All the Paths of Shadow

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.