All the Paths of Shadow

by Frank Tuttle

  Meralda smiled a wide, sweaty smile and propped herself against the wall with her free hand and imagined she could hear, faint but clear, the sound of cheering and clapping from her mages and from Mug, half a palace away.

  She stepped back, mopped her brow, and moved the detector, letting the latch take hold once more. The blue light returned, but faint and flickering steadily.

  “Good old Tirlish magic,” remarked Tervis, airily, and Meralda grinned.

  Move, latch, test, move. In a few moments, Meralda saw that a spellwork had, indeed, been attached to the safe, and the wall about it. The spellwork’s footprint was circular, about four feet in diameter, with a pronounced notch running vertically above the safe.

  And utterly invisible to Sight. Strain as she might, without the detector Meralda could see nothing at all, even though she knew what to look for, and where to look. I’d have never found this with my staff, she thought. Not with my staff, not with two dozen staves and every mage in the Realms.

  Her elation dimmed at the realization. This is not the work of a guild master or a rogue wizard or a renegade Alon necromancer. No, Meralda decided, this is the work of a mage. A mage with skills I’ve never seen.

  Mumbling and jostling sounded from the hall.

  Meralda bit her lower lip, reached up, and swung Tim’s portrait away from the safe. When she lifted the detector to the back of the canvas, the light flickered and went out, and Meralda smiled. Yes, she thought, following the faint traceries of light that billowed and swam in the shimmering blue glass. This lot here. One end bound to the back of Tim’s portrait, the other end coiled like a spring. It pushed the portrait out before the safe door opened, and pulled it shut when the work was done.

  She waved the detector toward the safe, which was still ajar, and the blue glasses went momentarily dark. Meralda latched to the safe door, and the glow returned, this time as a faint, rotating pattern of tiny criss-crossed lines.

  Meralda frowned. Ordered, mobile traces? Of an old spell?

  She reached out, opened the safe, and slowly pushed the detector inside.

  The glow grew brighter, spun faster.

  Meralda pushed farther.

  The blue light began to beat, pulsing and ebbing like blows from a hammer, or a heart.

  It’s still active, thought Meralda. An active spell, so subtle it’s too faint for Sight.

  Meralda pulled in a breath, and willed her Sight deeper, farther, clearer. Memories of the exploding spellworks in the Gold Room rose, but after a moment’s observation in the glass Meralda decided this spell wasn’t preparing to strike, and she proceeded.

  She fixed her mind upon the spell latched to the detector, saw it as a bright blue sphere cupped in a copper bowl. She pushed again, and her normal vision faded, and then she saw, just for an instant, a tangled skein of blue-lit spell traces, all spilling out of the wall safe like an explosion of Phendelit pasta noodles. There, at the back of the safe, she saw that the metal was lit by worm tracks of fire, and that at the center of the glow the metal was hollow.

  She held her breath. Sight, she begged, and there, in the void, a glittering thing took shape. Fat raindrops caught in a spider’s web, thought Meralda, and her heart raced, and then her Sight went close and clear and the raindrops became pale diamonds and the web a delicate lattice of finely worked gold.

  “The Tears,” said Meralda. I was right, she thought, elation rushing through her. They’re here.

  Now to get them free.

  Meralda opened her eyes, and though she let her Sight recede a bit she could still see the tangled outlines of the foreign spell riding across the disks.

  Meralda tried to follow the patterns, make sense of the turnings and the whirls and coils, but it was like trying to count raindrops as they fell. What is this structure? And why would anyone cast a spell which linked large portions of the framework to itself?

  “Ma’am,” said Tervis, from her side. “Ma’am, are you well?”

  Meralda blinked. The blue glow from the detector pulsed faster now, as though the spell suspected it was under scrutiny and was growing troubled.

  “Too late,” said Meralda, triumph in her voice. “I fooled you. Now I’ll beat you.”

  “Ma’am?” said Tervis.

  Meralda withdrew the detector. “The Tears are here,” she said, stepping back. She handed the detector to Tervis, mopped her face with her sleeve, and turned to Kervis. “Guardsman,” she said. “In my bag you’ll find a hammer, and a long chisel. Will you be so good as to take them up, and break out the back end of this safe?” She smiled and winked toward the corner. Let the Alons, she thought, make of it what they will. “I believe you’ll find a handful of trinkets, at yonder end.”

  Kervis grinned, threw his helmet to the floor, and charged to her side. “Glad to,” he said. “I knew you’d have us home by supper.”

  Meralda returned his smile and sought out the chair at the other end of the room.

  Mawb and Dorn Mukirk now stood shoulder-to-shoulder in the doorway, glaring ferociously at Meralda when they weren’t muttering behind their palms or jabbing each other in the ribs with their elbows. Meralda ignored them, and sat.

  “Careful, now,” she said, as Kervis placed the long steel spike on the back of the safe, and hefted the blunt-faced hammer in his right hand. “The metal is thin, and the cavity that holds the Tears is small. It wouldn’t do to hand our hosts their crown jewels in pieces,” she said.

  Kervis nodded, set the chisel, and gave it a blow.

  It rang, but nothing happened. “A bit harder, this time,” he said, and he struck, and Meralda heard from across the room a faint crunch and then a sharp ping as the tip of the chisel broke through one layer of oddly brittle steel, traveled a short distance, and then struck another.

  Kervis withdrew the chisel, stuck his arm in the safe, and felt about. “You’re right, ma’am,” he said. “The back of the safe is all brittle. I think I can break it with my hand.”

  Kervis set his face in a scowl, strained, and grunted. There came a faint snapping noise from within and Kervis’ eyes went wide. He smiled and pulled his arm out of the safe.

  Meralda resisted the urge to stand. Tervis rushed to his brother’s side. A hush fell over the Alons, and Tervis stepped aside just in time for Meralda to see Kervis hold up the Tears in sweaty, grinning triumph.

  Meralda stood, and returned his smile. We’ve done it, she thought. I was right.

  She looked upon the Tears, watched the diamonds sparkle in the dark safe room, marveled at the delicate skeleton of gold and silver that held the jewels in place. Then, in the hall, the gathered Alons erupted in a roar of shouts and bellows.

  Dorn Mukirk produced his leg bone. “Thief!” he cried, brandishing it like a staff. “You brought them with you! Thief! Thief!”

  The Alons roared. Meralda saw Ambassador Draunt lift his hands and shout, but his words were lost, and he stumbled back toward the doorway as a soldier shoved him hard in the chest.

  “Liar!” bellowed Red Mawb. Kervis’ face went crimson. He took the Tears in his left hand, and drew his sword with his right.

  Kervis looked toward Meralda, terror in his eyes. “Ma’am?” he asked.

  Dorn Mukirk lifted his leg bone, and it began to glow. “Witch!” he shouted, spittle spraying from his lips. “Witch!”

  The shouts from the crowded Alons muted, and there was a general shuffling away from the doorway. Dorn Mukirk, though, stood firm.

  “Witch!” he bellowed.

  Witch, thought Meralda. She knew what the word meant to an Alon. It meant warty old crones, gathered about a cauldron, stirring the remains of babies into a thick gruel as part of some evil spell.

  Witch.

  The anger which had been welling up inside Meralda evaporated. She heard the shouts, but they went distant. She saw the shaking fists and the half-drawn swords, but they might as well have been on a stage, in a play, for all the threat they presented.

  Even the two whist
le blows, which rang out faint from the hall, brought with them no panic.

  I’m smiling, thought Meralda, amazed at the realization. Smiling and calm and I’m walking steadily toward the door.

  “Witch?” she said, to the Alon wizard, and her voice carried over the remaining shouts. “You wave a femur in my face and dare call me witch?”

  She didn’t actually recall taking all the six or eight steps across the safe room. Suddenly, though, she was there, at the threshold, at arm’s length from Dorn Mukirk’s sweaty red face.

  “Witch!” he spat.

  She slapped him. She brought her open right hand hard and fast across his sweat-soaked, bearded cheek. The hall went deathly silent, and Mukirk’s close-set eyes bulged in fury.

  Meralda stepped back. The Bellringers flew to her sides, their swords drawn, held low and straight.

  Meralda locked stares with Dorn Mukirk. “If witch I am, step across this threshold,” she said to him. Her voice rang out clear in the hall. “If thief I am, come forward and take the Tears from my hand. Dare my ward. Your talisman can dispel it, can it not? Surely your mighty relic can break the ward of a lowly Tirlish witch?”

  Mukirk waved the bone frantically about. It glowed and sparked and made mutterings Meralda couldn’t understand, but the wizard did not step beyond the threshold.

  Meralda watched the bone trail fire, its mutterings growing louder and angrier as it sought out a ward that wasn’t there.

  “Enough,” said Meralda. She put a hand on each of the Bellringer’s shoulders. “Sheath your blades, gentlemen,” she said. She pushed each gently back, hoping they would step once again into the mirror’s view, and perhaps prevent the captain from blowing three whistles. “And step back. We will make no war today.”

  The Bellringers reluctantly left Meralda alone at the door.

  “I found your Tears,” she said, lifting her voice above the grumblings and her gaze above Dorn Mukirk’s furious glare. “I came in good faith, at the invitation of your queen.” She put her hands on her hips, and let her gaze wander amid the crowd. “We have endured insult and threat,” she said. “I tell you now we shall endure no more.”

  Ambassador Draunt shoved a soldier aside, put his elbow in Dorn Mukirk’s ribs, and pushed him yelping out of the doorway.

  “Thaumaturge!” hissed Tervis. “In the corner, to your right.”

  Meralda half-turned and saw a shimmer ride the air, hanging like a cloud in the corner from which Goboy’s mirror gazed.

  The shimmer spun and shrank. Red Mawb, Meralda thought, and she turned her gaze back upon the hall. Where is Mawb?

  She searched the close-packed hall, but Mawb was not to be seen. When she again risked a glance aside, the shimmering in the corner was gone.

  Could have been Shingvere and Fromarch, thought Meralda. Though I can hardly believe they’d risk a sending through a scrying glass.

  The mob in the hall jostled and shoved. More soldiers joined the fray, forcing their way toward the ambassador with curses and shoves.

  “Thaumaturge Ovis,” panted Ambassador Draunt, with a small bow. “Forgive the unthinking ardor of my countrymen,” he said. He paused to take a breath and brush back his hair, which had fallen in damp white locks across his forehead. “Alonya gives you thanks, for your service to Alonya and our queen.”

  Dorn Mukirk growled something, but his words were muffled when, at a nod from Draunt, a copperhead clasped his hand firmly over the fat wizard’s mouth and dragged him away, bone flailing, boots kicking.

  More boots sounded down the hall, and with them a whistle blow. Meralda’s heart raced until she realized only one whistle sounded, not three. Stand down, she thought. The captain is calling Tirlin to stand down.

  Ambassador Draunt found a smile, and beckoned to the soldiers at his back. Those soldiers all wore the same colors on their sashes, Meralda noted. Clan Fuam, no doubt. Another man, this one tall, bald, and sad-eyed, squeezed through the crowd to stand beside the ambassador.

  “Thaumaturge,” said the ambassador, putting his hand on the shoulder of the tall man. “May I introduce Goodman Russet, jeweler to the queen? With your permission, he will accompany me, and inspect the Tears for authenticity.” The ambassador took a breath, and spoke his next words in a near shout. “After Goodman Russet sees the jewels you found, we shall have no lingering doubt that we have recovered the Tears.”

  “Of course,” said Meralda. She briefly considered pronouncing her ward spell defunct, but the thought of sharing the room with three dozen sweaty Alon bodies was too much to bear. Just a few more moments…

  Meralda lifted her right hand and let her fingers dance. Let Dorn Mukirk wonder what that meant, she thought, and then she silently mouthed her grandmother’s maiden name.

  “You and Goodman Russet may pass,” she said.

  The Alon ambassador put a toe gingerly over the threshold, hesitated for only an instant, and then dashed into the room. Jeweler Russet followed close behind, jeweler’s loupe in hand.

  Meralda nodded, and Kervis held out the Tears. Ambassador Draunt waved them away, indicating his companion. The jeweler moved to stand before Kervis, solemnly regarding the Tears for a moment, then pulled a black cloth from his jacket pocket, and used it to gingerly take up the Tears.

  “Tervis,” said Meralda. “My magelamp.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” said Tervis. He found the bag and reached inside, his eyes still on the Alons. When he withdrew the lamp, Meralda spoke a word and from across the room her lamp flared to life.

  “Give the lamp to the ambassador, Guardsman,” she said. “I want him to be sure.”

  More boots sounded in the hall, outside. But where the other footfalls had been furtive scuffles or pounding runs, these boots marched.

  In an instant, the crowd in the hall melted away, except for the Alons bearing the sashes of the ambassador’s own clan. Even these saluted and stepped aside. Then, from out of the crowd, the Alon queen stepped up to the open door.

  Red Mawb was at her side, panting. He met Meralda’s gaze, surprised her by winking, and turned to his queen.

  “May I present to you the Mage of Tirlin?” he said, bowing. “Who has, it appears, solved our little problem.”

  The tiny Alon queen met Meralda’s gaze and tilted her head forward the merest fraction. Her grey eyes shone below her brow, and the powder on her face did little to hide the blotches of fury beneath it. “I gave orders you were to work in private, Thaumaturge,” she said. “It seems my orders were ignored.”

  Meralda bowed in return. “No matter,” she said. “The work went well, despite my audience.”

  “I am told you may have been insulted,” continued the queen. “If so, you may claim retribution.” The queen turned to the towering copper-helmed soldier at her right. “Fetch Headsman Gaudling,” she said. “And an axe. A bucket, perhaps, as well.”

  Meralda cleared her throat. “I claim no retribution,” she said, quickly. “Let there be peace among our folk.”

  The Alon queen grinned. It was a small grin, quickly hidden, but Meralda saw it and smiled. “Very well,” she said, to her guards. “Still, fetch the Headsman. And bring him and Dorn Mukirk to my chambers.”

  “The axe and the bucket?” asked her guard.

  “Those as well,” said the queen. “Make sure Mukirk sees them, won’t you?”

  “As you wish, my Queen,” said the soldier, his face utterly blank. “Shall I have a lad sharpen the axe, while he waits?”

  The Alon queen smiled and beckoned to Meralda. “What a wonderful idea,” she said. Then she looked toward Ambassador Draught, who, like Goodman Russet, had snapped to full attention at the sight of his queen. “Pray, proceed, gentlemen,” said the queen.

  Tervis crossed the room and gave Ambassador Draunt the short copper tube. The ambassador bowed, played the light on the Tears, and watched as Goodman Russet set his eye upon the thumb-sized diamond central to the Tears.

  Silence and scowling, but only for a moment.
Then Goodman Russet lowered his glass, looked up at the ambassador, and nodded.

  “These are the true Tears,” he said, first to the queen, then again to Meralda. “These are the Tears, and no doubt. Heavens, Thaumaturge, you’ve done it!”

  Goodman Russet wrapped the Tears in his cloth, bowed to Meralda, and said, his words barely audible over the rising cheers outside, “I’ll never get the scratches out, but thank you all the same.”

  Meralda collapsed into her desk chair as the Bellringers closed the laboratory doors and took up their posts outside in the hall.

  The laboratory was cool. And, aside from the muted sound of voices in the hall and the gentle busy clacking of Phillitrep’s Calculating Engine, it was quiet. Meralda was surprised to find that her ears weren’t ringing, after all the shouting in the halls.

  Goboy’s Scrying Mirror still stood in its place by her desk, though now the glass showed only a cloud-tufted sky. Mug basked in the sun, silent and still after so long with only spark lamps for light.

  “Busy day,” said Shingvere. He disappeared among the ranks of shelves, and was back in a moment, dragging a bucket heaped with crushed ice and the tall, narrow necks of Nolbit’s dark. “I imagine we’re all a bit thirsty.”

  Fromarch rose from his chair, took two of the bottles from Shingvere’s hand, and brought one to Meralda.

  “Thank you,” said Meralda, and she drank. As the icy ale poured down her throat the weight of the day settled over her like a coat of lead.

  Her trip from the Alon safe room to the Tirlish end of the east wing halls had taken four hours. The Alon ambassador had spoken. Half a dozen clan lords had spoken, and then half a dozen more. Meralda was convinced she had either grasped hands with, or exchanged bows with, every single soul in Alonya, some of them twice. She’d found no respite back in Tirlish halls, either. The king himself had led a cheering procession back to the Gold Room, where, after a brief private meeting with Meralda and the captain, he had declared an impromptu feast, which even the Alon queen had joined.

  The queen had been gracious and appreciative without ever actually mentioning the disappearance of the Tears. She referred instead to Meralda’s ‘great service to Alonya,’ and her ‘lasting place in the annals of Alon heroes’. She quickly realized that the queen couldn’t truly acknowledge the specifics of the event. Meralda recalled something the captain once said. The clan version of forgive and forget translates roughly as “we’ll not kill all the grandchildren.” That’s why the Alon queen didn’t arrive until after I’d found the Tears, Meralda decided. She couldn’t have arrived earlier without breaking the peace.