Dana Stabenow: Powers of Detection

“Do you see that?” she asked the captain.

“Now it’s working,” he said.

“Let him get to the edge of the woods, then call him back.”

The captain did so. When the manservant got within about a thousand yards of the castle, the images of the Gypsies winked out in the model, and the phantom trolls reappeared. They seemed to have captured the keep and were throwing tapestries and furniture into the moat.

“I think you may be on to something,” the captain said. “What is that crystal?”

“An excuse to get him out of range,” Gwynn said.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Could you send someone to fetch Master Justinian?” Gwynn asked.

From the cloud of camphor that arrived with him, Gwynn deduced that the Maestro’s cold was no better, and judging from the expression on his face, Gwynn suspected his investigation was still going badly, too. She winced when she saw the duke trailing in his wake, looking like a thundercloud about to spew lightning.

“This better be important,” the duke snapped as he entered the room.

“A moment, your grace,” Justinian said, and drew Gwynn to one side.

“I’m sorry I’ve interrupted your work,” she began.

“I’m not,” Justinian said, rubbing his forehead again. “I’m in no shape to be doing magic. One minute my spells work, the next they fizzle. And even when they work, I’m not finding anything that could account for that poor benighted man’s death.”

“Perhaps this will help,” she said.

She showed him the model castle, where the triumphant miniature trolls were now roasting tiny castle guards on spits and eating them with gusto.

“Fascinating,” Justinian said, fingering a model catapult on the castle walls.

“Typical,” the duke said, with disgust. “Damned useless piece of junk.”

“Patience, your grace,” Justinian said, toying with the miniature drawbridge. “Something of great import is afoot.”

He looked at Gwynn and nodded.

While the duke and the captain of the guard looked on with puzzled expressions, Gwynn demonstrated how the wards worked again when Reg was out of range.

“Of course,” Justinian said. “He’s been hovering over me all morning. That explains everything. Follow me!”

He dashed off at a breakneck pace. Gwynn, Reg, and the duke followed him back to the dungeons.

“What are we here for?” the duke asked, when he’d caught his breath.

“I need to question your surviving prisoner,” Justinian replied.

The remaining anarchist flinched. Obviously, he was more used to the duke’s style of interrogation than the Maestro’s.

“You saw the wound in your comrade’s chest, did you not?” Justinian asked.

“Filthy magic attack,” the anarchist muttered.

“He was wounded before in just the same fashion, wasn’t he?” Justinian asked.

“Aye,” the anarchist said, looking puzzled. “Stabbed in the chest in a scuffle with the king’s guards-must be five years ago. We thought he was a goner, for sure, but we had this mage with us-”

“A mage? With you?” Justinian said.

“A hostage, more than likely,” the duke said.

“Something like that,” the anarchist said. “Anyway, the mage fixed it. Healed the wound so you couldn’t even see it, and we managed to get out of the city that night. Guards were looking for a wounded rebel, not a healthy one.”

“Aha!” Justinian said, dramatically. “Most helpful. Now I know how he was killed.”

“Some kind of magic,” the anarchist muttered.

“No,” Justinian said. “He was killed by the complete absence of magic.”

“I beg your pardon?” the duke said.

“We already know the castle warding spell has been… temperamental,” Justinian said. “Have you noticed problems with any other spells? Food preservation spells wearing off prematurely? Healing potions not working as designed? Cosmetic spells not performing reliably?”

The duke nodded and narrowed his eyes. From the murmurs Gwynn could hear from several other people nearby, she suspected that there had, indeed, been many magical malfunctions recently-probably more than the duke ever dreamed.

“The light globes haven’t worked for weeks,” the castle mage said, glancing up at a flickering torch.

“It’s him,” Justinian said, pointing at Reg.

“Me?” Reg exclaimed. “I’m no bloody mage.”

“We’ll see about that,” the duke said, gesturing to his guards to seize Reg.

“No, Reg is right, your grace,” Justinian said, waving the guards back. “He’s no mage. He has no magic whatsoever. Probably born that way. He’s what we call a magic null.”

“A what?” the duke said.

“A null-he cancels out magic by his very presence. Like water and fire. Pour water on a fire, and it fizzles out. Pour water on gunpowder, and you can’t even light it. That’s what he does to magic. Snuffs it out like a candle.”

“Explains why the warding spell wasn’t working, but not how he killed my prisoner,” the duke said. “Unless you’re trying to tell me that anarchist was a mage. Which doesn’t make sense; they hate mages. Besides, you aren’t harmed by him.”

“It goes back to that wound your prisoner got five years ago,” the Maestro said. “The one his confederate here says their captured mage healed. They probably had a knife to his throat, poor man. But he was clever. He didn’t perform a healing spell at all.”

“That’s rot,” the remaining anarchist said. “I saw it. One minute he had a great bleeding wound, and the next he looked perfectly fine.”

“Precisely,” Justinian said. “You said he escaped the city that same night? Healing spells don’t work that fast. What I suspect your captive mage did was cast a stasis spell just along the outside of the wound, to stop the bleeding.”

“Like the one my spellcaster did before you came?” the duke asked.

“Precisely,” Justinian said. “And probably finished it off with an illusion spell, to hide the wound.”

“Now I’m not sorry we offed him,” the surviving anarchist muttered.

“With a stasis spell, the wound wouldn’t bleed or fester,” Justinian explained. “It also wouldn’t heal. It would stay just as it was the moment that poor captive mage cast his spell. And he probably conjured better than he intended; his stasis spell remained in place these five years until our magic null here walked into his cell and erased it. Reg was there, wasn’t he, when the prisoner died?”

“Yes, he was,” the duke said.

“So it wasn’t really murder after all,” Justinian said. “Your prisoner was wounded by the king’s guards in the lawful dispatch of their duty. It just took five years for the wound to kill him.”

“Of course, we still don’t know who sent him to me,” the duke said, staring at Reg with narrowed eyes.

“Sent?” Reg said, looking worried. “Nobody sent me. I just needed a job.”

“Maybe,” the duke said. “Or maybe someone wanted all my magical defenses to fail. We’ll see what a little questioning reveals.”

“Oh, not much use doing that,” Justinian said.

“Why not?” the duke said. “You’d be surprised how well a little close questioning works.”

“Yes, but whoever sent him probably bespelled him to make sure he was impervious to torture,” Justinian said.

“Torture?” Reg squeaked.

“But Maestro, if he’s a magic null,” Gwynn began, then stopped herself.

“Then I’ll just hang him and be done with it,” the duke said.

“Hang him, when he’s merely an unwitting tool of something else?” Justinian exclaimed.

“Unwitting? I’ll do him one better,” the duke said. “Unbreathing-that’s more like it.”