Spellbound by Blake Charlton Read Free Book Online Page A

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 jumped up from its windowsill and rose fifty feet into the air. Watching it climb, Shannon saw two other warkites flying above it. The constructs were circling him like vultures.
    Higher than the warkites was a flock of brightly colored lofting kites. As he watched, two of the kites—one red, one yellow—descended in sudden drops. Someone fell from the yellow kite.
    Shannon tried to comprehend what he was seeing, but then one warkite dove toward him like a hawk.
    Frantically, Shannon clawed at the tiles, pawing his way back up the roof. With a final kick, he launched himself into the air to sail through a window and land in the hallway. He glanced backward and saw the warkite not ten feet behind him. It folded into a thin shaft to shoot through the window and then extended its steel talons.
    Shannon turned and dove into the library’s door. Again, buzzing and pain. Then he was standing in the library