my passenger to the wind garden. Don’t bring her back to the city until you have gotten word that the sanctuary is safe again. Trust no other wind mage. Tell no one what I have said or even that you spoke to me.”
Francesca grabbed the other woman’s shoulder. “Not him!” she said. “Any other hierophant. Please, not him.”
Deirdre pushed her hand away. “No, he’s the new air warden, newly arrived. Typhon brought him back because he’s unaware of the canonist’s situation. He’s a screen.”
Francesca had no idea what the other woman was talking about. She was about to say so as colorfully as she possibly could when a sudden jerk on their chain yanked their kite down five feet.
Francesca’s stomach seemed to leap into her throat. “What’s happening?” She looked down at the infirmary roof. The Savanna Walker’s cloud of blindness now hung over the minaret to which their kite was tethered.
Deirdre swore. “He’s pulling us in!”
“He’s pulling you in,” the air warden called. “I can’t take your passenger if the tower is hauling you down.”
Another jerk pulled their kite down ten more feet. “The Walker’s figured out which chain connects to our kite,” Deirdre said.
Again they sank with sickening speed. The air warden lowered his kite to keep company. Francesca asked, “What happens if the Savanna Walker pulls us in?”
“The Walker devours you, the demon enslaves me forever, Nicodemus walks into his trap, and the dread god Los is reborn.”
“Can we fight?”
The avatar shook her head. “Not a chance. I’m too near being possessed again, and I don’t know the Walker’s name. You must go now. Here’s my message to Nicodemus about the trap. Are you listening?”
She nodded.
“Tell him there are two dragons.”
“Two WHAT? You’re—”
Deirdre cut her off. “The demon said your function will be to keep Nicodemus alive during his forced conversion. I think the demon means to wound Nico in some way that only you can cure.”
“I don’t know—”
“Typhon has been holding something back. Over the years, pretending to work as his Regent of Spies, I went through his letters. I learned that Typhon started to make the Savanna Walker into the first dragon, but then the power of the emerald wore out. So the Walker is stuck as a half monster, half dragon.”
“A God-of-gods damned dragon? With scales and wings and fiery breath?”
Deirdre shook her head. “They look that way only under certain conditions. Dragons are more like potentials or forces. And the Walker is now something grotesque and incomprehensible.”
Abruptly, Deirdre shuddered. Then she squeezed her eyes shut as if in concentration. “Listen, in one of the demon’s letters you are named as the only one who can stop the second dragon from destroying Nicodemus. I don’t know any more than that. As the Regent of Spies, I had some of my agents magically wound me when the lycanthropes attacked so that I would be taken to you in the infirmary. I had to put you into play.”
“What the hell do you mean by that?”
“When I broke your anklet, I broke his hold on you. You can leave the city now without his knowing. You have to stop the second dragon.”
“But why me?” Francesca squawked. “And what in burning heaven do I know about demons or dragons?”
Deirdre shook her head. “No time. Go!”
“Go where, damn it?”
Instead of answering, the other woman turned to face the air warden and bellowed, “FALLING PILOT!”
Francesca turned to see which hierophant had fallen from a lofting kite. But as she did so, Deirdre reached up and—as easily as if she were snapping threads—broke the straps of Francesca’s harness.
With a scream, Francesca threw her arms around Deirdre.
But the immortal woman grabbed hold of Francesca’s shoulders and, with inhuman strength, shoved her into the churning air.
Chapter Seven
The warkite was written on an eight-foot-long strip of white sailcloth. It possessed a small pair of triangular forewings and a larger pair of aft wings. Occasionally these flapped to provide direction or thrust, but mostly the construct moved by undulation. Though it flew through the air, the spell reminded Shannon of a shark swimming through the sea.
Originally, warkites had been written for battle, but since the Spirish Civil War, their only official function had been to guard Spirish holy places. Judging by its velocity, this particular warkite had identified Shannon-the-ghost as a foreign spell threatening the sanctuary.
With a lash of its tail, the kite dove through a hallway window and unfolded two cloth limbs; from each limb extended four talons made of sharpened steel squares.
Shannon leapt backward. Weighing almost nothing, he moved in a blur of speed. The warkite’s talons struck the floorboards with a thump. One slashed Shannon’s shin. Ghost or no, the pain lanced up his leg.
He flew about ten feet down the hall and landed awkwardly. The force of the warkite’s strike made it crumple into a pile of sailcloth. Shannon looked at his shin and saw frayed sentences floating from the wound. He grabbed the injured language and edited it back into his body.
Plain steel would have passed straight through him. The talons must have encased cloth that contained sharp hierophantic spells.
Shannon looked up. The once-crumpled warkite was now bulging with air. The construct’s fluttering edges luffed as it turned toward him.
Shannon crouched.
The warkite blasted air against the floor and pounced. Shannon dodged left, avoiding the talons by inches. This time, the construct anticipated his quickness and, with another air blast, snaked around to lash out.
Shannon jumped straight up and flew so high his head struck the ceiling. The world went black, and then his face was sticking out of the floor of the hallway above him. In the distance he could see two green-robed figures running.
Shannon tried to push himself down, but his arms passed through the ceiling. Remembering that his Magnus text pressed against what he considered the ground, Shannon thought of walking on the ceiling below him. Immediately, his hands found traction.
After pulling his head through the floor, he found the warkite was a whirl of cloth and steel roiling up toward him. Instinctively he kicked off of the ceiling, barely avoided the kite again. But this time he hadn’t looked where he was leaping. Instead of flying down to the floor, he shot sideways and tumbled through the hallway’s outer wall.
Again, his ears buzzed and his hands burned. Then he was outside in the sunlight, sliding down the sanctuary’s rain-slicked roof. He clawed at the tiles, but his fingers passed through them. Tumbling through the wall had frayed his Magnus sentences. Looking over his shoulder, Shannon saw the roof’s edge and the dizzying drop to the city’s sandstone buildings. He didn’t know if falling from such a great height would damage him, and he didn’t want to find out.
Without warning, the Magnus in his fingers recovered enough to catch hold. A jolt ran down his arms and almost split his shoulder paragraphs. The wind blew hard, hissing across the roof.
The chirp of steel meeting stone made him look up. The warkite had folded itself in half and perched on a windowsill. The wind shifted, and again Shannon heard a distant wailing. Just then he remembered the Numinous script he had translated back in the library. One fragment had read, “Hide in books if the constructs discover you.”
He had to get back into the library. Fast.
The warkite