Frank Tuttle - All the Paths of Shadow

Meralda stepped onto the grass and motioned the Bellringers to follow.

The lumber wain rattled past.

Tervis pointed toward the hurried band of carpenters stacking lumber and erecting scaffolds at the base of the Tower.

“What are they building?”

Meralda frowned. “Seating,” she said. “For the Accords.”

Meralda resumed her trek toward the Tower, which lay a goodly march ahead. “The king will give the commencement speech from there,” she said, pointing toward the tall, narrow framework jutting out from the base of the Tower. “The Eryans will be there, the Alons there, the Phendelits there, and the Vonats just in front of us,” she said, her hand indicating the skeletal frames arranged around and dwarfed by the Tower. “All this, for a ten minute speech no one will remember the next day.”

“Kings will do what kings will do,” said Kervis, with the air of one repeating a time-honored truth. “At least that’s what Pop always says.”

“Ma’am,” he added, after a jab in the ribs from Tervis.

The Tower beckoned. Meralda fell into step with her soldiers and marched, humming, ahead.

The Tower doors, each twenty feet high and nearly as wide, were open, but blocked by a drooping length of bright yellow ribbon and a faded Danger Public Works sign bolted to a rusty iron stand.

Meralda waved to the Builder’s Guild foreman, lifted the yellow ribbon, and passed over the threshold.

Three steps on stone, and the last slanting rays of the sun gave way to darkness. Meralda squinted ahead, slowing until she could make out shapes in the shadows. “Be careful,” she said, as Tervis and Kervis entered. “The carpenters are stacking lumber in here.”

Meralda reached out and touched the wall to her right. The stone was cold. Like the outside of the Tower, the interior hall was stone. Solid black Eryan granite, shaped and fused into a single mass by a spell or spells known only to the Tower’s long-dead master. Cold and dry and as smooth as glass. Meralda knew just beyond the wall, the sun was shining, the park was green and lush, and Tirlin was bustling and busy. But here, in the windowless belly of the Tower, she felt as if it were the smallest hour of the longest, darkest night.

“It’s quiet, all of a sudden,” said Tervis, in a whisper. “Isn’t it?”

Meralda shrugged. Oh, the hammering and pounding and shouting continued, but the Tower doors might as well have been flung shut, so faint was the noise after only a few paces. And had the daylight fled so quickly, on her other visits?

“This way,” she said, when the Bellringer’s footfalls fell behind. “The hall is very short, and there are no turns.”

“No windows, either,” muttered Tervis. “Ma’am.”

“We won’t need windows,” said Meralda, groping in her bag. “We’ll have plenty of our own light.”

“Oh,” said Kervis. “Should I go back and fetch a lantern?”

Meralda pulled a short brass pipe from her bag. “Light,” she said, unlatching the simple magelamp spell coiled invisibly around the cylinder with the word.

The Bellringers whistled as wide beams of soft white light flared from each end of the brass tube.

“Wizard lamp,” said Tervis, lifting his hand to run his fingers through the light. “Uncle Rammis saw one, once. Nobody believed him.”

Meralda played the lamp around the hall. Shadows flew. Some, she thought, more slowly than others.

A shiver ran the length of Meralda’s spine.

“Nonsense,” she said, amazed and a bit embarrassed. “Utter nonsense.”

“Pardon, ma’am?” asked Kervis.

Meralda shook her head. “Nothing,” she said. “Nothing. We have a long flight of stairs to climb, gentlemen,” she said, striding toward the heart of the darkness at the end of the hall. “Shall we go?”

The Bellringers followed. Ten paces further Meralda’s lamplight fell across a crude table bearing half a dozen battered oil lanterns, an open box of Red Cat matches, and a half-eaten Lamp River apple.

Further down the hall, smooth-planed cedar planks were stacked neatly along each wall. Meralda thought she heard the sound of gentle snoring behind the third stack as she passed it, and her face reddened even more. I can at least be thankful Mug isn’t here, she thought. I’d never hear the last of this. Carpenters sleep while the sorceress trembles.

Meralda’s footfalls came faster and harder until the hall simply ended, and the shaft of light from her magelamp soared up and out, only to lose itself in the vast, cavernous maw of the Tower.

Kervis whistled softly.

“Bats,” said Tervis, his face turned upward. “You’d think there would be bats.”

“Not a one,” said Meralda. “There isn’t a crack or a gap anywhere in the Tower. It’s an amazing structure.” She played the lamplight out into the darkness, resting the beam finally on the far side of the Tower and the faint outline of the winding, rail-less stair that wound lazily up and away into the dark.

“We climb that?” asked Kervis.

Meralda nodded. “It’s wider than it looks,” she said, though she understood the badly-hidden wash of fear in the boy’s voice. She recalled the first time she had ascended the stair. Darkness above, and darkness below, a magelit patch of old black stone to her left, a hungry void a step to her right.

From the idling carpenters just beyond the doors, Meralda heard the barest snatch of soft, low laughter.

There will be no more bloody shivering, she said, to herself. I won’t have it.

“Do either of you have a fear of high places?”

In perfect unison, both Bellringers, their faces pale in the magelamp, wiped sweat from their foreheads with their right hands, set their jaws, and shook their heads.

“We’re not afraid,” said Kervis. “Shall I go first?”

Meralda waved him ahead. “Stay in the lamplight,” she said. “Tervis, if you would be so good as to follow?”

“Right behind you, ma’am.”

Meralda switched her bag to her right shoulder and set out for the foot of the stair. She knew it was her imagination, but laughter seemed to follow all the way up to the Wizard’s Flat.

“At last.”

The stair ended at a narrow wooden door. Kervis halted and reached out for the tarnished brass knob, but pulled his hand back before he touched it. “Ma’am,” he said, panting and looking back over his shoulder at Meralda. “Is this it?”

Meralda brushed back a damp lock of red hair and nodded. “Yes,” she said. “The Wizard’s Flat.”

Kervis flashed a crooked grin and sank into a winded slouch against the Tower wall. Boots scraped softly on stone behind her, and Meralda turned to face Tervis, who had been silent the whole of the long climb to the flat.

Both boys were streaked with sweat. Their stiff red and black palace guard uniforms looked thick enough for the dead of winter, but Tervis was pasty-faced and wild-eyed, as well as sweaty. Meralda watched as the boy inched his way, with elaborate care, up onto the last tread between them.

“Tervis?” she said, softly. “We’re here. It’s almost over.”

Tervis met her eyes and gulped.

“He’s just winded,” said Kervis, quickly. “A few moments on a good solid floor and he’ll be right up, ma’am,” he added. “Isn’t that right, little brother?”

Tervis tried to speak, but only croaked. While he licked his lips Meralda reached into her pocket and found the key that opened the flat. “We could all use a place to sit,” she said. “The door is locked, Kervis.” She thrust the key into the cone of light from her magelamp. “Take this and open the door, if you will.”

Kervis took the key. “What about, um, spells?” he said.