All the Paths of Shadow

by Frank Tuttle

  Meralda stared. “Have you been talking to Shingvere?”

  “Certainly,” he said. “I hailed a cab and searched him out just this morning. We had coffee, and then went bowling.” Mug snorted. “Really, mistress, why would you think such a thing?”

  Meralda went back to her packing. “It sounds very Eryan, this notion of walking about with military magics hidden in one’s pockets. Shingvere hasn’t been by to see you?”

  “He has not,” said Mug. “And why is the notion of protecting oneself so outlandish? You cannot deny these are unusual times.”

  Meralda placed a coil of copper rope in the bag, counted her glass insulating rings, and added another to the bag. “The best weapon is an alert mind.”

  Mug moaned. “Fine. Throw that at the Vonats when what’s-his-name attacks with flaming tornadoes.”

  Meralda closed her bag and frowned. “You have been talking to Shingvere.”

  Mug sighed, long and loud. “I’m merely urging you to a bit of caution, mistress,” he said. “I hardly need the advice of foreign wizards to do that, now do I?”

  Meralda hefted her bag. “I suppose not,” she said. “And I appreciate it. I’ll take measures if the need arises. Is that satisfactory?”

  Mug tossed his leaves. “It will have to do.” His eyes whirled about the room. “Time to take another journey, I see.”

  “You can stay here. Watch the mirror. Check my math.”

  Mug gathered in his leaves. “No,” he said. “I go, too.”

  Meralda walked to her desk and put down her instrument bag. “Are you sure?”

  “I’m sure,” said Mug. “Bed sheet, if you please. I’ll leave my dignity here.”

  Meralda covered Mug’s cage and waited for Tervis to knock at her door.

  The park was, if anything, more crowded than the day before. Schools had been let out, so in addition to the sightseers and the carpenters and the court officials, children of every age were about, darting past in screaming mobs, a harried, open-mouthed nanny or parent in determined, but futile pursuit.

  The Alons, shirtless and bellowing, were also present, and quite a crowd was gathered to watch their football game. Food sellers wandered among the spectators, their calls of “Sausages! Apples! Hot rolls, hot rolls here!” nearly drowned out by the rush and thud of the madly charging Alons struggling on the field.

  The stands about the Tower, mere skeletons and scaffolds just a few days ago, were quickly taking shape. Meralda chose to work from Yvin’s half-completed speaking platform, as it afforded a good view of the Tower and the park while keeping the press of the workers and the crowds from wandering too close. After commandeering a work table from the Builder’s Guild and convincing Mug that the barely perceptible breeze was hardly capable of leveling the platform, Meralda set to work.

  Before she could latch to the Tower, she first had to raise and shape the spell. Mug helped, reeling off whole sections of her notes from memory while Meralda stored the sections in her wands, but even so the shaping of the latch was no quick task.

  As the afternoon wore on, the crowd in the park grew larger. It looks like a sea of hats, Meralda noted, as the throngs milled about beneath her. It’s a good thing Tervis and Kervis are guarding the stair, or I’d be shoulder-to-shoulder up here.

  Beyond the Tower, though, the crowds were not nearly so thick. In fact, a stone’s throw on the Tower’s backside, only carriage drivers and particularly naughty children idled in the sun on either side of the Wizard’s Walk. Past them, there was no one, save one lone child, and his bright yellow kite.

  Meralda wiped her brow with a handkerchief, muttered a word, and held her retaining wand to a fresh holdstone. The wand crackled and spat as it charged, and as Meralda waited she watched the child.

  Back and forth he ran, stout legs pumping. His yellow kite with its slanted red cat eyes and long red tail bumped off the grass behind him.

  Meralda felt for any hint of a wind on her skin, but even from atop the king’s platform she felt none. It’s a beautiful day, she thought, but hardly a day for kites.

  Still, the child ran on. He would start at the edge of the walk, then dash south, his right arm held high, his body leaning into his charge. He ran as far and as fast as he could, and when he began to falter, he would stop, pant for a moment, then gather his kite, wrap the tail carefully around his arm, and walk slowly back toward the walk. Then he would charge toward the west wall, all over again.

  The holdstone emptied with a hiss and a brief blue flash. Inside the glass bottle, the silver and gold elements of the holdstone whirled, moving away from each other in a complex spiral as the spell energies escaped. When the coils were still, Meralda took the wand away, and Mug touched her wrist with a tendril.

  “Ready for the next thread?” he asked.

  Meralda smiled. It felt good, to be doing magic again. Even if it was magic for a questionable cause. “I’m ready,” she said. “Shall I turn to a fresh page?”

  Mug agreed, and she took the sheet of architect’s paper from the top, slid it beneath the others, and replaced the emptied holdstones at the corners of the stack, in case a breeze blew past.

  Mug began to read, and Meralda lifted her wand. The child began another mad dash across the grass. Meralda felt again for any hint of a breeze, but the air was still, and the kite darted and spun, but never flew.

  The wand buzzed and crackled, holding the untethered spell threads to its mass as Meralda added yet another. To anyone watching with second sight, Meralda knew she would appear to be grasping a handful of glowing, windswept ropes, all writhing and tangling and knotting with their fellows. Only when she spoke the final word would the spell take shape and latch to the Tower. But to the crowds below, she appeared to be standing and muttering, a short brass wand held at eye level before her.

  Another spell thread joined the rest. Meralda moved the retaining wand from her left hand to her right, and prepared for the next.

  When she cast a glance toward the child and his kite, she saw that he was no longer alone. A man was waiting for him, as the boy marched wearily back to his starting place on the walk.

  The man dropped to one knee, and the two spoke for a moment. Then the boy carefully unwrapped the kite’s tail from his arm and presented kite, tail, and ball of string to the man, who took them all before rising to his feet.

  Time to go home, thought Meralda. It simply isn’t a day for kites.

  Then, to Meralda’s surprise, the man bowed, lofted the kite, and charged onto the grass, following the same path the boy had taken so many times before.

  Meralda watched, as did no small number of the cabbies and idlers on the walk. Arms went up, as fingers pointed, and though Meralda heard nothing she could imagine their laughter.

  The man ran. No, that isn’t right, Meralda thought. The child ran, legs pumping, arms churning away madly at the air. This man was gliding.

  Only his legs seemed to move. His chest barely rose, barely fell. He held his right arm up, playing out the string.

  On and on he ran. He reached the point where the child had stopped and turned, and on he went, his gait increasing, his steps long and fast. Meralda nearly lost the latch, and when Mug snapped out “Mistress! Mind the spell!” she had to look away, and calm the wand.

  When she cast her glance back toward the man, he was merely a dot against the green grass of the park. But the kite rose above him, the red cat eyes wheeling and darting, the tail coiling and snapping.

  The faint sound of cheering rose up, and Meralda saw the cabbies and the idlers had risen to their feet, their laughter turned to cheers and shouts, and their hands uplifted. The boy danced and waved, his voice lifted with the rest.

  The kite whirled and swooped, climbing and rising, playing in a wind Meralda still couldn’t feel. Soon, it, too, was merely a dot and a faint streak of tail.

  The man turned and began to walk back toward the walk and the child. Meralda watched the far-off kite for a moment, expecting it to plu
mmet at any moment. It remained aloft, straining at the string, snapping faintly from high above.

  Meralda hung another thread by the time the man reached the child, who still danced with glee. The cabbies rose to their feet and gave the small man a final round of cheers and hoots. The man halted, bowed to the cabbies, placed the string gravely in the boy’s hand, and patted the child’s head once before the lad darted away, kite string in hand.

  After a moment, the man put his hands in his pockets, turned his back to the Tower, and ambled away, alone on the walk.

  Meralda watched him go while her wand recharged. Soon he reached the Old Oaks, and vanished beneath them, swallowed up by the distance and the dark beneath the boughs.

  “What are you mooning about?” said Mug.

  “Nothing,” said Meralda, turning back toward her makeshift work bench and Mug. “Just catching my breath.”

  “Hmmph,” said Mug. He strained to lift a pair of green eyes over the rail.

  Meralda ignored him, and hung another thread.

  “That should be most of the primary latchwork,” said Mug, when she was done. “Good thing, too. Six bells.”

  Meralda lifted an eyebrow. “Six o’clock? Already?”

  “Time flies,” said Mug. Meralda hadn’t heard the Big Bell ring, but she realized Mug was right. The Tower’s shadow had engulfed the stands, and the air had gone damp and cool. I’ll do well to latch to the Tower today, Meralda realized, with a frown. The refractors will have to wait.

  Her stomach growled. She walked to the head of the stair and shouted down to Kervis. “Guardsman,” she said, above the din. “Bring up a biscuit, will you?”

  Kervis nodded and darted up. “Here you are,” he said, halting just below the top, a paper-wrapped biscuit held forth. “Nearly done, Thaumaturge?”

  Meralda took the biscuit. “Nearly so,” she said. Kervis nodded in relief.

  A crowd had gathered at the foot of the stair, and Meralda was surprised at how closely they pressed about Tervis. “Has it been like this long?” she asked, with a nod toward the ground.

  Kervis sighed. “Yes ma’am,” he said. “Half of ’em are penswifts. We’d like to have knocked a few heads when they decided they could just shove on past,” he said. “The other half are aldermen and civilian Street Watch volunteers,” he said, lowering his voice. “They want to talk about the haint.”

  “The haunt,” corrected Meralda, automatically.

  Kervis tilted his head. “I told them they wouldn’t be allowed to waste your time talking about such nonsense. I hope that was the right thing to say.”

  “Keep saying it. Maybe they’ll listen, sooner or later.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Kervis glanced down. Tervis had been forced by the press of the crowd to retreat a step up the stair.

  “I’d better get back,” said Kervis. “Don’t worry about leaving. We sent for help, to get you through the crowd.”

  “Thank you,” said Meralda. Kervis nodded and darted down the stair, bellowing.

  When Meralda turned, she found Mug’s eyes upon her. “Did you hear?”

  “I heard,” he said. “The Post will just make up whatever it is they think you aren’t telling them.”

  Meralda tore the paper wrapping from her biscuit. “Do you suppose,” she asked, wearily, “that, before the Accords are done, every storied childhood boogie from every one of the Five Realms will put in an appearance?”

  “Sooner or later,” said Mug, cheerfully. “It’s the dragon I’m looking forward to the most.”

  Meralda took a bite, marched back to her worktable, and set about hanging the last few threads of the latch.

  Meralda lifted her hands, touched the ice-rimed ends of two fat copper wands together, and unleashed the latching spell with a long, loud word.

  The spell leaped. Meralda watched it go. To her second sight, it appeared as though an enormous blob composed of tangled, luminous spider’s webs wobbled and darted through the air, rising up against the Tower’s bulk to seek out the Wizard’s Flat.

  Meralda looked up and up, craning her head as the latch ascended. Mug’s eyes followed as well, and he began to count aloud.

  “One, two, three, four…”

  The spell reached the top of the Tower, surrounding the flat. The glowing threads lashed about, flattening into a fat circular disk centered on the top of the flat like the brim of a hat.

  “…five, six…”

  The hat brim spun, faster and faster, threads straightening and elongating at right angles to the Tower’s axis until the spell was a flat, red-edged blur. Then, with a flash, it vanished.

  “…seven.”

  The wands in Meralda’s hand went icy cold.

  “And done,” said Meralda. She watched for a moment, but the spell remained latched. At last she lowered her face, and met Mug’s gaze.

  “Not just done, but well done,” said Mug. “You do realize that you’re the first mage to latch a work to the Tower in the last four hundred years.”

  Meralda yawned. She couldn’t stop herself. Weariness fell hard upon her as the latch sailed skyward. Weariness, and a sudden urgent longing for a water closet.

  Mug chuckled. “I see,” he said. “I suppose you’re open to my suggestion that we pack up and go home. Even if you hung a refractor tonight, you’d not know if it worked until the morning.”

  “Home it is,” said Meralda. She leaned over the rail, cast a despairing eye upon the close-packed crowds still gathered at the foot of the Tower. Waiting for the lights, she thought. Waiting for the shade of dread Otrinvion.

  “At least the captain can blame any lights tonight on me,” she said, dreading the walk through the mob.

  “I’ve kept a pair of eyes on the flat, but haven’t seen any yet,” said Mug. “But, if our spook sticks to strict ghostly custom, they won’t start until midnight or after. He’s a traditionalist, our Otrinvion. None of these contemporary early evening haunting practices for him, no, ma’am.”

  Meralda looked up from the shadowed crowds below, and sought out the flat again. The Tower sulked against a sky gone nearly dark. No stars were out yet, but they would be, and soon.

  Meralda thought about the empty space within the Tower, and the darkness on the stair, and she shivered and looked away.

  “Let’s go home,” she said, briskly. “Reasonable people don’t stand in the dark and gawk at empty rooms.”

  “Indeed not,” said Mug, as Meralda folded papers. “They go home, and read about it the next morning.”

  Meralda wrapped her wands with thick cotton pads and shoved them in the bag, well away from the holdstones. “Only if one takes the Post,” she said. The spent Riggin bottles, which still glowed faintly, went in next. “One wonders what they’ll print when the lights stop and the Hang go home.”

  Mug tossed his leaves. “The haunted Tower ought to be good through First Snow.”

  Meralda grabbed and shoved and packed until the guild work table was bare. She slung the bag over her shoulder and prepared Mug’s cage and sheet.

  “Ready?” she asked.

  “Ready,” replied Mug. Meralda gently lifted him from the table and made for the stair. “Tervis,” she called, at the first tread. “A hand, please.”

  Tervis clambered up the stair. “Coming, ma’am,” he called.

  “Take Mug, if you will,” said Meralda.

  Tervis reached the top, and carefully took the bird cage handle from Meralda. “There’s a man waiting to see you at the bottom,” said Tervis, in a whisper. “He won’t say who he is, but we think he’s a penswift.”

  Meralda groaned. “I’ve been standing on this bloody scaffold for six hours,” she said, to Tervis’ back. “Unless he’s prepared to follow me into a water closet, I don’t have time for this.”

  Tervis had turned his back, but his ear lobes went suddenly red, and Meralda rolled her eyes. “Forgive me, Guardsman,” she said. “We mages are a grumpy lot.”

  Tervis sped wordlessly down the sta
irs. Mug groaned softly.

  “The thaumaturge has, um, pressing business elsewhere,” said Tervis, to someone at the bottom of the stairs. “Go away.”

  Meralda smiled.

  More words were spoken, but were inaudible over the din of the crowd.

  Three-quarters of the way down the stair, she slowed. The crowd pressed close against the Bellringers, who had to take a step ahead every few moments to hold their ground against the press.

  Meralda felt her chest tighten at the thought of forcing her way through such a press. At sight of her, the murmuring redoubled, and a tall man in a light tan overcoat, staring up at the sorceress, snatched a pencil from behind his ear.

  Meralda lifted her hand and spoke a word. A magelight flared noiselessly to life, hovering above her right shoulder, bright in the darkness of the stairwell.

  “I have no comments,” said Meralda, in a near shout. “Other than to point out that I’m tired, and I’m going home.”

  “Then you wouldn’t care to dispute allegations that your work here today was intended to bind the shade of Otrinvion to the Tower,” shouted the man.

  “Guardsman Kervis,” said Meralda. “Which is more annoying, street minstrels, or penswifts?”

  “Penswifts, ma’am,” shouted Kervis, without turning. Meralda left the stair, and met the penswift’s eyes.

  “My work here today concerned moving the Tower’s shadow for the King’s Accord Commencement speech,” she said, eyeing the crowd with growing dismay. Even with the Bellringers at the fore, they’d never make it to the walk through that.

  If the help Kervis mentioned doesn’t get here soon, she thought, I swear I’ll part them myself.

  “What of the lights in the flat, Thaumaturge?” said the penswift, scribbling away. Meralda realized the man was not only writing, but sketching her likeness as well. “They were seen by at least a hundred people. Are you willing to dismiss all these reports?”