Lord of Stormweather

by David Gross

  “Yes, yes,” said Tamlin. “I realize this. It’s just that these dreams I have been having suggest otherwise, and on one occasion I seemed to produce some sort of lightning effect while fighting off a darkenbeast.”

  Magdon nodded, as if she’d heard all that before.

  “Fortunately,” she said, “we can perform both tests with this array. Still, I must caution you against investing too much hope in success. The proctors at the guild have never yet failed to detect signs of the natural Art.”

  “Do they often try again after rejecting a candidate?”

  “Well …” said Magdon.

  “There it is, then,” said Tamlin. “We will be the pioneers who confirm or refute their reputation. Exciting prospect, isn’t it?”

  “Very exciting, my lord,” Magdon said dryly.

  To her credit, she didn’t roll her eyes. Tamlin thought she must have had some experience in the past year indulging the whims of wealthy but untalented nobles.

  “What do I do, then?” he asked.

  “First, set aside any enchanted items you’re wearing. Keep them well away from the desk. I will activate the array and ask you to approach.”

  Tamlin nodded, handing over his rings and charms along with the portfolio to Escevar, who remained near the library door with Vox.

  Magdon uttered a few words and tapped the inverted pendulum at the heart of her magical construction. The dozens of paper-thin gold sheets rose to form an irregular sphere around the center post. At every vertex between them hovered some fetish object: a bit of mirror, a wad of tar, a dog’s tooth, a tiny doll made of hair.

  On the side where Magdon stood, a deep indentation formed in the sphere. As she walked away from the device, the dent bulged back outward, forming a perfect sphere once she was more than ten feet distant.

  “Now approach the sphere,” she said.

  Tamlin did as she bade, slowly walking forward. With each step, his imagination wrestled with his reason. His mind said it was preposterous to think he had some dormant talent for the Art. His heart told him there was no other possibility, for his dreams were undeniably true visions.

  Three steps away from the globe, Tamlin realized he was holding his breath. The golden ball remained perfectly spherical. When he released his breath, the leaves fluttered briefly but returned to their places.

  “Closer,” said Magdon.

  The encouragement in her voice sounded genuine, but Tamlin’s hopes had already begun to fade.

  He took another step and saw no change in the globe. He looked back at Vox and Escevar. The big man was also holding his breath, and Escevar looked as anxious as a mother watching her child approach a scorpion.

  “You can do it, Deuce,” he said. “I mean, my lord.”

  Tamlin realized then how he must look, and he felt a blush of shame rise to his cheeks. He quickly took the last two steps and stood inches from the magical globe.

  The foil leaves shuddered in the faint breeze his approach created, but they soon resumed their positions.

  The result was obvious even to him. There was nothing remotely magical about Tamlin Uskevren.

  “Sorry,” he said. He refused to look back at the disappointment he knew had crossed Vox’s face. He suspected Escevar was suppressing a smirk, and he had little use for that, either. “I know how ridiculous I’ve been about this. Let’s pretend it never happened and turn to the serious matters at hand.”

  “Aye, my lord,” said Magdon. She returned to her contraption and brushed its base with a feather. “This is a more complex version of the compass spell I made for you last time. Instead of harmonizing with an object, it seeks out sympathetic patterns in the Weave, the very fabric of magic.”

  Tamlin remembered the terms from his childhood lessons, even though they had been of no practical use to him since then. He tried not to feel envious as he watched Magdon sculpt her creation with a few graceful gestures of her white hands. At her unspoken command, the foil globe refigured itself into the shape of a cone rotating smoothly on its invisible axis. It rose to float independently of its base.

  “You may take your things back,” she said. “This spell will seek only the residue of the most powerful magic, and only that derived from translocation spells.”

  Tamlin watched as the gadget-mage spoke the words of spellcraft and sprinkled what looked like amber dust over the hovering cone.

  Magdon completed her evocation with the command, “Seek!”

  The cone flexed and turned like a hound’s snout seeking the spoor of its prey. It rotated halfway around the library before darting to a point only a few feet from its original position. Orange light emanated from the space within the floating gold leaves, and the radiance burst into a ragged cloud with trailing tendrils. Rather than dissipating, the magical light remained in place about three feet above the floor.

  “There,” said Magdon. “The marker shows that there was definitely some sort of translocation event at that point, and recently.”

  The cloud looked to Tamlin like the afterimage that formed on one’s eye after looking directly at a bolt of lightning. Even as he stared at it, another burst of light created a second cloud over the first.

  The quivering pointer floated a few feet toward the desk. Its radiance burst again, creating a third lingering mark in the air.

  “That means three separate events,” said Magdon. “Judging from their consistent size and brightness, I’d say they all occurred within the period of an hour or two.”

  “Father, Mother, and Mister Cale,” replied Tamlin. “But where did it take them?”

  “The spell is not capable of showing us …”

  Magdon’s words trailed off as she watched the spinning cone begin to turn on its vertical axis. Its frail leaves began to flutter, its fetish objects rattling in an unseen turbulence.

  “What is it?” demanded Tamlin.

  “There must have been more than one powerful translocation spell connected to that spot,” said the mage. “It is still seeking.”

  Her magical compass point trembled as its rotation came to a stop. It pointed down at the floor at an angle, then shot downward as quickly as a diving sparrow. The compass’s fragile body smashed itself flat upon the floor, sending a spray of shattered glass, ceramic, and bone in all directions.

  “Where was it pointing?” asked Tamlin. “Did anyone mark the spot?”

  “No need,” said Magdon. “Look there.”

  From each of the three cloudy markers emanated a ragged beam of light. All of them slanted down, through the floor, at the same incline.

  Down, toward the center of Stormweather Towers.

  “Follow me!” called Tamlin.

  He rushed out of the library and sprinted toward the grand stairs. He took the steps three at a time and slid across the polished marble floor of the foyer before recovering his footing enough to run east toward the feast hall.

  “There!” he said.

  A pair of porters had almost dropped their burden as they stared at the three glowing beams descending from the ceiling, passing through the cabinet they carried, and disappearing into the wall beside them.

  “Out of the way!” cried Tamlin.

  He shoved one of the men aside to get through the door the porter was blocking.

  Vox finally caught up with his errant master, and Escevar and Magdon appeared behind him, panting.

  “It goes through to the kitchen,” Tamlin said, leading the way.

  The kitchen staff stood against the farthest walls, their gazes locked on the magical beams that had suddenly appeared in their midst. The three lines passed through the huge central oven and into the floor below.

  “The cellars,” said Tamlin.

  They crossed through the pantries to the cellar stairs, pausing only to light torches before plunging into the dark corridors below.

  “I don’t see anything,” complained Escevar.

  “Keep looking,” urged Tamlin.

  He tried to estimate the ang
le of the beams in comparison with the relative positions of the cellars and the kitchen. Unless he was grossly mistaken, they should have arrived …

  “Here!” called Magdon. “Under here.”

  Tamlin crouched to peer beneath an enormous empty cask that Thamalon kept only for show. Over the years, visitors to his cellars had seared their names into its face with a brand. It was the Old Owl’s version of a guest book.

  Beneath the gigantic barrel, the beams of light passed through it and down into the ground below.

  “The source of the spell must be below this room,” said Magdon. “What’s down there?”

  “Nothing but the foundation,” said Tamlin.

  He thought about the secret passages in Stormweather Towers and wondered whether or not Thamalon had shown him everything after all. He resented the idea that his father might have considered him unworthy of his full trust—despite the fact that Tamlin knew how often he’d disappointed the Old Owl—but then another thought rescued him from those futile recriminations.

  The house was built on the foundation of the original Stormweather Towers.

  Even if the Old Owl had kept no secrets from Tamlin, who was to say that Thamalon had known all of Aldimar’s secrets? Was Thamalon not just as much a disappointment to his own father, who’d expected the elder Perivel to lead the family after his untimely death?

  “Summon the gardeners,” said Tamlin. “Have them bring their picks and shovels. I want to see what lies beneath these stones.”

  The magical light of Magdon’s spell had already faded before the gardeners arrived with their tools. The men took one look at the floor and reported it would take hours just to pry up enough stone to make room for digging. Tamlin dashed their hopes of postponing his orders commanding them to fetch help from the stables. He would have set the entire house guard to digging if there had been enough room in the cellar.

  Next, he sent Escevar to escort Magdon back to the library, where she could retrieve the remnants of her magical contraption and return to the guildhall. The mage made no attempt to disguise her curiosity about what lay beneath the wine cellar, but Tamlin had already decided that he would keep any discovery a family matter until he knew he needed more help from the wizards.

  Soon, the cellar rang with the sound of picks on limestone. Tamlin watched anxiously as the men cracked apart the floor and pulled it away in chunks.

  This will take time, signed Vox.

  “I know,” said Tamlin. “I know. Still, there’s nothing else for me to do except … Where’s my portfolio?”

  He realized he hadn’t taken the slipcase with his father’s correspondence and his notes on the cipher with him during the excitement of Magdon’s spell. He must have left it in the library.

  “Wait here,” said Tamlin. He looked to see that the men were all engrossed in their work before stepping behind a large cask and pressing the stone that revealed a latch to the secret door. The secret paths of Stormweather Towers reached even there, below the ground floor.

  Vox glowered at his master. He knew he wasn’t welcome in the secret passages, and he obviously hated letting Tamlin out of his sight.

  “Don’t fret, you mother hen,” said Tamlin. “I’ll be right back, and none will know I’ve left, so long as you stand here.”

  Vox shook his head in a weary and practiced expression of exasperation.

  Tamlin closed the secret door behind him and found the spiral stairway that led directly to the second story. From there it was two turns and a pair of secret doors to the library. When he arrived, he checked the peephole before entering.

  Magdon was the room’s only occupant. She knelt on the floor, gathering the crushed foil of her magic-detecting apparatus.

  Tamlin entered the library and closed the door silently. He moved well away from the secret door before coughing to avoid startling the wizard. It hadn’t happened to him, but he would never forget the story of the three days Uldir Foxmantle lived as a Chultan tree frog after surprising his house mage in his study.

  “My lord Uskevren,” said Magdon.

  The albino tried to rise and bow at the same time, managing to perform neither gesture very well. Tamlin remembered that his first assumption upon meeting Magdon and her sister was that they were peasant girls indentured to the wizards’ guild.

  You can take the girl out of the country, he thought.

  “Oh, do not let me disturb you,” he said, looking around for the documents he’d left. “Where’s the portfolio I left here?”

  Magdon replied, “My lord, I could not say.”

  “Could not,” said Tamlin, feeling a sudden rush of anger, “or would not?”

  Forgetting the danger of frightening a wizard, he stalked toward her. He paused before closing the distance and veered toward her satchel of materials on his father’s desk. A glance told him there were no pages inside. Still, he knew a mage could render things smaller, or transport them with a spell.

  “My lord, I promise you,” she protested. “I took nothing.”

  “Who else was in here with you?”

  “Only your man, Escevar,” she said.

  Relief washed over him then, followed by a sharp pang of chagrin.

  “I beg your pardon, mistress. I hope you can forgive my intolerably poor temper. Since my father’s disappearance, my manners have suffered. Escevar must be looking for me downstairs even now.”

  “Yes, my lord.”

  Tamlin was inclined to stay and apologize further—one never knew when one might need a favor from the wizards—yet he was anxious to recover his one tangible clue to his father’s disappearance. He sketched a courtly bow, a gesture far out of proportion to Magdon’s station, and turned to leave.

  “My lord?”

  “Yes?”

  “It is I who owes an apology,” she said. “I have deceived you.”

  Dark and empty, thought Tamlin. Here it comes, and me without so much as a smatchet.

  While he was far more proficient with a long sword, Tamlin longed for his lucky axe. The weapon had saved him from a rampaging troll. Perhaps it would help him cut down the wizard before she transmuted him into something wretched.

  Rather than raise her hands to conjure something out of the empty air, Magdon said, “The spell I cast for you was a ruse. There is no spell to show whether a person has magical potential.”

  “What?” said Tamlin. “Why would you do such a thing?”

  “He said it would relieve your mind,” said Magdon.

  “Who?”

  “Your man, Escevar. He said you were fraught with worry, and performing that charade might help you sleep better.”

  “That idiot,” said Tamlin. “Even if his intentions were benign, how dare he … Wait a second. Do you mean to tell me that I am even now digging up a perfectly good wine cellar because of a mummer’s trick?”

  “Oh, no, my lord. That spell was genuine. I would not accept payment for a mere ruse. As things stand, I should return my entire fee. If you wish to complain to my mistress Helara, it would be only fair.”

  She removed a pair of coin purses from her satchel. Tamlin noted that they must contain at least twice as many coins as she had demanded for her services.

  “We shall speak of this another time,” said Tamlin. “Until then, I hope your penance shall take the form of the utmost discretion about this evening’s events.”

  “Certainly, my lord.”

  “And keep the gold,” he said. “One day I may come to you for a service.”

  She made a deep curtsy and kept her eyes on the floor as he turned and left the room.

  Forgetting his promise to Vox, Tamlin dashed down the steps, retracing his earlier path when following the beams of light from Magdon’s spell.

  He paused in the grand foyer and asked the doormen, “Have you seen my butler?”

  “Yes, my lord,” replied one of the men. He stood straight at attention. “He went to summon a carriage for the visiting mage.”

  “How lo
ng ago?”

  The guard frowned and said, “At least ten minutes ago, my lord.”

  “Dark!” shouted Tamlin. “Find him at once. Bring him back here, and make sure he has a leather portfolio with him. No one may look inside it but me. Do you understand?”

  The guards snapped perfect salutes.

  “Send a double guard to take your place here,” Tamlin added, then spun on his heel and ran down to the cellar.

  Vox nearly leaped at the sight of his master returning from a path other than the secret passage. Before he could sign a complaint, he saw the deep scowl on Tamlin’s face.

  “Bad news, Vox,” he said. “We’ve found our traitor.”

  CHAPTER 20

  THE INEFFABLE VAULT

  I’m getting too old for this.

  The thought kept returning to Thamalon’s mind like some refrain from one of the operas Shamur adored so much. He hoped his predicament would turn out better than it did for the characters whose tragedies were sung in the amphitheater of the Hulorn’s Hunting Garden.

  He pressed his ear against the door and listened—yet again—for any sounds of inhabitants in the room beyond. He’d been doing so all morning at dozens of secret doors, and each time he heard voices or footsteps nearby, his heart skipped a beat.

  It was only a matter of time before he blundered into the wrong room and revealed that he’d been skulking through the Sorcerer’s no-longer-completely-secret passages.

  Apart from the incredible difference in scale, the hidden corridors of Castle Stormweather were remarkably similar to those in Stormweather Towers. They weren’t exactly the same, but they reinforced Thamalon’s notion that this grand bastion and his own relatively modest manor home were fraternal if not identical twins.

  How he could accept those similarities and deny the likely relationship between the Sorcerer and his son, Thamalon did not know. Nor did he care to examine the question too closely. It was a matter of faith and intuition, and Thamalon preferred to leave it that way.

  Thamalon heard nothing beyond the door. He estimated that he’d wound his way through the servants’ quarters and was near a kitchen or one of the lesser feasting halls. He sniffed for some smell of roasting meat or baking bread, but either he’d misjudged his direction or else the secret door sealed too tightly to allow odors to pass through.