Copyright © 2005 by Blake Charlton. All rights reserved. No part of this text may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, reposting, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without express written permission of the author.
Home Samples Prolog Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four Chapter Five
The grammarian was choking to death on her own words.
And they were long sharp words, written in a magical language and crushed into a small, spiny ball. Her legs faltered, dropped her onto her knees.
The creature standing beside her covered its face with a voluminous white hood. "Exspelled already?" Its voice crackled. "Disappointing." A chill autumn wind surged across the bridge.
The grammarian fought for breath. Her head felt light as spider silk; her vision burned with gaudy color. The familiar world became foreign.
She was kneeling on a tower bridge, seven hundred feet above Starhaven's walls. Behind her, the stronghold's myriad towers reached skyward like a copse of giant trees. At every height, ribbon-thin bridges spanned the airy gaps between neighboring spires. Before her loomed the dark Pinnacle Mountains. Dimly, she realized that her confused flight had brought her to the Spindle Bridge, a massive structure built long before humans inhabited Starhaven.
Her heart fluttered with fear. From here the Spindle Bridge arched a lofty half-mile away from Starhaven to terminate into a mountain's sheer rock face. It did not lead to a path or a cave but ended in blank stone. It was a bridge to nowhere, a bridge that offered no chance of rescue or escape.
She tried to cry out but only gagged on the words caught in her throat.
To the west, above the coastal plain, the sunset was staining the sky a molten shade of incarnadine.
The creature, now completely hidden beneath its white robes, sniffed with disgust. "Pitiful," it said, "what passes for imaginative prose in this age." A cloth-wrapped arm rose, two golden sentences growing along the wrist. "You are Nora Finn, Dean of the Drum Tower. Do not deny it again, and do not refuse my offer again. I will not make it a third time." The creature flicked its spell into her chest.
Nora could do nothing but choke.
"What's this?" it asked with cold amusement. "Seems my attack stopped that curse in your mouth." The creature paused before laughing low and breathy. "I could make you eat your words."
Sharp pain ripped down her throat. She gasped, and the agony lanced down into her chest.
The creature's head cocked to one side. "But perhaps you've changed your mind?"
With five small cracks, the sentences in her throat deconstructed and spilled into her mouth. She fell onto her hands and spat out the silver words. They shattered on the cobblestones. Cold air flooded into her greedy lungs.
"And do not renew your fight," the creature warned. "I can censor your every spell with this text." She looked up and saw the figure holding the golden sentence that penetrated her chest. "So then...which of your students," it rasped, "is the one I seek?"
Her answer came out as a low, defiant croak: "Never."
The creature laughed. "You took our master's coin, played the spy for him."
She shook her head.
"Do you need more than gold?" It stepped closer. "I now possess the Emerald and Language Prime. I could tell you the first words the Creator spoke."
"No payment in this world could buy me for you," she growled between ragged breaths. "It was different with master...he...was a man."
The creature produced a sharp, crackling cackle. "Is that what you think? That he was human?" The monster's arm whipped back, snapping the golden sentence taut. The force of the action yanked Nora forward onto her face. Pain flared along her throat. "No, you stupid sow," it snarled, "your former master was not human!"
Something pulled up on Nora's hair and made her look at her tormentor. A breeze was making its concealing hood ruffle and snap. "Which cacographer do I seek?"
She clenched her fists. "What do you want with him?"
There was a pause. Only a sudden wind dared make noise. Then the creature spoke, "Him?"
Nora's hands went limp. "No!" She blurted, stomach clenching. "No, I said 'with them'."
The cloaked figure remained silent.
"I said," Nora pleaded, "'What do you want with them?' Not him. With them!"
Another pause. "I think not," it drawled. "A grammarian does not fault on her pronouns. Let us speak of him."
The spell holding Nora's head disengaged and she collapsed. "It was different in the dreams," she murmured into the cobblestones.
"Different," the voice growled, "because I sent you those dreams. Your students will receive the same: visions of a sunset seen from a tower bridge, dreams of a mountain vista. Eventually they will become curious and investigate."
Inwardly Nora flinched. The prophecy had come to pass. How could she have been so blind? What grotesque forces had she been serving?
"Perhaps," the creature said, "you think Starhaven's pretexts will protect your students? They won't. They might keep me from spellwriting within your walls, but I can lure the whelps into the woods or onto these bridges. It won't be hard to do now that the convocation has begun. If I must, I'll snuff your students out one by one. You could prevent all these deaths by speaking one name."
She did not move.
"Tell me his name," the white figure hissed, "and I will kill you quickly!"
Nora glanced at the railing. An idea spread across her mind like an ink stain. Perhaps she could--if she moved quickly enough.
"No answer?" the creature asked, stepping away. "Then it's a slow death you want." Nora felt a tug on the magical sentence running through her chest. "I've just infected you with a Language Prime spell."
She looked at the creature.
"It's called the canker spell. It forces a portion of a spellwright's body to forge misspelled runes. As we speak, the first canker is forming in your lungs. Soon it will spread into your muscles, compelling you to forge dangerous amounts of text. An hour will see your body convulsing, your veins bleeding, your stomach ruptured."
Nora pressed her palms against the cold cobblestones.
"But," the creature leered, "the strongest of your cacographers will survive such an infection. That's how I'll winnow him from the chaff-brained boys. He'll survive the cankers; the others will die screaming." It laughed. "I will spare you this torture if you tell me--"
But Nora did not wait to hear the rest. Like an uncoiling spring, she shoved herself up and leapt over the railing. For a moment, she feared a swarm of silvery paragraphs would wrap about her ankles and hoist her back up to the bridge. But the force of her drop snapped the golden sentence running through her chest, and she was free.
Closing her eyes, she dropped toward a clean death. The prophecy had come to pass! The knowledge would perish with her, but that was the price she had to pay: her death would keep a small, flickering hope alive.
Still falling, she opened her eyes. The eastern sky shone crimson against the mountains' saw-toothed silhouette. The setting sun had shot the peaks full of red-gold light and, by contrast, stained the boreal forests below a deep, hungry black.
Home Samples Prolog Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four Chapter Five