Spellbound: Book 2 of the Spellwright Trilogy. Blake Charlton

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СКАЧАТЬ SPARK OF textual consciousness that considered itself Shannon recognized another spark that also considered itself Shannon. They were being pressed together.

      The texts joined paragraphs and realized that they were two pages in a closed book. A few exploratory sentences discovered other intelligent pages. Now the texts realized that they were the textual analog of a human brain—specifically, the frontal aspects of Magister Agwu Shannon’s brain.

      The texts suspected that their thoughts were limited by lack of connection to other texts; however, they had few memories and so were unsure. They connected to more pages. Each link induced confusion as two pieces of Shannon realized they were now a larger piece of Shannon. It was like waking from a dream, over and over again.

      Then they connected to a page corresponding to the backmost brain, which coordinated balance. This produced nauseating vertigo and a strange reflex. Suddenly, all pages unified into Shannon-the-ghost, who found his head protruding from an open book that lay on the floor.

      Not five feet away, a limp warkite was draped over a broken table. A woman dressed in voluminous green robes stood above the kite and moved her fingers across it in complex patterns. She wore a turban and a veil that covered her nose and mouth. Suddenly the ghost realized the woman was a hierophant, a wind mage. She was editing the kite’s language, likely investigating what had excited the warkite to fly into the library.

      Shannon was not fluent in the hierophantic language and so could not see the runes the woman was manipulating. He did remember that the hierophantic language could move within cloth but outside cloth melted into wind. As he watched, the warkite’s edge fluttered slightly and then stretched out toward him.

      The ghost pulled his head back into the book. The world dissolved as his mind began breaking up into individual pages. Only with effort did he keep passages corresponding to his frontal brain connected.

      Time seemed to pass quickly and not at all. It was difficult to remember or feel much emotion, but logical thoughts came clearly and quickly. Perhaps that was a good thing. He needed to think logically about his situation.

      Someone had left him a note informing him he’d been murdered. The ghost must have been separated from the author before the murder occurred; a ghost within his body at the moment of death became incoherent.

      So when and where had his author been killed? After leaving the Heaven Tree Valley? Was the murderer one of Typhon’s demon worshipers? Or had it been one of the wizards who thought that Nicodemus was the Storm Petrel? Just then, in a dizzying whirl of memory, the ghost recalled Nicodemus’s half sister.

      Back in Starhaven, Nicodemus had learned that the clandestine Alliance of Divine Heretics was opposing Typhon and Fellwroth. For centuries, both factions had been breeding humans to reconstruct the imperial bloodline. Each faction had assassinated the Imperials born to the other, until Typhon broke the stalemate by placing Nicodemus’s ability to spell in the emerald, leaving the boy a disabled apprentice no one suspected of being an Imperial. However, after Nicodemus’s birth, his mother had escaped the demon worshipers. Protected by the Alliance, she had given birth to his half sister.

      Because Nicodemus’s half sister was not disabled, she might become the Halcyon—the spellwright prophesied to stop the Disjunction. No doubt, the Alliance had trained her to find and kill Typhon’s Imperial, to find and kill Nicodemus.

      Therefore, Shannon might have been murdered by Nicodemus’s half sister or one of her agents.

      Then the ghost considered the paper note left on the book. A bloody spot, followed by the words “our memories are in her” and another bloody spot. There was no punctuation or capitalization. Why?

      The Numinous message had instructed him to find the Cleric Francesca DeVega. Only she can help you find your murderer, it had read. Shannon hadn’t collected all the broken Numinous runes. Perhaps there had been more information.

      But was there a connection between the two notes? Did “our memories are in her” mean that Shannon’s memories were in the cleric Francesca? And why write “our” memories?

      Perhaps the blood had covered a letter? Maybe it was supposed to read “Your memories are in her.” That would explain the lack of capitalization. Or perhaps there was another word that was supposed to follow “her.” Perhaps the sentence was supposed to be “Your memories are in her care” or some such. He had to find Francesca DeVega.

      The ghost, still unable to guess how much time had passed while in the book, wondered what part of his textual mind sensed time and if he could connect to it. However, when he tried to send out exploratory sentences, a stiff pressure held them in place. He tried twice more before realizing that the book he was in had been closed. The hierophant who had been editing the kite must have picked up his book.

      Was he going to sit on a shelf for decades until someone pulled the book down? Perhaps he could find his few Magnus passages and use them to push the book open?

      Suddenly the pressure holding the ghost on the page vanished. With a jarring speed, his face flew out of an open page.

      Once again, he was peering out of an open book on the floor. Before him stretched the hallway where he had encountered the warkite. The hierophant from the library stood beside him. She must have been carrying the book and dropped it.

      The woman lowered her veil, grimaced, and then let out a rush of incomprehensible words. Her eyes widened in terror. She brought her hands to her mouth as if shocked. Then she lowered her eyebrows in concentration. For a moment no sound came. Then she let out a fluid mash of words.

      Soundlessly, Shannon swore. A powerful and unknown spell must be locked around the parts of the woman’s brain that allowed her to speak. She had expressive aphasia.

      The woman’s gibberish rose and then fell. A distant chorus of voices answered. She began walking toward the clamoring voices.

      Shannon stuck his head farther out of the book and watched her walk down the hallway. He imagined the book as the “ground” and focused his Magnus sentence in his chin. Awkwardly, he used his chin to lift another page. From this new crack in the book came first his fingers, then his whole right hand.

      With concentration, he used three silvery sentences in his reconstructed hand to turn the page from which his head emerged. The world tilted, and then all his text began to interconnect and pull itself free. The pages flipped faster and faster, releasing paragraph after paragraph that wove themselves into his body. When the last page turned and pushed him away, he slid a few feet along the floor and stopped.

      Down the hall, the wailing grew louder. Cautiously, he stood and walked back to the library. The door was open. Inside, the warkite lay folded next to a stack of books. The hierophant must have deactivated its text. Shannon peered out the window but saw no warkites in the sky. For the moment, he was safe.

      So he turned and trotted after the aphasic hierophant. The hallway ran in a slow curve. Through the windows, he saw more red-tiled roof, ornate sandstone minarets, glimpses of the city beyond. Every thirty feet or so, he passed a smaller hallway that ran toward the dome’s center.

      The hierophant’s gibberish now rose and fell to a manic cadence. Coming around a corner, Shannon caught sight of her just before she broke into a run.

      He hurried after, keeping a safe distance. The voices answering her grew louder. The woman ran faster. He sped up.

      Then something made him stop.

      He СКАЧАТЬ