“I believe so, Magister.”
Smallwood stood. “Very well, very well. Thank you, Nicolas; it is good to meet you. You may go.”
“Nicodemus, Magister.”
“Yes, yes, Nicodemus, of course.” He paused. “Pardon me, but did you say Nicodemus Weal?”
“Yes, Magister.”
Smallwood studied Nicodemus with a focused intensity. “Of course,” the grand wizard said at last, suddenly earnest. “Foolish of me to forget you, Nicodemus. Thank you for the message. You may go.”
Nicodemus bobbed his head and retreated. He hurried to the hallway’s end and then ducked into a narrow spiral staircase. Shannon had instructed him to go straight back to the Drum Tower, so he jogged down to the ground level and out into a torch-lit hallway. Walking eastward, he passed Lornish tapestries and gilded stone arcades.
But he was blind to their beauty.
His thoughts were troubled by what Smallwood had said about Shannon. All the apprentices knew that Shannon had suffered some kind of fall from grace back in Astrophell, but Smallwood had implied there were more recent rumors involving Shannon and cacographers.
Nicodemus bit his lip. Smallwood was famously absentminded; it was possible that he was mistaking old rumors for new.
But if that was the case, what exactly had Smallwood been misremembering when he mentioned Shannon ’s “next cacographic project” and his new “pet cacographer”?
Nicodemus turned to mount a narrow staircase.
Shannon had begun teaching cacographers only fifty years ago, when he arrived at Starhaven. So the source of Smallwood’s rumor must have occurred since then.
Reaching the oak doors at the top of the stairs, Nicodemus pushed them open and looked out on the gray slate tiles that paved the yard of the Stone Court.
Centuries ago, the Neosolar Empire had renovated the courtyard after taking Starhaven from the Chthonic people. However, none of the succeeding occupying kingdoms had built over this aspect of the stronghold.
Consequently, the Stone Court demonstrated the classical architecture so common to Starhaven’s Imperial Quarter: walls decorated by molded white plaster, arched doorways, wide windows. Each entryway was flanked by a pair of stone obelisks.
However, because of the Stone Court ’s remote location, the wizards had filled it with several objects too unsightly to reside in Starhaven’s more populous quarters.
A forest of Dralish standing stones stood in the courtyard’s center. On its eastern edge loitered two marble statues of Erasmus and one of Uriel Bolide. And everywhere-curled up, sprawled out, or lying on any available stone ledge-were sleeping janitorial gargoyles.
Nicodemus started for the Drum Tower, which abutted the court’s eastern limit. But as he went, he saw something move within the stone forest.
He stopped.
The movement had been too quick to be that of a janitorial gargoyle. And no neophyte should be awake so late. Perhaps it was a feral cat?
It came again: a pale blur between two standing stones. Apprehension gripped Nicodemus. Wizards wore only black. Cloth of any other color signified an outsider… or an intruder.
Starhaven’s many towers hid the blue and black moons, but the gibbous white moon hung directly overhead and flooded the court with milky light. As Nicodemus snuck among the standing stones, a crocodile-like gargoyle sleeping on the ground rolled over to regard him with a half-opened eye.
Someone was whispering behind the megalith to Nicodemus’s left. “Who’s there?” he asked in his boldest voice and stepped around the megalith.
Before him stood a short figure robed in white cloth. It spun around with inhuman speed.
CHAPTER Four
Magister Shannon, sitting behind his desk, looked in the direction of Smallwood’s voice. “Thank you for coming so late, Timothy.”
“Quite all right; I’m always up,” Smallwood said with his usual warmth. Shannon could not see the other wizard, but judging by his voice, he was standing by the bookshelves.
“But I’m surprised you’re awake,” Smallwood added. “I didn’t think you were a night owl.”
Shannon grunted. “I’m not. Two hours ago, I was in bed. A relay text from one of my research projects woke me with a report of unusual guardian activity around the Drum Tower. Seems they’ve been chasing something around on the roofs.”
“Guardian spells,” Smallwood said with a disdainful sniff. “Sloppy prose, if you ask me, written with too much sensitivity. Likely they were chasing a feral cat that wandered in from the uninhabited quarters.”
“That was my first thought. I came here to look up a few things about editing the guardians’ sensitivity. But then my apprentice appeared; seems he heard someone running across the roof of the Stacks.”
When Shannon looked at his bookshelf, his eyes saw through the leather bindings to the radiant paragraphs contained within the books. As he watched, a rectangle of green text separated from the rest and unfolded into two smaller rectangles. Smallwood had pulled a book and was browsing through it. “Timothy, are you listening?”
“What? Yes, yes, of course,” Smallwood replied and clapped the green rectangles together. “So you think one of the delegates might be sneaking about the roofs?”
Shannon shrugged. “Could be a foreign spellwright. Could be a wizard.”
“But spying on the Drum Tower? I know the cacographers are close to your heart, but shouldn’t intrigue focus elsewhere? The Main Library, say, or the provost’s quarters?”
“Precisely what worries me.”
Smallwood coughed. “Agwu, might you be overreacting? I know you were more… involved in Astrophell, but this is Starhaven.”
Shannon rubbed his mustache to hide his frown.
Smallwood continued. “Perhaps the Astrophell delegates have put you on edge? Brought back the old instincts?”
“Perhaps but unlikely,” Shannon insisted. “I’ve two guardian spells in the linguistics library. I’d like them cast to patrol around the Stone Court. But first I need you to rewrite their protocols to communicate with the gargoyles sleeping there.”
It sounded as if Smallwood were shuffling his feet. “Tonight?”
Shannon crossed his arms and looked where he thought his colleague’s face might be. “It would help me focus on our research spell tomorrow.”
“Tonight it is, then. I am grateful you’ve included me in this research.”
Shannon let out a breath he had not known he was holding.
The rectangle of green prose floated back up to its proper place: Smallwood was reshelving the book. “Is Azure about?”
Shannon shook his head. “She’s delivering a message for me.” He did not mention that she was also flying about the rooftops searching for anything unusual.
“Pity,” Smallwood said, his voice heading for the door. “I wanted to see her Numinous dialect again. Agwu, before I go… do I remember correctly that your apprentice was thought to be the Halcyon?”
“You do.”
Smallwood continued hesitantly. “Your fear that… I mean, perhaps you’re jumping to conclusions.” He paused. “Let me ask it this way: Do you think Nicodemus is the one of prophecy?”
“Absolutely not.”
“Good, good, of course.” The door latch clicked. “I’ll have the guardian spells cast within an hour. I’ll see you tomorrow after midday?”
“Indeed,” Shannon said and then waited for the door hinges to creak before adding, “Timothy, truly, thank you.”
“Quite welcome, Agwu. Quite welcome.” The door clicked shut.
Puffing out his cheeks, Shannon retrieved his research journal from his desk. It was a leather-bound codex about two hands tall. Its spine and face were each embossed with three asterisks, allowing him to identify the book by touch. He opened it and began to write a few notes about the day. He worked for a quarter hour before an unexpected light made him look up.