All the Paths of Shadow

“Show me the Tears, wherever they are,” Mug had said.

And now we see the safe room?

Meralda rose, banged her right knee on the desk leg, shoved her chair sharply backward, and bit back a shout.

“Mistress?” said Mug, who turned half his eyes upon her, but left the other aimed motionless at the glass.

“The Tears,” said Meralda. “You asked…oh, blast, the nature of your question was such that the object in question would have its whereabouts revealed,” she said, wary of using words the mirror might interpret as a new command. “Think about it, Mug. Imagine you’re a villain. You want to cause trouble. You put a spell on the safe, or the jewel box, and you make it look as if the Tears have been stolen.”

Mug tapped the glass with a leaf. “But you hide the Tears, instead,” he said. “Somehow. Hide them in the safe room.”

“And then you just wait,” said Meralda. She stepped closer to the glass. “You just wait, because sooner or later, the Alons will be gone,” she said. “And sooner or later, Yvin will remove the guards from the safe room. Oh, he might also bar it and lock it, but given time, you can get in. And if not? Well, the damage is done.”

Meralda stared into the glass. I’m right, she thought, smiling at the guttering candle, shifting her gaze to the ghostly equine smile of the Horsehead in the portrait. I’m right.

Mug blinked with fifteen eyes. “It sounds plausible,” he said. He blinked again. “I can’t find anything wrong with it.” He paused. “Except, of course, for the mirror’s sudden spate of competence.”

Meralda felt her smile shrink, just a bit.

“Odd,” she said. “Though not undocumented. Remember the missing princes, back in 1810?”

“I thought you said that Mage Lommis made that story up, to implicate the Vonats,” said Mug.

“I may have been wrong about that,” said Meralda. She reached out and touched the dark oak frame. “I may have been wrong about a lot of things.”

Mug shrugged. “Glasses showing rooms, mages admitting errors. This is a night for rare occurrences,” he said. He thrust an eye toward Meralda. “That aside, what now?”

Meralda turned from the glass to Mug. “It’s time someone else had a very bad day,” she said, and she smiled. At the sight of it Mug pulled his eye hastily back.

“Oh, my,” said Mug.

In the glass, the candle guttered and went out.

Midnight. Meralda yawned and stretched. Mug muttered in his sleep, and Tervis rose from his chair and stood.

The scene in Goboy’s mirror was dark, aside from the faint line of light that crept in from under the safe room door.

“Shut up, you awful hyacinth,” said Mug.

“Ma’am?” said Tervis.

“He’s dreaming,” said Meralda. “Ignore him.” She reached up and stroked the topmost of his leaves.

“Never thought about plants dreaming,” said Tervis. Then he yawned. “But I reckon they get tired; too.”

“Don’t we all,” said Meralda.

Tervis muttered assent, and sat again.

The mirror remained dark. Meralda had sent for the captain, told him of her suspicions, then asked that a contingent of guards be kept ready just beyond the Alon halls. She’d refused the captain’s offer of additional guards to watch the mirror, deciding there was simply too much potential for mischief in the lab. Or, Meralda wondered, is it that I, like Fromarch and all the mages before us, simply don’t want strangers in my lair?

Meralda smiled at the thought. Next I’ll be slouching around in old robes and muttering to myself in public, she thought.

“Hedge-bush,” said Mug, and Tervis chuckled.

Meralda bit back another yawn and idly shoved her now-cold cup of coffee around on her desk. She was beginning to question the wisdom of insisting that she keep her own watch on the mirror, instead of assigning Kervis and Tervis to watch it in shifts.

But here I sit, she thought, half-asleep and bone weary. I can’t just go home and lie down. Not yet.

She lifted the coffee cup, took a sip, made a face, and put it down.

Sometime during her first hour of watching the mirror, she’d decided that one of the rival Alon wizards was probably the culprit. If so, he’d also be the one to recover the Tears. Meralda’s hope was she could find them first.

And then she’d begun to think about how the Tears were hidden, and she’d decided the Alon mages were, if the captain and Shingvere were correct, simply not up to the task.

Arcane concealment of the Tears, which would mean visual and tactile suppression of form and mass, was not something she’d like to try, she decided. If Red Mawb or Dorn Mukirk cast such a spell, there was more to Alon clan wizards than the college ever taught.

Mug shook his leaves, and Meralda yawned again.

“You’ll have the Tears in hand by tomorrow night, I’ll wager,” said Tervis.

“I wish I shared your confidence,” replied Meralda. “But I hardly know where to begin looking.”

Tervis nodded and smiled. “You’ll know when the time comes.”

“She can’t know of this,” mumbled Mug, in Shingvere’s merry voice. Meralda smiled and patted Mug’s pot. “Poor thing,” she said. “You’ll have to go outside tomorrow, get some real sunlight.”

Tomorrow. She looked to the clock and saw that sunrise was only five hours away.

Night is fled, and with her slumber, thought Meralda. Phendelit playwrights must lose as much sleep as Tirlish thaumaturges.

“And I still have shadows to move,” she said, aloud. She pushed an image of the face from the park aside and looked down at the drawings and calculations that covered her desk, and the words she’d scribbled earlier on a drawing of the Tower.

“Vonashon, empalos, endera,” she’d written. “Walk warily, walk swiftly, walk away.”

Spoken by a mad-eyed death’s head from within a broken spell. She looked at Mug and shook her head. I’ll never hear the end of this, if I tell him, she thought. Though I suppose I really should.

In casesomething happens to me.

Meralda rubbed her eyes. What did she see?

She picked up her pen, and shuffled her papers until the Tower sketch was before her. She thought back to that instant of Sight, just before the latch tore and fell away, and she began to draw.

“There,” she said. “What, pray tell, are you?”

She’d drawn a ring about the Wizard’s Flat. Riding the ring were a dozen evenly spaced, barrel-sized, round- ended masses, each circling the flat at a hawk’s pace. She noted the direction of flight about the flat, and guesses as to the size and shape of each dark mass, and then she drew a question mark and put down her pen.

I never actually saw the masses, she realized. She’d only seen their shadows, shadows they cast in the latch, as they flew through it.

A shiver went through Meralda. Not at the thought that she might have actually seen a spellwork cast by the hand of Otrinvion the Black himself, but that her latch might have touched Otrinvion’s spell in the same way his had touched hers.

What if I damaged Otrinvion’s circling masses as badly as they damaged my latch?

“Tervis,” said Meralda, jumping at the loudness of her voice in the silence of the laboratory.

“Yes, ma’am,” said Tervis, leaping to his feet.

“Go to the guards in the hall,” she said. “Send one to the park. I want any news of lights in the flat. Real news, mind you, from the watch or the guard.” Meralda bit her lip, considering. “I’ll want hourly reports, all night tonight, delivered here. Compiled and delivered each morning every day after.”