All the Paths of Shadow

“Now,” said Meralda.

Her awareness merged with that of the staves.

Light, she thought, and light there was, blazing from both staves, flooding the midnight dark of the Tower with the sudden harsh light of day.

A hundred feet down the stair, the Vonat whirled, dropping his tools, gasping at the sudden blaze of light.

Meralda caught a single brief glimpse of the man’s wild eyes and open mouth before he lifted his own staff and hurled a gout of fire directly at her.

Nameless showed Meralda a hidden space, and time slowed about it. The rushing gout of wild flame stopped, beautiful, a blooming crimson flower made of fire and heat and light.

Meralda flicked it into oblivion with ease.

The Vonat waved his staff, and the air was filled with knives. They flashed toward Meralda, a school of shiny razors, until she sent them hurtling back toward the Vonat with the merest flick of her hand.

The Vonat’s staff, a thing of moaning wet bones wrapped in iron, shielded its master with a cloak of ice. The ice broke when the knives struck, filling the Tower with the sound of tinkling and shattering, far below.

Meralda spoke through Otrinvion’s throat, her voice loud and strong and harsh.

“How dare you disturb my rest?” she said. Echoes rolled like thunder. “How dare you invade my home?”

The Vonat rose and shouted a word and surrounded Meralda with a clinging, choking cloud of thick, deadly smoke.

Meralda dispelled it with a glance. The Vonat sent a wave of serpents slithering up the stair, each hooded and hissing and dripping with venom. Meralda burned them to ash before any could strike.

A rain of acid hail, a burst of killing wind, a screaming voice that cried madness into the mind and despair into the heart. A second wave of fire. A mass of flying whips. A sudden rain of spears.

All came hurtling toward Meralda, and all fell before her newfound power.

So easy, she thought, as each attack failed, as the staves showed her hidden things filled with power.

Why not strike him down?

Why not strike them all down?

The Vonat sent a final burst of hungry shadows at Meralda, and then sank to his knees, breathless and spent.

“Who are you, to trouble me?”

Meralda felt the words leave her throat, but was unsure for an instant who spoke them.

“Who are you, to dare my wrath?”

Who are you, to use my voice?

“Is this not what you wanted?” asked a stave.

“Is it not power you sought?” asked the other.

I could have it all, thought Meralda. Power in every shadow. No more struggling. No more doubt.

No more Meralda.

What was it Tam had said?

“There will come a time when you must choose,” Meralda remembered. “Choose between power and stealth. Between might and wisdom. Between the easy way, and the hard.”

Meralda took a deep breath.

“Behold, son of Vonath,” she said, in Otrinvion’s booming voice. “You would dare intrude, dare seek to ensorcel my home? Then see the price of thy impertinence. Look up, and see!”

Meralda reached forth and gripped Nam’s chin and forced his head up before imposing her Sight full upon his.

She showed him the curseworks, showed him the tethers. Showed him the moving, living mass of spells and magics that coursed through the Tower.

“Fire, Vonat.”

She showed him the curse of fire, how it would devour stone and iron, such was the ferocity of its burning.

“Wind.”

She showed him dark funnels of black wind that fell from a boiling sky before marching across the lands, ravaging everything in their path.

“Pestilence.”

She forced the Vonat to see each of the dozen curses.

She reached out, and gave her tethers a subtle twist, and when it was done the curseworks were aimed right at the heart of Vonath. She showed that to the wizard, forcing him to watch as doom after doom engulfed his homeland before spreading like a rush of fire across the Realms.

By the time the last curse landed, he shook in her grasp.

“Each of these shall be loosed upon your lands, should you trouble me once more. When they are done, Vonath shall be a wasteland, a place of bones and ghosts. Do you doubt this, magician? Do you need further proof of my powers?”

Meralda relaxed her grip. The Vonat sagged, coughing and sputtering, before managing the single word ‘no’.

“You will depart,” said Meralda, to the sputtering Vonat. “You will depart my home at once. You will trouble me no more. Be gone, meddling magician. Be gone, or taste my wrath.”

Meralda looked into the secret places one last time. She saw the Vonat’s travel spell, how he had transported himself directly into the Tower from his own makeshift laboratory in his room at the palace. She saw the killing spell he sought to prepare, making ready to wreak havoc on the Accords.

And she saw the fear in the man’s eyes. Fear of her.

“Enough.” Meralda reached out and moved her will just so, and the Vonat was cast screaming out of the Tower, and his killing spell evaporated like so much morning dew.

The sudden silence in the Tower rang almost like a bell.

Meralda sank on the stair, herself again, shaking and sweating and tired.

“Master would approve,” said a stave.

“Indeed,” said the other.

“Let’s go home,” said Meralda.

“As you wish, Mage Meralda,” said one.

The dark of the Tower vanished, became the warm soft glow of the laboratory.

Fromarch was there, his face lined with worry. Shingvere, too, not smiling, no twinkle in his eyes.

Donchen moved to meet Meralda, his hand extended. She took it, and leaned against him as they walked to her desk and her battered old chair.

“We saw,” said Mug. “I think you may have done it, mistress. Fixed the Vonats as well as the tethers. I don’t think Nam will ever come nosing about the Tower, again.”

“We’d rather have seen you throw him off the stair, Mage, but you’re the one in the robes now, not us.” Fromarch and Shingvere gathered at Meralda’s desk as she sat.

Donchen looked down at her and smiled.

“Well done, Mage,” he said. “I am glad to have you back.”

Weariness settled on Meralda like a robe made of lead. She felt herself slipping out of wakefulness, felt her head settle down onto her desk despite her efforts to remain upright and alert.

Donchen’s words sang her to sleep. “I am glad to have you back.” He’d put just a bit of emphasis on ‘you’.

He understands, she thought. Somehow. He alone understands.

And then Meralda slipped away into a deep sleep, where she dreamed of eating hay with Tam and flying kites with Tower while Donchen served everyone eggrolls and ghosts.