All the Paths of Shadow

by Frank Tuttle

  “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 Post and 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.

  The detector weighed heavy in Meralda’s hand. And here I go alone, she thought, to latch a major spellwork to the heart of the Tower itself.

  “Vonashon, empalos, endera.” Meralda recalled the words, and that awful face. Walk away. Good advice, it seems, she thought. I only wish I could. “Perhaps the guilds are hiring,” she muttered to the dark.

  The detector flashed suddenly, and Meralda started and gasped. But the light settled back to its normal steady cast, and Meralda took a deep breath and continued her climb.