Frank Tuttle - All the Paths of Shadow

“You’re right,” said Shingvere. “Most of what you’ve heard about the other Vonat mages wasn’t true. But everything you’ve heard about this one is.” Shingvere paused. “And believe me, Thaumaturge, you haven’t heard the worst.”

Meralda looked up from her page of Tower calculations and sought out Shingvere.

“You’ll be wanting to be careful around him, Thaumaturge,” said Shingvere, from well behind the silvery ball of ice-cold water that hung suspended above Allabat’s Flying Plates. “Especially when he’s smiling. Aye. Especially then.”

The water blurred, and Shingvere’s form appeared within it. Small and upside down at first, but growing quickly larger until his distorted face filled the barrel-sized sphere. “Boo,” he said, with a grin.

Meralda shook her head. “Shingvere,” she began.

The Eryan raised a hand and darted from behind the Flying Plates. “No, no,” he said, shaking his head. “I’ve wasted quite enough of your time, lass. Just wanted to pass on a bit of friendly advice, and poke about the old place a bit before court.” He ambled back to Meralda’s desk, hands in his pockets.

“I’ll be careful,” said Meralda, when Shingvere was near. “I know enough about this Nam to leave him be,” she said. “Not that I can’t knock him flat, if the need arises.”

Shingvere nodded gravely, and laid his hand lightly on Meralda’s shoulder. “Oh, it will,” he said, no hint of humor in his tone. “And when the time comes, Meralda, my dear, remember this. Right after you knock Nam flat you’ll need to kill him. Quickly.”

Meralda blinked. “Shingvere?”

“You heard me, lass. It’s a hard thing to say, and a hard thing to hear, but hear it you must, and heed it you must. Kill him. Mercy would be wasted. Hesitation will be fatal. Kill him quick. You won’t get two chances.” And then the fat Eryan turned and was through the doors and gone. Meralda barely had time to utter the word of leaving, and then the doors were shut.

Meralda stared after him, and it was a long time before she was able to pick up her pencil and resume work on her shadow moving spell.

Shingvere sauntered past the Bellringers with a quick word and the offer of a penny-stick to each. Both declined, and both kept their eyes alert and on the Hall, which meant neither saw the bulge under the front of the Eryan wizard’s robe or noticed the odd gait he took down the stairs.

At the foot of the west stair, Shingvere stopped, looked furtively about, and hitched at his robes when the Red Guards at the Burnt Door looked away. “That’s better,” he muttered. Then he found a grin and managed to walk without hopping all the way through the west wing, out the west doors, and half a block down Palace Way to Fromarch’s plain black carriage.

The curbside carriage door opened, and Shingvere darted inside.

Fromarch scowled at him through a thick fog of purple pipe smoke. “Well,” he said, knocking twice on the carriage with his knuckles. “Did you get it?”

Shingvere grinned. “You know I did,” he said, unfastening the front of his robe and reaching inside. “Walked right up to it and stuck it in my britches. Walked right out, too. No wonder you Tirls have got Hang in your palace. You wouldn’t amble out so easily at Cloudcrown.”

Fromarch grunted. The carriage wheeled into the street just as Shingvere pulled a solid brass cylinder out of his robe and held it up with a flourish.

“Mage Prolep’s Infinite Latch,” he said. Then he lifted an eyebrow. “Isn’t it?”

Fromarch spoke a word. The cylinder, which was nearly long enough to stretch from fingertip to elbow and about as thick as a big man’s wrist, made three sharp clicking noises

On the third click it doubled its length. Shingvere yelped, but kept his grip.

“That’s it, all right,” said Fromarch. He whispered another word, and the cylinder noiselessly and instantly resumed its original size. Fromarch nodded approvingly. “That’s old, dark Tirlish magic,” he said, wistfully. “Mage Ovis has no use for it. But perhaps you and I do.”

Shingvere shut his mouth. “This Prolep,” he said. “Knew his business, did he?”

Fromarch shrugged. “He knew latches,” he said. “Otherwise, he was quite mad.” Fromarch tapped the latch with the bowl of his pipe. “It’s a bit unpredictable, but we can latch spells to it all day and never run out of latching mass.” The lean mage laughed without smiling. “Certain ugly Vonats might find this surprising in a brief, unpleasant way.”

“’Ere, hold on,” said Shingvere. “You just used the word unpredictable. Odd that you didn’t mention it earlier, when you talked me into pilfering a foreign king’s palace. So, unpredictable to what extent?” The Eryan frowned. “And why have I never heard of this Prolep?”

Fromarch shrugged. “Sometimes it unlatches all its spells at once,” he said. “And that’s why you’ve never heard of Prolep.”

Shingvere gently laid the latch across Fromarch’s knees and snatched his hand away. “This is your secret weapon?” he asked. “‘An ancient instrument of great power’,” he said, mocking Fromarch’s baritone. “‘Forgotten, by all but me’.” The Eryan shook his head. “Simply marvelous. When the trouble starts, you can explode with the latch, and I’ll set fire to my robes, and perhaps the Vonats will be so embarrassed they’ll call in all their spies and go home to take up apple ranching.”

Fromarch rubbed the latch’s dull case with the hem of his robe. “You talk too much,” he said. “Always have.”

Shingvere sighed. “Aye. You’re probably right,” he said. Then he lifted the carriage curtain a bit and squinted into the sun. “We’ve engaged in skullduggery, and we have our eldritch magics,” he said, as traffic rattled past. “What do we do now?”

Fromarch withdrew his pipe from his mouth. “We buy some Nolbit’s,” he said. “And we go back to my basement, and we spread out our tools, and we latch every spell we know to this,” he said, shaking the latch, “and then we just wait for that-”

“Language,” warned the Eryan, with a grin. “Profanity is the footstool of lazy intellect.”

“-for that unwashed hedge conjurer to lift a paw toward the thaumaturge,” said Fromarch. “At that moment, I’ll start unlatching, and I’ll stop when there’s a pair of empty Vonat boots on the floor and a sooty spot on the ceiling.”

“And if the latch fails before that?” said Shingvere, quietly.

Fromarch stuck his pipe in the right corner of his mouth and made a small shrug.

Shingvere grinned. “A hero’s death, right out of a Phendelit poem book,” he said. “Fromarch, as Meralda is fond of saying, you’re a treasure. An idiot, but a treasure nonetheless.” The Eryan saluted, laying his right hand over his heart. “Naturally, I vow to stand with you, and share your noble, if messy, doom.”

Fromarch sucked his pipe, toyed with the latch, and said nothing else all the way home.

The Gold Room was, if Meralda was any judge, in a full-blown tizzy.

Meralda’s grandmother had used the phrase to denote any sudden onset of frantic and ultimately futile activity. “Oh, they’re in quite the tizzy,” Grandma Ovis had proclaimed, that day so long ago when Meralda’s older sister had wed. “You’d think the world a-turnin’ depended on the roses.”

Looking about at court, Meralda mouthed the phrase herself.

The Phendelits and the Alons had all arrived in the night, and were to be formally welcomed at a tenth-hour ceremony. Meralda had been summoned at eight, apparently, under the assumption that thaumaturges had nothing better to do than sit and watch the day staff set up chairs, cover tables with tablecloths, and argue over placemats and placards.