All the Paths of Shadow

day.

I wonder, mused Meralda. Should I tell him I was born on a pig farm? Should I tell him the king is a bumbler, the court a refuge for overbred dunderheads, and the Accords are largely an opportunity for the nobles of five nations to come together and drink to excess at their peoples’ expense?

Another airship, her fans swiveling and whirling, swooped ponderously down and blotted out the sun.

“Wondrous,” said Tervis.

Meralda smiled, and said nothing.

“Here we are, ladies and thaumaturges,” shouted Angis. “The Tower.”

Angis pulled his cab to the curb in the circle ’round that looped between Hent Street and the park’s east entrance. The Bellringers stared. No wonder so many painters set up their easels here, thought Meralda.

The park wall, ten miles of Old Kingdom rough hewn stone ravaged and worn by the passing of centuries, rose a full thirty feet above the well-tended grass of the park. The gargoyles mad king Foon had added in the second century still danced and capered and brooded atop the wall. The age-old tradition of tying ridiculous hats to the most fearsome of the gargoyles was, Meralda saw, still observed by Tirlin’s more daring youngsters. The pair of gargoyles flanking the gate-posts were sporting last year’s fruit-and-feather day hats, and the right-most fellow was wearing a jaunty pink Oaftree scarf.

Well above and just inside the wall and its gargoyles, the park’s ring of Old Kingdom iron oaks rustled and swayed, like thick green mountain peaks shuffling to and fro against a pale blue sky. Meralda loved the oaks, and though she knew the stories claiming Otrinvion himself planted the seedlings were utter nonsense, she couldn’t help but think those mighty old trees had watched Tirlin for a good portion of its clamorous history.

“Oh,” said Kervis, and Meralda knew from his face that he wasn’t seeing the wall or the Old Oaks or the line of dancing gargoyles.

“The captain says it’s haunted,” said Tervis, his eyes upon the Tower. Meralda put her bag in her lap and waited for the guardsman to notice that the cab had stopped.

“The thaumaturge says it isn’t,” said Meralda. “And she should know better, shouldn’t she?”

Tervis whirled, groping for the door latch. “Yes, ma’am,” he said. “Sorry, ma’am.”

Angis flung open the door from outside. Tervis yelped and would have fallen, had Angis not caught hold of his red uniform collar. “Here, lad,” said Angis. “First thing you’ve got to learn about is doors. See this here? It’s what we city folks call a latch.”

“Leave him be, Angis,” said Meralda.

“Aye, Lady,” said Angis, grinning. He reached up, caught Meralda’s black bag, and held her door. “Will you be long, this morning?”

“Two hours,” she said, stepping out onto the curb. “Then it’s off to the palace.”

“Got to greet our Eryan guests, aye?”

“Aye,” said Meralda, wincing at the thought of a long afternoon at court. “But first, I’ve got work to do. Gentlemen?”

The Bellringers looked down, away from the Tower.

“That is the Tower,” she said, as Angis tended his ponies. “It’s seven hundred years old. It was built by Otrinvion the Black, himself. You’ve heard the name?”

The Bellringers nodded in unison.

“The Tower is central to our history,” she said. “And the Tower has a long and bloody past. War and murder and madness. You’ve heard the stories of King Tornben the Mad? Queen Annabet the Torturer?”

The Bellringers exchanged glances, and Kervis nodded.

“The stories are true,” said Meralda. “Documented fact. But I tell you this, gentlemen, and I want you to remember it.” Meralda paused, shifted her bag from her left hand to her right, and waved back Kervis when he motioned to take the bag himself.

“The Tower is not haunted,” she said. “It was not, is not, and shall never be. Is that clear?”

The Bellringers nodded, slowly this time.

Angis grinned at his ponies, but didn’t say a word.

“Then let’s go,” said Meralda. “Follow me.”

She turned and set foot on the cracked flagstones of Wizard’s Walk, which led through the park’s east gate and then wound toward the Tower. The walk was, according to local lore, another of Otrinvion’s legacies.

The Bellringers, right hands on sword hilts, faces stern (except for Tervis, who kept wrinkling his forehead to push his helmet up), fell into step behind her.

“Keep a sharp eye out, lads,” said Angis, after Meralda passed into the park. “Especially after dark. That’s when the haunts get mean.” Angis lifted his voice. “Not that I believe such, mind you.”

Meralda listened to the steady tromp-tromp of newly soled guard boots and frowned. The Bellringers were marching, not walking. Fresh out of boot camp, she thought. I’m sure they’re not even aware they’re doing it. I’ll be hearing the sound of marching boots from now until the Accords. That’s eighteen more days,and every one of them my own small army dress parade.

The walk turned suddenly, leaving the shade of the old oaks for the close-cropped green grass of the park proper.

The Tower split the sky, no longer obscured by walls or oaks.

“Here it is, gentlemen,” said Meralda, halting. “The Tower.”

“It’s taller than the palace,” said Kervis.

Meralda shook her head. She knew the highest spire of the palace to be ten feet taller than the blunt tip of the Tower. Old King Horoled, a century past, had nearly bankrupted Tirlin seeing to that. But the palace was more than twenty city blocks away. One had to squint just to make out the lofty spire, which peeked above the trees. The palace might be taller, thought Meralda, but here in the park, the Tower reigns.

Reigns? No, Meralda decided. The Tower doesn’t reign. It looms. Looms above the Old Oaks. Looms above the park wall. Looms above Tirlin. Thick and tall and blunt, chipped and nicked by seven hundred years of determined attempts to pull it down, the Tower endures.

“If a mountain had bones,” said Tervis, “that’s what they’d look like.”

“Hush,” replied Kervis. “It’s just a pile of rocks.”

A lumber wain rumbled up the Walk behind them. “Passing by,” shouted the driver. “Make way.”

Meralda stepped onto the grass and motioned the Bellringers to follow.

The lumber wain rattled past.

Tervis pointed toward the hurried band of carpenters stacking lumber and erecting scaffolds at the base of the Tower.

“What are they building?”

Meralda frowned. “Seating,” she said. “For the Accords.”

Meralda resumed her trek toward the Tower, which lay a goodly march ahead. “The king will give the commencement speech from there,” she said, pointing toward the tall, narrow framework jutting out from the base of the Tower. “The Eryans will be there, the Alons there, the Phendelits there, and the Vonats just in front of us,” she said, her hand indicating the skeletal frames arranged around and dwarfed by the Tower. “All this, for a ten minute speech no one will remember the next day.”

“Kings will do what kings will do,” said Kervis, with the air of one repeating a time-honored truth. “At least that’s what Pop always says.”

“Ma’am,” he added, after a jab in the ribs from Tervis.

The Tower beckoned. Meralda fell into step with her soldiers and marched, humming, ahead.

The Tower doors, each twenty feet high and nearly as wide, were open, but blocked by a drooping length of bright yellow ribbon and a faded Danger Public Works sign bolted to a rusty iron stand.

Meralda waved to the Builder’s Guild foreman, lifted the yellow ribbon, and passed over the threshold.

Three steps on stone, and the last slanting rays of the sun gave way to darkness. Meralda squinted ahead, slowing until she could make out shapes in the shadows. “Be careful,” she said, as Tervis and Kervis entered. “The carpenters are stacking lumber in here.”