“Thank you, Guardsman.”
“I didn’t order shoes,” said Mug. “Oblate spheroid.”
Meralda patted the dandyleaf’s tossing leaves until they were still.
“As I was saying,” said the Tower, in a near whisper. “The only point of contact between the tethers and the curseworks appears to be this juncture, here…”
A diagram appeared in the corner of the sunlit glass. Meralda copied it onto her paper, and then set about finding its secrets.
Donchen, clad now in the waistcoat and leggings and shiny buckled shoes of a nobleman of old, raised Kervis’ hand and smiled.
“Right foot, left foot, turn, pirouette,” he said.
Kervis stumbled, trying to stand tip-toe in his guardsman’s boots. He frowned and looked down at his long, flowing ball gown.
“I don’t think I like this dream,” he said.
Meralda lifted her head from her desk and shook it, trying to wake.
Mug turned his eyes toward her, whole again. “None of that, mistress,” he chided, waggling vines at her. “Someone went to considerable trouble to bring this dream about. Please sleep just a few moments longer. It’s important.”
“Indeed,” said Tower, from inside the glass. “A fanfare, if you please.”
Mug sounded a fanfare, complete with trumpets and drums.
Footfalls sounded from the shelves. There came the sound of a door slamming shut.
Meralda rose and whirled to face the shelves. My back aches, she thought. My arm is numb where I slept on it. I can’t be dreaming.
Tim the Horsehead stepped into the light.
“You are, indeed, dreaming,” he said. He turned his equine head so he gazed at Meralda through his right eye. “Though it is a singular sort of dream.”
“Tim the Horsehead couldn’t speak.” Meralda sagged. “It is just a dream.”
“I can speak perfectly well in dreams,” replied Tim. “May I come closer?”
Meralda shrugged. “Please do.”
Tim approached.
Meralda watched. He’s wearing the robes of office, she noted. The very same clothes depicted in his portrait in the Gold Room.
“Well, I’m working with your memories, after all,” said Tim. He moved to stand two short steps from Meralda. “We’ve been very impressed with you, you know,” he said. “All of us. We look in from time to time.” He raised a gloved hand and pointed at Mug. “He’ll be fine, by the way. You needn’t worry.”
Meralda pinched her side.
It hurt.
Tim remained, perfectly solid, not the least bit dreamlike.
He smelled of cologne Meralda couldn’t name. His muzzle was whiskery and going grey.
Beneath the cologne, Meralda realized he smelled very faintly of…a stable?
Meralda’s heart began to race. What if this is really Tim, somehow?
“We? We who?”
Tim curled back his lips in a horse’s toothy grin. “We former thaumaturges. All this time, thinking the Tower was haunted, when it is this laboratory that is full of ghosts.” He made a sound somewhere between a whinny and a laugh. “The very walls in this place are infused with old, old magic. We mages leave a part of us behind.”
More figures stepped from the shadows between the shelves. Some solid, some faded and ghostlike, some little more than shadows themselves.
None moved far from the dark.
“We know of the threat to Tirlin, and your efforts to stop it. We salute you, Mage Meralda Ovis. As not just one of us, but the best of us.”
“I am no such thing.”
Tim whinnied again in laughter. “We shall soon see. Tirlin’s darkest hour is nearly upon us, Mage. Know that we who wore the robes before you stand at your side.”
“Can you render the curseworks harmless?”
Tim shook his long head side to side.
“We are but ghosts now,” he said. “That task is yours, and yours alone.”
Meralda sighed. “I don’t know if I can do it,” she said. Her voice shook. “I just don’t know.”
“I would be troubled if you said otherwise,” said Tim. “I, on the other hoof, have the utmost confidence in you, Mage.”
“Everyone keeps saying that,” said Meralda. “This is pre-kingdom magic. It doesn’t make sense, half the time. It’s like trying to untie knots in the dark. I could fail as easily as not.” Meralda felt her face flush hot, and a sudden anger ran through her. “And you know what they’ll say? They’ll say I failed because I’m a woman. That will be my legend. Fool scrap of a girl let the kingdom burn.”
Tim nodded. “I felt much the same burden, so many times. The stuff of legends is nothing but trouble to the persons unfortunate enough to make them. On the whole, I’d rather have been off fishing.”
Meralda surprised herself by laughing.
“I’ve always wanted to meet you. You’re the reason I’m here, really.”
Tim bowed. “My apologies, then. It was never my intention to be a bad influence on the youth of Tirlin.”
“You’re exactly as I imagined.”
Tim stepped forward, his horse head swaying to and fro as though seeing who was close by.
“May I tell you a secret, Mage Meralda Ovis?”
“Please.”
Tim’s whiskery horse mouth tickled Meralda’s right ear.
“You’re not the first woman to wear the robes.”
“What?”
Tim’s horse head flashed, and when the light died, he-she-looked back at Meralda from a woman’s smiling face.
“I knew I’d never be named Mage as a woman, back in the bad old days of 1517,” she said. She looked down at her bosom ruefully and shrugged. “But it occurred to me that the robes would hide everything but my head and neck.”
“You’re not Tim?”
“Tam, actually. I even developed a taste for hay. Imagine that.” She ran fingers through her long brown hair. “Tam couldn’t even read for the college. Tim took the robes and saved the kingdom, more than once. What a difference a single letter makes. And a bit of magic.”
Meralda remembered to close her mouth.
“I’m not the only one, either. Brontus. Caplea. Sebrinal.”
Shapes stirred, stepped forward, waved.
“I’m the fifth woman to wear the robes?”
“We’re not sure about Abelt, and he or she won’t say. Fifth or sixth. But you’re the first who hasn’t hidden who you are.”
“I had no idea.”
“That’s rather the point. But see here, Mage. This business with the curseworks. Have you given any thought to how you might use them, to Tirlin’s advantage?”
