All the Paths of Shadow (26 page)

The glass disks flickered and began to glow. Within a moment a light shone from the glass, bright as a magelamp and a soft, deep blue.

Hushed exclamations rose up from the hall. “Bah,” she heard Dorn Mukirk spit. “Why are we wasting our time with this foreigner’s party lamp?”

Meralda closed her eyes. “Sight,” she intoned, in a whisper. “Sight, Sight, Sight.”

And she opened her eyes, and the room was aglow.

Relief washed through her, and she let out her breath in a sigh.
To work,
she thought, resisting an impish urge to turn and wave at the corner.
Goboy’s mirror seems to look in from there,
she decided,
and Fromarch, Shingvere and Mug are surely watching this very moment.

Not until I find the Tears,
she thought.
Not until then.

“I’ll start with this wall,” she said, to Tervis. “I’ll need you to move the table back, if you will.”

The Bellringers nodded, and sprang for the table.

Meralda lifted the detector and followed. Once there, she put the detector’s flat side to the wall, let it latch, and watched the blue light shine as she moved along the stones.

“It’ll be there, ma’am,” said Tervis. “I know it will.”

Meralda nodded and swallowed. Sweat ran down her face, plastered her hair to her temples and the back of her neck. She wondered if Fromarch was pacing now, or if Mug was holding all his eyes in a bunch.

She’d covered three of the room’s four walls, and the floor, without so much as the faintest flicker. Now she was halfway done with the ceiling, and she knew, deep in her heart, that the light wasn’t going to darken no matter how slowly or carefully she moved it across the polished ironwood beams.

“Careful, ma’am,” whispered Tervis, who stood below her and held the chair. Meralda had been forced to use the chair, as the ceiling in the safe room was higher than she recalled, and her handle had proved too short. “You nearly stepped off, that time.”

Meralda nodded, and moved the detector until she could reach no further. “Let’s move the chair,” she said. “One more time ought to do it for the ceiling, and then we’ll check the safe.”

“Good idea,” said Tervis. Meralda put her hand on his shoulder as she stepped down from the chair, and felt that his uniform jacket was wet with sweat. “I was surprised when you didn’t start there,” he said, nodding toward the portrait of Tim and the safe behind it.

“Oh, I know I’ll find traces there,” she said.
Or, at least, I bloody well hope so.
“But if the spell passed through the walls before latching, I want to know where it came from, and I decided I’d need fresh Sight for that.”
And the spell must have passed through a wall,
she thought.
A wall or the ceiling or the floor, unless our scheming friend hid it months ago.

Tervis nodded, and a fat drop of sweat rolled down his nose.

It’s hotter than a furnace in here,
Meralda thought, wiping her own brow with her sleeve. The Alons must have every fireplace and cook stove in the east wing going full blast. Coincidence, or more Alon hospitality?

Meralda took another long breath of hot, still air. She heard a distant clock strike ten, and Red Mawb laughed to his fellows.

Tervis scooted the chair toward the wall.
Nothing,
Meralda thought, and frowned.
I’ve found nothing at all.

She pushed the thought aside.
Well, of course you haven’t,
she reasoned.
Even if the spell passed through the walls, it never latched to them. The safe will likely hold the only traces of the spell. The walls and the floor needed to be checked, of course, but only out of thoroughness. No, if the Tears do remain, they are in the one place we haven’t looked yet.

Meralda bit her lip, stepped into the chair again, and quickly finished checking the ceiling. The steady blue glow never wavered.

“Well,” said Meralda, forcing a smile and climbing down to the floor. “That’s done.”

Tervis frowned. “Nothing?”

“No traces of projected spellworks,” replied Meralda. Her chest tightened.
What if I’m wrong? What if the Tears aren’t here at all?

From beyond the doorway, a bevy of close-packed Alons watched, the wizard Red Mawb at the fore. Meralda met his eyes, saw in them a bemused, haughty sort of boredom.

“Is that bad?” asked Tervis.

Meralda looked away from Mawb. “It changes nothing,” she said, to Tervis. “The Tears are here, and we shall have them.”

And then she turned on her heel, walked to the portrait of Tim the Horsehead, and set her Sight upon it.

Nothing. Oh, she saw the usual eddies and swirls of radiance that hung about any surface, if one’s Sight were sensitive enough. But that was all. There was no trace, not the faintest, of the ordered patterns an old spellwork might leave behind. Meralda hadn’t brought her staff, simply because any spell too subtle to be Seen or found out by the Alon wizards wasn’t going to be found by her staff, either. But now she wished she had it, if only to hold something familiar.

“Here we go,” she whispered. Then she placed the detector firmly against the wall, just to the right of the portrait.

Right or wrong,
thought Meralda.
Now, we see.

After the slightest of hesitations the lighted disks went dark.

Tervis whooped and stamped his foot. “Well done!” cried Kervis.

“And not a head bone in the room,” added Tervis, under his breath but not so faintly that the wizards outside couldn’t hear. “Ma’am.”

Meralda smiled a wide, sweaty smile and propped herself against the wall with her free hand and imagined she could hear, faint but clear, the sound of cheering and clapping from her mages and from Mug, half a palace away.

She stepped back, mopped her brow, and moved the detector, letting the latch take hold once more. The blue light returned, but faint and flickering steadily.

“Good old Tirlish magic,” remarked Tervis, airily, and Meralda grinned.

Move, latch, test, move. In a few moments, Meralda saw that a spellwork had, indeed, been attached to the safe, and the wall about it. The spellwork’s footprint was circular, about four feet in diameter, with a pronounced notch running vertically above the safe.

And utterly invisible to Sight. Strain as she might, without the detector Meralda could see nothing at all, even though she knew what to look for, and where to look.
I’d have never found this with my staff,
she thought.
Not with my staff, not with two dozen staves and every mage in the Realms.

Her elation dimmed at the realization. This is not the work of a guild master or a rogue wizard or a renegade Alon necromancer.
No,
Meralda decided,
this is the work of a mage.
A mage with skills I’ve never seen.

Mumbling and jostling sounded from the hall.

Meralda bit her lower lip, reached up, and swung Tim’s portrait away from the safe. When she lifted the detector to the back of the canvas, the light flickered and went out, and Meralda smiled.
Yes,
she thought, following the faint traceries of light that billowed and swam in the shimmering blue glass.
This lot here. One end bound to the back of Tim’s portrait, the other end coiled like a spring. It pushed the portrait out before the safe door opened, and pulled it shut when the work was done.

She waved the detector toward the safe, which was still ajar, and the blue glasses went momentarily dark. Meralda latched to the safe door, and the glow returned, this time as a faint, rotating pattern of tiny criss-crossed lines.

Meralda frowned. Ordered, mobile traces? Of an old spell?

She reached out, opened the safe, and slowly pushed the detector inside.

The glow grew brighter, spun faster.

Meralda pushed farther.

The blue light began to beat, pulsing and ebbing like blows from a hammer, or a heart.

It’s still active,
thought Meralda.
An active spell, so subtle it’s too faint for Sight.

Meralda pulled in a breath, and willed her Sight deeper, farther, clearer. Memories of the exploding spellworks in the Gold Room rose, but after a moment’s observation in the glass Meralda decided this spell wasn’t preparing to strike, and she proceeded.

She fixed her mind upon the spell latched to the detector, saw it as a bright blue sphere cupped in a copper bowl. She pushed again, and her normal vision faded, and then she saw, just for an instant, a tangled skein of blue-lit spell traces, all spilling out of the wall safe like an explosion of Phendelit pasta noodles. There, at the back of the safe, she saw that the metal was lit by worm tracks of fire, and that at the center of the glow the metal was hollow.

She held her breath.
Sight,
she begged, and there, in the void, a glittering thing took shape.
Fat raindrops caught in a spider’s web,
thought Meralda, and her heart raced, and then her Sight went close and clear and the raindrops became pale diamonds and the web a delicate lattice of finely worked gold.

“The Tears,” said Meralda.
I was right,
she thought, elation rushing through her.
They’re here.

Now to get them free.

Meralda opened her eyes, and though she let her Sight recede a bit she could still see the tangled outlines of the foreign spell riding across the disks.

Meralda tried to follow the patterns, make sense of the turnings and the whirls and coils, but it was like trying to count raindrops as they fell.
What is this structure? And why would anyone cast a spell which linked large portions of the framework to itself?

“Ma’am,” said Tervis, from her side. “Ma’am, are you well?”

Meralda blinked. The blue glow from the detector pulsed faster now, as though the spell suspected it was under scrutiny and was growing troubled.

“Too late,” said Meralda, triumph in her voice. “I fooled you. Now I’ll beat you.”

“Ma’am?” said Tervis.

Meralda withdrew the detector. “The Tears are here,” she said, stepping back. She handed the detector to Tervis, mopped her face with her sleeve, and turned to Kervis. “Guardsman,” she said. “In my bag you’ll find a hammer, and a long chisel. Will you be so good as to take them up, and break out the back end of this safe?” She smiled and winked toward the corner.
Let the Alons,
she thought,
make of it what they will.
“I believe you’ll find a handful of trinkets, at yonder end.”

Kervis grinned, threw his helmet to the floor, and charged to her side. “Glad to,” he said. “I knew you’d have us home by supper.”

Meralda returned his smile and sought out the chair at the other end of the room.

Mawb and Dorn Mukirk now stood shoulder-to-shoulder in the doorway, glaring ferociously at Meralda when they weren’t muttering behind their palms or jabbing each other in the ribs with their elbows. Meralda ignored them, and sat.

“Careful, now,” she said, as Kervis placed the long steel spike on the back of the safe, and hefted the blunt-faced hammer in his right hand. “The metal is thin, and the cavity that holds the Tears is small. It wouldn’t do to hand our hosts their crown jewels in pieces,” she said.

Kervis nodded, set the chisel, and gave it a blow.

It rang, but nothing happened. “A bit harder, this time,” he said, and he struck, and Meralda heard from across the room a faint crunch and then a sharp ping as the tip of the chisel broke through one layer of oddly brittle steel, traveled a short distance, and then struck another.

Kervis withdrew the chisel, stuck his arm in the safe, and felt about. “You’re right, ma’am,” he said. “The back of the safe is all brittle. I think I can break it with my hand.”

Kervis set his face in a scowl, strained, and grunted. There came a faint snapping noise from within and Kervis’ eyes went wide. He smiled and pulled his arm out of the safe.

Meralda resisted the urge to stand. Tervis rushed to his brother’s side. A hush fell over the Alons, and Tervis stepped aside just in time for Meralda to see Kervis hold up the Tears in sweaty, grinning triumph.

Meralda stood, and returned his smile.
We’ve done it,
she thought.
I was right.

She looked upon the Tears, watched the diamonds sparkle in the dark safe room, marveled at the delicate skeleton of gold and silver that held the jewels in place. Then, in the hall, the gathered Alons erupted in a roar of shouts and bellows.

Dorn Mukirk produced his leg bone. “Thief!” he cried, brandishing it like a staff. “You brought them with you! Thief! Thief!”

The Alons roared. Meralda saw Ambassador Draunt lift his hands and shout, but his words were lost, and he stumbled back toward the doorway as a soldier shoved him hard in the chest.

“Liar!” bellowed Red Mawb. Kervis’ face went crimson. He took the Tears in his left hand, and drew his sword with his right.

Kervis looked toward Meralda, terror in his eyes. “Ma’am?” he asked.

Dorn Mukirk lifted his leg bone, and it began to glow. “Witch!” he shouted, spittle spraying from his lips. “Witch!”

The shouts from the crowded Alons muted, and there was a general shuffling away from the doorway. Dorn Mukirk, though, stood firm.

“Witch!” he bellowed.

Witch,
thought Meralda. She knew what the word meant to an Alon. It meant warty old crones, gathered about a cauldron, stirring the remains of babies into a thick gruel as part of some evil spell.

Witch.

The anger which had been welling up inside Meralda evaporated. She heard the shouts, but they went distant. She saw the shaking fists and the half-drawn swords, but they might as well have been on a stage, in a play, for all the threat they presented.

Even the two whistle blows, which rang out faint from the hall, brought with them no panic.

I’m smiling,
thought Meralda, amazed at the realization.
Smiling and calm and I’m walking steadily toward the door.