Powers of Detection

Powers of Detection Page 12

by Dana Stabenow

  The other five of us sat in my office and looked at each other with expressions of mistrust and wonder.

  “So!” I said briskly, folding my hands before me on my ornate desk. “I suppose all of you have heard the dreadful news by now. Morben is dead, and someone killed him, and we need to try to discover who and why.”

  “The why is simple enough,” Audra said with some contempt. She sat in one of my stiff high-backed chairs as if it was a comfortably stuffed divan, and her gold robe molded itself to her long legs. Dernwerd, Borrin, and Xander couldn’t keep their watery old eyes off her. “He was a foul-mouthed, lecherous, mean-spirited hack, and everybody hated him.”

  “It’s true that he was a difficult man, but you needn’t speak so harshly,” Dernwerd mumbled in his irritating, apologetic way. As if he thought that even in death Morben might reach out to slap him if he didn’t talk nice.

  “Yes, but to disapprove of him and to kill him are two very different things,” Xander said. Xander was a lean, bald, punctilious scholar who would argue the most minute point of history or spell-work till you wanted to run screaming from the room.

  “Frankly, I’m surprised he hasn’t been done away with long before now,” Borrin drawled. Supercilious, wealthy family background, north-country accent—Borrin does think he’s the most elegant of the wizards, though I’m pretty sure he uses magic to keep his hair silver and his figure trim. I can respect his abilities, which are formidable, but not his vanity.

  You will be thinking by now that I dislike almost everyone in my employ, and you would be right. In fact, I am a terrible misanthrope, and my attitude is even worse when it comes to wizards and warlocks. Call me a misosorcerer and be done with it! But I inherited all five senior members of my faculty when I joined the school, and I was under contract to keep them. Trust me, otherwise I would have ousted Morben when I first came on board, and I might have fired the other four while I was at it. Though honesty compels me to admit that all of them, even Audra, are ferociously talented mages.

  And all of them have the ability, if not the inclination, to kill a man by magic.

  “Well, he’s dead now,” I said. “And it seems obvious that one of the five of us murdered him.”

  They all looked at each other and at me, and none of them said a word.

  “The students didn’t recognize the spell they described, but I did, and I assume you did as well,” I went on. “It can be found in the Hazelton Grimoire, though a variant without the screaming is indexed in Mortensen’s Spellbook, and only the five of us have the knowledge to unlock either of those volumes, let alone the strength to speak the enchantment. So one of us killed him. Why?”

  Dernwerd was on his feet, pointing at Audra. “You’re the one who always hated him!” So much for his usual conciliatory manner. “I heard you! Just yesterday in the hall! I heard you tell him that if he touched you again, you’d turn him to ice and iron!”

  “And I would have, but he didn’t,” Audra said furiously. “Aren’t you the one he embarrassed in front of his whole class last week, when you couldn’t recapture the igliat and had to get Morben’s help? He said you had the skill of a Rank Five wizard and shouldn’t be allowed to teach advanced classes.”

  Dernwerd’s face was the same gray color as his hair. “How did you know that?”

  She shrugged one thin shoulder. “A couple of the students told me. They thought it was funny.”

  Borrin was smiling in that detestable way, and Xander gave him a long, thorough look. “You smile now, but you didn’t think it was so funny when Morben called you an up-country upstart with imaginary bloodlines,” he said in his painstaking way. I had no doubt that he had reproduced the quote with shattering accuracy.

  Borrin stopped smiling. “My family’s older than the kingdom, and if anyone’s a sorcerer-come-lately it’s Morben with his questionable antecedents and his rough-and-ready magic.”

  “And, anyway,” I said to Xander, “you were none too fond of him, either. You were quite public in your hatred for him once he published that paper about the error you made in your Treatise.”

  The bald man glared at me. Borrin was laughing again. “And you, Camalyn?” Borrin said. “Why did you despise the estimable Morben? Because he told the school board that you were an aging spinster with a poisonous mind and a dried-up heart? Because he told them no female should ever be head of Norwitch Academy, but if they were going to make that mistake, they should at least choose one who could claim to be a woman.”

  Audra snickered. Dernwerd and Xander looked embarrassed for me. I looked at Borrin and wished him dead. “So one of us killed him,” I repeated, “and we all had a reason. Now we have to determine who had the chance. I want each of you to write down a diary of where you’ve been since midnight last night, with names of witnesses who can substantiate your claims. I will begin the investigation.”

  “What about you?” Borrin said. “You have the skills, and you have the temper. Who will investigate you?”

  I pointed at Audra. “Let the womanly woman of the group have that privilege,” I said coldly. “Though you may all give her whatever assistance you desire. I expect your reports by this afternoon. Now you can go.”

  -

  All four of them were quick to turn in accounts of their recent activities, and I handed over my own schedule to Audra when she came by my office. I spent a little time reading their reports, but in truth I didn’t have much hope that I would learn anything. A good wizard can appear to be in two places at one time; even a bad one can set up a spell in a remote location so that it’s triggered by an action or a phrase. How could I possibly check their alibis and prove definitively that one of them was responsible for this crime? Or even—interesting thought—that two or more of them had been involved?

  I shut my eyes and leaned back in my well-padded chair, reviewing the case. Well, to be truthful, I had had more reason than any of them to want Morben dead. He had recently gone to the school board to complain about me—my attitude, my abilities, my age—and to suggest himself in the role of headmaster instead. I don’t suppose any of them knew that I had managed to audit his entire presentation illicitly. I had planted a magical seashell in the council room and linked its listening ear to another shell set up in my office. It was like being in the room with the rest of them without actually having to see their stern and self-righteous faces. I found myself disliking the board members as much as I disliked Morben.

  But I hadn’t included that information in the report I gave Audra.

  Which led me to wonder what the others hadn’t told me.

  Going on pure instinct, I’d have said the likeliest killer was Audra herself. Morben had lusted after her ever since she’d joined the Academy, and being stalked for more than forty years could wear on the patience of the sweetest woman, which we all knew Audra was not. Moreover, she had always wanted to teach his specialty classes in Illusions and Transmogrification, but he was not about to give them up, so she was stuck with Travel and Time Manipulation, which were useful though much less glamorous skills. Distaste and envy could have combined to make her want to see Morben dead.

  The men had fewer incentives, I thought. Dernwerd, in any case, was a whiny and ineffectual man who might smolder with hatred for a hundred years before he brought himself actually to lash out at someone. Though I’d seen him level a mountain once, with utter grace and precision, so I knew he had more power than his personality might predict. Xander never seemed to pull his head out of his books long enough to develop any kind of emotional reaction, good or bad, to anyone else alive, so I found it hard to believe he would hav
e nurtured enough animosity to hunt Morben down. Borrin, though. He was smart enough, good enough, and nasty enough to kill a man, and the insult to his family name would probably have been sufficient to send him seeking revenge.

  I wrote them all down on a piece of paper, in descending order of probability: Audra, Borrin, Dernwerd, Xander. After thinking about it a minute, I squeezed another name between Audra’s and Borrin’s: Camalyn.

  That still left Audra as the most likely murderer.

  -

  We spent two days canvassing the students and checking Morben’s bedchamber and classrooms for any kind of evidence, but found nothing that incriminated anyone. There was no point in suspending school any longer, so we allowed classes to resume the following day. The school board members were all unhappy that the murder was still unsolved, but frantic to resume the educational process so parents didn’t start pulling students out. Therefore, none of them made a fuss when we opened the classrooms again.

  All was relatively serene for a week, and I began to grow a little more cheerful about the whole thing: Well, Morben’s dead, and we have a murderer in our midst, but that killer has done us all a favor, really, so maybe we should just let the whole thing go and get on with our lives. Unrealistic, you’ll say. Absolutely, I’ll agree.

  About ten days after Morben’s death I was heading down the hall between my Alchemy class and my Protective Spells seminar when I heard a sound of hysterical shrieking. Of course, I ran in that direction, as did the other five hundred people on the school property. I noted that Audra came puffing up from the southern stairway, and that Dernwerd and Xander arrived at the same time, as if they had been consulting together when the cries were raised.

  The commotion was coming from Borrin’s Animal Languages classroom. We rushed inside as if by hurrying we could affect the outcome of events that had already been put in motion. Naturally, we could not.

  The scene greatly resembled the one from ten days earlier. Students cowered against the back wall of the room and a wizard lay dead on the floor, face contorted in horror, hands clamped around his own throat. But this time I was not about to let myself be thwarted by the spell. I muttered a command of my own, and the body remained intact. No smoking pile of ashes. Gruesome though it was, we would be able to examine the corpse for evidence.

  The other three wizards had come to stand beside me and were staring down at Borrin with many emotions on their faces, none of them grief. They were angry, and they were afraid, for what can kill two wizards can kill three, or six. I raised my voice to address the students. “Clear the room, please,” I said. “The professors and I must talk.”

  As soon as the door had closed behind them, the accusations started.

  “You!” Dernwerd screeched, pointing at Audra. “You did this! I was with Xander all morning, I know he and I are innocent, but where were you before you came running up to investigate the alarm?”

  “I was in the archives with many junior professors nearby,” she said icily. “I did not speak to any of them, but I’m sure one or two will remember seeing me there. And as for the two of you being guilt-free—who’s to say you didn’t execute this little scheme together? I would think that would be a nice, convenient way to operate.”

  Dernwerd boggled at her. Xander shook his bald head. “And who’s to say it’s only the three of us who might have engineered this death?” he asked quietly. “For who saw Camalyn before she arrived on the scene? Where had she been earlier in the morning?”

  “Yes, Camalyn!” Dernwerd exclaimed. “Explain your actions, please!”

  “I would be much more likely to dismiss you than kill you if I wanted to see any of you gone from here,” I said in a hard voice. “But it is very clear that we now have a murderer in our midst who is working his or her way through the senior staff. One of the four of us. Trust me, I want to identify and destroy this person, but my first priority is safety—for the students at this school and the master wizards who remain alive.”

  “And what do you propose?” Audra sneered. “That the four of us stay always in sight of each other, watching and waiting? A bad idea, I think! Whoever has the strength to kill us one by one might easily have the ability to kill three of us at once. We should at least scatter throughout the halls and make his life more difficult.”

  Xander gave her a searching look. “So—you would rather be unobserved, Audra, would you?” he asked slowly. “What actions are you hiding? Why so secretive?”

  “Why so trusting?” she shot back. “Perhaps I feel I have a better chance to protect myself if you three bumblers aren’t nearby to hamper me.”

  “For the moment, I see no practical way for us to shadow each other day and night,” I said, mostly just to stop the bickering. “Those of you who wish to keep a fellow company may do so. If you want to spy on each other,” I added with some malice, “I will not stop you from doing that, either. I will examine the body and see what evidence it might yield.”

  “Oh, no, you will not!” Audra exclaimed. “I will stand here and watch every threadbare clue you lift from Borrin’s corpse, or every false clue you plant there when you think none of us are looking.”

  Xander and Dernwerd exchanged uneasy glances. “Yes—she’s right—I think we had better stay too,” Dernwerd said apologetically. “In case one of us notices something another one overlooks—”

  “Fine. Stay. And help,” I snapped. “Let us get this autopsy under way.”

  -

  But we found nothing helpful except the glimmer of magic. And even it bore no signature we could trace. Eventually I summoned the gardeners and told them they were turned gravediggers. Borrin would be buried beside the trellis of calysian roses that bloomed through all seasons. A better end than he deserved, actually, but it did not seem to be the time to be raking up past differences.

  -

  None of us heard from our murderer again for three more days. Again, I had permitted classes to resume, though everyone crept through the hallway with a sort of hunched and hunted gait, as if expecting at any moment horror would incorporate out of the very air. I was fairly certain the students and the staff had no reason to worry, but I was just as sure our renegade would eventually strike again at one of the senior wizards.

  I was right. The killer came for me.

  I had stepped outside for a breath of winter air and was walking along the lovely stone promenade that was attached to the second story of the school and overlooked the gardens. Little to see in the gardens at that season but hardy evergreens and hopeful brown stalks that, in a few months, would be animated by an even more ancient and powerful magic than mine. I always loved gardens in winter. They made me believe that even old and ugly and withered creatures possessed the potential for beauty and rebirth.

  I had completed my first pass down the promenade and was just pivoting to make the return trip when I felt the unmistakable frisson of sorcery skitter across my skin. I paused, one foot on the floor, one foot lifted to step.

  All around me, unfolding and refolding in infinite permutations, I saw reflections of myself caught in the exact same pose. I knew instantly what had happened, of course. Someone had cast a multiplying curse on me, assuming that I would never have gone out in the world unprotected, but also assuming that I had arrayed myself in a different kind of enchantment altogether. For instance, it might be supposed that I had summoned an artillery spell that was designed to fire off damaging shots as soon as it was activated by someone else’s magic. A multiplying curse goes on and on and on without end—I would have been igniting so many deadly explosions that within minutes I would have died in my own detonations.

  Never had my assailant expected that I w
ould have kept my simple old reflecting spell in place. So this replicating curse, while impossibly annoying, was completely harmless. All it did was show thousands of copies of me, millions, putting down my foot and looking around, trying to gaze through my own reflections to determine who had accosted me.

  I admit I was not surprised when I was finally able to make out Audra standing on the promenade before me, her eyes closed, her lips moving, as she quickly invoked a different bit of magic. I moved rapidly myself, tossing up a wall of protection that should be able to frustrate even the most virulent curse, for a while at least. Then, through my own still, watchful horde of sentries, I peered at her, trying to guess what she might do next.

  She was gesturing more forcefully. Her red hair was unbound and whipping in an ensorceled wind, and her gold robes clung to a body that was more voluptuous than I remembered it being. I had always believed Audra to be constructed of bones, spite, and magic, but clearly dislike had colored my perceptions.

  Or desire had colored someone else’s.

  I looked more closely. Last time I had seen her, Audra’s hair had not been quite so luxuriant, nor so long. Nor was she usually this tall, and her angular face was far from being beautiful in the normal run of things. And, may I say, I am not in the habit of rating other women’s physical attractions, but in my opinion, she generally had none. At the moment, her bosom was very well endowed.

  This was not Audra. This was someone’s idealization of Audra.

  I knew of only one truly gifted illusionist who had also been in love with the red-haired witch. Apparently Morben was not dead after all. We had never had a chance to inspect his body, I suddenly remembered. We had assumed that the original death spell was what had caused the corpse to flare to ashes, but that had just been part and parcel of the overall illusion. There had been no body to examine because there was no body. Morben had projected the whole scene of assault and death, then caused the final image to vanish with a flick of his fingers. How could we have been so stupid?

 

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