the tapestry, Nicodemus inspected the two guards. The younger one had long black hair and a pale face. She was unknown to him. But the elder guard’s silver hair and dark face were vaguely familiar. If he remembered correctly, she was one of Starhaven’s foremost Numinous authors.
Biting his lip, Nicodemus leaned back into his hiding place. Perhaps he should chance