standing next to two strangers. The first was a tall, fair-skinned woman with blue eyes and dark dreadlocks. Silver and gold buttons ran down the sleeves of her black robe, indicating her rank of grand wizard.
The second stranger was tawny-skinned, green-eyed Deirdre. Her robes were druidic white with wooden buttons on the sleeves.
“Forgive me, Magister. I’ll wait in the hall…” Nicodemus’s words trailed off as he saw the myriad tiny cuts raked across Shannon’s face.
“It’s all right, my boy,” Shannon said calmly. “Come in. We’ve been waiting for you.” He held his research journal and was tracing the asterisks embossed on its face. “Never mind the scrapes; I was working too late and mishandled an ancient spellbook. The blast scuffed me up a bit.” He motioned to his face with the journal.
“Yes, Magister,” Nicodemus said uncertainly. Each year brought a few reports of ancient codices deconstructing, but for such a thing to happen to a grand wizard was extraordinary.
The old man’s blank eyes pointed at Nicodemus’s chest. “And you, lad, are you all right? Was there anything amiss in the Drum Tower last night?”
Nicodemus glanced nervously at the strangers. “There was a Jejunus cursing match. I’m sorry if we disturbed anyone.”
Shannon’s expression softened. “Not to worry about that. Please greet our guests.” He gestured in the direction of the wizard. “Magistra Amadi Okeke, a sentinel from Astrophell.”
Nicodemus bowed and the woman nodded.
“And Deirdre, a member of the Silent Blight delegation.”
“Your pardon, Magister,” the druid interrupted. “But I do not speak for Silent Blight concerns. My protector and I provide independent counsel.”
Nicodemus had to stop himself from staring. By night Deirdre had seemed handsome. But now that she was standing in the window’s sunlight her eyes seemed greener, her skin darker, her loose hair more glossy black. Now she was stunning and looked even more familiar.
Shannon’s blind gaze had wandered up to the ceiling. “Well then, Nicodemus, please greet Deirdre, an independent emissary from Dral.”
Nicodemus began to worry. Shannon had said that they had been waiting for him. Had his conversation with the druid last night stirred up new interest in his cacography?
He bowed to Deirdre.
“Scratch!” Azure said, and launched herself from Shannon’s chair. Nicodemus raised his forearm in time to make a perch for the incoming parrot.
“Tell me again about your bird,” an amused Deirdre said. “I thought she was your familiar and couldn’t communicate with anyone else.”
Shannon turned toward the druid. He was silent a moment before replying. “Sometimes Azure flies a message to Nicodemus, but only I can understand her dialect of Numinous.” A golden sentence flew from Shannon’s brow to his familiar’s. The bird bobbed her head and flapped her way back to Shannon’s shoulder.
“For a few wizards, age or literary trauma steals our ability to see anything but magical text.” Shannon gestured to his all-white eyes. “Time did so to me. But those like me can rapidly exchange information with animal familiars.”
Two Numinous streams rushed between wizard and parrot. Now Shannon pointed his face directly at Deirdre’s. “Through this protocol, I can see through Azure’s eyes. I’m doing so now.”
Deirdre studied man and bird. “Such strange practices you wizards have.”
Again Shannon let a silence grow before he responded. “I hear druids also have strange relationships with animals. But hopefully this convocation will do more than renew treaties; hopefully it will make our different societies less strange to one another.”
Nicodemus had never heard the old man be so hesitant and so cautious with his words.
Azure, apparently having looked around the room enough for Shannon, broke the Numinous stream and turned to preening one of Shannon’s silver dreadlocks.
Magistra Okeke spoke. “We should tell the boy why we are here.”
Shannon’s mouth tensed, and then he motioned toward three chairs. “Then let us sit. This, Nicodemus, is a fortuitous interview. Deirdre passed me in the halls this morning and inquired about you. And Magistra Okeke appeared at my door only moments ago, quite unexpectedly.”
“I would like the boy to talk about the Erasmine Prophecy,” the sentinel said, coolly regarding first Shannon and then Deirdre.
Nicodemus felt his cheeks grow hot.
Shannon turned toward the sentinel. “I see you’ve been busy researching Starhaven rumors.”
With a half-smile, the druid looked from one wizard to the other before adding, “I am also interested in this prophecy.”
The sentinel narrowed her eyes at the other woman.
Three grand authors in one room, each distrustful of the others—Nicodemus would have felt safer if the study were full of starving lycanthropes.
“Regarding prophecy, there is little to tell,” Shannon said. “Nicodemus is not the Halcyon.”
“Why so certain?” Deirdre’s green eyes fixed on the old man. “Perhaps we should start with what the first wizards foresaw.”
Shannon started to reply but then paused. Prophecy, being closely related to religion, was seldom discussed among different magical societies. Doing so was considered impolite at best, blasphemous at worst.
However, Shannon could not refuse a guest’s direct request. “Erasmus foresaw the War of Disjunction: the final struggle between demons and humanity that will come when the fiends escape the ancient continent and invade this one. The prophecies predict that Los will be reborn and will lead the Pandemonium—the great demonic army—across the ocean to destroy all human language. Erasmus founded the Numinous Order of Civil Wizardry to repel the Pandemonium. His prophecy predicts that the Order will prevail only if it heeds the teachings of a master spellwright known as ‘the Halcyon.’”
Deirdre shifted in her chair. “But how could any force destroy human language?”
Magistra Okeke answered impatiently: “The demons will use special spells called metaspells to decouple the meaning of language from its form.”
The druid gave the sentinel a blank look.
“What Magistra Okeke means,” Shannon explained, “is that the demons will divorce the signifier from the signified. Phrases and words will take on unexpected meanings. Civilization will crumble into animal brutishness.”
“I don’t understand your jargon,” Deirdre said. “But this interests me. The druids hold to the Prophecy of the Peregrine, which predicts that the Pandemonium will burn our groves and crush our standing stones. Our mundane and magical texts are stored within our sacred trees and megaliths.”
“I thought druids believed the War of Disjunction was imminent,” Magistra Okeke said. “Something about a fungus killing off Dralish trees.”
Still smiling, Deirdre examined the sentinel as if for the first time. “Amadi Okeke, you refer to the Silent Blight. It is a complicated issue. I would prefer not to speak of it here.”
The sentinel pursed her lips. “But perhaps you could elucidate some of your order’s beliefs, since Magister Shannon was so free with information about wizardly prophecy.”
“There’s no need to—” Shannon started to say.
“It is all right.” Deidre raised an open palm. “The Silent Blight is a…‘change,’ I suppose I must name it to non-druids. Yes, the Blight is a world change we detected a few decades ago. It is not a disease, but a…condition that is affecting all of nature. The evidence comes from the observation that certain kinds