All the Paths of Shadow (41 page)

Bird watching,
mused Meralda, as she cleared a place on her desk for her breakfast.
What are you up to, Donchen?

“Thank you for breakfast,” said Meralda. “Now then. I’m heading for the Tower at three bells. Both of you will now go get a few hours sleep.” She raised her hands at their protests. “Have the captain send up a pair of guards. That’s an order. I’ll lock the doors and set the wards. A dozen Vonats couldn’t get past both. Go.” She stabbed a bite of pancakes with her fork. “I’d better not see either of you until three of the clock.”

“Are you sure, Thaumaturge?”

Meralda glared. Kervis caught his brother’s elbow and led him out.

“Back to the Tower, is it?” said Mug.

“I’ve got enough of the shadow moving spellwork finished to latch it. It’ll give me an excuse to have a look at the Vonat spell, too.”

“It’ll also expose you to anyone out there with mischief on their mind,” said Mug.

Meralda swallowed and shrugged.
I won’t even mention that I’m going home to change and have a proper bath,
she thought. Mug would lose leaves.

“It has to be done.”

“So you’re nearly done with the shadow spell?”

“I’m taking quite a few shortcuts,” said Meralda. “I’ve halved the number of refractors. It won’t be as bright as day, but the king won’t be in deep shadow, either.”

“Ooo, Yvin will have a fit.”

“If he wishes.” Meralda put down her fork and found her coffee. “He can always ask for my robe back. Another night in this chair and I may give it to him anyway.”

“Now you sound like Fromarch.”

“Hush, Mug.”

“Now you really sound like Fromarch.”

Meralda shrugged and sipped coffee until her mind was clear again.

“You put a ribbon in your hair,” said Mug.

Meralda regarded the park from atop the nearly completed spectator’s bleachers which now lay full in the Tower’s long shadow.

The park was full. Two dozen dirt smeared Alons charged and bellowed and ran, and a crowd of several hundred spectators gathered about them, all hooting or jeering or shoving each other for a better look at the running mob of Alons. Food sellers wandered, hawking their wares in strident tones. Minstrels played and sang, often so close to one another their songs were little more than shouting matches.

“It’s a red ribbon,” added Mug. “In case anyone asks.”

“I know perfectly well what color it is. I did, after all, put it there. It’s just a ribbon. I often wear hair ribbons.”

“Seen Donchen yet?”

“I have no idea where he might be.”

“Well, keep looking, he’s bound to turn up.”

“I’m not looking!”

“No, of course not, you were just pointing your eyes toward the crowd, my mistake.”

Kervis came charging up the wooden stair. “Ma’am,” he began, breathless. “I told—the foreman—he’ll blow a whistle—when everyone is clear.”

Meralda smiled. “Thank you, Kervis. Please make sure no one ascends the stair after the whistle is blown.”

Kervis nodded. “Yes, ma’am.”

“I didn’t see Mr. Donchen, by the way.”

Mug snickered.

Meralda turned, and Kervis stamped away down the stairs.

“Mistress,” said Mug, all humor gone. “Look west. By the ice cream vendor. Tall man in a black hood.”

Meralda didn’t look. “Is it him?”

Mug’s eyes swiveled and bunched.

“Yes. Just standing there. Arms folded. Can’t see either of his hands.”

“He wouldn’t dare attack me openly here.”

“No, that would be rash.” Mug shook his leaves. “Sorry. No, I don’t think so either. But let’s get this done, mistress. I’d feel safer with a few feet of solid stone between me and Ugly, if you don’t mind.”

Meralda reached into her right pocket and withdrew the Hang magic detector. She opened it, and watched as the needle swung around to point south, toward the Hang ships still moored at the harbor.

She laid the device down. The needle never moved, and the rings never spun.

“Keep one eye on that, if you please.”

Mug aimed a bright blue eye at the dial.

From the base of the Tower, a whistle blew. Meralda could see a ring of curious workmen gather in the shade, mopping their brows and watching her. One waved.

“It’s time,” said Meralda. She found her long copper latch, broke the silver thread she’d strung through its open ends earlier, and spoke a long, soft word.

“Sight,” she whispered.

The Tower flared to life, now glowing with a flickering corona that clung to it like sheets of pale, bluish flames.

The copper tube grew warm in her hands. Meralda spoke the word that released the new latch, and the tube leaped in her hands as the first part of the shadow spell flew toward the Tower.

Even with her Sight, even knowing where to look and what to look for, Meralda couldn’t see any hint of the Tower’s subtle actions as it accepted the new spell and gently latched it in place.

If Humindorus Nam is watching,
thought Meralda,
let him spend the rest of his life wondering just how I managed to latch that.

The copper tube in her hand grew cool. The ends began to rime, and Meralda laid it down next to her notes.

“Ugly is leaving,” said Mug. “He try anything, mistress?”

“Not that I could tell.” Satisfied that the latch was firmly in place, Meralda let her sight fall. “Still, he walked all the way out here for some reason.”

“Probably just curious about the Tower,” said Mug. “I’d bet a pound of good mulch Shingvere and Fromarch aren’t far. Might have ruined his plans, if he had any.”

“Possibly.” Meralda began packing her bag with her various implements and her wind whipped notebook.

“Back to the flat?” asked Mug. His voice fell to a whisper. “Won’t you at least take the captain and a dozen guards, this time?”

Meralda shook her head. “Why? Tower means me no harm. There’s no ghost.”

“It’s not Tower I’m worried about. What if Ugly sneaks in, somehow? What if that’s his plan, to catch you on the stair alone?”

Meralda hefted her bag. “I won’t be alone.”

“Mistress, the lads mean well, and I’m sure they’d be handy in a fight against irate middle-schoolers, but this could turn deadly.”

“And if I summon the captain and a platoon of pikemen, what does that say about the Mage of Tirlin, Mug?”

“It says she’s surrounded by large men with sharp pointy things.”

“It tells the world I’m afraid. It tells the world I can’t go about without relying on soldiers. No, Mug. I’ll take the Bellringers, but no more.”

Mug flung his vines. “Can you at least tell if you-know-who and you-know-what are nearby?”

Meralda shrugged. “I have no idea. And I can’t wait until I do. Please, Mug, don’t worry.” Meralda grinned and patted her bag. “I’ve taken extra precautions.”

Mug grunted. “Well. I’ll just stay here and keep watch.”

Meralda patted his topmost leaves. “Thank you, Mug. I’ll be back soon. You’ll see.”

Meralda turned and mounted the stairs. The Bellringers looked up, squinting into the sun.

“To the Tower, ma’am?”

“To the Tower. Please make sure someone watches the stairs. I don’t want Mug disturbed.”

Kervis darted off, grabbing a pair of idling palace guards by their bright red shirts and ushering them toward the stairs.

Meralda waited until the bewildered guards were in place, and then she led the Bellringers on the short walk to the Tower.

The Tower was as dark as ever, as silent as ever, and as empty as ever.

Meralda felt none of the dread she’d come to associate with her previous trips up the winding stair, though.
Yes, I know I am being watched. Yes, I know the shadows hide an ancient and powerful being.

But Tower now has a name, of sorts, and I can’t feel threatened by him, even if he is the handiwork of Otrinvion the Black, himself.

Meralda smiled up at Kervis, whose wide-eyed gaze and sweaty face belied anything but calm. Tervis, too, was pale and wary, his hand continually darting to touch the hilt of his sword.

Meralda watched the shadows at the edge of her magelamp for any tell-tale sign of Nameless or Faceless. She listened between the scrape of boots on stone for any hint of wings. But she saw only darkness, and heard only echoes and silence.

Perhaps the staves are being discreet because of the Bellringers,
she thought.

Or perhaps they simply aren’t here at all.

The stair wound up and up and up, vanishing in the dark above and swallowed by the dark below. Meralda counted steps until she reached nine hundred and forty, and then she called the Bellringers to rest.

Both put their backs to the wall and eyed the shadows warily. Meralda fumbled with her bag and then withdrew a glass sphere held at the end of a long brass funnel by a net of faintly luminous gold wires.

She handed the magelamp to Tervis. “Hold this please,” she said. “This will only take a moment.”

Tervis played the light over Meralda and nodded wordlessly.

Meralda turned away from the Bellringers and forced herself to stare out into the chasm just beyond the tips of her boots.

The Vonat spell should have latched here,
she thought.
It should still be here, even though Tower has pulled its teeth.

Time to see just what Humindorus Nam had planned for the Accords.

“Sight,” said Meralda, closing her eyes. The emptiness before her seemed to pull at her, urging her closer to the edge, urging her to bend, to lean, to take that one simple step…

Meralda held the glass sphere aloft, and spoke another long word.

The Tower was flooded with a brief, sudden light.

In that light, Meralda’s Sight showed her a tangle of dark, harsh magic. Great parts of it still lay coiled, still under a strange tension, still ready to snap and lunge and strike, if only the right word was spoken aloud.

Meralda traced the comings and goings of the glowing structure before her.
Yes,
she thought,
I can see how Tower moved this, shifted that, forced this other to bend and come loose. But what of that helical component? Why does the whole thing wrap not just around itself, but inside itself, twice over?

“Mage?” asked Kervis, his words faint and hollow, as though spoken through a thick fog or a fresh snow.

Meralda raised her free hand for silence, and pushed her Sight deeper inside the Vonat spellwork.

But it isn’t all Vonat, is it,
she thought.
Certainly, some of it. But half is something new.

Something foreign
.

Meralda didn’t dare close her Sight long enough to consult Donchen’s magical pointer, but she knew the needle would still point to the ships.

Still, this is Hang. But what does it do?

Meralda urged the sphere to reveal more. The glass began to sag, and a drop of it fell to the stair, smoking and hissing.

Meralda pushed deeper. The formations inside the spellwork danced and spun, rolling and straightening, flashing suddenly from the Tower’s floor to the flat, like cold, bright lightning.

Lightning.

“Oh, my.”

“Ma’am?”

“Nothing.”

Lightning. Plain and simple. The word is spoken. The structure unfolds. The coils are released.

And then a ring of deadly, concentrated lightning springs from the Tower and falls into the park. Bolt after bolt, until the latch fails.

The hand holding the melting glass began to shake. How many would die? Dozens? Hundreds?

And I’d be blamed,
she realized.
He’d wait until I invoked the shadow moving spell. Make it appear as if a clumsy Tirlish mage—a woman, at that—accidentally called down death on the royal houses of all the Five Realms, and the Hang.

Wrecking the Accords. Sending the Hang home, perhaps forever. Leaving the realms distrustful and perhaps even vengeful against a devastated, kingless Tirlin.

All of that laid at my doorstep.

Meralda felt her teeth grinding, and forced her jaw to relax.
It’s not going to happen
, she said to herself.
The spell has been disabled. Oh, it looks formidable enough. But when the word is spoken, if it is spoken, the whole wretched mess will simply spin and thrash and fall apart.

Meralda took a deep breath, and dropped her Sight.

The glass globe sputtered and dripped. The heat of it warmed her hand, even from the end of the handle.

Kervis and Tervis regarded her with something like terror.

“Ma’am,” said Kervis. “Is everything…all right?”

“It is now. Forgive me, gentlemen. I assure you, all is well.”

The Bellringers nodded, their eyes still wide.

Meralda spoke another word. The globe ceased its glowing, and began to pop and crack as it suddenly cooled.

Meralda propped it carefully against the wall. The glass was so soft it flattened and deformed against the stone.

“I’ll just leave this here and pick it up on the way down. Remember where it is, and don’t trip over it later.”

The Bellringers chorused agreement. Meralda hefted her bag, and resumed her careful march back toward the flat, scowling at the dark all the way.

Sunlight spilled into the flat. Meralda and the Bellringers put their backs to the walls and sat, catching their breath.

“I’m not going to miss doing this one bit,” said Tervis, after a time.

“Oh, I don’t know, it’s fun after the first few thousand steps,” added Kervis with a sweaty grin.

Meralda laughed and rose.
One last thing to do,
she thought.
And the shadow spell will be in place at last.

I just hope there’s still a Tirlin in which to use it.

Meralda fumbled in her bag, found the pair of holdstones and the intricate device of brass and silver that would shape the refractors upon their release. She put the device in the center of the floor, spoke half the word that bound it to the latch, and watched as the cogged gears located at each of the compass points rotated precisely half a revolution each.