Meralda reached out and touched the wall to her right. The stone was cold. Like the outside of the Tower, the interior hall was stone. Solid black Eryan granite, shaped and fused into a single mass by a spell or spells known only to the Tower’s long-dead master. Cold and dry and as smooth as glass. Meralda knew just beyond the wall, the sun was shining, the park was green and lush, and Tirlin was bustling and busy. But here, in the windowless belly of the Tower, she felt as if it were the smallest hour of the longest, darkest night.
“It’s quiet, all of a sudden,” said Tervis, in a whisper. “Isn’t it?”
Meralda shrugged. Oh, the hammering and pounding and shouting continued, but the Tower doors might as well have been flung shut, so faint was the noise after only a few paces. And had the daylight fled so quickly, on her other visits?
“This way,” she said, when the Bellringer’s footfalls fell behind. “The hall is very short, and there are no turns.”
“No windows, either,” muttered Tervis. “Ma’am.”
“We won’t need windows,” said Meralda, groping in her bag. “We’ll have plenty of our own light.”
“Oh,” said Kervis. “Should I go back and fetch a lantern?”
Meralda pulled a short brass pipe from her bag. “Light,” she said, unlatching the simple magelamp spell coiled invisibly around the cylinder with the word.
The Bellringers whistled as wide beams of soft white light flared from each end of the brass tube.
“Wizard lamp,” said Tervis, lifting his hand to run his fingers through the light. “Uncle Rammis saw one, once. Nobody believed him.”
Meralda played the lamp around the hall. Shadows flew. Some, she thought, more slowly than others.
A shiver ran the length of Meralda’s spine.
“Nonsense,” she said, amazed and a bit embarrassed. “Utter nonsense.”
“Pardon, ma’am?” asked Kervis.
Meralda shook her head. “Nothing,” she said. “Nothing. We have a long flight of stairs to climb, gentlemen,” she said, striding toward the heart of the darkness at the end of the hall. “Shall we go?”
The Bellringers followed. Ten paces further Meralda’s lamplight fell across a crude table bearing half a dozen battered oil lanterns, an open box of Red Cat matches, and a half-eaten Lamp River apple.
Further down the hall, smooth-planed cedar planks were stacked neatly along each wall. Meralda thought she heard the sound of gentle snoring behind the third stack as she passed it, and her face reddened even more.
Meralda’s footfalls came faster and harder until the hall simply ended, and the shaft of light from her magelamp soared up and out, only to lose itself in the vast, cavernous maw of the Tower.
Kervis whistled softly.
“Bats,” said Tervis, his face turned upward. “You’d think there would be bats.”
“Not a one,” said Meralda. “There isn’t a crack or a gap anywhere in the Tower. It’s an amazing structure.” She played the lamplight out into the darkness, resting the beam finally on the far side of the Tower and the faint outline of the winding, rail-less stair that wound lazily up and away into the dark.
“We climb that?” asked Kervis.
Meralda nodded. “It’s wider than it looks,” she said, though she understood the badly-hidden wash of fear in the boy’s voice. She recalled the first time she had ascended the stair. Darkness above, and darkness below, a magelit patch of old black stone to her left, a hungry void a step to her right.
From the idling carpenters just beyond the doors, Meralda heard the barest snatch of soft, low laughter.
“Do either of you have a fear of high places?”
In perfect unison, both Bellringers, their faces pale in the magelamp, wiped sweat from their foreheads with their right hands, set their jaws, and shook their heads.
“We’re not afraid,” said Kervis. “Shall I go first?”
Meralda waved him ahead. “Stay in the lamplight,” she said. “Tervis, if you would be so good as to follow?”
“Right behind you, ma’am.”
Meralda switched her bag to her right shoulder and set out for the foot of the stair. She knew it was her imagination, but laughter seemed to follow all the way up to the Wizard’s Flat.
“At last.”
The stair ended at a narrow wooden door. Kervis halted and reached out for the tarnished brass knob, but pulled his hand back before he touched it. “Ma’am,” he said, panting and looking back over his shoulder at Meralda. “Is this it?”
Meralda brushed back a damp lock of red hair and nodded. “Yes,” she said. “The Wizard’s Flat.”
Kervis flashed a crooked grin and sank into a winded slouch against the Tower wall. Boots scraped softly on stone behind her, and Meralda turned to face Tervis, who had been silent the whole of the long climb to the flat.
Both boys were streaked with sweat. Their stiff red and black palace guard uniforms looked thick enough for the dead of winter, but Tervis was pasty-faced and wild-eyed, as well as sweaty. Meralda watched as the boy inched his way, with elaborate care, up onto the last tread between them.
“Tervis?” she said, softly. “We’re here. It’s almost over.”
Tervis met her eyes and gulped.
“He’s just winded,” said Kervis, quickly. “A few moments on a good solid floor and he’ll be right up, ma’am,” he added. “Isn’t that right, little brother?”
Tervis tried to speak, but only croaked. While he licked his lips Meralda reached into her pocket and found the key that opened the flat. “We could all use a place to sit,” she said. “The door is locked, Kervis.” She thrust the key into the cone of light from her magelamp. “Take this and open the door, if you will.”
Kervis took the key. “What about, um, spells?” he said.
Meralda shook her head. “No spells here,” she replied. “It’s just a key, and that’s just a lock.” She eyed Tervis, whose complexion was looking decidedly more greenish by the moment. “If you please?”
Kervis thrust the key into the lock and turned it.
The lock made a single loud click.
Kervis withdrew the key and handed it back to Meralda. “In we go,” he said, turning the latch and pushing.
The door held fast. Kervis pushed harder.
“Open it,” said Tervis, though clenched teeth.
Kervis turned the latch again, pushed. “What am I doing wrong?” he said. “It turns, but it won’t open.”
Meralda took two careful steps ahead, to stand beside Kervis on the stair.
She turned the latch and pushed.
The door swung open and bright, warm daylight spilled onto the stair, plunged off the edge, and fell in long, slanting shafts across the dark.
Without a word, Meralda and both Bellringers charged headlong into the light.
“Well,” said Kervis, from the far side of the flat. “I can’t tell you how much I enjoyed that.”
Meralda put her back to the wall, laughed, and squinted at the sun. Tervis joined his brother, but sank into a crouch, both hands palm-down on the floor. “We’ll join the army,” he said, and Meralda knew at once Tervis was mocking his older twin. “Oh, the things we’ll see, the places we’ll go.”
Kervis shrugged and grinned. “I never said we’d ride carriages everywhere,” he said, cheerily. “Still, it’s not so bad. How many of old Barlo’s bully boys can say they’ve climbed to the top of a haunted wizard’s tower?” he asked.
Tervis put his head in his hands. “None,” he said. “They’ve got better sense. And the Tower isn’t haunted,” he said, peeking through his fingers up at Meralda. “Is it, ma’am?”
Meralda sighed and shook her head.
