by Frank Tuttle
Her wands flashed. The pocket watch rose, hovering above her hand, and just for an instant Meralda dared turn the least portion of her Sight upon it.
“Mistress!” Mug said after a moment. “Such language!”
“Sorry,” Meralda said. She closed her eyes, let her Sight fall away, and caught the pocket watch before it fell.
“Is it real?” asked Mug.
“It is. I’m stumped. This cannot be happening, yet it is.”
Mug sighed. “I hate to ask this, Mistress, but how did Donchen come to land in your water closet?”
Meralda glared.
“I’m not trying to be abrasive,” Mug said. “You wished to see him, didn’t you?”
“I’ve wished to see him since we left Tirlin,” Meralda said. “You’re just being cruel.”
“I’m trying to make a point,” Mug said. “Why must you be so stubborn?”
“And just how did Donchen acquire a post aboard in the first place?” asked Meralda. “It’s almost as if he had help. Help, perhaps, from a pair of elderly meddlers and a certain verbose dandyleaf plant.”
“Now who’s being cruel?” asked Mug. “I was as surprised to see Donchen flee from your bathtub as you were!”
Tervis tapped on the door. “Begging your pardon, Mage, but we hear voices coming up the stairs.”
Meralda began replacing the holdstones on their racks and the discharged wands in their copper cases. Mug flew to the door.
“Stall them,” he said. “Tell them Mistress is working with a volume of lifting gas.”
A moment later, Mug could hear muffled voices and soft laughter.
He flew to Meralda’s side. “What about the mannequin and the basket?” he asked.
Meralda shrugged, dumped the contents of the basket in a corner, and propped the mannequin next to the stack of odds and ends.
“We’ll leave them and let them wonder,” she said. “Let’s go.”
She opened the door, smiling at the pair of Air Corps mechanics who stood waiting nervously outside.
“Good morning, Mage.” The youngest one doffed his cap and smiled. “Is everything in order, ma’am?”
“Quite,” Meralda said, handing Kervis the basket. “We must be going. Good day.”
“Keep us aloft,” Mug said, bobbing and weaving. “That’s an order!”
Meralda hurried for the stairs, hoping nothing appeared before she was out of sight.
* * *
Back in her cabin, Meralda sipped from one of the six cups of tea that had so far appeared on her desk. This one is very nice, she thought. It’s light and tangy, with just a hint of something special–lemon?
Mug napped beside her, his leaves spread to catch the late afternoon sun pouring in through Goboy’s Glass. Among the many items which had appeared that afternoon were a pair of dark spectacles, which Meralda donned so that Mug might enjoy a snack of sunlight.
He had been looking a bit wilted of late. Poor dear. She had been neglecting his watering schedule.
“That’s nice,” Mug said, dreamily. “Just one more spade of mulch.”
She glanced at her clock and sighed. In five hours she’d be meeting Donchen, and they’d be committing a number of state crimes as they snuck into the Vonat’s cabin for a talk.
Meralda considered Mug’s comment about her wishing for Donchen. “Nonsense,” she muttered. “One cannot simply wish grown men into existence over a bathtub. Magical effects require magical causes, and I obviously did no magic.”
But still…
He had appeared the moment she spoke his name. She wished it. It happened.
Meralda shook her head. “Coincidence.” Tim the Horsehead, String the Stormbringer, even Otrinvion the Black–they were masters of magical law, but not a one of them ever broke it.
Because it can’t be broken. The fundamental makeup of creation won’t allow it.
“I would like a cup of apple cider,” whispered Meralda. “Hot, with two lumps of sugar, in a bright red cup, right now.”
She waited, but nothing happened.
“Foolishness,” she said. Mug’s leaves stirred.
“Hush,” Meralda said, softly. “Go back to sleep. You were dreaming.”
“Tell the horse to wait,” muttered Mug. “I’m making a hat for my cheese.”
Meralda heard a knock.
She took a careful step toward her cabin’s plain single door before stopping dead in her tracks, her right foot coming down with a crunch on a shallow bowl of popcorn.
Her cabin door was gone. So was the bulkhead. In its place, the great old Laboratory doors stood, and a portion of the Palace wall.
“Mug,” Meralda said. “Wake up. I’ve gone mad.”
The knock was repeated. Mug stirred and mumbled, but did not wake.
Meralda blinked and rubbed her eyes, but the Laboratory doors remained. The doors appeared to be scaled down, as were the stones of the Palace wall, or perhaps seen from a greater distance than that allowed by the confines of Meralda’s cabin.
The knock was repeated. “You really should open the doors,” said a familiar voice from beyond the soot-stained oak. “We’ve come a very long way to see you, Mage Ovis.”
“Tim?” Meralda asked. “Now I know I am mad.”
“It’s Timea, as you bloody well know, and I’m the one who’s going to be mad if you don’t open these doors and talk to us,” replied the voice. “You’re not dreaming. You’ve not gone daft. It’s magic, perhaps you’ve heard of it. If not, perhaps we can offer you a pamphlet on the subject?”
“My groomsmen ride the toads,” Mug said, in his sleep. “Sack the entire kitchen staff, won’t you?”
Meralda made her way to the doors. As she walked, they rose up, taking on their proper size. “Or is it I who am diminishing?” Meralda said, aloud.
“A little of both,” replied Timea. The floor beneath Meralda’s feet changed from the cluttered white deck of her cabin, becoming the smooth worn flagstones of the hall before the Laboratory.
Still a dozen steps away, Meralda looked back. Mug still slept on her desk, and her cabin remained, but it was smaller, and seemed very distant, though she knew she hadn’t walked such a trek.
Meralda’s ears popped, and she heard voices. Voices and footsteps and laughter, and she knew, beyond any doubt, that she walked in the Palace again. >From the smells, it was just past lunch, and Monday, which meant chicken.
A harried waitress darted past Meralda, nearly bowling her over. Meralda leaped quickly aside and spoke, but the girl hurried on, as if she hadn’t seen.
Meralda put her hands on the great brass latch and turned it, and the Laboratory doors opened to her with the familiar well-oiled swing of their hinges.
Meralda spoke the ward word out of habit, and stepped quickly inside.
“Even dead, I never get tired of this place,” said Tim—Timea, really—the Horsehead, who was seated in Meralda’s chair with her decidedly undainty boots propped on Meralda’s desk. “I see you’ve kept the place in good shape. Well, my portrait is gone, but I can’t blame you much there. I was never overly fond of it myself.”
“It’s on permanent display in the Museum of Arts and History,” Meralda said, surprised at how calm she sounded. “Am I dreaming?” Meralda asked.
“Not at all,” said Tim. “You’re in Tirlin. But only briefly. You are in grave peril, Mage Ovis. As are we all.”
Meralda shivered, remembering the letter blocks in Phillitrep’s Engine spelling out FINAL COSMIC EVENT.
“I was afraid you were going to say something like that,” she said.
“Necessity often makes for awkward conversation. By the way, I’m Tim and male from now on. Even dead, some of my associates are quite pigheaded in their sexist beliefs, so let’s keep my gender a secret for another few centuries, shall we?” said Tim, who gazed off into the shadowed ranks of the shelves and whistled. “You lot! She’s here. We don’t have all day, you know.”
Shadows moved in the dar
k. Five robed figures quickly emerged from the ranks of shelves.
“Allow me to introduce my companions,” said Tim. “Mage Amorp. Mage Callen. Mages Stripple, Haggart, and Bend.”
The dark figures bowed, but did not uncover their faces.
“I’m honored,” Meralda said. “Your names live on.”
The hoods dipped, and Tim whinnied softly. “A grim shadow, moving quickly, briefly cast its face over the heart of Tirlin,” said Tim. “We sense you are a great distance from home. Over the Great Sea, perhaps?”
“Nearly halfway across it,” Meralda said. “How did you bring me here?”
The robed shades chuckled. “Shelf two hundred,” said one. “Row eighty-six.”
“There’s no such shelf,” Meralda said.
“Oh, but there is,” replied a gruff male voice. “Only a few can find it. If you make it home, seek it out. Lots of surprises stored there. Nearly halfway across the Sea, you say? How did you manage that?”
“An airship,” Meralda replied.
Whispers rose up from the hooded figures, too soft for Meralda to understand.
“It is as we feared,” said Tim. “There is a name for what we all sensed. I will speak it only once, and you must not repeat it here. Kuhat vulung. The words are Vonat for black destroyer, or black death.”
“Of course they are,” Meralda said. I wonder, she thought. Do the Vonats even have words for flowers, or smiles? “You say it just passed over Tirlin? As in flew?”
Tim nodded. “It made haste east, toward the Sea.”
“Then how are you too in peril?” Meralda asked. “Especially considering your, um, postmortem nature.”
“If the black destroyer is loose upon the Realms, everything is in danger,” replied Tim. “That is our reason for emerging from the shadows. We came to give you a gift, Mage Ovis. But know this—there is division of opinion in our ranks. The Mages with me believe the gift is either allied with the danger you face, or even the source of it. My beliefs are contrary to this. You must decide whether to accept our gift or reject it.”
“This gift,” Meralda said. “What is it?”
“We do not know,” said a gruff voice, from behind Tim the Horsehead. “It’s older than Tirlin. Older than the Realms.”
“We tried to determine its age,” said another. “The results were different each attempt.”
“It’s not from this plane of existence,” added a third. “By the time I studied it, it had begun to move from the realm of the living to that of Shadow.” This speaker lowered his hood revealing a bushy white beard, a bald head, and a wide white moustache. “Amorp is the name, by the way. Nice to meet you.”
“Likewise,” Meralda said. “May I see this thing?”
“You may,” said Tim. “But to do so, you will have to walk with us. Just a short distance, into Shadow.”
“You mean the realm of the dead,” Meralda said.
“Some call it that,” replied Tim. “We can keep you safe, for a time. Sadly, there is no other way, or we would not ask such a thing.”
“I counsel against it,” said the shade of Amorp. “Know this, young woman. No one enters Shadow without peril. Even those few who enter and manage to leave will be marked by the journey. Stained, some would say.”
Meralda smiled. “Are there sea monsters in this place you call Shadow?” she asked.
Tim whinnied. “No. Other things, but no sea monsters.”
“Then let’s go,” Meralda said, smiling at Amorp. “Shadow sounds like a nice change of pace from the places I’ve already been this week.”
Tim nodded and gestured, and a wide column of impenetrable darkness rose slowly up from the Laboratory’s floor and vanished into the ceiling.
“This is the door to Shadow,” said Tim, great equine eyes sad. “Conceal yourself, as we do.”
She rose from the desk and handed Meralda a folded bolt of cloth.
Meralda took it, inspected it, and felt her face flush red.
“This is a bed sheet,” she said.
“We took the liberty of cutting out eyeholes,” said Tim, cheerfully.
“This is my bed sheet,” Meralda added. “Taken from my hall closet.”
“Well of course it is,” Amorp said, pausing at the edge of the column of darkness and unfolding a white sheet of his own. “None of us have fussed with laundry since we died. Put it on. Or would you rather fight your way through a finite but certainly quite large number of furious vengeful shades?”
The white-haired ghost pulled the sheet over his head and adjusted his eyeholes. “I’ll go on ahead,” he said. Then he met Meralda’s eyes and shook his sheet-covered finger at her. “Remember what I said about entering Shadow, young lady. Stained I said, and stained I meant. Have a care, Mage. This is no game of riddles. Boo.” He stepped into the column of darkness and vanished.
“I know, I know, it’s daft as a bucket of weasels,” said Tim, raising her hands in supplication. “But we didn’t have time for anything more dignified. The lesser shades are more boo than brains, and we all managed to troop over here wearing bed sheets, and we’re running out of time. So put it on and lie about the whole thing later, if there is a later. Claim we clothed ourselves in slightly damp burial shrouds. The eyes go in the front.”
“This is ludicrous,” Meralda said, as one by one the shades of the Mages draped themselves in her good bed linens and disappeared into the shaft of Shadow.
“You’d be amazed by just how much of history is ludicrous,” said Tim, as she pulled her own sheet over her head. “Think about how I feel. I’m a ghost woman pretending to be a ghost man. I have the head of a horse and I’m wearing a bed. Funny old thing, life, even after it’s over it seldom makes much sense. Are you coming or not?”
Meralda yanked the sheet around until she could see through the holes, and then she took Tim’s hand and marched into the dark.
* * *
There was darkness at every hand. No moon, no stars, no streetlamps, not a candle to be seen.
The ground beneath Meralda’s feet was littered with debris. She felt sticks break beneath her soles, heard them crackle like dry kindling, heard faint cries rise with her every step.
“If I discover I am treading on a field of brittle bones,” she said aloud, “I will deem that melodramatic.”
She heard Tim’s neighing laughter. “The denizens of Shadow are often unsubtle,” Tim said. “Ignore them.”
The crackling beneath Meralda’s feet ceased, but before she’d taken another step bony hands beckoned from the darkness, crooking their pale fingers in invitation. “Come to us,” said the voices. “Still warm! Come to us!”
Tim neighed. Lazy lightning played above her head, sending the phantoms reeling and remaining to cast a dim glow from above.
The landscape was barren, but the gentle rise and fall of the land was oddly familiar.
As Meralda’s eyes adjusted, she made out a tall, squat shape looming in the distance, black against the starless dark sky, and she realized she was seeing the Tower in the Park and seeing it as if Tirlin’s lanes and buildings were removed, or had never been built in the first place.
“Welcome to Shadow,” said a voice. “Come and see! Come and see!”
“Walk with us,” said another. “Safe you will be! Safe you will be!”
“Oh, shut up,” Meralda said. “I’ve seen more frightening apparitions on the back covers of two-penny horror novels.”
The Mages chuckled. “It isn’t far,” said Tim.
“Is that really the Tower?” asked Meralda.
“One aspect of it, yes,” said Tim. “The Tower is a complex structure. As we all are, ultimately.”
A translucent female figure floated at Meralda’s side. It turned its hollow eyes on her, and moaned. “He doesn’t love you,” it said, its voice a dry rasp. “He will never love you.”
“Begone,” shouted Tim. For the first time, Meralda heard a faint trace of femininity in Tim’s voice.
Tim
whirled and pointed at the shade. “Begone, or feel my wrath!”
The phantom shrieked and rose up into the black sky, still wailing.
“Was that rude creature once a living person?” asked Meralda.
“Probably not,” replied Tim. “We believe such things are merely the doubts and fears the living bring to life by dwelling upon them. They, at least, are easily dismissed.”
More filmy, wavering phantoms gathered at the edges of the light, but Meralda ignored them until she and the Mages reached the foot of the Tower.
The Tower stood open. But whereas the Tower in Tirlin was dark inside, this Tower glowed with a cool dim light that radiated from the walls.
The Mages filed inside, forming a circle with their backs against Tower’s curved walls. Tim took her place in the middle of the open doorway, and motioned for Meralda to stand in the center of the chamber.
“Behold,” said Tim. “Tower, if you please?”
The air before Meralda sparkled. She fought the urge to step back away from the space.
“It takes a moment,” said Amorp. “Ah, here it comes.”
The sparkling became a solid shaft of light, and then a flash.
Meralda stared. Hanging in the air before her was a twisting, writhing, funnel-shaped vortex, wide at the top and vanishing into a point at the bottom. It was so tall Meralda could barely see over the top, and so dark it exuded a dimness into the air a foot on every side.
“What is it?” Some portion of her words seemed to be sucked away by the vortex.
“We could postulate this, or hypothesize that, but the truth is we simply don’t know,” said Tim. “A few Mages, over the centuries, were able to exert brief instances of control over it. There is immeasurable arcane power within its heart. Not surprising, as it was buried beneath Tower by Otrinvion the Black himself.”
Meralda forced her eyes away from the spiraling darkness.
“Why do you believe I need this?” she asked.
“The black death is loose,” said Tim. “Doom lies ahead. That much we agree on. Someone—you, we believe—will face a threat like no other ever imagined. The Vonats have released something so terrible it cast a shadow over the land of the dead, and lass, that’s no easy feat.”