Amberlin believed he finally knew the way in.
Now, studying his reflection in the Safe Mirror as he prepared himself for his journey, he was by and large pleased with what he saw. He was in his final years, no doubt, like the old sun itself, but was still impressively tall and certainly formidable-looking in his dark green robe set with old-gold frogging, maiden-thread serentaps, and gilt curlicues. His long grey hair and stylish tripartite beard held by its three opal clasps still had enough flecks of black, and he liked to think his eyes were bright with resolve and old-world cunning rather than an excess of brandywine, rheum, and too many late nights spent reading in front of the fire. He felt as ready for the Door and the brothers with their interminable schemes as he could ever hope to be.
And while Amberlin knew better than to let the Copsy Door be the sole answer to his troubles, hope remained the only meal worth having these last few decades. If not this, then what else was there? Nearly a century before, at the full blush of his powers, he had known upwards of fifty spells and cantraps. He could recite them from memory — the intricate syllables and pronunciations uttered just so — even the most exacting convolutes, glossolades, and prattelays, with no need of spell books or prompt lists, no reliance on the often fractious, sometimes duplicitous sandestins and daihaks in his employ to whisper embarrassing reminders.
But then, even as years and failing memory had worn those fifty-plus spells down to a zealously guarded twelve, Amberlin had experienced his worst of days.
In the workings of an ancient feud, specifically a longstanding dispute over the ownership of a particularly fine gossawary tree in the Robber Woods, that spiteful parvenu Sarimance the Aspurge had blighted him with Stilfer’s Prolexic Inflect, so that the syllable patterns of every spell Amberlin then uttered, every conjuration that he
What an embarrassment to engage in that trifling exchange with Tralques at the Iron Star Inn that day and then, having invoked his greatest display spell, Aspalin’s Fond Retrieval, being left to explain why he had countered the upstart’s dazzling conjuration of a troupe of performing silver dryads with nothing more than a lowly earthenware teapot reciting bawdy ballads from the Land of the Falling Wall. What an agony to escape the deodand at Wayly Corners, then from his refuge in the tossing heights of a lamplight tree see his Astemic Sunderblast turn an entire hillside into yellow flowers with softly chiming wind-bells. The deodand had either been discouraged by the sheer novelty of the display, or had more likely wandered off out of boredom, but Amberlin had been left to justify to neighbors and curious passersby why he had preferred to stay aloft swaying in the breeze for four hours instead of simply blasting the creature outright.
The whole affair had given Amberlin a not altogether unwelcome reputation for subtlety, capriciousness, and newfound stoicism. Some even called him, and never entirely in jest, Amberlin the Philosophe, and drew pleasing if somewhat offhanded parallels with his fabulous namesakes, Amberlins I and II, two of the mightiest after Phandaal in all the long history of Grand Motholam. It could have been worse.
But Amberlin knew it was only a matter of time before the spiteful Sarimance, that upstart Tralques, the Anto brothers themselves, or even that wilful mooncalf Diffin brought forth the various bits and pieces they knew and saw how it truly was, and he found himself the laughing-stock of Almery, Ascolais, and beyond, the punch-line of the season’s joke.
Amberlin glanced at the antique chronometer floating above his desk. It was well past time to be on his way. Fortunately, the housekeeping and protection spells for Furness required but a single one-syllable word, and today took merely fifteen subvocalized attempts before luck had it safely in place. Amberlin strode briskly down the path, then, with a single glance up at Diffin gazing at a sun that no longer was, he gripped his staff firmly and set off across the water-meadow to where the remains of Venta-Valu stood in the roseate morning light.
Though Amberlin’s few remaining spells had become ordeals of frustration and dismay, with even a text as fundamental to sound wizardry as Killiclaw’s Primer of Practical Magic hardly worth the trouble of opening, he possessed other adjuncts borrowed, bought or bequeathed to him through a long lifetime that required no utterances at all. If he were reasonably careful, he could still present as someone to be approached with caution and crossed at great peril.
One such possession was the antique baffle screen the Anto brothers now used to hide both themselves and the cellar Eunepheos had wrought so long ago. As Amberlin strode along the riverbank, he fitted the yellow key- glass coin to his left eye and revealed both the Copsy Door and the brothers wilfully hiding amid the more substantial of the old manse footings.
It was hard to know what passed for humor or wit in those sly, self-serving minds. Now, by remaining quiet, it seemed as if they wanted to make Amberlin lose face by having to ask that they reveal themselves.
“Let us be about it then!” he called, taking care to direct his gaze precisely at where each was concealed, and was pleased at how swiftly the grins left the startled, moony faces. Now both scrambled to their feet and stood, burly, copper-skinned and practically hairless in their humble village work-smocks and thick leather aprons, giving silly grins again.
“Kept it safe, your magnificence,” Joanto said, brushing the grass from his apron. “Did all you said exactly to the letter.”
Boanto wiped his chin with the back of a hand. “Ready and eager to uncover what’s within, your mightiness.”
The Copsy Door itself was a smooth milk-glass lid set at forty-five degrees into the hillside. About it, merging with the grassy bank, were the schattendross relics of old wall and arch footings, a sad handful looming up to become twists and tendrils before fading into nothing. Through them, the old red sun cast a purple light that made the day seem further along than it was. Not for the first time, Amberlin wondered what had possessed Eunepheos to create such a place. There was gloom and shadow enough in these latter days.
Amberlin pushed back his sleeves in the sort of theatrical flourish all wizards practiced in the privacy of their innermost sanctoria, and made as if to study the milky lid. “Joanto, take your water-bucket and fetch fresh water — mind now, free from any impurities. Boanto, go find five red wild-flowers from that meadow there. Flawless, you understand. Not a blemish or this will not work.”
The brothers exchanged glances, clearly displeased at having to miss any part of what the wizard now did, but dared not linger.
Amberlin watched as they hurried off muttering and casting backward glances. Then, even as Joanto stooped to fill his bucket and Boanto discarded one flower after another in his quest for perfect blooms, Amberlin took the green operating coin for the baffle screen in one hand and the yellow eye-coin in the other and slammed them together. The result was a rather spectacular and very satisfactory flash complete with a thunderclap that echoed in the hills and sent reed-birds rising along the Scaum.
The brothers, of course, saw it as a fine conjuration rather than the pyrotechnics accompanying ancient science at work. Even as the thunder faded, they came scrambling back, Joanto discarding his bucket, Boanto throwing aside his fistfuls of flowers along the way.
“No matter! No matter!” Amberlin called. “My simplest Sunderblast has brought Eunepheos’ door undone. Light the torches and let us proceed.”
Boanto wiped his chin again and studied the perfectly round hole where the Copsy Door had been. Its blackness was absolute. “Surely a fine magical glow would be more convenient, your magnificence.”
“Surely it would,” Amberlin countered loftily. “But think on it further, Boanto. You fine robust fellows must continue to play some modest part in this to warrant as much as a
Joanto gave a shrewd sideways look. “But we were the ones who found the old requiem manuscript in that trunk in Solver’s attic while — er — visiting his poor, ill — er — now deceased mother that day, then immediately brought it to you.”
“True, but you brought it to me knowing I valued old manuscripts and syllabaries and was a likely buyer, nothing more. It was I who spent the hours researching Eunepheos and finally learned how to apply that scrap of melody to this fine Copsy Door so we could plot its comings and goings.”
“As you say, master,” said Joanto. “And I like that word ‘we’. ‘We’ is so much friendlier than ‘I’.”
“You’ve been talking to Diffin, I can tell. For now, be satisfied with the generous quarter ‘we’ agreed upon.”
