Shannon-the-text touched his fingertips to those of Shannon-who-still-lived. Golden light flushed down the ghost's arm as his author replaced lost text. He became aware of how each of his sentences was an analogy for part of his author's body. He became aware that he was not his author or even his author's mind, for there was no mind without body. And yet ⦠at the same time he was his author. It was impossible, but it was so. He was a creation.
The ghost shuddered to know reunion with this glorious body, this frail body, infested by unrestricted growth. Here was the burden of disease and age. Here was death, so close.
The ghost withdrew his hand. “Shouldn't we be one?” he asked, but his throat could make no noise.
“Write to me in Numinous,” his author said.
The ghost cast a golden sentence that would read, “
What happened to us? I thought you were murdered.
”
His author caught the words and translated them. “Murdered,” he said with a frown. “Why would I have been murdered?”
The ghost wrote a quick sentence.
“I woke in a library, holding a Numinous sentence that claimed I'd been killed and needed to discover the murderer and warn Nicodemus.”
His author winced. “Last summer, Typhon's hierophants stormed our safehouse in the North Gate District. They killed some of Nicodemus's students, nearly killed me. They stole you from me. I thought they had deconstructed you ⦠I had given up hope.” He looked back down the hallway. “Come into the darkness before someone sees me.”
Stepping farther into the shadows, the ghost wrote another question:
“But who wrote the note about your murder?”
Again his author winced. “That doesn't matter now. We've found you. Come.”
From the dark came a sound like bare feet slapping floorboards. Then a commanding whisper: “Magister, we're going now. The Walker's preoccupied with the infirmary kites. Can you run?”
The ghost sucked in a breath. The voice filled him with memories of Starhaven and the Heaven Tree, of lessons and arguments and a fierce olive-skinned, green-eyed young man.
His author replied, “Nicodemus, come see whom I've found.” The old man's voice quavered, and the ghost was touched that his author was so moved.
The footfalls sounded again.
This far into the hallway there was little light, but the ghost could still make out the figure that appeared. He was older, barefoot, and dressed only in leather pants that ended at the knees. A thin scar ran along his left side, and his long black hair was tied into a ponytail. There were other, inhuman figures in the shadows.
When Nicodemus noticed the ghost, he leapt back into the dark. “Magister, get back! Typhon's corrupted it.”
Shannon-the-author shook his head. “Nico, don't worry.” Again he moved farther into the dark. “Remember what we discussed.”
The old man walked on, but the ghost did not follow. His author should have demonstrated more joy or relief at their reunion. Dread filled the ghost as he understood. His author's grief was not for what had happened; he was grieving for something that was about to happen. Suddenly the ghost knew what his author had “discussed” with Nicodemus.
Shannon-the-author turned back to the ghost. The old man closed his eyes. “Nicodemus,” he whispered, “do it quickly.”
The ghost turned to flee, but out of the dark flew Nicodemus, teeth bared and fists clenched around unseen wartexts.
When the lofting kite rose to a height above the Auburn Mountains, Cyrus moved his hands along the suspension lines, and the canopy split itself in two.
Half of the red sailcloth wrapped around Cyrus and Francesca, covering them from chests to feet. Short lateral wings formed along this encasement. The remaining cloth bulged into a round jumpchute that, blasting wind, pulled them toward the mountains.
A stiff textual shield formed within the tension lines, protecting Francesca and Cyrus from the rushing air. It was not so loud as to force either occupant to yell, but it was loud enough that both had to speak with conscious volume.
As they flew, the distant white speck that Cyrus insisted was an incoming warship grew slightly larger. Francesca asked about it, but Cyrus declined to explain until they were close enough to recognize the ship.
Meanwhile, Francesca watched the reservoir pass under them. They had flown over the main body of water and were now above the narrowsâsix riverlike projections that wound into the green foothills. She could make out a few single-sail fishing boats on the water.
At various points in their twisting course, the narrows expanded into wide coves. In these bobbed small lake towns, lashed-together houseboats anchored in deep water to ensure they never drifted close enough to the shore to be vulnerable to lycanthrope attack.
Now, at the rainy season's end, the fisher folk followed the water as far out as the base of the Auburn Mountains. In the dry season, Cala drained the reservoir to irrigate the canyon floor, and the fisher folk slowly migrated their lake towns toward the city. When the reservoir went dry, all of the lake towns banded together to form a small muddy township just outside the Sliding Docks. Some would find work in the Water District; others would chance a wagon ride over the Auburn Mountains to work among the fishers in Coldlock Harbor.
“Fran,” Cyrus said over the wind. “I really must know: What was attacking the sanctuary?”
She looked at him. He looked back. She had no idea what had actually happened in the infirmary. Should she tell him what she had seen? Or, at least, what she had believed she had seen? Deirdre had said that Cyrus was trustworthy, but Francesca didn't know if she could trust Deirdre.
Besides, Deirdre didn't know Cyrus like Francesca had known him.
The whole situation was a disaster. Usually, she would remind herself that confronting disasters was what she did. But an hour ago she had failed in a crisis, killed her patient. Worse, a demonic spell had been wrapped around her in the form of that anklet for years. The world as she had known it had broken to pieces.
And that, Francesca reminded herself, was all the more reason why she had to remain composed. After a long breath, she smiled tightly.
Cyrus had always been committed to duty. So long as her plans coincided with his sense of honor, he would make an excellent ally. But how would he react when she explained a demon might be ruling Avel? For all Francesca knew, Cyrus was a demon worshiper. She had to choose her words carefully.
“Francesca,” she said loud enough to be heard over the wind.
His veil moved as if he were frowning. “What?”
“It's Francesca now. Not Fran.”
His eyes narrowed. “Francesca, what's happening in the sanctuary? I need to know.”
“Hours ago, lycanthropes attacked a caravan coming in through the Northern Gate. The wounded were brought to the infirmary. A woman named Deirdre claimed she'd been struck by a lycanthrope spell and that only I could save her. By the time I got to her, she was nearly dead. An unknown text was compressing her lungs. I tried to disspell it, but it crushed her heart. She died on my table. A few moments later she came back to life.”
“What?”
“She came back to life. She's an avatar, a creature possessing part of a deity's soul.”
“A canonist?”
She shook her head.
“But if she's not a canonist, how is she in Avel? Celeste would destroy any divinity not listed in the Celestial Canon. Perhaps she is serving Canonist Cala?”
“I've no clue.”
“Holy sky, Francesca, you must know something!” He said the word “something” with the same patronizing tone he had once reserved for their personal arguments.
“Oh wait, Cyrus, you're right. I do know something. I was just too
God-of-gods damned stupid to realize it until some patronizing man with an intelligence rivaled by garden tools told me I do,” she replied hotly, and then for good measure added, “you pretentious bastard.”
He only laughed. “Haven't changed, have you? Still all fiery sarcasm or calm compassion with nothing between. And still speaking like an antique. I never heard anyone but you and my grandmother name the Creator as the God-of-gods.”
Francesca clenched her teeth. “Just shut it and listen.” She explained how she had carried Deirdre to the roof while others lost their ability to speak and began to wail.
She did not mention Typhon or Deirdre's belief that the demon had brought Cyrus back to the city as a “screen.” However, she repeated Deirdre's claim that the Savanna Walker was the cause of the aphasia.
Cyrus looked at her. “The Savanna Walker's a child's tale.”
“The aphasia curse was real enough.” As she said this, Francesca thought of the text that had spellbound Deirdre's heart. Suddenly, she knew how to prevent Cyrus's sense of duty from endangering them both. He wouldn't like it ⦠if he ever found out about it. She looked at him. “I'm worried a curse might have gotten into you.”
Cyrus looked at her. “An aphasia curse or the one that crushed the avatar's heart?”
“Either.”
Cyrus looked at her. “If I become ill or aphasic, we'll fall out of the sky.”
“I can cast a countercurse to see if you have any foreign text in your body.”
“What about the text I'm writing in my heart?”
“I edit the countercurse so it won't interfere.”
He nodded.
“Give me your arm.”
When Cyrus obeyed, she took his wrist with her left hand. With her right, she cast a needlelike Magnus sentence and jabbed it into one of his arm veins.
Using her hand muscles, Francesca wrote a compact medical text in Magnus and Numinous. It took a few moments. When it was ready, she used the Magnus needle to cast it into Cyrus's bloodstream. He wasn't fluent in the wizardly languages, so the spell was invisible to him. But Francesca watched the silver-gold spark tumble up his arm and into his shoulder.
“Hold still,” she commanded and watched the spell flow into the center of Cyrus's chest and then shoot to the area under his right pectoral muscle. The text had passed through the right chambers of his heart and been pumped into his lung.
“Do you see a curse?” he asked.
“I said hold still!”
She watched the spell tumble though the lung's fine capillaries. Then it made sudden, halting progress back to the center of his chest. She tensed. When it reached the left side of his heart, she cast a backhand wave of Numinous signal spells into his chest. One of these struck the spell in his heart and commanded it to unfold.
She nodded with satisfaction as her text unobtrusively explored the beating left ventricle of his heart.
Using her thigh muscles, Francesca forged several wide sheets of Numinous signal spells. By flexing her leg, she mashed the sheet into an unstable ball. Every few moments, part of the sheet decayed and sent single texts flying in random directions.
She flexed and extended her legs five times more until the decaying ball radiated a shower of signal texts in all directions. Every few moments, one struck the text in Cyrus's heart, commanding it not to take action.
They were now flying above the highest foothills. Here the narrows ran between steep gorges. The dark Auburn Mountains stood before them.
“Burning heaven, Fran, do you see something in me?” Cyrus asked.
“I don't see a curse. But I placed a spell in you so I can monitor you.”
“You think I might become aphasic later?”
“In all likelihood you're fine, but I want to be safe. Just stay close to me for a while ⦠for my sake.” She squeezed his arm.
He stared at her and then turned back to the jumpchute.
She studied the spell in his young, healthy heart. As often happened when she examined a body, she felt as if she could look forward into time and see the different, older men he might becomeâsome hale and athletic as he was now, some soft with inaction, some wasting away from disease.
Suddenly, Cyrus broke her reverie: “You know something you're not telling me.”
“I do, but it's not about your health,” she said, knowing that she was, in at least two senses, lying.
An unseen wartext blasted the ghost's right arm into a cloud of golden text. He felt no pain, only a hot rush of fear. Behind him, Nicodemus yelled something.
The ghost jumped left, thought of the wall as the ground, kicked off of it, and flew down the dark hall. Behind him, a detonating wartext filled the air with shards of plaster and stone. Most passed harmlessly through the ghost, but a few tore Magnus sentences in his feet.
After landing in the bright outer hallway, the ghost tried to dash away, but the damaged prose in his soles uncoiled. He slipped and fell, sinking knee-deep into the floor.
Desperately, he pulled his feet out of the floorboards and tried to repair the soles. The severed paragraphs on the stump of his right arm were hemorrhaging language.
The sound of footsteps made him look up.
Nicodemus, standing at the edge of the hallway's darkness, cocked his hand back and cast something at the ghost. No doubt it was a wartext written in the tattooed language Nicodemus had learned from the kobolds. The ghost flinched, expecting to be shattered into sentence fragments.
But nothing happened.
Nicodemus yelled again. Suddenly the ghost realized that the hallway's bright light had deconstructed Nicodemus's wartext. The chthonic languages functioned only in darkness. Wasting no time, the ghost repaired his feet and pulled himself out of the floor.
Nicodemus ran forward. Daylight or no, the boy was still a cacographer, and if he touched the ghost he could misspell him into nothing.
The ghost dashed down the hallway with inhuman speed. He leapt into the air and kicked off the walls and ceiling to make himself a more difficult target for any wizardly wartext Nicodemus might cast.
When the ghost saw the sunlight pouring through the windows, he stopped to look back. Nico was out of sight and far behind. Quickly he edited the stump of his right hand so that it would stop hemorrhaging prose. How much text did he have left?
Frowning, the ghost realized he could have escaped Nicodemus by falling through the floor or dashing through a wall. If he was going to survive, he had to start thinking like a ghost.
The ghost's frown deepened with a second realization: he would have seen any wizardly wartext Nicodemus had cast at him. Could it be the boy hadn't used either wizardly language?
Footsteps sounded down the hall. Nicodemus came sprinting into view. The ghost stood, waiting to see if the boy's hand would shine silvery or golden.
But Nico only lunged at him. The ghost dodged left, partially hiding in a thick stone wall. Nicodemus turned and tried to grab him. Shannon drew himself completely into the wall and then stepped out a few paces away.
Nicodemus looked at him, panting. There was no sign of Numinous or Magnus in his body. He wasn't even going to try.
“You left the valley too soon!” the ghost would have said if his throat could have made noise.
Again Nicodemus lunged. Shannon jumped over him. “Creator damn it all, Nico!” the ghost silently cursed. “You left the valley too soon!” He peeled a Numinous sentence from the stump of his right arm and edited it so it would read
YOU LEFT TOO SOON!
The ghost waited for Nicodemus to turn around before casting it in his face.
Nicodemus jerked his head back and then pulled the golden sentence from his cheek. The instant it touched the boy, the line began to misspell. By the time Nicodemus had completed a translation, it read
YU LEAFT TUH VALEE TWO SOON!
A chill filled the ghost. Nicodemus's cacography in Numinous had worsened dramatically; he was now essentially illiterate in the wizardly languages.
Nicodemus leapt for him again, and again he missed. With a wrist flick, the ghost cast a question:
“Why did you leave the valley?”
Nicodemus threw another punch. Shannon dodged left and threw another line:
“WHY? TELL ME WHY, DAMN YOU!”
Nicodemus swung again. Shannon jumped back and was about to cast another sentence when he saw the pain in the boy's eyes.
Shannon stopped.
“I couldn't watch you die!” Nicodemus growled. “You're dying. The cankers. They're killing you. Any day now, you'll die. I had to try to get the emerald and cure you. Damn it, I had to try!”
The ghost swallowed. He had a good idea why Nicodemus was trying to deconstruct him. But he needed to hear the boy say it. He wrote another question:
“But why deconstruct me, the ghost?”
Nicodemus swung again. Shannon ducked under the blow and repeated the question:
“Why try to deconstruct me?”
And then added,
“Let me be one with my author before he dies!”
Nicodemus laughed bitterly. “You don't know what you are. Typhon's agents took you from us. He's had you for a year. If the demon has let you free, it's because he's using you against us.”
The ghost tensed, ready to dodge another attack. But Nicodemus only glared at him, his chest heaving. “Typhon has rewritten you. You're not Magister Shannon's ghost.”
“I AM Shannon's ghost!”
he threw in response.
“I'm meant to be one with him! Trust me, please.”
Nicodemus shook his head. “You're just the demon's weapon, like Deirdre was back in Starhaven.”
A realization sent a chill through the ghost. He didn't actually know if the demon had rewritten him or not. He did not feel rewritten ⦠but how could he know? The demon was masterful enough to rewrite him so as to hide what he had done. “Oh,” the ghost said to himself in shock. “Oh!”
Nicodemus tensed and seemed about to strike out again when it shot through the window. White sailcloth and steel flashed in the sunlight. The warkite snaked toward Nicodemus. The boy ducked under the talons and thrust his arms into the construct's belly. Instantly, the warkite went as limp as a tablecloth. His cacographic touch had misspelled its every sentence.
But just as Nicodemus tossed the disspelled kite aside, another flash of white shone at the window. More warkites. The constructs were reacting to the chthonic runes tattooed on Nicodemus's skin. They perceived him as a foreign spell more dangerous than Shannon-the-text.
The ghost didn't waste the opportunity. With a powerful jump, he flew up and through the ceiling.
He found himself on the floor of another hallway. In this one stood seven green-robed hierophants, men and women. They had all removed their veils. One had undone his turban. They were talking, or at least trying to talk. Their mouths produced only aphasic gibberish. Their eyes were wide with confusion or fear. Some were trying to communicate with gestures.
The ghost shivered. Something powerful must be moving through the sanctuary to spread an aphasia curse.
But the ghost had to get away from Nicodemus. After the Magnus sentences in his feet recovered from passing through the floor, the ghost ran down the hall in the direction of the sun. As he went, he looked out the window but saw only pale blue sky and winding city alleys. The warkites were not following him. He jumped up through the ceiling to another floor and kept running.
Then something seemed to go wrong in the ghost's chest, as if some vital passage had gone missing. It was as if ⦠where he should have had a heart there was only hollowness.
He stopped. His chest was heaving even though he had no need to breathe. He moved to cover his face but had only one hand.
Pain flashed through him. Where his arm should have been there was only pulsing agony. He fell to his knees, let himself sink into the floor. His mind was reeling with fear. His text had been horribly depleted. How much longer could he survive outside a necropolis?
But the worst of it was that his author did not want him. His author distrusted him, and Nicodemus had tried to deconstruct him. He might not be himself. He might be a demon's tool.
The ghost's chest began to shake. The pain of his lost arm had dissipated, but the hollowness in his chest had expanded. The ghost felt a longing for his author so keen and agonizing it was like that of the abandoned child. He remembered with agonizing clarity when Astrophell politics had taken Shannon away from his wife and young son; both woman and child were now long dead. That pain was like this pain in its sharpness.
The ghost curled into a ball, sinking entirely into the floor. The pain in his hands, feet, and ears was a welcome distraction.
He shook all over. Though he was now contained within wood and stone, he took long ragged breaths. For what felt like hours, he wept without tears.
Slowly, emotional exhaustion set in. He seemed to sleep. When his thoughts became clear again, he considered his situation. He had no way to prove to his author that Typhon had not rewritten him. Therefore, proof had to be found. But how?
Typhon had stolen him from his author and then removed some of his memories. The notes in the library claimed “our memories are in her” and instructed him to find Cleric Francesca DeVega.
The note's false claim that living Shannon had been murdered ⦠that was mysterious and troubling.
The ghost climbed out of the floor and began searching for the infirmary. But as he peered through doors and down stairwells, the hollowness in his chest returned. This time it was accompanied by fear so strong he felt nauseated.
Though the ghost tried not to think about it, some part of him knew that the being who had placed him in that library, the being who had written a lie about his author being murdered, might very well be the demon Typhon.