All the Paths of Shadow

Behind her, the Bellringers followed, boots scraping on the stone with measured, careful steps. Meralda thought about all the novels she’d read, in which princes, queens, or spies, who invariably bore a single guttering candle, charged up the Tower stair, or leaped fearlessly from tread to tread. Leapt, indeed, mused Meralda. No one, no matter the provocation, would dare take these stairs at a brisk walk, much less a headlong dash.

And candles? Impossible. Her own magelamp, bright though it was, cast a cone of light just wide enough at its base to illuminate three pairs of feet. Above, the magelamp lit only a tall, narrow swatch of the Tower wall.

The rest of the Tower remained cloaked in darkness. Darkness, and the faint sensation of constant movement at the edge of the light, as if Meralda’s magelamp alone kept something darker than the shadows barely at bay.

Tervis halted long enough to shift Meralda’s bag from one hand to the other. “I’m coming,” he said, at Kervis’ unspoken question. “Don’t stop.”

The trio resumed their climb. Meralda strained her ears for any hint of sound from the park. But again, not even a hundred paces up the stair, all the sounds of the world beyond were gone, shut away behind walls thicker than Meralda was tall.

“What was that game the Alons were playing?” asked Tervis, his voice echoing faintly. “It looked like fun.”

“They call it football,” said Meralda. “They played it during the last Accords, too.”

“It’s tearing up the grass,” said Kervis. “You ought to have heard the groundskeepers curse.”

Meralda grimaced. She had heard the groundskeepers bellowing, of course. Their language was such that after a moment even Angis blanched and turned away.

Kervis laughed softly. Meralda tilted the magelamp and looked down. Already, their ascent, though it had covered less than half a revolution around the Tower, had reached sufficient height that the glow of the magelamp no longer touched the floor below.

Shadows flew as she looked up. Kervis drew in his breath in a short quick gasp, and Meralda saw, from the corner of her eye, a flash of motion as the guardsman brought his monstrous Oldmark crossbow to bear on the dark beyond the stair.

“Kervis,” said Meralda, turning and sending light over the Bellringers and the void beyond them. “What are you doing?”

Kervis’ face was pale. “I saw something,” he said, his voice low and flat. “Out there.”

Behind him, Tervis shook his head and shrugged.

Meralda sighed and played the light about the Tower. “There is no one here but us,” she said. “What you probably saw was the outline of the stair on the far wall. See, you can just make it out, now and then, and it can look like something moving.”

Tervis whispered something, and Kervis lowered the crossbow. “Forgive me, Thaumaturge,” he said, his eyes still on the dark. “I was mistaken.”

Meralda smiled. “It’s all right,” she said. “Let’s catch our breath for a moment. It’s a wonder we aren’t all seeing things, with all the nonsense being talked about the Tower these days.” She sat, and motioned for the Bellringers to do the same. “There’s no hurry.”

Kervis looked toward Meralda and cocked his head. “I thought the captain said the other mages were coming by to meet you this afternoon,” he said. “Weren’t we supposed to be back by four bells?”

Meralda smiled. Every minute I sit here, she thought,is another minute I won’t be forced to endure king and court. “Do you think they’ll climb these stairs?” she asked.

Tervis shook his head and grinned. “I think not,” he said.

Kervis nudged his twin with his elbow. “You’re learning, little brother,” he said. Then he mopped sweat from his brow and polished his crossbow stock with the sleeve of his jacket. “Anyway, we’ve got nothing to fear with this along, do we?”

“Just you,” said Tervis. “Tell the Thaumaturge how you did at targets, this morning.”

Kervis ignored his twin. “So what are you doing today, Thaumaturge?” he asked. “If it’s not a secret.”

Meralda wiped back a wild lock of hair and smiled. “I don’t work in secret, Guardsman,” she said. “I’m here to set a few wards, and test the Tower structure for its latching properties,” she said.

Tervis’ brow furrowed.

“You know what wards are,” said Meralda. “Guard spells. The court’s idea, not mine, and most probably a waste of time.” Meralda shrugged. “My real reason for climbing all these stairs, though, is to test the Tower’s resistance to new spells,” she said. “Soon, I’ll need to latch my shadow moving spell to something solid,” explained Meralda. “The Tower, in this case. And before I latch such a complicated spellwork to a structure as old and unusual as the Tower, I need to determine how resistant it is to new spells.”

Tervis nodded slowly. “I’ll bet it’s as slippery as mud,” he said. “Ma’am.”

Meralda’s magelamp flickered. She drew the fingers of her right hand quickly down the traceries on the tube, and whispered a word, and the light steadied. But Meralda frowned, for the tube had grown momentarily cold, as though the unlatched coils of the light spell had begun to unravel.

“Is anything the matter, Thaumaturge?” asked Kervis.

“Nothing,” said Meralda. She rose, and the magelamp shone steady and bright. “Are you gentlemen ready?”

“We are,” chorused the Bellringers. Both stood.

Meralda nodded and turned. She shone the magelamp up, where it barely illuminated the second story ceiling, and the gaping, doorless portal that led through it.

Shadows danced. Meralda’s free hand groped in her pocket, and before she realized what she was doing Meralda had her short retaining wand in her grasp. The minor ward spell latched there warmed the wand, and made it quiver like a trapped bumblebee.

“Nonsense,” said Meralda, so softly neither Bellringer heard. She pulled her hand from her pocket, and set about reviewing her latch testing spell.

I’m surprised, thought Meralda, that no one has done it before. Simply latch a spellwork of a known capacity to the Tower, and then load the spell until it unlatches. The time elapsed between latching and unlatching, once compared to a standard, will give me a ratio. And the same ratio should hold for the shadow moving spell.

Should. That word pops up frequently when the Tower is involved, she decided. As if the Tower were a world apart, a world where the normal rules might hold sway, or might not, all at the whim of a legendary wraith.

Wraith. Haunt. Spirit. Meralda had seen the Tower’s supposed inhabitant called many things, in the old books. “We laide no Spells there, for feare of the Spirit and its Terrible Wrath,” quoth Mage Elvis, some two hundred years ago. More recently, she read that king Tomin III had ordered workmen to board up the windows of the Wizard’s Flat, from the inside, so that the “Cursed Lights and Leering Phantoms” that looked down upon park-goers might be hidden. The king found the planks broken and scattered about the Tower the next day, and the workmen fled. Lights danced in the flat every night for a month.

Step after step, stair after stair. The second story entrance came and went, and the third, and still the Tower soared up and away out of sight. The Bellringers fell silent, aside from panting and huffing. Kervis’ crossbow, Meralda knew, must be an awful burden by now.

Meralda tried to count steps, but lost her place in the four hundreds. The sight of her own hunched shadow turned her thoughts to Otrinvion. How many times, she wondered, did he climb these same stairs? Was the Tower so dark, then? So silent, so empty?

Unbidden, a nursery rhyme sang out in Meralda’s memory.

The old, old wizard goes round and round the stair,

The old, old wizard goes sneaking everywhere,

The old, old wizard goes where you cannot see,

The old, old wizard is sneaking…up…on…me!

Meralda felt eyes on her back, and a chill like the stroke of an icicle raced down her spine.

Kervis began to hum. There was no mistaking the tune, or the words behind it.