hid his nature was either experienced or an incarnation of guile; a dangerous opponent either way. In fact, the short but colorful list of neodemonic characteristics Nicodemus considered more dangerous than “subtlety” included such qualities as “sustained by the prayers of more than fifty thousand,” “an incarnation of lightning or pestilence,” and “is presently eating my still-beating heart.”
Although subtle neodemons made perilous enemies, they could also be made into powerful allies. Nicodemus had to try to convert the River Thief into a god of the league’s pantheon.
After a last look at the stolen barge, Nicodemus crawled to the next tent and pulled back its flap. Before he could whisper, the entryway was filled with a brutish face—wiry white hair, bulbous nose, horsey teeth. Magister John of Starhaven, once Nicodemus’s childhood companion and now his personal secretary. The big man’s small brown eyes mashed shut, opened wide. “Nico, what—”
Nicodemus held up a hand. “Who’s in there with you?”
“Just … Rory.”
Rory of Calad was Nicodemus’s envoy from the druids of Dral and an excellent choice for an infiltration game; however, on this journey, Rory had made a rival of Sir Claude DeFral, the new envoy from the highsmiths of Lorn. Favoring one man might cause trouble. “Where’s Sir Claude?”
John blinked. “Next tent over.”
“Good. Wake Rory up, quietly.”
When John crawled back into the tent, Nicodemus rose just far enough to see the river. Neither the barge nor the strangers had moved. If the River Thief fled, Nicodemus could do little more than rouse his party and pursue. The chances of catching a riparian god on a nocturnal river chase were minuscule. Nicodemus had to hope that after unloading his present prize, the River Thief would loot another barge.
“Nico!” John whispered from his tent. “Nico, I can’t wake Rory.”
“Dead?”
“Still breathing; he pulls his hands back when I pinch his nailbeds. But there’s something …” John held a hand to his mouth. “There’s something funny about how I’m thinking. It’s like I’m feverish or … back in Starhaven.”
Nicodemus frowned. “Starhaven?”
“I can’t seem to think of … some things.”
“Dammit,” Nicodemus whispered as he realized what the River Thief had done.
When John had been a boy, the demon Typhon had cursed his mind to induce a stereotype of retardation. The demon had then placed John among Starhaven’s cacographers to unwittingly spy on Nicodemus. During Nicodemus’s initial confrontation with Typhon, John had escaped the curse and regained his natural intellect. However, the struggle had separated John and Nicodemus for a decade.
That John felt as he had in Starhaven suggested he might have a curse locked around his mind. The River Thief might have cast an incapacitating godspell on the whole party. Only he and John would be resistant; Nicodemus because his cacography would misspell the text, John because his childhood spent battling such a spell had given him some inherent immunity. “John, drag Rory to me.”
“Why—”
“Just do it quickly and … well … here, let’s free you completely.” Nicodemus peeled a tattooed disspell from his neck. The luminous violet sentences folded into a tight cage.
Nicodemus had learned this violet language from the kobolds of the Pinnacle Mountains. It was one of the few magical languages with a structure logical enough to resist his cacography; however, it was sensitive to sunlight and would deconstruct in anything brighter than two moonlight.
With a wrist flick, Nicodemus cast the disspell against John’s forehead. The violet prose sprang around John’s head before sinking into his skull. The luminous sentences flickered as they deconstructed the River Thief’s spell.
The big man’s head bobbed backward. He flinched, grimaced, wrinkled his nose, sneezed. “Flaming hells, Nico, it feels like you just filled your mouth with snow and started licking my brain.”
“What an expressive image you’ve come up with,” Nicodemus said dryly. John had never lost his puerile fascination with vulgar imagery. As a child, Nicodemus had gotten into many Jejune wordfights with the big man. Now, it was less amusing.
“You could have warned me.” John groaned.
“Somehow the River Thief has obtunded our party and is stealing our cargo. That’s why you’ve agreed to haul, with particular care and haste, Rory out here.”
Nicodemus could not pull the druid from the tent as his touch misspelled the Language Prime texts in almost any living creature, thereby cursing them with mortal cankers. His wife and daughter, being partially textual, were among the few who could survive his touch. This immunity had been a great comfort to him years ago when his family had still been close together, physically and emotionally.
John disappeared into the tent and after some rustling pulled a limp Rory of Calad into the moonlight.
The druid was maybe six feet tall, dressed in white robes, broad shouldered, in possession of long glossy auburn locks. His freckles and slight chubbiness gave him a disarmingly youthful air that belied his fifty years.
Nicodemus cast a disspell onto the druid’s head. As the sentences contracted, Rory’s eyes fluttered. Then the violet sentences crushed the godspell around his mind. Rory convulsed once, opened his eyes, rolled over, vomited.
Nicodemus grimaced sympathetically. “John, quietly as you can, haul Sir Claude over here. Stay low. Rory, can you hear me?”
The druid spat. “Yes, but it feels as if—”
“As if a block of frozen mucus is fondling your brain?” John asked helpfully.
Rory looked up at John, frowned. “Yes … yes, that’s exactly what it feels like.”
Nicodemus rolled his eyes. “Shut it you two. John, fetch Sir Claude and one of his metal books. Rory, hold still.” Nicodemus began to forge a shadowganger spell on his forearm.
The druid pressed a hand to his stomach. “I promise not to move another muscle unless it involves puking myself inside out.”
Nicodemus pulled the shadowganger spell from his arm and cast it on the druid. The violet paragraphs spun around Rory, bending light away from him until he seemed another moonshadow.
John appeared with Sir Claude thrown over his right arm and a massive book pinned to his side by his left. With little ceremony, John let the book drop. It clanged softly on the ground. Then John laid the knight onto his back.
Sir Claude DeFral—highsmith of Lorn, knight of the Order of the Oriflamme, veteran of the Goldensward War, spy, and assassin—was a thin spellwright in his sixties. His skin was dark brown, his head shaved, his goatee silver. Presently his head lolled back and his mouth fell open. The very picture of coma.
Nicodemus cast a disspell onto the highsmith’s head. John was muttering something about slime, snow, and brains when Sir Claude calmly opened his eyes and looked with puzzlement at Nicodemus, John, and the human shadow that was Rory. “Let me guess, my lord,” Sir Claude said, “last night we drank too much?”
“Everyone’s a joker tonight,” Nicodemus muttered.
Sir Claude propped himself onto his elbows and looked at Rory. “Druid, such a surprise to meet you here. At least I assume it’s you; no one else but you would produce quite such a corpulent shadow.”
“Don’t you two start,” Nicodemus growled. “Listen, we haven’t much time. Somehow the River Thief snuffed our watch. He’s taking our boats out on the river to loot them one by one. I still don’t know what he is—a water god I’ll wager—but for all we know he could be a wind neodemon or a ghost from the Floating Island. Whatever he is, he might flee downriver at any moment. So Rory, Sir Claude, and I are going