Frank Tuttle - All the Paths of Shadow

Meralda bit her lip. This isn’t going to work, she thought. “Captain,” she said, and then the staff swung about, as though struck. When it halted, the ends were level with the floor, the shaft lay in a straight line between the west doors and the king’s brunch table, and the wood was growing cold to Meralda’s touch.

The captain halted. “Thaumaturge?” he said.

“Hush a moment,” said Meralda. She took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and forced her perceptions out along the faint traceries of the faded spell she’d found.

The spell was faint. “Faint as smoke from yesterday’s fire,” Mage Fromarch had once said. Meralda found the phrase doubly fitting, as she tried to make sense of the twisting debris.

There, she thought. And there. Anchor points, and common enough. But what were those structures out along the periphery? Meralda frowned. The more she searched for the terminal ends of the operative functions, the more it seemed they looped back to the latching point.

Meralda pushed again, and her staff grew so cold the air about it steamed. The smoke-like remains of the spell vanished in a flash that Meralda saw clearly through her tightly shut eyes.

“Thaumaturge!” bellowed the captain, and at least one of the Bellringers. Boots thudded on the Gold Room tiles.

Meralda opened her eyes, blinked at the dots that swam before her, and dropped her staff before it froze tight to her hands.

“I’m not harmed,” she said, at the blurs that approached. “Don’t touch my staff.”

“What happened?” asked the captain. “Were you attacked?”

“I thought I saw a twinkling in the air,” said Tervis.

“Me, too,” said Kervis. “Ma’am.”

Meralda struggled to make out faces. “My bag, please,” she said, at what she hoped was Tervis. “Open it, if you will.”

Tervis fumbled with the latches. “Here,” he said. “What happened? Did you find something?”

“I did,” said Meralda. She fumbled in the bag’s recesses for a pair of heavy copper-lined gloves, blinking furiously while she decided which was left and which was right. “Someone cast a spell here, recently,” she said. “A very strange spell.”

The captain frowned. “Can you tell what it did?”

Meralda shook her head. “Someone didn’t want me to know,” she said. “They even left a surprise for anyone who looked.” She held up her right hand, anticipating the captain’s next words. “No, the caster is not still here. No, I can’t tell you if it was a Hang spell. Yes, it might have been a charm of concealment. And no, I’m not hurt.”

The dancing blobs of light were fading. She could see clearly enough now. The Bellringers stood close by, watching her intently, concern mirrored on their faces. The captain, too, watched Meralda as if expecting her to fall into a swoon at any moment.

Meralda pulled on the gloves and snatched up her staff. It still trailed steam, and its shaft was rimed with a thin layer of dull ice.

“Come, gentlemen,” she said. “It’s a big palace.”

Meralda sat heavily at her kitchen table, a steaming mug of fresh coffee in her hand. Cool air breezed past, drawn in at the open kitchen window and leaving through the sitting room. A clock ticked softly in Meralda’s bedroom, and in the distance traffic hooted and clattered, but for midday in Tirlin, Fairlane Street was quiet. “It’s good to be home,” said Meralda.

From his perch in the kitchen windowsill, Mug spread his fronds to the sun. “Indeed, it is,” he said, his words slow and hushed. Ten of Mug’s eyes, the smaller brown ones, studied the thaumaturge intently from behind a screen of leaves.

Mug decided the thaumaturge looked tired, but not particularly angry. Her long red hair stuff was windblown, but not tangled into what Meralda called a fright, and the skin on her forehead wasn’t shiny with sweat. Her eyes were clear and bright, lacking the dark bands beneath them that so often appeared after a day at court.

The dandyleaf plant relaxed, his upmost leaves drooping in relief. At least that blockheaded king hasn’t insulted her today.

“Now that you’ve done your shopping and made yourself comfortable,” said Mug, “you can tell your poor neglected familiar what you’ve been up to, and why I see so many soldiers in the streets.”

Meralda relayed her day at the palace to Mug, who gradually turned all of his eyes upon the thaumaturge. “You found how many hidden spells?” said Mug.

“Eight,” said Meralda. “One in the Gold Room, two in the west wing, three in the fourth floor guest hall, one in the High Garden, and one just outside the Old Stair fifth floor landing.” Meralda swirled her coffee and watched the steam rise up. “Eight recently unlatched spellworks,” she said. “All of them set to discharge if discovered, all remnants of extremely powerful spells.” She took another sip of coffee. “All laid within the last two weeks.”

Mug bunched his eyes together in a frown. “Two weeks?” he said. “But the Hang only just arrived.”

Meralda shrugged. “Nevertheless, the traces were fresh, but not new. Also, each spell was laid days apart. Even if you laid one every other day, that’s two weeks.”

All of Mug’s green eyes looked into all of his brown ones. “The spells,” he said. “What were they? What did they do?”

Meralda sighed. “I don’t know,” she said. “I simply couldn’t tell.” She put down her cup and ran her fingers through her hair. “They may have been unlatched, but still awaiting a trigger,” she said. “Or they may have already fulfilled their purpose, and were merely debris. I can’t be sure.”

“Debris? And it froze your staff solid?” Mug’s fronds tossed as if in a wind. “Mistress, if that’s debris, I’m an oak. Someone meant to hurt you.”

Meralda recalled the blinding flash of the first spell. She’d blocked it, the next seven times. But had her focus been closer in the Gold Room, she might have been blinded, first sight and second.

“What I don’t understand,” said Meralda, “is how anyone managed to unlatch such potent spells in the palace at all. You couldn’t hand cast them, and you certainly couldn’t just latch such spells to a wand, or anything small enough to get past the guards. There isn’t enough latching mass.”

Mug snorted. “Well, it follows that an invisible wizard would have an invisible staff, doesn’t it?” he said.

“Nonsense,” said Meralda. “Even a staff wouldn’t latch any one of the spells I found. You’d need two staves and an oil-insulated Cooping Tall holdstone, at least.” Meralda frowned. “And please, no comments suggesting the presence of invisible pack-mules.”

“Mules,” said Mug. “Ridiculous. A mule wouldn’t do at all. Invisible wizards prefer mad-eyed stallions, which make for more dramatic exits.”

Meralda sighed.

“And what did the king say when you told him his palace was littered with dire Hang sorceries?” said Mug.

“I never said they were Hang,” said Meralda. Then she frowned. “He asked me if they had been dispelled, and I said they had. Then he asked me to set wards at the gates to detect latched spellworks,” she said. “I got the impression that he was neither surprised nor terribly worried.”

“Not worried?” said Mug. “We have a lone Hang, a full day ahead of his fleet. A fleet that is, I assume, under the careful scrutiny of the army, which has agents behind every outhouse and tangle-weed along the Lamp River. Our lone Hang leaves his fleet, strolls unseen cross-country and into the palace, has a brief conversation with the king, and then vanishes like a stage puppet from our midst.” The dandyleaf plant rolled a leaf into a tube, and waved it at Meralda. “Then, the clever Tirlish thaumaturge, hot on the trail of the elusive Hang visitor, discovers eight powerful, mysterious spells cast at various points in the palace.” Mug rolled his eyes toward the ceiling. “Not worried?” he asked. “Why, toss in a Vonat spy or two and we’ll have the makings of those penny-novel dreadfuls you pretend you never read.”