Bright morning sunlight streamed through the kitchen window. “Good morning, Mistress,” said Mug, as Meralda shuffled out of her bedroom, barked her shin on a chair leg, and made slowly for the cupboards. “Did you sleep well?”
“Mmmph,” said Meralda, squinting in the daylight. Her bathrobe, belt trailing loose like a train, hung lopsided from her shoulders. Her slippers were mismatched, right foot blue, left foot yellow with tassels.
Mug regarded the Thaumaturge with a dozen shiny eyes. “Perhaps I should be asking if you slept at all,” said Mug. “I didn’t hear you come in.”
Meralda shrugged and rubbed her eyes. “It was late,” she said. “You were asleep.” Meralda filled her coffee pot with water from the sink, rummaged in the cupboard for grounds, and sank into her chair with a sigh and a frown when the coffee urn turned up empty.
“Forgive me, mistress,” said Mug. “I meant to remind you yesterday.”
Meralda yawned. “I’ll get a cup at Flayne’s,” she said. “But first, a piece of toast.”
“Out of bread, too,” said Mug. He tilted his eyes toward the ceiling. “I imagine the mages of legend had someone handy to do the shopping,” he said. “‘Fetch me a bag of flour and an onion,’ they’d say, before charging off to topple the Acatean Empire or clash with the Hang.” Mug shook his leaves. “Yes, that’s the life. Power, magic, and all the shopping done. You really should look into conquering the world and making Yvin run all your errands.”
Meralda peeped out from between her fingers. “Do you sit around at night and think of these things, Mug?”
Mug tossed his fronds in a shrug. “Last night I thought a lot about towers and thaumaturges,” he said. “Specifically, I wondered what mine was doing about a certain long shadow.”
Meralda groaned.
Mug’s eyes clustered together. “Bad news, is it? Going to tell Yvin it can’t be done?”
“Worse,” said Meralda. “I’m going to tell him it can.”
Mug wilted. “Oh,” he said.
“Oh, indeed,” said Meralda. “I think I can change the air around the Tower. Make it bend light differently.”
Mug’s frown deepened. “Sounds interesting, in a hopelessly implausible way.”
“Water does the same thing,” said Meralda.
Mug’s red eyes gathered in a cluster. “Water hides shadows?” he asked, with a furtive red-eyed glance toward the half-full kitchen sink below him.
Meralda shook her head. “No, Mug,” she said. “Water bends light. It’s called refraction, and different materials refract light to different degrees.”
“If you say so, mistress,” said Mug. “Will it be difficult?”
“Extremely,” said Meralda, after another yawn. “I’ll have to divide the air around the Tower into hundreds of different volumes, and assign a unique refractive value to each volume.” She yawned again.
“Is that before or after you buy coffee and bread?”
“After,” said Meralda. She rose, rummaged in her icebox, and produced a chunk of cheese and a wax bag of Flayne’s salt crackers.
A knock sounded softly at the door. Meralda grimaced. “Right on time,” she said. “They’ve probably been standing there listening for the palace bells to sound before they knocked.”
Indeed, the Brass Bell, five hundred years old and as big as a house, was sounding from the palace.
Mug divided his eyes between Meralda and the door. “They? They who?”
“My bodyguards,” said Meralda, rising. “And no, it wasn’t my idea, and no, I can’t get rid of them.”
The knock sounded again. Mug twisted all of his eyes towards Meralda, and shook his leaves in what the Thaumaturge recognized as Mug’s equivalent of taking a deep breath.
“Not a word,” said Meralda, her eyes flashing beneath a tangled shock of hair. “Not one.”
Mug tossed his leaves and sighed.
“Thaumaturge?” spoke a voice at the door. “You asked us to report for duty at first ring.”
“Thank you, Kervis,” said Meralda. “I’ll be out in a few moments. There’s a settee just down the hall.”
They won’t do it, thought Meralda. They won’t sit. They’ll flank my door and lock their knees and stare at my neighbors and if it takes me more than twenty minutes to bathe and dress one or both of them will fall over in a dead faint.
“We brought you coffee,” said a fainter voice. “Ma’am.”
“They brought you coffee,” echoed Mug. “Ma’am.”
Meralda glared. “Thank you,” she said.
“It’s from Flayne’s,” said a Bellringer. Tervis, Meralda decided. He’s the timid twin. What a difference a few minutes made.
Meralda smiled. A cup of Flayne’s coffee was sixpence. A lavish sum, on a guardsman’s pay, even split in two.
Meralda padded to her front door and opened it a hand’s width. “Thank you,” she said again, as a grinning Kervis thrust a steaming paper cup within. “Now, if you gentlemen will take a seat, I’ll be out in a moment.”
“Yes, ma’am,” chorused the guards.
Meralda eased the door shut.
“Yes, ma’am,” said Mug, his voice a perfect rendition of the Bellringers. “They’ll both be in love with you before the Accords, you know. Ah, love,” added Mug, with a tossing of leaves. “Flowers and music and moonlight and guardsmen! You’ll have to get a bigger place, the three of you. What will old Missus Whitlonk think, what with the lads coming and going at all hours?”
Meralda raised the cup to her lips, kicked off her mismatched slippers, and marched wordlessly back to her bedroom.
Angis and his cab were waiting at the curb when Meralda and the Bellringers clattered down the steps and out into the hustle and bustle of Fairlane Street.
“Morning, Thaumaturge,” said Angis, doffing his hat. “Who ’er these lads? Book-ends?”
Meralda laughed. “Goodman Angis Kert, meet Tervis and Kervis Bellringer. They are my guards until the Accords.”
Angis guffawed. “Where you lads from?”
“Allaskar, sir,” said Kervis. “Just outside Moren.”
Angis took Meralda’s battered black leather instrument bag and placed it carefully in the cab. “Knew a man from Allaskar, once,” he said. “When I was in the army. What was his name, now?”
Meralda caught hold of the cab’s side rail and climbed inside. A double-decked Steam Guild trolley chugged past, smokestacks billowing, sending pedestrians and cabs scurrying off the track lane and momentarily drowning out the clatter of the road and the conversation between the Bellringers and Angis.
Meralda settled back into the cushioned seat and closed her eyes.
“Pardon, Thaumaturge,” said Tervis at the door. “Goodman Kert wants to know our destination. And Kervis wants to know if he can ride up top, to keep an eye out.”
Meralda smiled. She, too, recalled a time when Tirlin was best seen from the cabman’s seat.
“We go to the Tower, guardsman,” she said. “And tell guardsman Kervis I shall feel most secure knowing he and Angis are scouring the sidewalks for wandering Vonat river bandits.”
Meralda sensed Tervis grin, but did not open her eyes to see it. The door shut. Words were spoken. An instant later the cab door opened and Tervis climbed inside.
“We’re off, ma’am,” he said, his sword clattering against the cab door’s frame. “We’re off!”
The cab rolled smoothly into traffic. Above, Angis and Kervis were chatting away like long lost brothers. From the sound of it, Angis may well have served in the army with the Bellringers’ uncle. Meralda noted with mild shock that the cabman’s language never veered from strict propriety, even when a ten-horse road barge nearly forced Angis onto the sidewalk.
Wakened, Meralda kept her eyes open after that. Across from her Tervis stared through his window, occasionally biting back habitual exclamations to his twin at the sight of passing trolleys, a Builder’s Guild steam shovel at work, and the distant, bobbing hulks of dirigibles moored in a field east of the docks. The guardsman went slack-jawed with awe when he spied a walking barge hauling a load of lumber up a steep hill, and again when the automaton at the fruit market singled him out for a wave and a doff of its red hat.
“Mum said we’d see wonders, ma’am,” said Tervis, as the shadow of a rising airship blotted out the sun. “She was right.”
“My mother said the same thing,” said Meralda.
“Your mum?” said Tervis, craning his neck to follow the airship. “Weren’t you born in the palace?”
Meralda laughed. Tervis stared out, lost in wonders a thousand other cab riders ignored twice a day, every day.
I wonder, mused Meralda. Should I tell him I was born on a pig farm? Should I tell him the king is a bumbler, the court a refuge for overbred dunderheads, and the Accords are largely an opportunity for the nobles of five nations to come together and drink to excess at their peoples’ expense?
Another airship, her fans swiveling and whirling, swooped ponderously down and blotted out the sun.
“Wondrous,” said Tervis.
Meralda smiled, and said nothing.
“Here we are, ladies and thaumaturges,” shouted Angis. “The Tower.”
Angis pulled his cab to the curb in the circle ’round that looped between Hent Street and the park’s east entrance. The Bellringers stared. No wonder so many painters set up their easels here, thought Meralda.
The park wall, ten miles of Old Kingdom rough hewn stone ravaged and worn by the passing of centuries, rose a full thirty feet above the well-tended grass of the park. The gargoyles mad king Foon had added in the second century still danced and capered and brooded atop the wall. The age-old tradition of tying ridiculous hats to the most fearsome of the gargoyles was, Meralda saw, still observed by Tirlin’s more daring youngsters. The pair of gargoyles flanking the gate-posts were sporting last year’s fruit-and-feather day hats, and the right-most fellow was wearing a jaunty pink Oaftree scarf.
Well above and just inside the wall and its gargoyles, the park’s ring of Old Kingdom iron oaks rustled and swayed, like thick green mountain peaks shuffling to and fro against a pale blue sky. Meralda loved the oaks, and though she knew the stories claiming Otrinvion himself planted the seedlings were utter nonsense, she couldn’t help but think those mighty old trees had watched Tirlin for a good portion of its clamorous history.
“Oh,” said Kervis, and Meralda knew from his face that he wasn’t seeing the wall or the Old Oaks or the line of dancing gargoyles.
“The captain says it’s haunted,” said Tervis, his eyes upon the Tower. Meralda put her bag in her lap and waited for the guardsman to notice that the cab had stopped.
“The thaumaturge says it isn’t,” said Meralda. “And she should know better, shouldn’t she?”
Tervis whirled, groping for the door latch. “Yes, ma’am,” he said. “Sorry, ma’am.”
Angis flung open the door from outside. Tervis yelped and would have fallen, had Angis not caught hold of his red uniform collar. “Here, lad,” said Angis. “First thing you’ve got to learn about is doors. See this here? It’s what we city folks call a latch.”
“Leave him be, Angis,” said Meralda.
“Aye, Lady,” said Angis, grinning. He reached up, caught Meralda’s black bag, and held her door. “Will you be long, this morning?”
“Two hours,” she said, stepping out onto the curb. “Then it’s off to the palace.”
“Got to greet our Eryan guests, aye?”
“Aye,” said Meralda, wincing at the thought of a long afternoon at court. “But first, I’ve got work to do. Gentlemen?”
The Bellringers looked down, away from the Tower.
“That is the Tower,” she said, as Angis tended his ponies. “It’s seven hundred years old. It was built by Otrinvion the Black, himself. You’ve heard the name?”
The Bellringers nodded in unison.
“The Tower is central to our history,” she said. “And the Tower has a long and bloody past. War and murder and madness. You’ve heard the stories of King Tornben the Mad? Queen Annabet the Torturer?”
The Bellringers exchanged glances, and Kervis nodded.
“The stories are true,” said Meralda. “Documented fact. But I tell you this, gentlemen, and I want you to remember it.” Meralda paused, shifted her bag from her left hand to her right, and waved back Kervis when he motioned to take the bag himself.
“The Tower is not haunted,” she said. “It was not, is not, and shall never be. Is that clear?”
The Bellringers nodded, slowly this time.
Angis grinned at his ponies, but didn’t say a word.
“Then let’s go,” said Meralda. “Follow me.”
She turned and set foot on the cracked flagstones of Wizard’s Walk, which led through the park’s east gate and then wound toward the Tower. The walk was, according to local lore, another of Otrinvion’s legacies.
The Bellringers, right hands on sword hilts, faces stern (except for Tervis, who kept wrinkling his forehead to push his helmet up), fell into step behind her.
“Keep a sharp eye out, lads,” said Angis, after Meralda passed into the park. “Especially after dark. That’s when the haunts get mean.” Angis lifted his voice. “Not that I believe such, mind you.”
Meralda listened to the steady tromp-tromp of newly soled guard boots and frowned. The Bellringers were marching, not walking. Fresh out of boot camp, she thought. I’m sure they’re not even aware they’re doing it. I’ll be hearing the sound of marching boots from now until the Accords. That’s eighteen more days,and every one of them my own small army dress parade.
The walk turned suddenly, leaving the shade of the old oaks for the close-cropped green grass of the park proper.
The Tower split the sky, no longer obscured by walls or oaks.
“Here it is, gentlemen,” said Meralda, halting. “The Tower.”
“It’s taller than the palace,” said Kervis.
Meralda shook her head. She knew the highest spire of the palace to be ten feet taller than the blunt tip of the Tower. Old King Horoled, a century past, had nearly bankrupted Tirlin seeing to that. But the palace was more than twenty city blocks away. One had to squint just to make out the lofty spire, which peeked above the trees. The palace might be taller, thought Meralda, but here in the park, the Tower reigns.
Reigns? No, Meralda decided. The Tower doesn’t reign. It looms. Looms above the Old Oaks. Looms above the park wall. Looms above Tirlin. Thick and tall and blunt, chipped and nicked by seven hundred years of determined attempts to pull it down, the Tower endures.
“If a mountain had bones,” said Tervis, “that’s what they’d look like.”
“Hush,” replied Kervis. “It’s just a pile of rocks.”
A lumber wain rumbled up the Walk behind them. “Passing by,” shouted the driver. “Make way.”
Meralda stepped onto the grass and motioned the Bellringers to follow.
The lumber wain rattled past.
Tervis pointed toward the hurried band of carpenters stacking lumber and erecting scaffolds at the base of the Tower.
“What are they building?”
Meralda frowned. “Seating,” she said. “For the Accords.”
Meralda resumed her trek toward the Tower, which lay a goodly march ahead. “The king will give the commencement speech from there,” she said, pointing toward the tall, narrow framework jutting out from the base of the Tower. “The Eryans will be there, the Alons there, the Phendelits there, and the Vonats just in front of us,” she said, her hand indicating the skeletal frames arranged around and dwarfed by the Tower. “All this, for a ten minute speech no one will remember the next day.”
“Kings will do what kings will do,” said Kervis, with the air of one repeating a time-honored truth. “At least that’s what Pop always says.”
“Ma’am,” he added, after a jab in the ribs from Tervis.
The Tower beckoned. Meralda fell into step with her soldiers and marched, humming, ahead.
The Tower doors, each twenty feet high and nearly as wide, were open, but blocked by a drooping length of bright yellow ribbon and a faded Danger Public Works sign bolted to a rusty iron stand.
Meralda waved to the Builder’s Guild foreman, lifted the yellow ribbon, and passed over the threshold.
Three steps on stone, and the last slanting rays of the sun gave way to darkness. Meralda squinted ahead, slowing until she could make out shapes in the shadows. “Be careful,” she said, as Tervis and Kervis entered. “The carpenters are stacking lumber in here.”
Meralda reached out and touched the wall to her right. The stone was cold. Like the outside of the Tower, the interior hall was stone. Solid black Eryan granite, shaped and fused into a single mass by a spell or spells known only to the Tower’s long-dead master. Cold and dry and as smooth as glass. Meralda knew just beyond the wall, the sun was shining, the park was green and lush, and Tirlin was bustling and busy. But here, in the windowless belly of the Tower, she felt as if it were the smallest hour of the longest, darkest night.
“It’s quiet, all of a sudden,” said Tervis, in a whisper. “Isn’t it?”
Meralda shrugged. Oh, the hammering and pounding and shouting continued, but the Tower doors might as well have been flung shut, so faint was the noise after only a few paces. And had the daylight fled so quickly, on her other visits?
“This way,” she said, when the Bellringer’s footfalls fell behind. “The hall is very short, and there are no turns.”
“No windows, either,” muttered Tervis. “Ma’am.”
“We won’t need windows,” said Meralda, groping in her bag. “We’ll have plenty of our own light.”
“Oh,” said Kervis. “Should I go back and fetch a lantern?”
Meralda pulled a short brass pipe from her bag. “Light,” she said, unlatching the simple magelamp spell coiled invisibly around the cylinder with the word.
The Bellringers whistled as wide beams of soft white light flared from each end of the brass tube.
“Wizard lamp,” said Tervis, lifting his hand to run his fingers through the light. “Uncle Rammis saw one, once. Nobody believed him.”
Meralda played the lamp around the hall. Shadows flew. Some, she thought, more slowly than others.
A shiver ran the length of Meralda’s spine.
“Nonsense,” she said, amazed and a bit embarrassed. “Utter nonsense.”
“Pardon, ma’am?” asked Kervis.
Meralda shook her head. “Nothing,” she said. “Nothing. We have a long flight of stairs to climb, gentlemen,” she said, striding toward the heart of the darkness at the end of the hall. “Shall we go?”
The Bellringers followed. Ten paces further Meralda’s lamplight fell across a crude table bearing half a dozen battered oil lanterns, an open box of Red Cat matches, and a half-eaten Lamp River apple.
Further down the hall, smooth-planed cedar planks were stacked neatly along each wall. Meralda thought she heard the sound of gentle snoring behind the third stack as she passed it, and her face reddened even more. I can at least be thankful Mug isn’t here, she thought. I’d never hear the last of this. Carpenters sleep while the sorceress trembles.
Meralda’s footfalls came faster and harder until the hall simply ended, and the shaft of light from her magelamp soared up and out, only to lose itself in the vast, cavernous maw of the Tower.
Kervis whistled softly.
“Bats,” said Tervis, his face turned upward. “You’d think there would be bats.”
“Not a one,” said Meralda. “There isn’t a crack or a gap anywhere in the Tower. It’s an amazing structure.” She played the lamplight out into the darkness, resting the beam finally on the far side of the Tower and the faint outline of the winding, rail-less stair that wound lazily up and away into the dark.
“We climb that?” asked Kervis.
Meralda nodded. “It’s wider than it looks,” she said, though she understood the badly-hidden wash of fear in the boy’s voice. She recalled the first time she had ascended the stair. Darkness above, and darkness below, a magelit patch of old black stone to her left, a hungry void a step to her right.
From the idling carpenters just beyond the doors, Meralda heard the barest snatch of soft, low laughter.
There will be no more bloody shivering, she said, to herself. I won’t have it.
“Do either of you have a fear of high places?”
In perfect unison, both Bellringers, their faces pale in the magelamp, wiped sweat from their foreheads with their right hands, set their jaws, and shook their heads.
“We’re not afraid,” said Kervis. “Shall I go first?”
Meralda waved him ahead. “Stay in the lamplight,” she said. “Tervis, if you would be so good as to follow?”
“Right behind you, ma’am.”
Meralda switched her bag to her right shoulder and set out for the foot of the stair. She knew it was her imagination, but laughter seemed to follow all the way up to the Wizard’s Flat.
“At last.”
The stair ended at a narrow wooden door. Kervis halted and reached out for the tarnished brass knob, but pulled his hand back before he touched it. “Ma’am,” he said, panting and looking back over his shoulder at Meralda. “Is this it?”
Meralda brushed back a damp lock of red hair and nodded. “Yes,” she said. “The Wizard’s Flat.”
Kervis flashed a crooked grin and sank into a winded slouch against the Tower wall. Boots scraped softly on stone behind her, and Meralda turned to face Tervis, who had been silent the whole of the long climb to the flat.
Both boys were streaked with sweat. Their stiff red and black palace guard uniforms looked thick enough for the dead of winter, but Tervis was pasty-faced and wild-eyed, as well as sweaty. Meralda watched as the boy inched his way, with elaborate care, up onto the last tread between them.
“Tervis?” she said, softly. “We’re here. It’s almost over.”
Tervis met her eyes and gulped.
“He’s just winded,” said Kervis, quickly. “A few moments on a good solid floor and he’ll be right up, ma’am,” he added. “Isn’t that right, little brother?”
Tervis tried to speak, but only croaked. While he licked his lips Meralda reached into her pocket and found the key that opened the flat. “We could all use a place to sit,” she said. “The door is locked, Kervis.” She thrust the key into the cone of light from her magelamp. “Take this and open the door, if you will.”
Kervis took the key. “What about, um, spells?” he said.
Meralda shook her head. “No spells here,” she replied. “It’s just a key, and that’s just a lock.” She eyed Tervis, whose complexion was looking decidedly more greenish by the moment. “If you please?”
Kervis thrust the key into the lock and turned it.
The lock made a single loud click.
Kervis withdrew the key and handed it back to Meralda. “In we go,” he said, turning the latch and pushing.
The door held fast. Kervis pushed harder.
“Open it,” said Tervis, though clenched teeth.
Kervis turned the latch again, pushed. “What am I doing wrong?” he said. “It turns, but it won’t open.”
Meralda took two careful steps ahead, to stand beside Kervis on the stair. Don’t think about the height, she said, in a stern internal voice. Don’t think about empty darkness, or the long, long fall.
She turned the latch and pushed.
The door swung open and bright, warm daylight spilled onto the stair, plunged off the edge, and fell in long, slanting shafts across the dark.
Without a word, Meralda and both Bellringers charged headlong into the light.
“Well,” said Kervis, from the far side of the flat. “I can’t tell you how much I enjoyed that.”
Meralda put her back to the wall, laughed, and squinted at the sun. Tervis joined his brother, but sank into a crouch, both hands palm-down on the floor. “We’ll join the army,” he said, and Meralda knew at once Tervis was mocking his older twin. “Oh, the things we’ll see, the places we’ll go.”
Kervis shrugged and grinned. “I never said we’d ride carriages everywhere,” he said, cheerily. “Still, it’s not so bad. How many of old Barlo’s bully boys can say they’ve climbed to the top of a haunted wizard’s tower?” he asked.
Tervis put his head in his hands. “None,” he said. “They’ve got better sense. And the Tower isn’t haunted,” he said, peeking through his fingers up at Meralda. “Is it, ma’am?”
Meralda sighed and shook her head.
“No, it isn’t,” she said. “It’s just tall. Unusually tall.” She forced herself away from the wall and stepped out into the flat.
Out into Otrinvion the Black’s place of power, she thought. All the history, all the tragedy, all the wars and magics. It all started here. Started here, and ended here, seven hundred years ago.
The flat, like the Tower, was circular. Meralda knew the flat was exactly fifty-five feet in diameter, each of the flat’s four ten-by-ten windows was set at a compass point, and the ceiling was slightly convex, so the center was exactly twenty feet high. She knew the indentations in the floor by the door were square, half a foot to a side, and one foot deep. She knew Tower lore insisted these indentations once held Otrinvion’s lost twin staves, Nameless and Faceless. Meralda knew all this, but standing in the flat, she felt a touch of the same thrill she’d felt the first day she’d walked into the shadow of the palace while dirigibles swam by above.
Kervis hauled Tervis to his feet. “Look here,” he said, dragging Tervis toward the north-facing window. “Bet you can see Allaskar from there!”
Tervis shook off his brother’s grasp and pulled away from the window. Meralda motioned him toward her. “Hold this, if you will,” she said, thrusting her instrument bag into the boy’s arms.
Tervis nodded. “Yes, ma’am.”
“Oh,” said Kervis, his face pressed to the glass. “Oh,” he said again, softly.
Meralda joined him at the window.
Tirlin lay sprawled below. The Lamp River wound shimmering from the east, passed beneath the bridge, and lost itself amid the walls and rooftops and spires of the college. The park wall and its dancing gargoyles were invisible, swallowed whole by the distance. The old oaks, tiny now, stood swaying in a ring. Meralda felt she was flying, looking down on the heads of giants.
Kervis gasped and started. A bright green passenger dirigible flew into view, fans straining, climbing steeply and bearing west. But before it turned and was lost beyond the window frame, Meralda was sure she saw the flash of a lady’s white-gloved hand through a brass-worked salon porthole.
Kervis rapped the glass with his knuckles. “How thick is this, ma’am?” he asked, stepping back. “And how do they clean it?”
Meralda smiled. “The glass is nearly four feet thick,” she said. “And, believe it or not, once a year a Phendelit chimney sweep named Mad Hansa hangs on a line from an airship and polishes all the glass from outside.”
Kervis’ jaw dropped. “Mad Hansa,” he said.
Meralda nodded. “It’s an all day affair,” she said. “The park fills with people who come to watch.” Meralda shrugged. “Especially after the year Mad Hansa hired an apprentice. Too bad about him, really.”
Kervis swallowed and stepped away from the window. “Now then,” said Meralda. “Work to do.” She pulled back her sleeves and brushed a damp lock of hair out of her eyes. “Tervis, my bag. Please stand back and be silent.”
“Yes, ma’am,” said the Bellringers. Tervis came to stand before her, hefting her bag out at arm’s length before him.
Meralda thanked him, reached inside, and pulled out a small black cloth bag clasped with an intricate silver catch.
Tervis’ eyes bulged. Meralda released the catch, opened the bag, and pulled out a silver ball attached to a fine silver chain. A hole pierced the bottom of the ball. Meralda shook the bag until a short piece of sharpened white chalk fell into her hand. She then pushed the chalk into the hole in the ball.
Meralda grasped the far end of the chain and let the ball hang free. With her arm above her head, the ball hung just above the floor.
Meralda took a deep breath and whispered a word.
The first few windings of Meralda’s spell unlatched and flailed about. Meralda let go of the chain, and before it could fall the spell caught hold, suspending chain and ball in the empty air below the ceiling.
Tervis grinned in sudden wonder, and some of the fear left his eyes. Kervis bit back a squeak of amazement.
With another word, Meralda stilled the ball’s small oscillations.
“Stand back, if you will,” she said, to Tervis.
Tervis made great backward-shuffling strides to the far edge of the flat. Meralda squinted, said a word and made a gesture. The ball and chain sailed to rest in the center of the flat.
Meralda followed. She kneeled before the ball and chain, fumbled in her skirt pocket, and withdrew her short, battered retaining wand. The wand was warm, and at her touch it gave off a hum like the buzzing of a single angry honeybee.
Tufts of pocket lint clung to the wand. Meralda rubbed the lint off with her skirt, took the wand in both hands, and unlatched the rest of the seeking spell with a long rhythmic word.
The spell discharged with a crackle and a flash, draining Meralda’s retaining wand with a sound like frying bacon.
“Look!” said Kervis, as the ball began to dart about, swinging to and fro as if testing the air for scents.
“Hush,” said Tervis.
The silver ball strained at the chain, pulling it taut until the chalk tip touched the floor. Then the ball swung to the north, pulling the chain with it at a slight angle and drawing a short straight line upon the floor.
Meralda clapped her hands, and caught the chain as it went limp and fell. “That’s all,” she said. “We’re nearly done.”
“What now?” asked Kervis, as Meralda wound the chain loosely around her left hand.
“I use a ruler,” said Meralda. “I measure the length of the line on the floor. I use this to calculate the height of the flat.”
Kervis tilted his head.
“A ruler?” he said.
“A ruler,” replied Meralda. “Tervis?”
Tervis trotted to her, bag in hand. She reached inside, found the folding Eryan ruler in its pouch by the copper-bound Loman jars, and pulled it out.
Kervis frowned. Meralda smiled. “I need to anchor my shadow moving spell to a spot here in the flat,” she said. “And to do that, I have to know exactly how high off the ground the spot is.”
Tervis frowned. “Couldn’t someone measure the steps, and then count them?” he said. “Ma’am?”
Meralda unfolded the ruler, kneeled, and laid the flat edge against the chalk mark. “Very good, Tervis,” she said, squinting at the tiny marks on the ruler’s edge. “That was, in fact, the first recorded method by which the Tower’s height was surveyed. And it was a good estimate. But to move the Tower’s shadow will require more than just good estimates.”
Kervis stepped close, but leaped away when he saw his shadow fall over Meralda’s ruler. “Pardon, ma’am,” he said, scratching his head beneath his helmet, “but how does that little scratch on the floor tell you how tall the Tower is?”
Meralda put her nose nearly to the floor, decided on a figure, and used the chalk from the ball to scribble the numbers on the floor.
“Mathematics,” she said, rising. “The biggest part of magic. Not the stuff of epic legends, I know, but the stuff of magic nonetheless.”
“Mathematics?” asked Tervis, wrinkling his nose. “You mean two-and-two and take away four, that sort of thing?”
“That very sort of thing,” said Meralda, grinning at the thought of old Master Blimmett’s sputtering, should he ever hear his High Mathematica studies dubbed a “two-and-two and take away four sort of thing”.
Tervis stared down at the mark on the floor.
“The process is called trigonometry,” said Meralda. “I caused the ball to be attracted to the Historical Society marker by the park gates. It pulled the chain away from the vertical by that much.” She pointed to the scribbles on the floor with the tip of her boot.
“And since I know the exact distance from the center of the Tower to the Society marker, and since I know the length of the chain and the angle of deflection, I can calculate the exact height of a point just below the ceiling of the Wizard’s Flat.”
“As you say, ma’am,” said Tervis. Then he grinned. “Magic!”
Meralda folded her ruler. “Magic,” she said, putting away her gear.
The half-open door to the stair beckoned. Meralda dropped her bag and tied it shut.
“Time to go, gentlemen,” she said. Tervis mopped his brow. Kervis, who had been dashing from window to window, trotted back to join Meralda and Tervis before the door.
“It’s downhill, this time,” Kervis said. “Shall I go first again, ma’am?”
Meralda lit her magelamp with a word and motioned Kervis toward the door.
“Last one down is a Vonat,” he said, before slipping out into the dark.
Meralda followed. Tervis came after, and though his hand shook when Meralda handed him the key he managed to lock the door without fumbling.
Meralda pocketed the key, bade Kervis to wait until she set the magelamp’s twin beams wider and brighter, and then brushed back her hair.
A line from a Phendelit play crept whispering into Meralda’s mind. “We climb now the walls of the cold dark night,” said the hero, at the base of the stair that wound down to the Pale Gate. “No sun now to warm us, no light for our feet. Just darkness and silence and down to defeat.”
Meralda sighed at the memory, then realized both Bellringers were eyeing her expectantly. “Well, gentlemen,” she said, forcing a smile. “It is downhill, as you said.”
Kervis groaned. “If old what’s-his-name had been any kind of real wizard, he’d have put in a lift.”
Tervis took in his breath with a sudden hiss. “Don’t say things like that,” he said. “It’s disrespectful to speak ill of the, um, ones that aren’t here anymore.”
Kervis rolled his eyes and turned away.
Meralda increased her magelamp’s brightness with a whispered word and set a brisk pace for the foot of the Tower.
Between midday traffic and the extra crowds milling about the palace, Meralda was nearly late for court.
Ordinarily, she’d simply not go, since Yvin preferred absence to tardiness. And, ordinarily, her absence would have been noted, but nothing more. Thaumaturges were almost expected to ignore the routine functions of the court.
Ordinarily.
The Accords, however, were only held every five years. And of the fifth-year Accords, only one in five was hosted by any given realm, including Tirlin. So nothing, reflected a breathless Meralda, was ordinary anymore.
She’d leapt from the traffic-locked cab at the corner of Kemp and Striddle, intending to walk the five blocks to the trolley stand at Fleethorse. The Bellringers, still sweat-streaked and flushed from the morning’s long climb, cleared a wide path through the busy sidewalks. Even with the twins clearing the way, though, Meralda could only watch as the Fleethorse trolley pulled away from the stand, filled to capacity and gone before Meralda could attempt to claim court preference and gain a hand-stand on the shuddering red hulk.
And as for hailing a cab, I might as well shout down the moon, she thought. Traffic was at a near standstill from Kemp to Roard. Worse, there wasn’t a cab to be seen, much less hailed and ridden.
And so, another brisk walk. Meralda’s calves ached. Her heels were bruised and tender. Her hair hung limp and damp. She caught a brief glimpse of herself reflected in a clockmaker’s window and looked quickly away. I’m a sight, she thought. A sight, and bound for court.
A street minstrel dared the Bellringers, but Kervis sent him scampering with a growl and a pat of his sword hilt.
Eight blocks to the palace, and still the roads were clogged. Seven blocks, and Meralda’s right ankle began to ache. Six blocks out, and short, sharp pains ran up her right leg each time her foot fell.
Five blocks from the palace, traffic began to flow. A dusty black army troop cab rattled past, and Kervis, to Meralda’s amazement, bellowed at the driver, called him to a halt, and threw the door open for Meralda before the driver could do more than sputter and shrug.
“The palace, and before ten bells,” said Kervis, before clambering into the cab and joining Tervis on the smooth wood bench seat.
The cab rolled away from the curb. Kervis put his helmet in his lap and ran his fingers through sweat-soaked hair.
“Guardsman, you are a treasure,” said Meralda, rubbing her aching right ankle through her boot.
Kervis blushed. “I figured the worst he could do was laugh and drive past, ma’am,” he said.
Meralda gathered loose locks of hair and pulled them to the back of her head, working them into the beret as best she could. She frowned suddenly. I’ve got a bagful of sorcerous implements sufficient to fell the west wing, but I don’t have a hairbrush.
The cab rolled to a halt behind a line of carriages inching towards the palace reception hall.
“The palace, Your Majesty,” said the driver to Kervis. “Mind you don’t knock your crown off, on your way out.”
“Thank you, Goodman,” said Kervis, forcing the door open. Meralda hefted her bag, stooped, and leapt onto the curb. Tervis followed, pausing only to stick his tongue out at the departing driver’s red-clad back.
Meralda ignored the pain in her ankle and trotted to the door. There she paused, fumbled in her pocket for a coin, and pressed it into Kervis’ hand. “Find Orlo’s,” she said. “Down the street. Get a table, and hold it. We’ll all have a late lunch, when this nonsense is over.”
She smiled briefly at Kervis’ widening eyes, whirled again, and brushed past the sentries.
A whistle blew, once and briefly. Meralda waited for the doors to close behind her, saw that the carpeted hall was momentarily empty, and broke into a dead, if limping, run.
By custom, one short trumpet blast signaled the court that the king had left his chambers and was nearing the Gold Room. Two short trumpet blasts indicated the king’s descent of the east stair, and his eminent arrival at court.
The second trumpet blew as Meralda found and fell into her stiff, high-backed Old Kingdom replica chair. She shoved her bag underneath, wiped sweat from her brow, and let out her breath in a whoosh.
The Gold Room was abuzz about her. Whereas most court sessions were quiet affairs conducted by a dozen bored functionaries scattered about an echoing throne room large enough to swallow a city block whole, today’s session looked like nothing short of a full coronation. Red-clad palace guards, in full parade regalia, flanked every door. Loud, long-haired Eryans, all laughing and blustering and draining King Yvin’s wine cellars with typical Eryan joviality, were seated amid and mingling with the quieter Tirlish folk. Everywhere, soldiers and nobles and servitors rushed and squeezed and darted about, lending the Gold Room the quality of a flower garden in a windstorm, with shades of red and brown and yellow and blue all set twirling in a sudden rush of air.
The three legendary Tables of the King, each made of polished cherry wood and capable of seating four hundred, were ringed round on three sides with chairs and guests. The tables were arrayed in a line before the throne, which rested on a knee-high dais at the far end of the Gold Room. A trio of Red Guards stood frozen at attention before the throne. The guards would not stand down until Yvin and his queen ascended the dais and bade them depart.
The Throne of Tirlin, Meralda knew, started out as a large oak chair. Just a chair, nothing more. At first.
Then King Pollof had added cushions and a bit of carving on the arms. Then King Lertinor had decided gold-worked dragons’ heads looked imposing as a headrest, and King Adoft had added the clawed silver feet, and at some point it became customary for every king to add his own personal touch to what bore less and less resemblance to a seat of any kind, ceremonial or otherwise.
Meralda had once heard Yvin threaten to haul the throne off to a museum and have a reclining Phendelit reading chair brought in. In fact, Meralda could see the corner of a threadbare red seat cushion peeking out from behind the throne’s clawed feet. And was that a dog-eared Alon mystery novel, wedged down between the arm and the seat?
Above the throne and the milling court, sunlight streamed in pastel shafts through the stained glass windows set high along the Gold Room’s curving cathedral ceilings. The gently moving air, an innovation of Meralda’s, smelled of cinnamon and faint perfumes, all circulated by dozens of quiet spark coil fans hidden behind screens below the windows.
The north wall windows were Meralda’s favorite. Each depicted Tim the Horsehead’s exploits against the Vonat wizard Corrus, and Tim’s narrow triumph at the Battle of Romare. I’m surprised Yvin didn’t have masks glued over them, thought Meralda. But then, even Yvin isn’t terribly worried about offending a handful of Vonats.
Someone shouted, and the minstrels began to pipe and strum and arrange their music. Meralda smiled at the gentle sound of Phendelit harps and Tirlish violins and settled back. At least there’ll be a bit of music, she thought. It’s been months since I’ve been to the symphony.
The third trumpet blew. Meralda groaned and rose, with the rest of the court, resigned to remain standing until Yvin arrived and was seated.
Meralda gazed about a bit, searching for familiar faces. The king’s tables, reserved for visiting Eryans and highly-placed Tirls, were full of strangers. But among those seated with her in the ranks of chairs behind the tables, Meralda found a few of her former professors from the college, a handful of familiar newspaper penswifts, the conductor of the Tirlin Philharmonic, and, of course, Sir Ricard Asp, who met her gaze with a barely concealed sneer.
A sudden mad scramble for chairs began. Conversation continued, though in hushed tones, and something in the frowns and the earnest gazes and the shaking heads nearby made Meralda wonder what she’d missed.
It isn’t good news, she decided, as she caught a glimpse of the captain lost in whispered debate with a pair of frowning Red Guard lieutenants. Not good news at all.
A hand fell light upon her shoulder. “Aye, lass,” spoke a man, his words buried in a familiar full tilt Eryan highland brogue. “It’s time you took a husband, and it’s time I took a wife. What do ye say, now? Shall we hire a piper and a hall?”
Meralda’s breath caught in her throat. “Alas,” she said, determined to keep her voice calm and level. “I vowed not to marry beneath myself, even for pity’s sake. Surely you understand.”
Before the man could answer, the brass-bound doors at the end of the Gold Room were flung open and King Yvin marched inside, Queen Pellabine on his arm.
The musicians struck up “Tirlin, Tirlin,” the assembled court fell silent, and Meralda turned, smiling down at the fat, grey-headed Eryan standing behind her.
“Just as well,” said the older man, his eyes merry, his mouth cocked in a crooked smile. “Everyone knows Tirlish women can’t cook.” The Eryan bowed deeply, winking at the shocked glares of those nearby.
Meralda shoved her chair aside and caught the old man up in a long, fierce hug.
Shingvere of Wing, Mage to the Realm of Erya, patted Meralda on the back, then gently pushed her away. “Not in front of the old folks,” he said, cheerily. “That can only lead to a lot of loose talk.”
Meralda squeezed his hand, and the rotund Eryan squeezed back. “Do you know who I am?” he asked the gape-jawed Tirlish noble standing to Meralda’s right.
The man stared and choked back a reply.
“Good,” said Shingvere. “That’s a nice chair you’ve got. I think I’ll take it. Find another, won’t you?”
Then he patted the man’s shoulder, winked at Meralda, and sat.
The noble scurried away, peering back over his shoulder as if memorizing Shingvere’s face and clothes for the guard.
“I’ve missed you,” said Meralda, as the last strains of “Tirlin, Tirlin” began to fade. I truly have, she realized, surprised at the intensity of her emotion. The old wizard had never once treated her as a child, even when she’d first arrived at college. “I’d heard you were ill, and not planning to attend.”
Shingvere smiled, but the music died and he did not speak.
Yvin stepped onto the dais and escorted Queen Pellabine to her own smaller but more comfortable throne, and the two were seated.
The rest of the court sat then, with a sound like lazy thunder.
“Lots of long faces,” whispered Shingvere, as Yvin began to welcome the Eryans. “And I don’t wonder. Have you heard the news?”
Meralda shook her head.
Shingvere grinned. “It’s the Hang,” he said. “They’re here, sailing up the Lamp. Twenty of those Great Sea five-mast rigs. One of them is flying the Long Dragon flag.”
“Are you joking?”
“I am not,” said Shingvere. “The Hang are coming, all the way from the other side of the world. Chaos and discord abound.” The fat wizard fumbled in his pockets and withdrew a sticky white stick of candy wrapped in a shiny red paper wrapper.
“Penny-stick?” he said.
“Penny-stick?”
“Stop pestering her with those atrocious jaw-breakers,” said Thaumaturge Fromarch. “She’s here to learn history, not bad eating habits.”
Meralda-then Apprentice Ovis, barely out of the college, less than a year into her apprenticeship to Thaumaturge Fromarch-kept her eyes firmly fixed on page four hundred of Trout and Windig’s A History of Tirlin and Erya and Environs, With Generous Illustration Throughout. She’d read the same passage a half-dozen times, and still could make no sense of it. No wonder, when all the mages did was bluster and argue.
“Bah,” said Mage Shingvere, the round little Eryan. “You’re wasting her time with that revisionist Tirlish history, Fromarch, and you know it. Look at this.” Shingvere spun Meralda’s book around, so he could read from it. “It says here that ‘the Hang first appeared in the spring of 1072, and they’ve visited the Realms once a century since then’.”
Fromarch sighed. “Hang visits have been well documented, even from the earliest days of the Old Kingdom.”
“Bah!” said Shingvere, spinning the book back around to Meralda. “The Hang have been sneaking around since well before ten hundred, and they’ve bloody well been back more than once a century, and you’re an idiot not to see it.” Shingvere shook his finger at Meralda. “You’re a smart one, lass, so you listen to old Shingvere. Read what’s in your books. But don’t ever forget that printing a thing doesn’t make it true.”
Mage Fromarch groaned and rubbed his forehead. “Spare us.”
“The Hang have been watching us for more than a millennium,” said Shingvere, quietly. “Ask any Eryan beach comber. Ask any Phendelit fisherman. I’ve got a scrap of paper with Hang scribbles on it in my study. Are you going to tell me it floated from Hang to Erya?” The Eryan snorted. “They’re out there, closer than you think,” he said. “And one day, miss, they’re going to come sailing up the Lamp to stay. Mark my words, both of you. The Vonats may rattle their swords every twenty years or so, but the Hang are the real threat, Great Sea or not.”
Mage Fromarch stood. “Apprentice Ovis,” he said, to Meralda. “Our Eryan associate’s outlandish ideas aside, we have a history lesson to discuss. Now then. How did the advent of the airship shape New Kingdom politics in the years before the Parting?”
Meralda shook her head. The answer to Mage Fromarch’s question was obvious enough. But there, on the page, was a hand-drawn picture of a Hang warship, a ship that had done what no vessel of the Realms had ever done. It had crossed the Great Sea, and would do so again.
“They’re up to no good,” said Shingvere, softly. “Mark my words, Apprentice Ovis. No bloody good.”
Meralda closed the book, but the crude drawing of the Hang five-master haunted her dreams for days.