Frank Tuttle - All the Paths of Shadow

Yvin closed the door. Tervis and Kervis, waiting on the settee in the oak-paneled anteroom, sprang to their feet.

“Where to, ma’am?” asked Kervis.

“Home,” said Meralda. From the door to the west hall, Meralda heard the captain tell a penswift that the thaumaturge was in the laboratory, and would be working late.

He knows quite well where I am, thought Meralda. She smiled at the west door, took a step away from it, and motioned for the Bellringers to follow.

Meralda took the long route out of the palace, left by the Soldier’s Gate, and found Angis waiting at the curb. “Thought you’d slip out this way,” he said, as Meralda and the Bellringers clambered in his cab. “Penswifts out chasing ghosts, aye?”

Meralda sighed. She opened her mouth to tell Angis what she’d told Yvin, that there are no haunts, no ghosts, no wraiths.

This time, though, the words caught in her throat. I know the flat was empty, she thought. Empty and open, no place to hide. But someone was there, watching me.

Seven hundred years of careful scientific inquiry. Seven centuries of serious, dedicated ghost-hunting, all of it fruitless. Just last year, the famed Night Walker of Dolleth Manor in Phendeli proved to be a child’s enchanted toy soldier, marching sporadically to and fro inside a walled-up corridor. The Piper of Morat’s Elt was just that. A wily piper who spent thirty years tormenting his neighbors because, as he said on his deathbed, “they were a right lot o’ fruit thievin’ rascals.”

The list of hauntings turned mundane events went on and on. As a student, now and then, of Shingvere’s, Meralda had been exposed to a plethora of grisly tales and paranormal goings-on. Even Shingvere admitted, despite his firm belief in what he called “the realm of the higher natures,” that thaumaturgical inquiries turned up far more flying squirrels and old kitchen magics than potential ghosts. How, then, could the Tower, which had been scrutinized and analyzed by scores of mages since the birth of Tirlin, conceal anything truly out of the ordinary?

Meralda thought back to a day when she’d asked Shingvere the very same question.

“You’re making the same mistake Fromarch makes, Apprentice,” Shingvere had said. “You claim you’re open-minded. But here you are, arguing against a haunted Tower without really examining the evidence.”

“What evidence is that?” Fromarch had said. “And what beer bottle did it come out of?”

“Look to your books,” Shingvere had replied. “Book after book, mage after mage, the details differ, but the facts remain unchanged. When you look hard at the Tower, Apprentice, you’ll likely see something looking back.”

Fromarch had snorted and left the room in disdain. Shingvere had shrugged, then grinned and waggled a finger at Meralda’s poorly-concealed expression of polite disbelief.

“One day you’ll see,” he’d said. “Maybe not at the Tower, maybe not tomorrow. But someday, someone is going to come face-to-face with a genuine ghost, and prove it, and then you’ll owe old Shingvere an apology, young lady.”

Meralda closed her eyes and settled back into her seat and wondered, for the first time, if Shingvere might just possibly be right.

Meralda settled into her favorite high-backed, well-cushioned red reading chair and put her bare feet down slowly into a tub of steaming water. “Ahh,” she said. “That feels nice.”

The Bellringers perched uneasily on Meralda’s overstuffed Phendelit couch and watched Mug watch the thaumaturge.

“You look like you’ve put down roots,” said the dandyleaf plant. “Next you’ll be sprouting flowers and asking for a bit of mulch.”

Kervis and Tervis exchanged glances. Mug turned a dozen eyes upon them. “So, lads,” said Mug. “Which one of you is Kervis?”

Kervis looked toward the thaumaturge, but her eyes were closed, and she was silent. “I am, sir,” said Kervis. “I am.”

Mug brought more eyes to bear upon the Bellringer. “Tell me again what you saw.”

“I, um, saw a shape, sir,” said Kervis. “Behind the thaumaturge, after the flash.”

Mug tossed his leaves. “A shape, you say. What kind of shape? A man? A dog? A milk cart? What?”

“A man-shape,” he said, after a moment. “Not a man, exactly. I didn’t see any hair or hands or eyes. Just a man-shape. Tall. Skinny.” Kervis shivered visibly at the memory. “I think he was reaching for her.”

Mug turned a pair of red eyes upon Meralda. “I see,” he said. “How did you explain it, Thaumaturge? A flash-induced visual anomaly, possibly an artifact of the ward spell’s faulty axial orientation?”

Mug turned his eyes back to the Bellringers. “You two see what I’m up against,” he said. “She’s got ward spells exploding, and ghosts reaching out to grab her, and here she sits with her feet in a bath going blithely on about axial faults and visual artifacts.” The dandyleaf plant’s leaves whirled, as if in a wind. “Old Otrinvion could come lurching out of the ground at her feet and she’d swear he was a reflection off the queen’s left ear-ring.”

“Mug.”

Mug rolled his eyes. “You boys know better,” he whispered. “Keep a good watch on her. And for all your sakes, next time shoot the blighter where he stands.”

Meralda opened her eyes. “As Guardsman Kervis knows, discharging a crossbow in the Wizard’s Flat is an excellent way to be remembered as the Tower’s newest ghost. And tell me this, Mug. If indeed dead Otrinvion does come strolling down the stair, what good will it do to shoot him? Do not all of your precious ghost stories stress that spirits cannot be harmed by mundane means?”

Mug glanced sidelong at the Bellringers. “See what I mean?”

Meralda shook her head. “Pay him no attention, gentlemen,” she said. “Logic fails. Reason surrenders. Silence is your only defense.”

“Silence, and a whopping big crossbow,” muttered Mug. Kervis grinned, and Mug winked. “That’s a lad,” he whispered. “There’s hope for you yet.”

Meralda closed her eyes again, and said nothing. Instead, she listened.

Through the four open windows of her sitting room, she could hear Tirlin quite clearly. The last downtown trolley thundered past, right on time, at six-ten. Soon after, traffic halved, and halved again, and the Brass Bell clanged out the seven of the clock. The cries of the paperboys, strident and clear during the closing time bustle, were reduced to a single lad’s weary, hoarse cry of “Hang dock tonight! Two pence for the Post !”

Finally, even the clomp-clomp of straggling pedestrians and early evening revelers died. Meralda pictured Fairlane Street. It sounded empty, a thing she had never before seen, and yet the effort to rise and look out a window was just too much to bear.

“Everyone must be down at the docks,” said Mug. “I hear the Hang lit their ships with lanterns on the rigging. Looks like a city gone to sea, they say.”

“I’m sure it’s beautiful,” said Meralda. She looked up at the Bellringers. “If you two would like to go and see, go ahead. I’m home, for the evening.”

“We’ll all see the Hang soon enough,” said Tervis. Kervis nodded assent. “We thought we’d better stay here, until they are docked and we know they’re peaceful.”

Mug chuckled. “Good idea,” he said. “That way, if the Hang attack, you two can ambush them in front of old Mrs. Whitlonk’s room. Kervis can use his crossbow, Tervis can wield both swords, and Mrs. Whitlonk can grab a hundred or so Hang at a time and complain to them about the noise.” he said.

Meralda sighed. “Shut up, Mug,” she said.

The sun set, and soon after, a trumpet blew in the distance. Meralda sat bolt upright, and the Bellringers leaped to their feet, and Mug even turned all his eyes toward the north, where the docks lay hidden behind the sprawling, twinkling heart of northwest Tirlin.