Frank Tuttle - All the Paths of Shadow

Meralda laughed, stepped onto the porch, and gently took Fromarch by the sleeve of his plain white shirt. “Come inside, both of you,” she said, handing Shingvere the stew spoon. “You know that elderly gentlemen are prone to crankiness if they miss their evening gruel.”

Shingvere crowed, and Fromarch nearly smiled, and from its burnished copper stand by the door Fromarch’s staff snickered audibly. “Quiet, you backscratcher,” said Fromarch.

Meralda stepped inside, took both wizards by their elbows, and marched them toward Fromarch’s kitchen.

After a long supper of summer stew and a thick butterscotch pudding prepared by Shingvere, Fromarch led his guests into his sitting room, opened all three windows, and bade everyone to sit and drink. An icebox of Nolbit’s Dark was dragged in from the pantry, and for the first time in her life Meralda drank ice-chilled Eryan ale and swapped gossip, mage to mage.

Talk began with the story of the Vonat spy caught red-handed and nearly frozen in the mail-hold of an Alon courier airship, a sheaf of coded papers sewn into his jacket. Shingvere then recounted the troubles facing the Alon queen and the blood feud between Clan Morar and Clan Glenoch. “Look close enough and you’ll see a Vonat in their midst,” said Shingvere. Fromarch merely snorted, observed airily that far too many Eryans spent far too much time seeing things that weren’t there, and changed the subject to talk of the near-completion of the railroad that would soon link Phendeli to Kendle.

“But here we are, two old gaffers doddering on about roads and boats when we ought to be talking about the lovely young lady in our midst,” said Shingvere, as he handed Meralda another bottle of Nolbit’s. “So tell us about the Tower, Mage Meralda,” he said. “Seen the haunt, have you?”

Meralda groaned. “Please,” she said. “Not that. Anything but that.”

Fromarch, from his shadowed repose in his enormous Phendelit reclining chair, guffawed. “Oh, he’s always believed in haunts and the like,” he said. “Can’t blame him, really, given the standards of education in dear old Erya.”

Shingvere ignored the jibe. “’Tis true I spent a whole summer chasing the Tower shade,” he said. “Back in-oh, 1967, it was. Did you know that?”

Meralda blinked. “I didn’t,” she said. No more Nolbit’s, she decided. Her legs and arms were getting heavy, while her head seemed light and wobbly.

She sank back into Fromarch’s couch, pulled a small copper funnel from behind the small of her back, and relaxed again.

“Nobody does,” said Fromarch, after a sip of beer and a sigh. “Too bloody embarrassing. If the Exchequer found out we’d spent from the crown’s purse on a spook hunt, we’d have been put out on our heads, and rightly so.”

Meralda frowned. “Were you a part of this, Mage?” she asked.

“Reluctantly,” Fromarch growled. “I was to make sure our Eryan friend didn’t mistake flying squirrels for long-dead wizards.” Fromarch leaned forward, so that his short ring of thin white hair and pale cheekbones shone faintly in the dim, slanting rays of the setting sun streaming lazily through the window.

“The ghost hunt, of course, was nonsense,” he began.

“Aye, but people were seeing lights in the Wizard’s Flat,” said Shingvere, quickly. “Reliable people. Guardsmen. Reporters. Even,” he said, after a pause and a grin, “a noted Tirlish Thaumaturge.”

Meralda shook her head to clear it. “You?” she asked Fromarch, incredulous. “You saw something?”

Fromarch snorted. “I saw lights in the Wizard’s Flat,” he said. “Once. Just lights, nothing more. Could have been kids with a lantern.”

Meralda thought about the long, long climb to the Wizard’s Flat, and the locked door at the top.

“These were clever, determined children,” said Shingvere. “Aye, one might even say brilliant, since the Tower, that evening, was locked, sealed with wards, and under heavy guard by no fewer than two dozen watchmen.” Shingvere assumed a pose of mock concentration. “In fact, I recall someone, I’m not sure who, making a grand proclamation early that very evening that no human being could possibly enter the Tower, that night. Who was that, I wonder?”

Fromarch emptied his bottle and put it down with a thump. “Lights at a window do not prove the existence of haunts,” he said. “Neither did you, I recall, despite a whole three months of fussing about with magnetometers and radial thaumeters and that bloody heavy wide-band scrying mirror,” he added. “My back still aches, some days, from carrying that thing up and down those stairs while you pretended to fiddle with the holdstones.”

Shingvere held up his hand. “Aye. You’re correct,” he said. “I found nothing.” The little wizard fixed his eyes on Meralda’s. “Perhaps, though, I just wasn’t looking with the right pair of eyes.”

“Bah,” snorted Fromarch. He waved a finger at the Eryan. “We both know that the lights, if they weren’t reflections off the window glass, were nothing but a residual discharge from some old structural spell.”

Shingvere shrugged. Meralda remembered the laughter on the stair and shivered and took another cold draught of Fromarch’s beer.

“Bah,” said Fromarch again. “So how are you going to go about moving the Tower shadow, Thaumaturge?” he asked.

Meralda wiped her lips. “Directed refraction,” she said. Shingvere slapped his knee.

“Told you!” he crowed. Fromarch scowled.

“He thought you’d hang those spark lights of yours from scaffolds and aim them at the ground,” said Shingvere. “I told him they weren’t bright enough, and if they were they’d be too hot.”

Meralda nodded. “I’m working on cooler, brighter lights,” she said. “But that could take months. Months I won’t get, with Yvin wasting my time at every turn.”

“Spoken like a mage, lass!” said Shingvere. The Eryan donned a wicked smile. “Now you see why I spend so much time away from Erya and that blatherskite queen. She’d have me whiling away the hours as a magic carpet cleaner, you mark my words.”

Fromarch snorted. “So instead you come to Tirlin and chase ghosts,” he said, lifting his bottle. “Another college education, gone sadly to waste.”

Shingvere grinned. “Will you be latching your refraction spell to the Tower itself?” he asked.

“Of course,” said Meralda. “The focal volume will be just below the ceiling of the Wizard’s Flat.” She tilted her head. “If, that is, your ghosts won’t mind.”

Shingvere nodded gravely. “Oh, I don’t think they will,” he said. “But I’d ask them nicely first, all the same. No harm in being polite, is there?”

“No harm in being a soft-headed old fool, either,” muttered Fromarch. He leaned back into the shadows. “But do have a care latching spells to the Tower,” he said. “We had a devil of a time, way back when.”

“Aye,” Shingvere said. “The structural spellworks left a residual charge. New spells tend to unlatch, after a short time. Even old skinny there had trouble working around it.”

Fromarch began to snore. Shingvere yawned and rose from his settee, padding quickly across the dimly lit room toward Meralda. “Well,” he said, smiling. “Just like old times. Seems we young folks need to put the oldsters to bed.”

Shingvere offered his hand, and Meralda took it, and rose. “It’s good to have you two back,” she said, in a whisper. “I’ve been worried about him, since he retired. He used to come around, but lately…”

“He doesn’t want you to feel like you’re still working in his shadow,” replied Shingvere. “He’s really not such a bad old fellow, once you get to know him. And I’m sure he wouldn’t mind a bit of company here, now and then.”