Spellwright by Blake Charlton Page A

library.
    Behind him the decomposing sentences began to tear open the other spellbooks. Soon they would spill their contents into the growing textual storm. Shannon pulled the subtextualized door shut.
    The hallway went black. Shannon could hear the deconstructing literature crackle and hiss behind the subtext.
    But he was safe now. The chaotic language, left in the private library, would deconstruct into nothing.
    Something wet and hot was running down his face. Blood.
    He was still holding the mysterious cloth-covered object. Perhaps Azure could look at it for him.
    Azure!
    Fear tore into his gut. What had the murderer done to his familiar?
    “Azure!” he called hoarsely. “Azure!” He had turned and was running blindly, arm stretched out. His hand struck a wall and he nearly fell. There came a faint whistle from behind.
    He spun around and saw with intense relief a coil of Numinous censoring texts lying on what he assumed to be the windowsill. The murderer had bound the bird magically but had not killed her. The villain must have known hurting Azure would have made recruiting him impossible.
    Shannon hurried to pick up the censored bird.
    In her fear, Azure bit his pinky hard enough to draw blood. But Shannon wouldn’t have cared if she had snapped his finger in two. Cooing softly, he unwound the censoring texts from the bird’s head.
    Once her mind was free, Azure cast to him a deluge of terrified text: a white-cloaked figure appearing in the hallway and a blazing Numinous spell that came from outside the tower to envelop her mind.
    It seemed odd that the murderer had written the censoring text to strike from outside the tower; then Shannon remembered the thing’s claim that it could not spellwrite within Starhaven’s walls.
    “Los damn it, but what could the creature be?” he hissed while scooping Azure up as if she were a loaf of bread.
    In his left hand, he still gripped the strange cloth-covered object he had picked up in the private library.
    On trembling legs and looking through Azure’s eyes, he hurried down the Gimhurst Tower. His breath became ragged as he ran into Starhaven’s inhabited quarter.
    Twice, mangy cats scattered before him. He did not slow until flickering torches appeared along the walkways. Only then did he take the time to look at himself through Azure’s eyes.
    The deconstructing sentence fragments had torn holes in his robes and cut small bloody lines into his hands and face. More shocking was the gash that slanted down his left brow. Two of his silvery dreadlocks had been cut by whatever blade had made that wound.
    After hurrying through several buildings and across the Grand Courtyard, Shannon reached the Erasmine Spire. Thankfully there were no other wizards about to see him trot up the stairs and into his study.
    Still panting, he set Azure on the back of his chair and the strange cloth-covered object on his writing desk. Though she still sent him frightened memories of the attack, Azure was beginning to calm down.
    Shannon cast a few flamefly paragraphs above his desk. Once there was enough light, he coaxed Azure into standing on his shoulder. After saying a brief prayer to the Creator, he turned Azure’s eyes to the strange object he had taken from Nora’s library.
    At first he could not understand what he was seeing.
    It lay on his desk, wrapped in what was left of a white sleeve. He must have cut it off with the Magnus spell.
    Slowly, tentatively, he turned the thing over.
    It had been detached just above the elbow joint. There was no blood. Its curled fingers were perfect, down to the hairs growing on the back of the thumb.
    “Heaven defend us,” Shannon whispered in shock. “The days of prophecy are upon us!”
    Patches of the object seemed to be made of pale skin. But even as he watched, these slowly darkened into clay.
    Save for this strange fact, the thing was an exact replica of a man’s severed forearm.

CHAPTER
Nine
    Nicodemus mounted the last few steps to