Текст книги "All the Paths of Shadow"

Автор книги: Frank Tuttle

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Текущая страница: 14 (всего у книги 23 страниц)

“Aren’t you going to ask me why we’ve come now, after all those years of waiting and watching from afar?”

“All right,” said Meralda, and she recalled the time, long ago, when she’d first seen a drawing of a Hang five-master while Shingvere waggled his finger in her face. “ Mark my words,”she heard the Eryan say, again. “They’re up to no bloody good.”

“Tell me why you came,” said Meralda. “Tell me how long you’ve been watching us. And then tell me why.”

Donchen nodded. “As you wish,” he said. “First, a bit of history, if you don’t mind.”

Meralda nodded, struggling to keep her face impassive.

“Oh, not at all,” she said. “Go on.”

Donchen clasped his hands behind his back. Just like a schoolmaster,thought Meralda as Donchen began, once again, to walk.

“The date was 640, as you number years,” he said. “My land was at peace, but the Emperor? Well, the Emperor went mad, one day.”

Meralda indicated a row of shelves to her right, and Donchen proceeded down it, his eyes darting from this to that as he spoke.

“He looked upon our land, and saw that it was his, as far as his eye could see,” said Donchen. “But it occurred to him that there was plenty he could not see, and that made him think. And we all know how dangerous it is when monarchs begin to think, do we not?”

Meralda laughed. “We do,” she said. The glass and silver eyes of Movan’s Talking Head swiveled slowly around to fix on Donchen, and he leaned close for a better look.

“It occurred to this mad emperor, whose name was Sosang, that his mastery of the world was incomplete,” said Donchen. “Sosang called together his ministers and bade them tell him how he might bring the farthest shores closer, that he might rule all, as was his right.”

Movan’s Head lifted a silver eyebrow, and Donchen’s eyes went wide.

“One of Sosang’s advisors whispered to another. ‘Does he think he can cast a rope about the world, and draw it to him?’ asked this man.” Donchen smiled at Movan’s Head, and it smiled back, and Donchen laughed. “Sosang, of course, heard this whisper. And, being mad, he took it not as a criticism, but as a rare fine idea.”

Meralda tilted her head. “Stretch a rope around the world?” she asked. “Why?”

“So you can hold either end and pull, of course,” replied Donchen.

Meralda frowned. I’m surprised Yvin hasn’t asked for that,she thought. It might well be true.

“Emperor Sosang was mad, but not forgetful,” said Donchen, moving away from Movan’s Head and continuing his stroll down the ranks of mageworks. “From that moment on, the resources of my land and my people were turned to one goal. We worked to stretch a rope around the world, so that a mad-eyed king might pull the horizons closer.” Donchen shrugged and shook his head. “What an awful waste.”

Meralda cast a warning frown at an unnamed glass cylinder that held a writhing bolt of bright white lightning. It tended to nip at passers-by. And now is not the time,intoned Meralda silently.

The lightning dimmed, and its writhing grew less frantic.

“Nineteen years passed,” said Donchen. “Two vessels were built. Monstrous vessels, far larger than anything built before, or since. The very first of the Great Sea ships. Each was large enough to carry one of the five-masters docked by your wharfs as a lifeboat.” Donchen sidled past the jar of lightning with a wry smile. “Of course, they built them inland, another of mad emperor Sosang’s suggestions, and it took another eight years to get either one of them to a coast,” he said. “But this at least gave the rope-makers a head start.”

Meralda tilted her head. “You mean they actually tried to make a rope long enough to cross the Great Sea?”

Donchen met Meralda’s eyes. “They had no choice, Thaumaturge. None at all. Whole provinces were planted with hemp. Two enormous cities sprang up, one on each coast, at the places from which Sosang decreed the ships should set sail. Day and night, they wove ropes, ready to pay out the line on turning wheels so large each was visible from nearly a mile away.”

“Your kings have considerable power,” she said, thinking the most a mad Tirlish king was ever able to accomplish was the line of dancing gargoyles atop the park wall.

Donchen smiled. “We are an obedient people,” he said. “To a fault, at times, as you would say.”

Meralda shook her head. “And these ships?” she asked. “What became of them?”

Donchen shrugged. “Oh, they were crewed with the sons of noble houses,” he said. “Again, at the whim of the Emperor, who bestowed it as an honor. The crews, being sane, if overly obedient, considered themselves doomed and bade their families farewell.”

“The day came for departure,” said Donchen. “And so they set sail, vanishing from sight as they dragged their ropes behind. One went west, the other east, and soon the only evidence of their leaving was the slow, steady turning of the monstrous wheels on the shore.”

Donchen had begun to walk again, and the pair quickly reached the end of the row of shelves. Ahead of them now lay the shadowed rear of the laboratory, where larger mageworks were stored. There, tarps stretched across hulking frames of wood or dark iron, and all was silent and shadowed and still.

Meralda halted at the end of the shelf, and motioned Donchen toward the right.

“And did one of these vessels reach the Realms?” she asked.

Donchen entered the next rank of shelves and nodded. “Indeed,” he said. “But only after three years of sailing. Three years of drifting, actually. Mad kings make poor sailors, as the saying goes. The ship couldn’t tack, dragging such an enormous weight. After a time, both ship and rope were simply dragged along on the current, and the captain struck his sails and gave up.”

Meralda walked and nodded. Wait until Shingvere hears this,she thought.

“There was a storm, and the rope was torn away, and lost,” said Donchen. “The captain sailed and searched for the rope, determined to fulfill his charge, fearful that if the rope wheels stopped, his family would suffer Sosang’s mad wrath. But the captain never found the rope, and soon another storm cast the vessel upon a reef, and tore it apart,” said Donchen. “One sailor clung to a floating door, and I imagine you can guess the rest.”

“He was cast up on an Eryan beach?” asked Meralda.

“A bit farther south, but correct in essence,” said Donchen. He leaned down and peered into the eyepiece of Delby’s Far-Seeing Glass, and laughed when he was presented with a bird’s eye view of his own backside. “Our castaway sailor awoke to find himself in the bed of a Kiltish fisherman.”

Meralda went wide-eyed. “Kilt is only forty miles south of here,” she said.

Donchen nodded, and continued his stroll. “I know,” he said. “Charming place.”

“Is it,” said Meralda, blithely.

“The sailor was afraid, at first,” continued Donchen. “As he recovered, he realized he was in a foreign land. This was a new concept, for him. How would he be treated? Would he be held prisoner, or cast into the wilderness?” Donchen shrugged. “He didn’t know. Time passed. He healed, learned a bit of Kingdom, rose from his bed. And found that, after a time, he was welcome among the fisher folk.”

Meralda slowed. “How do you know this?” she said. “If the ship was lost but for him, how did word get back to your people?”

Donchen shrugged. “Our sailor settled down,” he said. “Married, even. Had children.”

Meralda halted.

“Yes, that’s right,” said Donchen. “All those black-haired, small-framed fishermen? My cousins, many times removed.” Donchen chuckled. “The Hang have always been closer than anyone thought.”

Meralda heard Mug whistle softly. She suspected Donchen heard as well, but if so he pretended not to notice.

I’d whistle myself, if it weren’t impolite,she thought. Centuries of watching the distant horizon, while the fisher folk laughed and went about their business.

“Children aside, though, the tale is not yet done,” said Donchen. “You see, while the ships were at sea, mad Sosang died. Messily, I’m afraid, by means of a sack of serpents and a bottle of poison, proving that he was King of Death as well as life.”

Meralda lifted an eyebrow, but was silent.

“The mad king dead, the families of the nobles aboard the two doomed vessels set forth to rescue their fathers and their sons,” said Donchen. “They built ships, crewed them with wizards, and set sail from the rope-weaver cities, just as the big ships had. And they searched. Searched for years. Forty years, in fact.”

“Forty years?” said Meralda, unable to hide the disbelief in her voice.

“Oh, they weren’t continually at sea for forty years,” said Donchen. “Five years was the longest single voyage.” He saw the confusion on Meralda’s face, and smiled in sudden comprehension. “Ah,” he said. “All our vessels can make fresh water from salt. And the original Great Sea rope haulers could grow their own food, as well. So it was feared that the great ships might lie, becalmed, with the crew helpless, but very much alive.” said Donchen. “Also, the rescue ships did not merely search at random. Each of the original sailors wore a chosong. A chosongis a small medallion, which houses a finding charm specifically designed and secretly crafted against the day the mad king might reign no more.”

“Fresh water from salt?” asked Meralda. “How?”

“The process is very similar to that by which your guilds extract lifting gas from ordinary air,” explained Donchen. “We carry a number of spare devices. I’ll have one sent round for your inspection, if you like.”

Meralda nodded. Hang magic, at last. And one that might extend the cruising range of our own airships tenfold, if I can work out how it functions.

Donchen halted before Finnick’s Second Lifting Plate and watched the pair of spectacles suspended in the air above it bob and turn. “One by one, these new ships searched out the rope-hauler chosongs,” he said. “And, one by one, they found them, all lying on the bottom of the sea. All save one, and the wizards pointed west, and one ship sailed after,” he said. “On and on they sailed, until one day in late summer of your year 714, a Great Sea five-master dropped anchor off a beach near Kilt,” he said. “The awestruck wizards claimed the very last chosongwas near. And it was. Still around the neck of their long lost countryman, who sat mending a net in the shade while his grandchildren played at his feet.”

“I imagine he was shocked,” said Meralda.

Donchen laughed. “He set his dogs upon his rescuers,” he said. “And would have taken a stick to them, as well, had his sons not rushed from their boats and stayed his hand.” Donchen shook his head. “Everything the old sailor said was dutifully recorded by the ship’s scribe,” he said. “He used a variety of colorful terms, but basically he’d had enough of mad kings and doomed quests and, most especially, he’d had quite enough of the Great Sea. ‘I am home,’ he said. ‘This is the happy land, and I am home.’”

“The captain of the five-master explained to this man that his house was minor no more, and that as the eldest of his house he was, by rights, the rough equivalent of a duke. This caused the old man to throw his stick at the captain, and once again call for his dogs. ‘Hear this, then,’ he said, as his sons held him back. ‘I tell you to go. I tell you to pass the rule of my house on to the eldest of my nephews and give him my blessing and leave me, my sons, and these people alone’.”

“And they did?” asked Meralda.

“They did indeed,” said Donchen. “Are we not, after all, an obedient people?”

“And your ships stayed away until last week.”

“Well, not entirely,” said Donchen, his lips turning upward in the faintest of smiles. “Subsequent voyages mapped the entire Great Sea, and, of course, all your coasts. And I’m sure you’ve read accounts of the dozen or so brief diplomatic landings, which were meant only to establish that the Hang mean no harm.” Donchen lifted an eyebrow, and put his finger to his chin as though in deep contemplation. “And we may have made a few other landings, as well. All to satisfy the curiosity of various naturalists, I assure you. Always in uninhabited areas, and only in the pursuit of science.”

Meralda lifted an eyebrow. “And yet you’ve learned our language and our customs,” she said. “How very perceptive of your naturalists.”

Donchen laughed. “Of late, I confess, our landings have grown more direct,” he said. “But out of necessity, not a desire for mischief.”

Meralda started walking again. “What sort of necessity, Donchen?” she asked. “Since we’re trading state secrets,” she added.

“Two reasons,” said Donchen. “First, because contact is now inevitable. The Great Sea is no longer wide enough to prevent your airships from completing the journey.”

Meralda frowned. “We’ve tried,” she said. “The Yoreland-”

“Was within a few days of sighting land,” said Donchen, gently. “Had they not turned back, they would have seen the coast. Had they come down for one last look at the sea, they’d have seen driftwood. Had they been paying attention to the sky, they’d have seen gulls.” Donchen shrugged. “Had they not been so weary, Thaumaturge, you would not be the only Tirlish woman in the world to know what you know.” He smiled. “But I would have missed telling you,” he said.

Meralda bit her lip. “The king doesn’t know all this?”

“He knows the important parts,” said Donchen. “But he doesn’t know that I grew up reading the Postand the Times, or that I’m about to give you this.”

He reached inside his shirt, and withdrew a piece of paper. “Even your king has not seen it.”

Meralda made herself look away from the paper, and straight into Donchen’s grey eyes. “What is it?”

“The world, of course,” said Donchen. “All of it.”

Meralda took the paper.

“I should go now,” said Donchen. “I’m sure you have things to think about.”

The paper in her hands was strange. It was brilliant white, thin, yet stiff and smooth to the touch. Faintly, Meralda could see the outlines of what might be part of a map, and her heart began to race.

The world. All of it. At last.

“All the notations and measures are in New Kingdom,” said Donchen. “And I’ll be happy to supply you with a whole book of maps, later, if you wish.” He made a small bow. “But for tonight, I hope this will suffice.”

“It will,” said Meralda, and her voice nearly caught in her throat.

Donchen turned, casting his gaze down the aisle of glittering mageworks. “Is the door that way?” he asked.

Meralda nodded. “One last question,” she asked.

Donchen turned back to her.

“Anything, Thaumaturge,” he said.

“Were you the man who appeared in the palace and asked Yvin for permission to bring your ships into the harbor?”

Donchen’s half-smile vanished. “I was not,” he said. “Nor is that man among our party.”

Meralda began to speak, but Donchen held up his hand. “He was probably Hang, yes,” he said. “And the formal request for passage and lodging is an ancient tradition among our Houses. But I assure you that no one of the House of Que-long would have dared such an act, in the palace of your king.” He bowed. “That is another reason we have come,” he said. “For now that contact is inevitable, it seems there are those from both our shores who would see our peoples spend the next hundred years glaring suspiciously at each other from across the Great Sea.”

From both our shores?Meralda lowered the map.

“The Vonats,” she said.

“I believe so,” said Donchen. “And a certain small number of my people.”

Meralda gaped. “The Accords,” she said, biting back mention of the strange spells in the palace and the disappearance of the Tears.

“Precisely,” said Donchen. “Destroy the Accords. Sow discord and mistrust. Provoke hostility and suspicion.” His half-smile vanished. “We stand at a crossing of ways, Thaumaturge,” he said. “Willing or not, we will write our own history, in these next few weeks. It is my wish to avoid including the terms warfare and bloodshed.”

Meralda nodded absently in agreement, and looked again at the folded paper in her hands. “And so you’ve decided to trust me,” she said. “Knowing that I might go immediately to the king, or the papers, or both.”

Donchen shrugged. “That is for you to decide, Thaumaturge. If you choose such a thing, I am undone, but that is your choice.” He bowed, and when he rose his smile was back, and his eyes were merry. “But I must go, before friend Cook misses his serving cart. Do give my regards to the Post.”

“I shall do no such thing, and you know it,” said Meralda, unable to frown at Donchen’s smiling face. Meralda shook her head and sighed in exasperation. “Though it’s lucky for you Mage Fromarch isn’t still the thaumaturge in Tirlin.”

“Indeed,” said Donchen, as he backed the last few steps out of the aisle. “I am most fortunate. Good evening, Thaumaturge, and thank you for your company.”

And then he turned, and walked away. After a moment, the serving cart wheels squeaked, and Meralda heard the laboratory doors open, Donchen spoke to the Bellringers, and then footsteps came into the laboratory.

“Thaumaturge?” said Tervis. “Thaumaturge, where are you?”

“I’m here,” said Meralda, striding forward, out of the aisle. “I’m all right, Guardsman,” she said.

Tervis was just inside the laboratory, one hand still on the door.

“You can come in,” said Meralda. “I’ve set no wards or guard spells.”

Tervis let the door shut. “Just, um, checking, ma’am,” he said. “Mr. Donchen just left, and we didn’t see you.”

Meralda sought out her desk, shoved aside her refracting spell papers, and pulled back her chair.

“Is that what I think it is?” said Mug, all his eyes open and straining.

“It is,” said Meralda. She sat, then turned to face Tervis.

“Coffee, please,” she said. “A pot.”

“Yes, ma’am,” said Tervis. He wiped his chin with his sleeve. “Not bad grub, whatever it was.”

Meralda smiled. “No,” she said. “It wasn’t.”

And then she unfolded the map, and Mug wordlessly swung all his eyes to bear on it, and they looked in awe upon the world.

Chapter Twelve

Meralda didn’t take to her bed until two of the clock, and even then she tossed and turned and wrestled with the sheets. Her wonder at seeing the world on Donchen’s map was giving way to a niggling whisper of fear. The Realms were so tiny. Small and alone on the wide Great Sea, and the land of the Hang, once so far away, was nearer now, and so much bigger.

Indeed, Donchen’s homeland dwarfed the Realms. Hours after putting the map away, Meralda could still see it in her mind’s eye. Especially the set of drawings which represented the world as a globe, as if they had taken a child’s kick ball and drew all the lands upon it. The Realms were a fingertip-sized dot on one half of the ball, alone in the Great Sea. But turn the ball around to the other side, and the land of the Hang occupied half of the hemisphere, with a spray of islands running nearly to each pole from both the north and the south.

Half a dozen of these islands were at least equal in size to the Realms.

Down on the street, a cab rattled past, and a man who must have been perched atop it was bellowing out a rude tavern song. Meralda leaped from her bed with an Angis-word, stamped over to the half-open window, and was about to shout down at the hoarse-voiced reveler when Mrs. Whitlonk’s window slammed open and without a word or a warning the elderly lady hurled a flowerpot down toward the cab.

The pot smashed on the cobblestones just behind the open carriage, the driver snapped his reins, and the singer fell over backwards into the carriage bed to gales of laughter from his fellows. The carriage sped away, and in a moment the street was quiet.

Mrs. Whitlonk’s window closed with a gentle click, and Meralda laughed, and suddenly weariness swept over her.

And then, at last, she slept.

Even in her dreams, Hang place names ran sing-song through her mind. Shang-lo. Ping-loc. The great river Yang, the plains of Hi, the vast inland sea Phong May. But, perhaps strangest of all, Donchen’s map labeled the Realms as “The Happy Land”.

The Happy Land? Here?

But despite the dreams, she slept until the five-twenty trolley rattled past, bell clanging. And after that, she slept again until the sun rose, and even then she buried her face in her pillow and slept until Mug woke her with the blasting sound of off-key trumpets and the shouting voice of the king.

Meralda rose, found a pair of slippers and her robe, and stumbled into the kitchen.

“Keeping wizard’s hours, I see,” said Mug. “The lads will be here at any moment.”

Meralda glared. “Is that your way of telling me I’m a fright?”

“Merely passing the time with idle pleasantries, mistress,” said Mug, casting all his eyes toward the ceiling in mock disdain. “I thought to refrain from discussions of maps and mysterious foreigners until you’ve had your coffee, a good frown, and a brisk round of pacing about the table.”

Meralda bit back a response and fumbled with the lid of her coffee urn.

“Do we return to the Tower today, mistress?” asked Mug.

Meralda nodded, filled her coffee pot, set it to boil on the stove, and sat. “Back to the flat,” she said, through a yawn. “With the new detector. I’ll hang the shadow latch afterward.”

“Unless the spooks protest,” said Mug. Meralda glared through tangled hair, and Mug looked away.

“I’ll go with you, of course,” he said. “One of the lads can take me.”

Meralda frowned, but said nothing. Not even the Bellringers can go this time,she thought, but I’m too groggy to argue about it right now.

Instead, she cradled her face in her hands and listened to the coffee pot gurgle and pop.

“Have you decided to tell Yvin about your map?” asked Mug, after a moment.

“No. Not yet,” said Meralda, as the smell of fresh coffee wafted through the chilly kitchen. “Though later today I think I’ll track down Fromarch and Shingvere.”

“Ah,” said Mug, sagely. “A conspiracy of mages. Amusing, but historically linked with-what is the word?” Mug rolled his eyes, as if pondering. “Oh, yes,” he said. “Disaster.”

Meralda closed her eyes. For a moment, the sun was warm and bright.

But then a shadow passed, and the light in the kitchen dimmed, and Meralda imagined she was high and alone on the winding, silent stair.

Thunder smashed and rolled, muted, yet not silenced by the Tower’s thick walls. Meralda took off her high-necked black raincoat at the foot of the stair and wished in vain for a coat rack.

“Oh, bother,” she muttered, putting her magelamp on a chest-high stair tread before shaking her rain soaked coat out on the Tower floor. Half a dozen raincoats in my closet,she thought, and today of all days I grab the Farley and Hent.

As she spread out her coat on the floor, another peal of thunder rang out, so loud and lingering Meralda wondered if it had struck the Tower. Park lore claimed such a thing had never happened, and immediately Meralda wondered if this, too, was another indication that her shadow latch had damaged some ancient Tower spellwork.

“Nonsense,” she said aloud, as the echoes of the thunder clap died. “I can’t be blamed for everything.”

She picked up her magelamp and played it up and around the winding stair. The white flour she’d strewn about the first dozen steps was undisturbed. As if anyone could get past the guards,she thought. Still, it’s good to know I am truly alone, here in the dark.She imagined someone hiding in the shadows, high on the stair, and she pushed the thought quickly away.

Now is not the time,she chided herself, to start filling the dark with penny-novel villains.Especially when a large, ferocious ward spell is waiting to pounce on anyone but the Bellringers or myself.

“I’d best make sure it’s still waiting,” she said. And then she sang out a single word of the ward’s unlatching spell, heard an answering buzz from high above, and smiled, satisfied that the ward still roamed the dark, invisible, but vigilant.

“Well,” said Meralda. “Time to go.” Her echo died quickly, and she hefted her instrument bag with a groan. I’ll miss having Tervis carry this,she thought. But I can hardly trot back down the stair if I decide I need a fresh holdstone or a piece of one-way glass. And I certainly can’t have the Bellringers underfoot if yonder ward spell goes bad.

She slipped the bag strap over her shoulder and regarded the damp, cloth-wrapped bundle still dripping rainwater several feet away. Inside the cloth, the new weak spell detector sizzled faintly, sending tiny blue flashes of light twirling about like gnats.

Meralda groaned. “You should not be doing that,” she said. Her words echoed through the empty Tower. What could it possibly be detecting, this far from the flat? Or am I only now seeing the flashes because the Tower is so dark?

It occurred to her that the blanket she’d used to shield the detector from the rain was the same blanket that usually covered Goboy’s scrying mirror. The detector might be reacting to traces of spell energies latched to the blanket, faint though they must be. And if that were so, the tiny bursts of fire would cease when the blanket was removed.

Meralda grasped the damp blanket with her left hand and unwound it until the detector was freed.

The darting flashes stopped.

Meralda sighed in relief. “Marvelous,” she said, taking the detector up by its handle. “Ten to the minus twelfth, or I’m a cabaret dancer.”

Meralda spoke a word, and the dark half-globe of the detector began to glow, spilling a candle’s worth of soft blue light at her feet.

Meralda spoke the second word, and the light began to brighten. By the time she reached the flat, Meralda fully expected to be engulfed in a globe of light fully twenty feet in radius. But for now, she played the magelamp on the treads, shifted her bag on her shoulder, and set foot on the stair.

Her wet boots squeaked until the soles touched the flour, and then they went slick. Meralda climbed the first dozen steps carefully, then turned, scraped her toes and heels off on the edge of a tread, and listened to the thunder boom and crackle far above.

If Mug were there, he’d be saying things like “Nice day to meet ghosts,” or “good weather for spook hunting,”. And I’d sigh and tell him to shut up,thought Meralda. But in truth, isn’t that what I’m doing?

Meralda took a few careful steps upward. Satisfied that her boots were clean– it would be a shame to face the shade of Otrinvion, but then slip off the stair because of flour on my boots,she thought-she continued her trek toward the flat.

The detector’s globe of radiance slowly expanded, spitting tell-tale sparks and flashes as the sharply defined sphere of light brushed the treads of the stair, or the wall, or the corner of Meralda’s instrument bag. Meralda watched and smiled, heartened by the detector’s seeming eagerness to reach the flat. She knew until the spells were latched to the Tower the glows and sparks were nothing more than random trace events. Still, though, she was glad for any sign the spells were still active.

Scritch, scrape, scritch, scrape. Even the thunder wasn’t enough to mask the lonely sounds of Meralda’s slow progress up the winding stair. Determined to reach the halfway point to the first floor landing before changing her bag strap to the other shoulder, Meralda set her jaw and kept a steady pace.

The darkness grew about her, made even darker and much larger when the Tower floor vanished, and Meralda once again had the sensation of walking up the walls of the night. Shadows danced on the wall beside her, causing Meralda to force her eyes strictly upon the stairs ahead. “I will not be spooked,” she said aloud, her voice quickly lost to the grumbling thunder.

Still, shadows flew, and the whirls and flashes from the detector’s slowly expanding sphere of influence only added to their brief dances. Just like in the stories,thought Meralda. No wonder the mages of old preferred to leave the Tower alone.

A few had dared the dark, though. Meralda pulled down every musty old tome in the laboratory the night before, while her new illuminator spells were building, and for the first time she’d read through the books with an eye for tales of the darker shadow said to lurk in the heart of the Tower.

“We saw a Flitting shape,”wrote one mage, the ink of his scribbled words faded and flaking. “And Heard sudden cruel Laughter, and then our Spelles of Warding were broken, and Fire rolled Down the staire, and we fled, and None of the Guard will go back, not even for their Swords.”

Meralda guessed she was halfway to the first floor landing, and she halted long enough to shift the bag strap to her right shoulder. This put the bag on her right, and forced her to walk a step closer to the dark than before.

“We saw a Flitting shape,” she’d read, and the words now danced in her mind. “ Flitting Shape, wrathful Spectre, gruesome hollow Man.” Tale after tale, mage after mage. They’d all used different words to describe the Tower shade, but their stories were always the same.

The shade appears, ward spells go awry, guards and mages take to their heels. Meralda had found eight such encounters, spread out over four centuries, in less than an hour of reading. Immediately, she had seen a pattern of ghostly encounters emerge.

Mages with spells enter the Tower. What mages, with what spells, for what purpose-none of these things seemed to matter. Meralda suspected the mere act of hauling major unlatched spellworks into the Tower was enough to stir the shade.

And the shade, once stirred, soon appears. It allows itself to be seen, or be heard, or both. And then it attacks ward spells or spellworks, and in doing so it frightens the intruders away, generally for decades to come.

Meralda had wondered why Fromarch and Shingvere never saw the shade, until she realized that Fromarch had insisted they convey no unlatched spells within the Tower. The scrying mirrors, the lookabout staves, the sixteen pieces of Ovaro’s Image Capture Box, all were passive spellworks, firmly latched to mechanisms carried in from the laboratory. True, Fromarch had latched a few see-you spells to the Tower proper, which would have alerted them to any sneaky mortal intruders. But they had been tiny spells, hand cast, on the last days of their search. Perhaps,thought Meralda, hand cast spells simply aren’t worthy of the shade’s horrific attention.