Dana Stabenow: Powers of Detection

He gestured and murmured a few words. Gwynn recognized the incantation that would strip away the stasis spell. And then another spell, less familiar to her.

Justinian paused as if listening to a sound inaudible to the rest of them, then looked around with unfocused eyes.

“No taint of magic,” he murmured, with a puzzled look.

“As I said, my spells couldn’t detect anything either,” the castle mage said, a little defensively.

“Your spells couldn’t detect a turd in your soup tureen,” the duke said. “Leave this to a real mage.”

But the duke’s tone made Gwynn glance in his direction. The duke looked-scared would be an exaggeration, perhaps. But definitely uneasy. It was one thing to see his personal mage baffled. No spellcaster of any real power would settle for a post as a mere castle mage. But to see the powerful Master Justinian baffled-that would make anyone uneasy. Gwynn’s own stomach tightened a bit at the thought.

“A fascinating puzzle,” Justinian said.

He gestured again, then frowned. Gwynn and the castle mage were probably the only ones who realized that his spell had fizzled. They looked at each other with alarm.

Justinian sighed and rubbed his forehead as if it hurt. Gwynn felt a little reassured. Obviously his stuffed-up head was bothering him. He’d do better when he felt better.

Although he could be in for a miserable few days in the meantime.

“So what are we standing about for?” the duke asked.

“Your grace-” the castle mage began.

“Now that the expert’s here, shouldn’t you be seeing about the wards?” the duke asked.

The castle mage looked, if possible, even more anxious.

“I’ve already tried everything I know,” he protested. “I was hoping Master Justinian…”

“Of course,” Justinian said. “My assistant will go and… um… begin running the tests I’ve planned to diagnose the problem with the castle warding spell, while I work on the murder.”

“Me?” Gwynn wanted to squeak, but she managed to hold her tongue in front of the duke.

“Ah, there you are, Reg,” the duke ordered, seeing that his manservant had arrived carrying a covered platter. “Show her to the gatehouse.”

“Just pretend it’s a class exercise and try to find out what’s wrong with the wards,” Justinian murmured, picking up her small carpet bag and handing it to her as carefully as if it were full of volatile potions. “If the duke’s magician hasn’t brought down the castle walls trying to fix it, you’re not likely to do any harm. If you fix it, marvelous; if not, I’ll deal with it when I’m finished with this.”

Gwynn nodded and followed Reg back to the gatehouse. It took fifteen minutes-the castle was more like a small city.

“Latest expert on warding spells,” Reg said, turning her over to the captain of the guard, who, after quirking one eyebrow, seemed to accept Gwynn’s expertise. Or perhaps he was just happy to see Reg leave.

“Not sure what you can do about the damned thing,” the captain said. “Works one minute and not the next. Apparently that’s a lot harder to fix than if it just flat out didn’t work.”

Unfortunately, he was right, Gwynn soon realized. Intermittent problems were the worst. She ran tests all morning, and the warding spell worked perfectly. The guards could come and go at will without setting off the alarm bells, but they rang furiously whenever an intruder entered the castle-intruders being represented, for test purposes, by a motley collection of peddlers, minstrels, and Gypsies unfortunate enough to show up at the castle that day.

Gwynn hated to disappoint the Maestro, but she was beginning to think he’d have to solve the problem. Though she’d keep trying for a while, since obviously his own work on the murder wasn’t going well. She saw him crossing the courtyard occasionally, always with a slightly more worried look on his face. She didn’t want to bother him yet.

Besides, she was a little worried about what would happen when Justinian saw the warding spell’s control device: a perfect little miniature of the duke’s castle, complete with a working drawbridge and portcullis. Justinian’s intense passion for disassembling small mechanical objects was matched only by his complete inability to reassemble them. What if the Maestro decided he needed to take the model apart to repair the spell? Gwynn tried not to think about it.

If she hadn’t been so worried, she’d have found the model castle fascinating herself. You could keep track of everything that went on in the castle-outdoors, at any rate-by watching the small, ghostly figures that moved around in it. Gwynn spotted the tiny image of Master Justinian standing on one of the ramparts and paused to watch. From the slumped set of his shoulders, she deduced that things were still going badly. She sighed, turned her back on the model, and tried to think.

“There really doesn’t seem to be anything wrong with it,” Gwynn muttered.

“Useless things, these magical devices,” said Reg, from the doorway. Gwynn jumped; she hadn’t heard him come in. And his presence was the last thing she needed. He had a personality like a cold, wet drizzle.

Suddenly the bells began ringing. Gwynn and the captain ran to the front of the miniature castle. They could see a group of small, ghostly figures entering it. A troop of wood trolls, armed with scythes and machetes. And yet, glancing out of the window of the guardhouse, which overhung the real gate, they saw no trolls entering the castle. Nothing was entering the castle, not even a chipmunk.

“It was working fine a minute ago,” the captain said.

“If you say so,” Reg said, with a shrug. “I’ve never seen it work right myself.”

“Send some of the Gypsies in and out of the gate,” Gwynn said.

The captain shouted some orders down into the courtyard. The wards ignored the Gypsies plodding in and out, though they continued to show the purely imaginary trolls wandering about the courtyard.

Or were they imaginary? Gwynn decided to cast a quick illusion-stripping spell on the courtyard. Permanently dispelling illusions was a job for a master mage, of course, but Gwynn thought that if any magically cloaked trolls lurked in the courtyard, she could probably make them visible for a second or two.

“Watch the courtyard and tell me what you see,” she told the captain and Reg.

And then she gestured.

“I don’t see anything,” Reg said. The captain shook his head as well.

Of course they didn’t see anything, Gwynn thought. The spell had fizzled. And yet, this morning, when she had cast the same spell on the courtyard as part of her tests, it had worked perfectly. The only illusion she’d dispelled this morning was a passing courtier’s toupee spell, but her illusion-stripping incantation had worked, just the same.

What was different now?

“I don’t hold with magic,” Reg said, lounging in the window. “Useless stuff. Never works the way it’s supposed to.”

Gwynn suddenly remembered how the Maestro had been able to sneeze without ill effect when Reg had been in his study. And in the coach, all the way from the college to the duke’s castle.

“I want you to help with something,” she told Reg. She rummaged through her carpet bag and handed him a small crystal. “Here, take this. Go down to the gate, walk out and keep going in as straight a line as you can until I call for you to stop.”

“Whatever you like,” Reg said, with a sneer. He shoved the crystal in his pocket and sauntered out.

“Keep the Gypsies going in and out,” Gwynn told the captain.

Gwynn glanced back and forth between the miniature castle and the outside world as Reg left the castle and ambled toward the edge of the wood. The tiny trolls appeared to be setting the model of the stables afire. The Gypsies were nowhere to be seen in the model, although she could see them well enough in the real world, marching back and forth through the gates with resigned expressions on their faces. When Reg was about a thousand yards from the castle gate, the phantom trolls suddenly vanished from the model and the Gypsies appeared.