Frank Tuttle - All the Paths of Shadow

The captain lost his smile. “The last thing you need now is Humindorus Nam,” he said.

“The Vonat mage,” said Mug. “We’ve heard so many pleasant things about him.”

“He’s the one insisting on a tour,” said the captain. “He’s insane. Not climb the walls and run about naked insane, but mad in worse ways. They’re up to something, Meralda, and I’m afraid you’re a part of it.”

The voices faded, and footsteps fell away.

Meralda waited until they were gone. I have the oddest impression, she thought, that someone is crouched just beyond the door, listening.

She fought back a shiver, looking to see if the captain noticed. But his eyes were upon Goboy’s mirror, which had begun to flash again, and present brief scenes of rainy Tirlish streets.

“Captain,” said Mug, after a moment. “If you know something definite, why not share it with the thaumaturge? She doesn’t keep secrets from you, now does she?”

Meralda glared, but the captain nodded and turned away from the mirror. “That’s why I’m here,” he said. “I’ve got things to tell.” He sighed, and put his hands on his knees, and met Meralda’s eyes.

“It all started a year ago,” he said. “And naturally, it all started in Vonath.”

The captain stomped out.

Mug regarded Meralda with all of his eyes. “Well. Vonat spies, trained in sorcery. This day gets better and better by the moment, doesn’t it?”

Meralda nodded. In her hand was a pencil. She resisted a sudden urge to chew on it.

“Why doesn’t Yvin just arrest every last Vonat and toss them in the dungeon until after the Accords?” sputtered Mug.

“You know why,” said Meralda. “They have to sign the treaty too, or the Hang will sail away and never come back.”

“Oh? And that’s a disaster, is it? Why?”

Meralda sighed and put down her pencil. “Because the world isn’t as big as it once was, Mug. And we’re a part of it now, like it or not.”

“Well, I don’t like it.” The dandyleaf plant tossed his leaves. “I just want that understood.”

“I’ll make a note of it.” Meralda rose, stretched, yawned.

“If that Vonat wizard is in with the meddlers, as the captain suspects, he’ll likely try and meddle with you, mistress. Probably with something shiny and sharp. Please tell me you’re going to take steps to protect yourself.”

“I am.” Meralda gazed back across the ranks of shelves and stacks of crates. The captain’s warning had been clear.

I can expect a magical assault by a skilled Vonat wizard, she thought. What would best protect me from such a thing?

“Migle’s Mighty Armor,” said Mug, guessing her thoughts. “Turns arrows and knives, too, as I recall.”

Meralda imagined herself stumbling about in eighty pounds of iron and frowned. “Made for a man, and one two feet taller than I,” she said. She paced toward the first row of shelves, finger to her lips. “No. I need something subtle. Something he can’t see. Something no one can see.”

Items on the shelves were stored, in Shingvere’s words, “according to malevolent whim and infernal caprice.” Before Meralda were half a dozen intricate devices designed to make ice. Beneath them was a line of six silver gloves, all snapping their fingers in perfect time.

“Naigree’s Vanishing Amulet?”

Meralda walked past a jar containing the skeleton of a rat, which put its bony face to the glass and wiggled dry whickers at her as she passed.

“Won’t work in direct sunlight.”

The faint strains of music rose up from a music-box before her. Meralda smiled, and the box scuttled away, leaving tiny footprints in the dust.

“Carvile’s Temporary Displacer?”

A crystal snake, its gold spine bending and twisting within it, coiled suddenly at Meralda, flicking its metallic tongue at her until she lifted her eyebrow and frowned.

“You have to constantly sing to it.”

Mug sighed. “Surely there’s a bloody enchanted sword somewhere in this clutter, mistress!”

“There are at least eight. Five had to be wrapped in chains and sealed inside lead boxes. Two are broken.”

“That leaves one,” said Mug.

“It grows an inch a year,” said Meralda. “It was twelve feet long, last time I checked.” Meralda found herself halfway down the first rank of shelves. Magical implements glittered and moved and spun, illuminating her one moment with strange glows, and the next with flashes of harsh white light.

“Here you are,” she said.

She reached up and took down a small, dusty oak box. The top was worked with sigils and runes. A tiny key protruded from the delicate brass lock.

Lavey’s Here-now Gone-now Charm of Hiding. Meralda cleared a space on the shelf before her and put the box carefully down.

“Mistress?” called Mug. “Have you found something?”

Meralda bit her lower lip. The charm was reputed to be quite powerful, allowing its wearer to somehow go about their business, but remain hidden to those seeking them out. Not invisible, either. Just…gone. Absent. Away. All without ever actually hiding.

Which is just the thing to be, when Vonat wizards mean to do you ill, thought Meralda.

But first, of course, there was the charm’s famous here-now gone-now nature to contend with. “Mistress?” called Mug, louder now.

Meralda took a deep breath, held it, and turned the tiny key in the dusty brass lock.

There was a click.

Meralda lifted the lid, and peered inside.

The velvet lined case was empty.

“Bother,” said Meralda.

“What?”

“I opened Lavey’s little oak box,” said Meralda. “It’s empty.”

Mug groaned. “When can you try again?”

“After the next new moon. It doesn’t matter how many times I open the box from now until then, it’ll be empty. The spell doesn’t reset until the new moon.” Meralda closed the box and shook it. She could hear and feel the charm rattling about inside, but when she opened the box, it was empty, as it would be until the spell reset. Then there would be a fifty out of fifty chance the charm would appear.

“Bugger. Good idea though. What next?”

What next, indeed?

Meralda replaced Lavey’s box on its shelf. Mattip’s Sideways Positioner? Calit’s Bracelets of Furious Wind?

Neither is very reliable, she thought. The Bracelets of Wind are as likely to injure me as the Vonat.

Meralda walked, her mind racing, her eyes fixed on the objects before her. Etter’s Phantasmal Twin?

No. Anyone with Sight could easily tell twin from original.

She stubbed her right toe on something on the floor.

The spark lamps cast more shadows than light, between the ranks of shelves, so Meralda didn’t recognize the object with which she had collided at first. But she suspected how it came to be out of place.

“Shingvere, no doubt,” she muttered, straining to see in the dark. “Probably looking for a bottle of brandy he hid in here twenty years ago.”

She reached down and lifted the object from the floor.

It looked like a staff, at first. An old one, by the wear on the rough hewn ironwood. But it bore no markings, no sigils, no runes. It had neither iron shod foot nor copper plated head.

Meralda frowned at it. Probably not even a staff, she decided. Probably just a chunk of cast off lumber stuck beneath the shelves to level them. I just hope removing it doesn’t bring one of these shelves down on my head.

Meralda leaned the length of wood against the shelf behind her and continued her prowl amid the works of the mages of old.

“Any luck?” said Mug, from the shadows.