Spellbound: Book 2 of the Spellwright Trilogy. Blake Charlton

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СКАЧАТЬ style="font-size:15px;">      Shannon laughed. “He seems to feel the same way about you.”

      “He is unbelievably powerful within the sanctuary walls, I will give him that. But if I could just catch him outside the city at night.”

      “There was that time two dry seasons ago when the two of you wrestled below the dam.”

      “Doesn’t count. How was I to know he’d filled that damn gate with lucerin dilution?”

      “There was that night in Coldlock Harbor. Your fishing boat scheme.”

      Despite himself, Nicodemus shivered. “Doesn’t count either. Who knew orca whales could come in so close to shore or that the Savanna Walker could do … that … to them?”

      Shannon rubbed his temples. “I still have nightmares about thrashing around in that water. The dark figures swimming below us, and all that … blood.”

      Nicodemus felt his cold anger grow but changed the subject. “Magister, your ghost, I wanted to say—”

      “We won’t talk about it.”

      “But, Magister, Typhon has held that ghost captive for a year. Surely, the demon has rewritten him. We had to try to deconstruct him.”

      Shannon turned toward him, his all-white eyes unreadable. “Yes. Of course. And if you had proper wizardly training, if you’d just listened to me back in Heaven Tree Valley, you would have destroyed the ghost instead of letting it escape back to Typhon.”

      “Magister, we couldn’t have stayed in the valley. As I’ve told you a hundred times—”

      “You have. We’re finished.”

      “Magister,” Nicodemus started to say, but just then the courtyard grew quiet and all eyes turned toward the dais at the far end. A procession of Celestial devotees had emerged bearing a litter. With practiced ceremony, they laid down the litter and folded back its doors to reveal a topaz standing stone about five feet tall—a sliver of Canonist Cala’s ark.

      One devotee made a brief speech, praising the high sky goddess, Celeste, and her canon of demigods. Then the devotees led all in a song of prayer.

      As they sang, a modicum of Nicodemus’s strength ebbed away as Cala’s godspell withdrew it. The tall topaz stone shone brighter as it gained strength from those assembled.

      Nicodemus had spent his childhood in the wizardly academy of Starhaven. The patron god of wizards, Hakeem, rarely required devotion from his followers. As such, wizards lived an almost atheistic life, infrequently offering their strength to a deity and even more infrequently receiving that deity’s protection.

      When Nicodemus had arrived in Avel, he had been shocked by the devotions Cala demanded and outraged that the needy citizens should make devotions twice as often as the rich. The hungry had no other choice; flatbread was handed to the poor after devotions.

      However, Nicodemus’s disquiet about Cala had dissipated when his companion, Boann—herself a nearly vanquished river goddess—had explained how much Cala did for her citizens.

      It was only the canonist’s godspell that kept the city walls standing despite the earthquakes, grassfires, lycanthrope attacks. It was only Cala who held the water in the reservoir during the long dry season. If the people of Avel stopped praying for the walls to hold, they would end up in lycanthrope throats. If they stopped praying for the dam to stand, they would die of thirst.

      Similar arrangements between deities and humans existed throughout the six human kingdoms. Did the poor and powerless bear most of the burden of empowering the deities? Certainly. It had always been so and was likely to remain so. But, as Boann pointed out, the inequity of divine governance was a small matter compared with Typhon’s quest to bring the rest of the demonic host across the ocean.

      Nicodemus had begun to realize how sheltered he had been in the academy.

      As the devotional song ended and the impoverished lined up for flatbread, Nicodemus felt hollow. He had to hide his false lepers until nightfall. He had to quell Shannon’s anger and despair at losing his ghost or the hopelessness would kill the old man before the canker curse growing in his gut. Nicodemus had to recover the emerald to cure Shannon, free Deirdre, defeat Typhon. In all these tasks, there was no earthly deity to whom he could pray for help.

      So, when the song ended, Nicodemus led his school out of the courtyard and silently prayed to a deity who took no part in the world because he was the world.

      Nicodemus prayed to the Creator.

      Chapter Fourteen

      When consciousness returned, Deirdre found her eyes filled with tears. It was always like this after repossession. At least she’d learned not to sob.

      She was lying on a thick carpet, her head resting on a pillow, her body covered by a blanket. Beside her a low hexagonal table held a kettle and a small metal cup of steaming mint tea. Other pillows lay around the table.

      She rubbed the tear tracks from her cheeks and sat up. The wide room was bright and airy. Beyond the furniture stood ornate redwood screens. Late afternoon sunlight spilled through the screens in the shape of their geometric latticework. A cold breeze brought the scent of redwoods and the distant ocean.

      The Savanna Walker had brought her to the top of the sanctuary, to what had been the canonist’s quarters but now was Typhon’s. Deirdre’s last clear memory was of shoving Francesca from the kite. After that, everything was blurry sky and an ecstatic heat.

      After catching her breath, Deirdre noticed a break in the screens that revealed a wide balcony and a view of Avel’s winding avenues and the wind-tossed savanna. Gingerly, she stood and discovered that she now wore a blue silk blouse and a white longvest threaded with gold. Once again Typhon had dressed her up as a Spirish noble, an officer of the canonist’s court.

      At times Deirdre enjoyed this outfit; the white longvest contrasted nicely with her dark skin. More often she was vexed that Typhon insisted on costuming her like a doll. The demon had planted his worshipers within Cala’s court and compelled her to help them play the nobility’s political games … games Deirdre had once played for Boann a lifetime ago, when she had been a Dralish noble in the city of Highland.

      For the past decade, Typhon had compelled her to become his Regent of Spies, to help renew the network of demon worshipers that Fellwroth had devastated when he usurped the demon’s control of the Disjunction. Presently, most of Avel’s powerful citizens—military commanders, merchants, bankers, even clergy—were sworn to Typhon. Without their help, he would never have enslaved Cala. The demon made Deirdre use her political savvy to manipulate Avel’s pliable nobles and her strength to assassinate the resistant.

      But after years of preparation, Deirdre had put a plan in motion to escape the demon. A bloom of hope made her smile until she wondered if she’d pushed her luck too far.

      She’d convinced the demon that she had been converted, that she was devoted to the Disjunction. As such, the demon had ceased to search her memories, which he could only do when in her physical presence. The process also left her debilitated for two or three days and so interfered with her role as Regent of Spies. It had been two years since he had read her thoughts. But now that Deirdre was freed, could she continue to fool him? Could she keep him from reading her mind?

      She СКАЧАТЬ