All the Paths of Shadow

to his fellows.

Tervis scooted the chair toward the wall. Nothing, Meralda thought, and frowned. I’ve found nothing at all.

She pushed the thought aside. Well, of course you haven’t, she reasoned. Even if the spell passed through the walls, it never latched to them. The safe will likely hold the only traces of the spell. The walls and the floor needed to be checked, of course, but only out of thoroughness. No, if the Tears do remain, they are in the one place we haven’t looked yet.

Meralda bit her lip, stepped into the chair again, and quickly finished checking the ceiling. The steady blue glow never wavered.

“Well,” said Meralda, forcing a smile and climbing down to the floor. “That’s done.”

Tervis frowned. “Nothing?”

“No traces of projected spellworks,” replied Meralda. Her chest tightened. What if I’m wrong? What if the Tears aren’t here at all?

From beyond the doorway, a bevy of close-packed Alons watched, the wizard Red Mawb at the fore. Meralda met his eyes, saw in them a bemused, haughty sort of boredom.

“Is that bad?” asked Tervis.

Meralda looked away from Mawb. “It changes nothing,” she said, to Tervis. “The Tears are here, and we shall have them.”

And then she turned on her heel, walked to the portrait of Tim the Horsehead, and set her Sight upon it.

Nothing. Oh, she saw the usual eddies and swirls of radiance that hung about any surface, if one’s Sight were sensitive enough. But that was all. There was no trace, not the faintest, of the ordered patterns an old spellwork might leave behind. Meralda hadn’t brought her staff, simply because any spell too subtle to be Seen or found out by the Alon wizards wasn’t going to be found by her staff, either. But now she wished she had it, if only to hold something familiar.

“Here we go,” she whispered. Then she placed the detector firmly against the wall, just to the right of the portrait.

Right or wrong, thought Meralda. Now, we see.

After the slightest of hesitations the lighted disks went dark.

Tervis whooped and stamped his foot. “Well done!” cried Kervis.

“And not a head bone in the room,” added Tervis, under his breath but not so faintly that the wizards outside couldn’t hear. “Ma’am.”

Meralda smiled a wide, sweaty smile and propped herself against the wall with her free hand and imagined she could hear, faint but clear, the sound of cheering and clapping from her mages and from Mug, half a palace away.

She stepped back, mopped her brow, and moved the detector, letting the latch take hold once more. The blue light returned, but faint and flickering steadily.

“Good old Tirlish magic,” remarked Tervis, airily, and Meralda grinned.

Move, latch, test, move. In a few moments, Meralda saw that a spellwork had, indeed, been attached to the safe, and the wall about it. The spellwork’s footprint was circular, about four feet in diameter, with a pronounced notch running vertically above the safe.

And utterly invisible to Sight. Strain as she might, without the detector Meralda could see nothing at all, even though she knew what to look for, and where to look. I’d have never found this with my staff, she thought. Not with my staff, not with two dozen staves and every mage in the Realms.

Her elation dimmed at the realization. This is not the work of a guild master or a rogue wizard or a renegade Alon necromancer. No, Meralda decided, this is the work of a mage.A mage with skills I’ve never seen.

Mumbling and jostling sounded from the hall.

Meralda bit her lower lip, reached up, and swung Tim’s portrait away from the safe. When she lifted the detector to the back of the canvas, the light flickered and went out, and Meralda smiled. Yes, she thought, following the faint traceries of light that billowed and swam in the shimmering blue glass. This lot here. One end bound to the back of Tim’s portrait, the other end coiled like a spring. It pushed the portrait out before the safe door opened, and pulled it shut when the work was done.

She waved the detector toward the safe, which was still ajar, and the blue glasses went momentarily dark. Meralda latched to the safe door, and the glow returned, this time as a faint, rotating pattern of tiny criss-crossed lines.

Meralda frowned. Ordered, mobile traces? Of an old spell?

She reached out, opened the safe, and slowly pushed the detector inside.

The glow grew brighter, spun faster.

Meralda pushed farther.

The blue light began to beat, pulsing and ebbing like blows from a hammer, or a heart.

It’s still active, thought Meralda. An active spell, so subtle it’s too faint for Sight.

Meralda pulled in a breath, and willed her Sight deeper, farther, clearer. Memories of the exploding spellworks in the Gold Room rose, but after a moment’s observation in the glass Meralda decided this spell wasn’t preparing to strike, and she proceeded.

She fixed her mind upon the spell latched to the detector, saw it as a bright blue sphere cupped in a copper bowl. She pushed again, and her normal vision faded, and then she saw, just for an instant, a tangled skein of blue- lit spell traces, all spilling out of the wall safe like an explosion of Phendelit pasta noodles. There, at the back of the safe, she saw that the metal was lit by worm tracks of fire, and that at the center of the glow the metal was hollow.

She held her breath. Sight, she begged, and there, in the void, a glittering thing took shape. Fat raindrops caught in a spider’s web, thought Meralda, and her heart raced, and then her Sight went close and clear and the raindrops became pale diamonds and the web a delicate lattice of finely worked gold.

“The Tears,” said Meralda. I was right, she thought, elation rushing through her. They’re here.

Now to get them free.

Meralda opened her eyes, and though she let her Sight recede a bit she could still see the tangled outlines of the foreign spell riding across the disks.

Meralda tried to follow the patterns, make sense of the turnings and the whirls and coils, but it was like trying to count raindrops as they fell. What is this structure? And why would anyone cast a spell which linked large portions of the framework to itself?

“Ma’am,” said Tervis, from her side. “Ma’am, are you well?”

Meralda blinked. The blue glow from the detector pulsed faster now, as though the spell suspected it was under scrutiny and was growing troubled.

“Too late,” said Meralda, triumph in her voice. “I fooled you. Now I’ll beat you.”

“Ma’am?” said Tervis.

Meralda withdrew the detector. “The Tears are here,” she said, stepping back. She handed the detector to Tervis, mopped her face with her sleeve, and turned to Kervis. “Guardsman,” she said. “In my bag you’ll find a hammer, and a long chisel. Will you be so good as to take them up, and break out the back end of this safe?” She smiled and winked toward the corner. Let the Alons, she thought, make of it what they will. “I believe you’ll find a handful of trinkets, at yonder end.”

Kervis grinned, threw his helmet to the floor, and charged to her side. “Glad to,” he said. “I knew you’d have us home by supper.”

Meralda returned his smile and sought out the chair at the other end of the room.

Mawb and Dorn Mukirk now stood shoulder-to-shoulder in the doorway, glaring ferociously at Meralda when they weren’t muttering behind their palms or jabbing each other in the ribs with their elbows. Meralda ignored