All the Paths of Shadow (33 page)

“Such language,” said the captain, looking back with a grin. “And did you really call them witless, mewling, rumor mongers, who spew out mindless drivel for a small, but exceedingly ignorant, readership?”

I did say that, didn’t I?
thought Meralda.
To a mob of penswifts, who took down every word.

“I’ve wanted to say that hundreds of times, over the years,” he said, settling into a chair. “Good evening, houseplant,” he added, to Mug.

“Your Grace,” replied Mug, with a sweeping dip of his eye buds.

“Bah,” snapped the captain. Meralda pulled her desk chair away from the desk, and set it so she faced Mug and the captain.

Voices sounded from outside the door. The captain smiled.

“That will be Sir Envid and the Vonats,” he said, cheerily. “The Vonats insisted on a tour. I instructed your lads that you weren’t here, and that I hadn’t been around in days, and that if Envid asks them why they’re here and you’re not they are to shrug and say they were told to guard the laboratory and Tirlish soldiers follow orders whether diplomats like it or not.”

“Thank you,” said Meralda. “The last thing I need now is a herd of Vonats wandering about, trying to slip things in their pockets.”

The captain lost his smile. “The last thing you need now is Humindorus Nam,” he said.

“The Vonat mage,” said Mug. “We’ve heard so many pleasant things about him.”

“He’s the one insisting on a tour,” said the captain. “He’s insane. Not climb the walls and run about naked insane, but mad in worse ways. They’re up to something, Meralda, and I’m afraid you’re a part of it.”

The voices faded, and footsteps fell away.

Meralda waited until they were gone.
I have the oddest impression,
she thought,
that someone is crouched just beyond the door, listening.

She fought back a shiver, looking to see if the captain noticed. But his eyes were upon Goboy’s mirror, which had begun to flash again, and present brief scenes of rainy Tirlish streets.

“Captain,” said Mug, after a moment. “If you know something definite, why not share it with the thaumaturge? She doesn’t keep secrets from you, now does she?”

Meralda glared, but the captain nodded and turned away from the mirror. “That’s why I’m here,” he said. “I’ve got things to tell.” He sighed, and put his hands on his knees, and met Meralda’s eyes.

“It all started a year ago,” he said. “And naturally, it all started in Vonath.”

Chapter Thirteen

The captain stomped out.

Mug regarded Meralda with all of his eyes. “Well. Vonat spies, trained in sorcery. This day gets better and better by the moment, doesn’t it?”

Meralda nodded. In her hand was a pencil. She resisted a sudden urge to chew on it.

“Why doesn’t Yvin just arrest every last Vonat and toss them in the dungeon until after the Accords?” sputtered Mug.

“You know why,” said Meralda. “They have to sign the treaty too, or the Hang will sail away and never come back.”

“Oh? And that’s a disaster, is it? Why?”

Meralda sighed and put down her pencil. “Because the world isn’t as big as it once was, Mug. And we’re a part of it now, like it or not.”

“Well, I don’t like it.” The dandyleaf plant tossed his leaves. “I just want that understood.”

“I’ll make a note of it.” Meralda rose, stretched, yawned.

“If that Vonat wizard is in with the meddlers, as the captain suspects, he’ll likely try and meddle with you, mistress. Probably with something shiny and sharp. Please tell me you’re going to take steps to protect yourself.”

“I am.” Meralda gazed back across the ranks of shelves and stacks of crates. The captain’s warning had been clear.

I can expect a magical assault by a skilled Vonat wizard,
she thought.
What would best protect me from such a thing?

“Migle’s Mighty Armor,” said Mug, guessing her thoughts. “Turns arrows and knives, too, as I recall.”

Meralda imagined herself stumbling about in eighty pounds of iron and frowned. “Made for a man, and one two feet taller than I,” she said. She paced toward the first row of shelves, finger to her lips. “No. I need something subtle. Something he can’t see. Something no one can see.”

Items on the shelves were stored, in Shingvere’s words, “according to malevolent whim and infernal caprice.” Before Meralda were half a dozen intricate devices designed to make ice. Beneath them was a line of six silver gloves, all snapping their fingers in perfect time.

“Naigree’s Vanishing Amulet?”

Meralda walked past a jar containing the skeleton of a rat, which put its bony face to the glass and wiggled dry whickers at her as she passed.

“Won’t work in direct sunlight.”

The faint strains of music rose up from a music-box before her. Meralda smiled, and the box scuttled away, leaving tiny footprints in the dust.

“Carvile’s Temporary Displacer?”

A crystal snake, its gold spine bending and twisting within it, coiled suddenly at Meralda, flicking its metallic tongue at her until she lifted her eyebrow and frowned.

“You have to constantly sing to it.”

Mug sighed. “Surely there’s a bloody enchanted sword somewhere in this clutter, mistress!”

“There are at least eight. Five had to be wrapped in chains and sealed inside lead boxes. Two are broken.”

“That leaves one,” said Mug.

“It grows an inch a year,” said Meralda. “It was twelve feet long, last time I checked.” Meralda found herself halfway down the first rank of shelves. Magical implements glittered and moved and spun, illuminating her one moment with strange glows, and the next with flashes of harsh white light.

“Here you are,” she said.

She reached up and took down a small, dusty oak box. The top was worked with sigils and runes. A tiny key protruded from the delicate brass lock.

Lavey’s Here-now Gone-now Charm of Hiding. Meralda cleared a space on the shelf before her and put the box carefully down.

“Mistress?” called Mug. “Have you found something?”

Meralda bit her lower lip. The charm was reputed to be quite powerful, allowing its wearer to somehow go about their business, but remain hidden to those seeking them out. Not invisible, either. Just…gone. Absent. Away. All without ever actually hiding.

Which is just the thing to be, when Vonat wizards mean to do you ill,
thought Meralda.

But first, of course, there was the charm’s famous here-now gone-now nature to contend with. “Mistress?” called Mug, louder now.

Meralda took a deep breath, held it, and turned the tiny key in the dusty brass lock.

There was a click.

Meralda lifted the lid, and peered inside.

The velvet lined case was empty.

“Bother,” said Meralda.

“What?”

“I opened Lavey’s little oak box,” said Meralda. “It’s empty.”

Mug groaned. “When can you try again?”

“After the next new moon. It doesn’t matter how many times I open the box from now until then, it’ll be empty. The spell doesn’t reset until the new moon.” Meralda closed the box and shook it. She could hear and feel the charm rattling about inside, but when she opened the box, it was empty, as it would be until the spell reset. Then there would be a fifty out of fifty chance the charm would appear.

“Bugger. Good idea though. What next?”

What next, indeed?

Meralda replaced Lavey’s box on its shelf. Mattip’s Sideways Positioner? Calit’s Bracelets of Furious Wind?

Neither is very reliable,
she thought.
The Bracelets of Wind are as likely to injure me as the Vonat.

Meralda walked, her mind racing, her eyes fixed on the objects before her. Etter’s Phantasmal Twin?

No. Anyone with Sight could easily tell twin from original.

She stubbed her right toe on something on the floor.

The spark lamps cast more shadows than light, between the ranks of shelves, so Meralda didn’t recognize the object with which she had collided at first. But she suspected how it came to be out of place.

“Shingvere, no doubt,” she muttered, straining to see in the dark. “Probably looking for a bottle of brandy he hid in here twenty years ago.”

She reached down and lifted the object from the floor.

It looked like a staff, at first. An old one, by the wear on the rough hewn ironwood. But it bore no markings, no sigils, no runes. It had neither iron shod foot nor copper plated head.

Meralda frowned at it.
Probably not even a staff,
she decided.
Probably just a chunk of cast off lumber stuck beneath the shelves to level them. I just hope removing it doesn’t bring one of these shelves down on my head.

Meralda leaned the length of wood against the shelf behind her and continued her prowl amid the works of the mages of old.

“Any luck?” said Mug, from the shadows.

“I could make ice or raise a sudden fog or cause empty shoes to dance,” said Meralda.

“Marvelous. We’re saved. Mistress, surely there’s something nasty back there!”

Oh, there’s plenty of nasty,
thought Meralda. Kingen’s Bell causes massive internal bleeding in anyone who hears it. Stovall’s Blighted Candle melts the eyes of anyone who gazes into the flame. Both were locked away in sturdy chests, but neither offered much in the way of protection from stealthy Vonat mages.

Meralda reached the end of the shelf row, and sidled around the end of it, ready to begin searching the other side.

She walked into something hidden in a shadow and it fell with a bang and a clatter.

Meralda jumped, careened into the laboratory’s back wall, and bit back a curse word.

“Mistress? You all right back there?”

“I’m fine.” Meralda forced a smile. “Too much clutter.”

There, on the floor, was the twin to the ironwood staff she’d encountered moments before.

Meralda nudged it with the toe of her boot. It scooted with a rasping sound.

Your nerves are getting the better of you,
she thought. Then she reached down, snatched the ironwood up, and leaned it carefully against the wall.

“What about Gilbert’s Cloak of Grounding?” asked Mug. “Didn’t half a dozen mages wear that when they were working with unstable wards?”

Meralda nodded. “That they did,” she said. She tried to recall where the cloak had been stored. Wasn’t it wrapped in canvas, in that yellow chest by the south wall?

She made for the far end of the row, where the lights shone bright and there was open space and room to move. The cloak wasn’t a bad idea. Particularly if one enhanced the original spells.

She took half a dozen steps. Just half a dozen steps, and then, though she heard nothing, saw nothing, sensed nothing, Meralda turned and looked back at the wall where she’d leaned the troublesome scrap of ironwood.

The wall was empty.

As was the floor.

“Mistress,” called Mug, his voice filled with rising panic. “Mistress, I think you’d better grab something right now, because we have company.”

A shadow flew over her, and with it came the sound of wings.

“Mistress
, run!
”

Meralda ran. Again, the whoosh and dart of shadow. She reached out, caught the first thing she grasped, and threw it toward the sound.

“Missed,” cried Mug. Something metallic landed with a clatter. “Mistress, there are two of them!”

Meralda forced her Sight up and out.

The laboratory was suddenly ablaze with moving, spinning, flashing lights. Thousands of spells shone and moved like noon in a field of wind-blown mirrors.

But above the crowded ranks of magical items about her, two blurs of purest, darkest black sailed and spun and flew.

Meralda’s Sight collapsed, and she sank to her knees, suddenly blind, suddenly exhausted. She reached out again, fumbling with the items on the shelf before her, and gasped as she found Mahop’s Portable Inferno.

I may burn down half the shelves,
she thought,
but let’s see how quickly these staves ignite.

“That will not be necessary, Mage Ovis.”

The voice was not Mug’s. It was far too loud to be any of Mug’s mimicry, either.

It spoke perfect New Kingdom, with no trace of a Vonat accent.

“Nameless. Faceless. Desist. Return.”

Above came the sound of troubled air, but it faded quickly, and was gone.

Meralda rose. Her hands found the two small indentations that, if covered, would cause the open end of the Inferno to spew gouts of fire reputed to be so hot they melted glass and stone alike.

“My apologies, Mage. They were intent on childish mischief, but I do not believe they meant you harm.”

“Mistress,” hissed Mug. “You are not going to believe this.”

“Oh, but she must,” replied the booming voice, to Mug. “All your fates depend upon her belief. Without it, Tirlin is doomed.”

Meralda held the Inferno in front of her, ready to bring it to life.

“Who are you?” she said, her eyes straining to penetrate the shadows about her.

“I have no name,” replied the voice. “Please. Come forward. I mean you no harm.”

“Mug?”

“No one else is here, mistress,” he replied. “It seems to be speaking from inside Goboy’s mirror.”

“The construct is correct. I am using the glass as a portal. Please approach. We have urgent matters to discuss.”

Meralda warily emerged from between the shelves, the Inferno at the ready.

Mug swiveled half his eyes toward her, keeping the rest fixed on Goboy’s mirror. From her vantage point, Meralda could not see into the glass, so she moved cautiously toward Mug and her desk.

“Those things, whatever they were, flew inside the mirror,” said Mug. “Hit it and vanished inside.”

They couldn’t possibly have done that
, thought Meralda.
The mirror is just glass
. But she nodded and made her way to a spot behind her desk.

Goboy’s mirror showed a scene from inside the Wizard’s Flat. Late afternoon sunlight streamed in through the windows. The two plain ironwood staves stood upright, their ends inside the holes carved into the floor.