Read Online Spellbreaker by Blake Charlton - Free Book Online

glimpses of a young woman, bared wet shoulders, hair braided back, a long knife in her right hand, peering into the darkness.
    Nicodemus wondered if she were a spellwright and if she would cast a luminescent spell to inspect cargo. If so he’d have to kill her silently. But long moments passed, the River Thief’s devotee looked from side to side, but she cast no light. Not a spellwright then. She turned and hurried back up the stairs.
    Nicodemus fought the urge to move as water continued to splash against the hull. Finally the sensation of acceleration lessened. The splashing oars changed tempo. Someone called out soft commands. Something thumped against the hull and the deck rang with more footsteps. One of the stranger vessels had closed with their boat.
    Suddenly Nicodemus realized that he had not told Sir Claude when to start his Wounded Bird routine. Now—when the raiders were preoccupied with boarding and before they organized themselves to loot the hold—would be perfect. Worried that Sir Claude would miss the opportunity, Nicodemus cast a single flamefly paragraph. The incandescent light it shed revealed a scene that made Nicodemus breathe easier.
    The highsmith had crawled from his hiding place and opened his Canticle of Iron. The spellbook’s metallic sheets had come alive and were folding themselves into an animated suit of armor around the knight. Each sheet was covered with the highsmith magical language, which functioned only within metal. Like all knights of the Oriflamme, Sir Claude had mastered the variations of a half dozen spells that composed such metallolinguistic armor.
    Two razor thin swords grew from Sir Claude’s fists. An angular helmet folded around his head, leaving only a thin slit for vision. Thus armored, a Lornish knight was one of the most dangerous combatants in the six human kingdoms.
    As Nicodemus’s flamefly paragraph burnt out, Sir Claude crept to the base of the stairs and then, as silent as a trained assassin, charged up to the deck. The knight’s armor accelerated his steps to inhuman speed.
    Not a moment after the knight disappeared from Nicodemus’s view, a scream broke the night’s quiet. Two blows sounded on the deck and then a splash, which Nicodemus supposed was that of a body striking water. A chorus of voices rose in alarm.
    Nicodemus crawled out of his hiding place and made for the stairs. Up through the hatch, he saw a single dark figure clutching a boarding ax. The man raised the weapon and charged toward the bow.
    Nicodemus pulled free the first few sentences of a disspell written across his left chest. Pain seared through his skin as the spell spread across his body, covering him in a protective text that would attack any other magical text that touched him. This combined with his cacography would make him briefly impervious to most any godspell. Soon every patch of Nicodemus’s skin shone with the disspell’s violet light.
    Screams and crashes sounded from the bow. There was a sudden crack and the boat lurched. The neodemon had joined the fray. Nicodemus ran up the steps.
    After the hold’s blackness, the wide and starry sky above the glossy river dazzled. Nicodemus glanced forward and saw a fountain of white light; the glare outlined the metallic Sir Claude as a pirate swung a boarding ax against the knight’s armored back. The blade clanged against steel. Sir Claude spun with inhuman quickness and ran his left sword through the pirate’s gut.
    No one noticed Nicodemus as he sprinted to the stern, planted his foot on the gunnel, and dove out over the water. He had just enough time, suspended above the dark currents, to extend his arms and put his head down. Then the shock of water and deceleration, diving deep. He arched his back and coursed upward, his long hair streaming.
    When his head broke surface, Nicodemus turned and began to overhand stroke back toward the stolen boat. The disspells covering his body