All the Paths of Shadow (12 page)

Shadows flew as she looked up. Kervis drew in his breath in a short quick gasp, and Meralda saw, from the corner of her eye, a flash of motion as the guardsman brought his monstrous Oldmark crossbow to bear on the dark beyond the stair.

“Kervis,” said Meralda, turning and sending light over the Bellringers and the void beyond them. “What are you doing?”

Kervis’ face was pale. “I saw something,” he said, his voice low and flat. “Out there.”

Behind him, Tervis shook his head and shrugged.

Meralda sighed and played the light about the Tower. “There is no one here but us,” she said. “What you probably saw was the outline of the stair on the far wall. See, you can just make it out, now and then, and it can look like something moving.”

Tervis whispered something, and Kervis lowered the crossbow. “Forgive me, Thaumaturge,” he said, his eyes still on the dark. “I was mistaken.”

Meralda smiled. “It’s all right,” she said. “Let’s catch our breath for a moment. It’s a wonder we aren’t all seeing things, with all the nonsense being talked about the Tower these days.” She sat, and motioned for the Bellringers to do the same. “There’s no hurry.”

Kervis looked toward Meralda and cocked his head. “I thought the captain said the other mages were coming by to meet you this afternoon,” he said. “Weren’t we supposed to be back by four bells?”

Meralda smiled.
Every minute I sit here,
she thought
,
is another minute I won’t be forced to endure king and court.
“Do you think they’ll climb these stairs?” she asked.

Tervis shook his head and grinned. “I think not,” he said.

Kervis nudged his twin with his elbow. “You’re learning, little brother,” he said. Then he mopped sweat from his brow and polished his crossbow stock with the sleeve of his jacket. “Anyway, we’ve got nothing to fear with this along, do we?”

“Just you,” said Tervis. “Tell the Thaumaturge how you did at targets, this morning.”

Kervis ignored his twin. “So what are you doing today, Thaumaturge?” he asked. “If it’s not a secret.”

Meralda wiped back a wild lock of hair and smiled. “I don’t work in secret, Guardsman,” she said. “I’m here to set a few wards, and test the Tower structure for its latching properties,” she said.

Tervis’ brow furrowed.

“You know what wards are,” said Meralda. “Guard spells. The court’s idea, not mine, and most probably a waste of time.” Meralda shrugged. “My real reason for climbing all these stairs, though, is to test the Tower’s resistance to new spells,” she said. “Soon, I’ll need to latch my shadow moving spell to something solid,” explained Meralda. “The Tower, in this case. And before I latch such a complicated spellwork to a structure as old and unusual as the Tower, I need to determine how resistant it is to new spells.”

Tervis nodded slowly. “I’ll bet it’s as slippery as mud,” he said. “Ma’am.”

Meralda’s magelamp flickered. She drew the fingers of her right hand quickly down the traceries on the tube, and whispered a word, and the light steadied. But Meralda frowned, for the tube had grown momentarily cold, as though the unlatched coils of the light spell had begun to unravel.

“Is anything the matter, Thaumaturge?” asked Kervis.

“Nothing,” said Meralda. She rose, and the magelamp shone steady and bright. “Are you gentlemen ready?”

“We are,” chorused the Bellringers. Both stood.

Meralda nodded and turned. She shone the magelamp up, where it barely illuminated the second story ceiling, and the gaping, doorless portal that led through it.

Shadows danced. Meralda’s free hand groped in her pocket, and before she realized what she was doing Meralda had her short retaining wand in her grasp. The minor ward spell latched there warmed the wand, and made it quiver like a trapped bumblebee.

“Nonsense,” said Meralda, so softly neither Bellringer heard. She pulled her hand from her pocket, and set about reviewing her latch testing spell.

I’m surprised,
thought Meralda,
that no one has done it before.
Simply latch a spellwork of a known capacity to the Tower, and then load the spell until it unlatches. The time elapsed between latching and unlatching, once compared to a standard, will give me a ratio. And the same ratio should hold for the shadow moving spell.

Should. That word pops up frequently when the Tower is involved,
she decided. As if the Tower were a world apart, a world where the normal rules might hold sway, or might not, all at the whim of a legendary wraith.

Wraith. Haunt. Spirit. Meralda had seen the Tower’s supposed inhabitant called many things, in the old books.
“
We laide no Spells there, for feare of the Spirit and its Terrible Wrath,
”
quoth Mage Elvis, some two hundred years ago. More recently, she read that king Tomin III had ordered workmen to board up the windows of the Wizard’s Flat, from the inside, so that the “Cursed Lights and Leering Phantoms” that looked down upon park-goers might be hidden. The king found the planks broken and scattered about the Tower the next day, and the workmen fled. Lights danced in the flat every night for a month.

Step after step, stair after stair. The second story entrance came and went, and the third, and still the Tower soared up and away out of sight. The Bellringers fell silent, aside from panting and huffing. Kervis’ crossbow, Meralda knew, must be an awful burden by now.

Meralda tried to count steps, but lost her place in the four hundreds. The sight of her own hunched shadow turned her thoughts to Otrinvion.
How many times,
she wondered,
did he climb these same stairs?
Was the Tower so dark, then? So silent, so empty?

Unbidden, a nursery rhyme sang out in Meralda’s memory.

The old, old wizard goes round and round the stair,

The old, old wizard goes sneaking everywhere,

The old, old wizard goes where you cannot see,

The old, old wizard is sneaking…up…on…me!

Meralda felt eyes on her back, and a chill like the stroke of an icicle raced down her spine.

Kervis began to hum. There was no mistaking the tune, or the words behind it.

“I see the door,” said Tervis, his voice suffused with relief. “We’re almost there.”

Meralda took a deep breath.
I am a thaumaturge,
she said, to herself.
A mage. I do not quake and shiver at nursery rhymes.

“I’ll need you gentlemen to stand in the doorway while I set the ward,” she said. “Can you hold the lamp while Tervis handles my bag?”

“Yes, ma’am!” said Kervis. His grin was bright in the magelamp’s glow.

Meralda played the lamp upwards. There, not fifty steps away, was the notch in the ceiling that held the door to the Wizard’s Flat.

“I do believe it gets taller each time,” she said.

“Don’t say that,” said Tervis. “Ma’am,” he added, quickly. “Meaning no disrespect—”

“I know,” Meralda said. Twenty paces. “You’ve done well, this climb.”

Tervis sighed. “I practiced,” he said, matter-of-factly.

Ten paces. “How,” asked Meralda, “did you practice?”

“Well,” said Tervis. “There’s a big old iron oak, just outside the barracks—”

Meralda looked over her shoulder. “Guardsman,” she said. “You are not about to tell me you have taken to climbing iron oaks as practice at ascending the Tower, are you?”

Tervis’ gaze fell to his boots.

“Don’t do that,” said Meralda, with a glare at Kervis, whose wide-eyed look of innocence was not entirely convincing. “Ever again. That’s an order, from a member in full of the court of Tirlin. Is that clear?”

Tervis looked up and nodded, relief plain on his face.

Meralda turned, and was at the door.

Men,
she thought. She shoved the key into the lock and prepared to push against the door, but it opened easily, gentle as a whisper.

Daylight streamed through. Meralda squinted and stepped into the flat before turning to face the Bellringers.

Both stood leaning into the sunlight, smiles on their face behind their upheld hands.

“Bright,” said Tervis.

“Lovely and bright,” said Kervis. He squinted at Meralda, laid his crossbow carefully down on the floor just inside the flat, and held out his hand. “I can take the lamp now, if you’d like,” he said.

Meralda smiled and put it into his hand.

He took it gently, like the dented brass cylinder was made of flower petals and spider webs. “Oooh,” he said, playing the light slowly about. “Magic.”

Tervis stepped past, Meralda’s bag held forth. “Here you are, Mage,” he said. “What do I do now?”

“Just open the bag, and hold it off the floor, if you will,” said Meralda. “This will only take a moment, I’ll set the ward, and then we can go.”

Tervis nodded, and unfastened the bag’s three leather straps. “Here you are,” he said.

Meralda wiped the sweat from her palms on her skirts and reached inside. She withdrew a fist-sized glass sphere, which rolled on its axis in a burnished copper cage, and a neatly folded bath towel.

Tervis lifted an eyebrow at the towel.

Meralda stifled a laugh, and took the globe and towel to the far wall of the flat. She laid the towel at the edge of the floor, took the globe in her right hand, spoke a word, and touched the copper cage gently to the Tower wall.

The spell enveloping the globe latched to the Tower.

“Watch,” said Meralda. She took her hand away.

The globe stuck to the wall, spinning like a top, waist-high above the folded towel.

Tervis stared. Kervis glanced at the globe, shrugged and went back to playing the magelamp about the darkened stairs.

Meralda counted. The spell remained latched for a full count of twenty before it lost hold of the Tower and the globe fell onto the towel.

Meralda scooped up both gently. Faint wisps of fog rose from the glass, and ice coated its surface.

“Did it, um, work?” asked Tervis.

“Oh, it worked,” said Meralda. “Now I take the globe back to the laboratory, and say the other half of the word. It will spin again, backwards this time, for the exact amount of time we just saw. I’ll measure the interval precisely and then I’ll know the Tower’s latching coefficient.”

Meralda folded the towel over the globe as she walked, and Tervis took a single step to meet her. She stowed the latching ball, bade Tervis to seal her bag, and then warned the Bellringers to stand at the door.

“It’s only a minor ward spell,” she said, as she moved to stand at the center of the flat. “It will allow me to enter the flat and dispel it. Once cast, no one else will be able to pass that door without breaking the ward.”

“What happens if they try?” asked Kervis.

Meralda smiled. “Wrack and blast,” she said, though she doubted either Bellringer would know a verse from Ovid. “Fury and flame and fie, fools, fie.”

Meralda drew the ward wand from her pocket, raised it, and spoke the word.

The wand went cold. Meralda put it back in her pocket, and walked toward the door, already dreading the long, dark descent. Behind her, the unlatched ward began its lazy orbit of the room.

Then, with only the faintest and briefest of hissings, the ward spell massed, leaped, and exploded, two short paces from Meralda’s back.

The flat rang with a thunder-clap that echoed up and down the Tower. Meralda fell, arms outstretched, half-blinded by the reflection of the flash off the rounded walls. She saw Kervis thrown backward toward the stair, saw the magelamp spin out of his grasp. Tervis whirled, one hand on the door frame, the other straining to reach his twin’s pant leg. Meralda could see that Tervis was shouting, but his cry was lost amid the echoing roar.

And then the doorway was empty. Empty and dark, though the light from Meralda’s magelamp, which spun as it fell, flashed twice across the dark before fading and dying.

“No!” shouted Meralda, though she could barely hear her voice above the ringing in her ears. She sprang to her feet and raced for the door, blinking past the bright haze that obscured her vision and the spots that danced before her eyes.

“Tervis!” she shouted. “Kervis!”

Meralda’s right foot struck her bag, and she stumbled, and in that instant Tervis came diving through the doorway, dragging Kervis by his uniform collar.

“Behind you, Mage!” cried a Bellringer, and with horror Meralda realized Kervis had snatched up the Oldmark and dropped to one knee. “He’s behind you!”

Meralda whirled, praying that Kervis had better sense than to actually loose a crossbow bolt in a space as small as the flat.

Meralda’s eyes watered, and ghostly afterimages of the door and Tervis’ mad lunge wavered and spun across her vision, but the flat before her was empty.

Except, just for an instant, a bunched, small shadow did seem to dart past the east-facing window, on the far side of the flat. Meralda blinked, and it was gone, leaving her with the vague impression that a bird might have flown past outside.

The last echoes died.

“No one is behind me,” said Meralda, quickly. “We’re alone. Put away the crossbow, Kervis. The only thing you’ll shoot here are mages and guardsmen.”

“There was a man behind you,” said Kervis. Meralda noted with relief that Tervis forced the crossbow down with the palm of his hand. “I saw him!”

“I saw something too, ma’am,” said Tervis. His voice shook, and his eyes darted about the flat. “Not sure it was a man, but it was there.” His hand went to his sword hilt, and he drew it swiftly, as though he had only just remembered he was armed. “It can’t have gotten out.”

Meralda lifted her hand. “Listen to me,” she said. The skin on the back of her neck began to tingle and itch, as though sunburnt, and the faint odor of singed hair began to waft through the room. “Something broke the ward, yes. But it could have been an old Tower spellwork, or a fault within the ward itself. What you saw was probably the ward uncoiling.”

“If a ward spell uncoiling looks like a robe on a wall hook, then that’s what I saw, ma’am.” said Tervis. “Tall black robe with nothing in it.” The boy’s eyes met hers, and after a moment Meralda shook her head.