by Frank Tuttle
The sphere of light cast by the detector had expanded to engulf all of the handle and Meralda’s hand and half her forearm. Grateful for the extra light, Meralda held the half-globe close to the stair, and wondered if the shade was curious about what she carried.
The shade, thought Meralda. Well, there, I’ve said it, even if only to myself. But I can hardly deny it any longer. Something here, in the dark, is watching me. Has been watching me since the day I first set foot in the hall.
The light from her magelamp caught the seamless black ceiling of the first floor, not fifty hands above. Meralda quickened her pace, well aware that she was no closer to daylight, but eager to quit the darkness below and see a floor under her feet, if only for a moment.
First floor, second floor, third floor at last. Meralda stopped, mopped sweat from her forehead, and let her bag drop to the stair.
Both shoulders ached, bruised by the bag strap. Her arms were weary from the weight of the detector, which now glowed bright as a magelamp and sent worms of cold blue fire wriggling and crawling across those parts of the Tower it touched.
“Not much farther,” she said aloud, swapping the bag strap from left to right and wincing as she hefted the bag again. “Good thing, too.”
She resumed her climb. Shadows still darted about her, but not so near, now that the detector’s glow had engulfed her. She could sense the ward spell passing occasionally, but it never ventured close or lingered too long.
Still, Meralda was wary. It’s just about this point, she thought, that most of the mages of old ran into the shade. High on the stair, nowhere to hide, nothing to do but make a mad dash downward for the hall and the park. She shuddered at the thought of running any distance down the narrow winding stair.
Soon, though, the magelamp’s light washed over the final ceiling, and then caught the tarnished brass door knob of the plain wooden door set in the upright notch at the top of the stair. Meralda found herself, if not exactly dashing, at least walking briskly the last hundred treads to the flat. As if by hurrying she could somehow miss the sudden awful appearance of the shade of dread Otrinvion.
At the door, she dropped her bag and the detector on the tread behind her and fumbled in her pockets for the key.
It wasn’t there.
At her back, she felt the darkness gather.
She put the magelamp under her chin, bent her head forward, and held the cold lamp tight against her neck while she used both hands to search her pockets. I put it in my right skirt pocket before I left for the park, she thought. I know I did.
Thunder broke, and rolled in echoes through the dark, and Meralda was overwhelmed by the sensation that if she were to turn, if she were to face the stair, something would be standing there, just past the glow of the detector. Wrathful Spectre, she thought, and shivered. A gruesome hollow man, waiting for her to turn so it could open its awful mad eyes and split its rotted face with a wide and hungry smile.
Handkerchiefs, ward wands, an old pair of theatre tickets, fused into a smooth mass of paper pulp by the wash. Then her right hand closed on cold, smooth iron, and she pulled the flat key from her blouse pocket, thrust it hard in the door, gave the key a savage twist, and shoved.
The door flew open, and daylight spilled out of the flat and onto the stair.
Meralda took her magelamp in her hand, drew in a ragged breath, and turned around to face the dark.
The stair was empty. But empty in a manner that suggested to Meralda it was only very recently emptied. Vacated, perhaps, in the brief moment immediately before she worked up the nerve to turn and look.
“No more of this,” she said. “Sight!”
Meralda closed her eyes, and for the first time since entering the Tower she willed forth her Sight.
The detector’s sphere of influence blazed like a tame globe of fire. Her bag, within the detector’s sphere, cast whirling loops and probing red and blue and green-hued tangles writhing about the stair. Meralda pushed her Sight out, into the dark, past the light that shone weakly through the open door.
Nothing. Darkness and darkness and no hint of anything else.
Meralda opened her eyes and let her Sight abate, though she did not let it fall. Normal vision and glittering Sight left the flat glowing and indistinct, but revealed only smooth stone and those things Meralda had brought. She picked up her bag, took the detector in her hand, closed the door with her heel, and walked to the center of the flat.
She dropped her bag to the floor beside her.
This is it, she thought. If the Tower is haunted, I am about to come face-to-face with the shade of Otrinvion the Black.
Or, more likely, make a complete fool of myself.
Meralda cleared her throat.
“Greetings,” she said, aloud. “I am Mage Ovis, Thaumaturge to the Kingdom of Tirlin.” She licked her lips, which had gone dry as she spoke.
“It was I who latched the shadow moving spell to this place,” she said, her voice loud and ringing in the round, empty flat. “I meant no harm, but harm I may have done, to a spellwork I did not know existed until my own spells broke apart. For this,” she said, “I am sorry.”
Shingvere, she thought silently, must never ever hear of this.
“Furthermore,” she added, “I plan to loose another spell here today. It is a passive spell, one I shall latch to the space in this room, rather than to the Tower itself. This spell is meant to reveal any older spellworks active here, so I might determine their function and assess any damage I might have unknowingly done.” She paused, considering her next words. “It is not my intent to usurp, remove, or modify any part or portion of the Tower, or its works,” she said. “Nor do I intend upon proving or disproving the existence of any, um, unseen residents to this place. I only want to know what, if any, harm I may have done. I also need to know if there is a safe way to latch a shadow moving spell to the lower half of the Tower.”
The only sound was thunder, the only shadow Meralda’s, cast briefly by distant lightning.
“That is who I am,” she said. “And that is why I am here. I ask for your forbearance, that I might do my work, and then leave you in peace. May I do so?”
Meralda kept her eyes open, and let her Sight move out into the flat.
Nothing stirred. Aside from the sounds of muted thunder and her own rapid breaths, the Tower was utterly silent, utterly still.
Utterly empty.
Foolishness, said the part of Meralda that had never believed Shingvere’s tales, never credited the old mages with anything but a fondness for strong drink and a desire to tell scary stories to a breathless court. And that face in the park? Fatigue. Fatigue and an imagination fed by a lifetime of ghost stories and Shingvere’s sincere nonsense.
“Very well,” said Meralda. She lifted the detector so the copper half-globe was level with her shoulders, took a deep breath, and spoke the long word that activated two dozen eager spells.
The flat was filled with a blue haze, as if it was suddenly flooded with still, sunlit water. Whips and bubbles of light, like shining ropes chasing fireflies, spread out from Meralda’s bag until she spoke another word and the detector removed the bag spells from view, one by one, until none were visible.
The flat was empty now. Meralda turned in a circle, but found nothing, not even at the notches in the floor where once Otrinvion’s twin staves were said to stand.
Meralda spoke another word, and the glow from the detector intensified.
She swept the flat again, spoke another word, turned and looked. And though the glow from the detector shone bright now, no hint or sign of disturbance marred its face.
The detector’s handle grew warm in her hands. Meralda urged her Sight further, finer, knowing the spells couldn’t be maintained much longer.
“Three more words,” she said aloud. No need to become discouraged yet, either, she thought. If the spells are there, I’ll find them.
She said another word, and the detector buzzed faintly in response as coppe
r bands began to shake and blur. The mist became a fog, so thick now that Meralda could barely see the door. But still, no trace of hidden spellworks appeared.
Meralda spoke the next word, and the handle grew hot, but Meralda held on. The fog went thick and bright, and the outline of the door vanished, then the walls, until only the faint squares of the windows remained.
“I’m only trying to help,” said Meralda, through gritted teeth. The buzzing became a sizzle, and acrid wisps of smoke began to curl toward Meralda’s face. “Do you understand that? I only want to help.”
The blue fog blazed suddenly, and the detector spat a stinging glob of molten copper on Meralda’s right boot toe. Meralda shouted her final word.
The flat exploded. There was no noise, no felling blow, but the rush of light was so sudden and intense Meralda dropped the detector and fell to her knees, her hands flying to cover her eyes, her Sight all but obliterated by the ferocity of the blast.
But in that instant, before the detector fell, she saw the flat ablaze with the glow of a massive spellwork. Like a monstrous tree, it rose through the floor of the flat, engulfed Meralda whole within its fiery trunk, and sent branches thrusting horizontally outward to meet the Tower walls on every side. The branches were not still, though. Even in the brief Sight presented to Meralda, she saw they rose and turned in unison, spiraling upward and around the central trunk in a dizzying whirl.
Meralda’s head reeled. She’d reached out with her Sight, tried to look closer, tried to follow the shuttling and turning of a single line of power around and through the trunk. But the effort had been too much, and she knew, had the flash not blinded her Sight, she might have lost it forever in the tangled midst of the Tower.
Meralda forced her hands from her eyes and rose from her knees. Her normal vision was blurred, criss-crossed and overlaid with fading images of the spellwork she knew still engulfed her.
Now I know the Tower’s secret, she thought. The Tower isn’t haunted.
The Tower is alive.
The spellwork flared. Even with the tiniest vestige of her Sight remaining, Meralda saw the shimmering air and took a step backwards.
It heard me, she thought. It knows I know.
The flat went dark, and the floor seemed to tilt and fall a finger’s breadth away. Meralda stumbled, nearly went to her knees again, and groped for her magelamp. She took a single step forward in the dark, determined to remove her body from the midst of the hidden spell that filled the flat, and then she brought forth her magelamp and stroked the brass tube.
Light shone, and Meralda gasped. Her Farley and Hent raincoat lay two steps from her feet, still spread wet upon the floor. The foot of the stair stood dim at the edge of the light, and on the first dozen treads Meralda saw plain her own damp boot prints, leading up into the dark.
Meralda turned in a circle. She was alone, but she was no longer in the flat, and the stair and her coat were no tricks of her still blurred sight.
She recalled the brief sensation of falling, and shivered, realizing that she had fallen from the flat to the floor in the blink of an eye.
Her bag was gone, and the detector, though wisps of smoke from the hot copper bands still hung in the air about her.
A heavy blow fell upon the Tower doors, and echoed through the empty Tower. Heart pounding, Meralda turned her lamp upon the empty hall.
“Thaumaturge!” shouted Kervis, faintly from beyond the door. “Thaumaturge!”
A new fusillade of blows fell upon the door, and just as Meralda began to wonder why the Bellringers didn’t just open the unlocked door she heard the furious droning buzz of her ward spell from above.
And then, in the dark, hands touched her back, at her shoulders. They touched her back, and gave her a gentle shove toward the hall and the door.
Meralda stumbled, caught herself. The sensation was gone.
“Vonashon,” boomed a voice that echoed throughout the Tower. Walk swiftly, it meant, in Old Kingdom.
Meralda whirled, but the shaft of light from her magelamp illuminated only emptiness.
“Empalos,” said the voice, so loud Meralda winced. Again, invisible hands touched her, this time from the front, still on each shoulder, pushing her back toward the door. Gentle, but forcing her back a step.
“Walk away!” The voice shouted, loud as thunder, more fearful than commanding. “Walk away!”
Meralda played her magelamp before her, but nothing caught the light. She swatted the air with her left hand, and though she felt the touch of a man’s hand upon her she swatted empty air.
She tried to raise Sight, and saw nothing but after images of the column of fire from the flat. “I came to help you,” she said, fighting a rising urge to bolt for the door. “Do you understand?”
The droning of her killing ward drew nearer, and a ruddy orange glow filled the second story opening in the ceiling, and the voice in the Tower screamed. Not a word, this time. Just an unceasing, ear-splitting howl that rose in both pitch and intensity until Meralda turned and ran for the door, her eyes watering, her hands held over her ears.
Halfway down the hall, Meralda’s teeth began to quiver, and her head felt as if it were about to burst. She could hear nothing but the scream. Not her own footfalls, not the thunder, not the pounding on the doors. Just a howl of agony far louder than any one man, or any hundred men, could ever make.
Meralda jammed her hands tighter against her ears, careened into a wall, forced the wildly bobbing magelamp beam to face the hall before her. The Tower doors appeared, twenty paces away, and Meralda blinked back tears and ran toward them.
The doors flew open. Dim grey sunlight and the splash and smell of rain rushed into the hall. The Bellringers dashed inside.
Kervis and Tervis charged to meet her. Kervis dropped his crossbow and drew his sword. Tervis sheathed his own blade and rushed to Meralda’s side.
“Go,” said Meralda. She groped in her pocket for a wand and turned back toward the stair, searching the dark for any sign of the killing ward.
Tervis spoke, but Meralda couldn’t make out the words over the ringing in her ears. “The ward may be bad,” she said, interrupting him. “We’ve got to get out.”
He shut his mouth and nodded. Meralda held the wand at ready, prepared to speak the three words that would cause the ward spell to latch itself harmlessly to the glass.
The hall, though, was dark.
Meralda motioned the Bellringers back, toward the door. The ringing in her ears abated to the point that she began to hear footsteps. Footsteps, but no tell-tale droning of a ward on the hunt.
Beside her, Tervis looked warily about, then bent and picked up the shadowy bulk at his feet. That looks like my bag, thought Meralda, and she stepped closer and stared.
It is my bag, chalk marks and mended handles and all. My bag, which I left in the flat, here and in Tervis’ left hand.
Meralda blinked, and found her black Farley and Hent raincoat folded neatly atop her instrument bag. Folded, and laid through the bag handles, just as she’d have done it.
Meralda reached down, put her hand on the coat, found it dry. Dry, and as free of wrinkles as if she’d just had it pressed at Minton’s.
“Ma’am?” said Tervis, confusion on his face. “Is something wrong?”
“Nothing,” said Meralda. I don’t dare tell him here that the Tower put bag and coat at his feet, an instant ago. “Kervis?”
Kervis passed her, facing the dimly lit hall with his sword still drawn.
“I don’t hear the ward,” he said. “Is it still there, ma’am?”
Meralda pulled her hand away from her coat and joined Kervis in facing the dark. No glow shown forth, no buzzing rode the air. She took a breath and spoke the ward word.
Silence and darkness were her only replies. My mighty killing ward, puffed out like a candle, thought Meralda. She spoke the word again, heard nothing, and then motioned the Bellringers toward the door.
“The ward is gone,” she said. “An
d we’re leaving, too.”
Tervis nodded. “Are you all right, ma’am?” he asked as he began to walk. “We heard an awful racket.”
“I’m fine,” said Meralda.
“Did you see it?” began Kervis.
Tervis interrupted. “Not in here,” he said. “None of that until we’re outside and the doors are shut and the thaumaturge has a breath of fresh air.”
Kervis shrugged, but fell silent. Ten more paces brought them to the doors, where they met a dozen anxious red-coated guards all peering into the hall from the park.
“We’re all right,” said Kervis, before any spoke. “Make way.”
The guards melted away, and the Bellringers halted, and Meralda took a breath and stepped out into wan grey sunlight and the damp, chilly park.
“Beetles and droughts,” muttered Mug, when Meralda was done describing her encounter in the Tower. “It touched you? It spoke?”
Meralda nodded, and Mug’s leaves shook.
Meralda hugged her chest with her arms and wished for a blanket. She’d gotten wet in the park before regaining the presence of mind to don her raincoat, and now the laboratory’s windowless, dark space felt like an ice box. But the mirror blanket is still in the Tower, she thought, wet on the floor by the stair, and I’m certainly not going back there to fetch it.
“And you haven’t left anything out?” asked Mug, turning all his eyes upon the Thaumaturge. “Nothing at all?”
“Nothing,” said Meralda. “The Tower spoke, it moved me from the flat to the floor, it showed me a massive spellwork, and it touched me. All before it snuffed out a killing ward like a half-penny candle.”
“Amazing,” said Mug, “and all the while it was cleaning, drying, and folding your Farley and Hent raincoat.” Mug leaned forward, dropped his voice to a whisper. “Mistress, I think the Tower likes you.”
Meralda shrugged, dumbfounded. Her raincoat hung on the rack by the door. It had indeed been cleaned and pressed, as Mug had said, and even smelled faintly of a subtle perfume Meralda had never encountered and certainly did not own.
