All the Paths of Shadow (9 page)

“Pardon, Thaumaturge,” said the tallest of the guards. “You are required upstairs. Immediately. The king is waiting.”

The guard, a stony-faced sergeant perhaps ten years older than Meralda, lowered his voice.

“I don’t know what’s happening, Thaumaturge,” he said, before Meralda could speak. “But the captain told me to tell you to bring whatever you’ll need to seek out foreign sorcery.”

“Foreign sorcery?” asked Meralda.

The guard nodded.

A door slammed down the hall, and the sound of booted feet in a hurry followed.

Meralda lifted a finger. “One moment,” she said, and spun.

Foreign sorcery. She darted past her desk, snatched her light staff from its hooks on the wall, found her black bag and put a fresh glass and copper holdstone in the pouch sewn into the side.

“Confound, dissuade, confuse,” she mumbled, latching the ward spell with words since her hands were full.

The spark coils flared, the glow tubes died, and the doors closed softly behind her.

“Let’s go,” she said. The palace guards headed for the stair. Meralda followed, the Bellringers close behind.

“What’s happened?” asked Tervis, as a trio of regular red-clad army troopers charged up the west stair, causing Meralda and her party to squeeze to one side.

The palace guards exchanged glances. “Don’t know,” said the sergeant. “The captain just said to fetch the thaumaturge.”

Another trio of army troopers charged past at the base of the stair. At the Burnt Door, five troopers stood fast, confusion evident on their faces and their hands near their sword hilts.

Beyond the Burnt Door, the hall was empty. Meralda counted doors as she sped past—eight, nine, and ten. The palace guards halted, one knocked, and after a low exchange of words the door opened.

The captain emerged. “Thaumaturge,” he said. Then he turned to the palace guardsmen. “Lieutenant Heathers is patrolling the north wing apartments,” he said. “Join him there.”

The guards trotted away, and the captain motioned Meralda and the Bellringers inside.

Meralda had seen the door before. Two doors past the kitchen, four before the entrance to the Gold Room.
It’s a storage room,
she thought. For the chairs and folding tables sometimes used at banquets, when the King’s Tables weren’t sufficient.

Frowning, she crossed the threshold. The room was dark, until the door shut behind Kervis.

Light flared, revealing a small, narrow room perhaps twice the length of Meralda’s apartment. Another door stood in the center of the far wall; other than that, the room was bare.

Bare, yet not empty. His Highness, Yvin II, son of Histel, Lord of the House of Yvin, stood glowering at Meralda from perhaps five long steps away. Beside the king stood his queen, her eyes narrowed.
Yvin might be glowering,
thought Meralda,
but the queen is quite ready for an old-fashioned round of murder.

Five Red Guards stood close by, short swords drawn. Another was stationed by the door Meralda had just entered.

The captain moved to stand before the king.

“We’ve had a visitor, Thaumaturge,” said the captain.

Meralda frowned. Details of the room’s construction were becoming obvious in the dim light. The doors were made of iron. Solid iron, with wood over the outer face. Those bumps on the walls weren’t nail heads, but rivets.

“This is a siege retreat?”

“Aye,” growled Yvin. He balled his hands into fists, and glared at the captain. “An iron-plated rat-hole, where frightened monarchs might hide. Siege retreat!” His voice rose to a bellow. “He was only one man!”

The captain bowed. “Indeed, Majesty,” he said, with a glance toward Meralda. “One man. One man who walked through the palace gates and past twenty-seven guard stations without being stopped, signed, or even, as far as I can tell, seen.”

Meralda put her bag down.

“He walked into the Gold Room,” said the captain. “Walked up to the king’s brunch table, introduced himself as envoy to the House of Chentze, and asked permission to enter Tirlin.”

More mindful of the queen’s glare than anything else, Meralda permitted herself no more reaction than to lift an eyebrow. “I see,” she said, after a moment of what she hoped seemed careful reflection. “What, pray tell, were this person’s exact words, as Your Highnesses recall them?”

The queen spoke. “‘Greetings,’” she said, her voice icy. “‘I am envoy to the House of Chentze, sent before my House to beg right of entry and stay from the House of Yvin.’”

Meralda fought to hide her bewilderment.
Never before has a Hang asked for such a thing,
she thought. The Hang’s words had the ring of ritual to them. What ritual, though, Meralda could not say.

“And what did Your Highness reply?” asked Meralda.

Before Yvin could speak, the queen took hold of his arm and squeezed. “The king bade him welcome,” she said, pride in her voice. “He finished his tea and put his cup down and bade him welcome, and enter, and stay, just as if Hang wizards interrupted our brunch every other Furlday.” The queen smiled, and Meralda realized that Yvin was actually blushing.

The captain shook his head. “There were probably two hundred people in the Gold Room, Thaumaturge,” he said. “Fifty of them soldiers. Ten of them my men. One of them me. And no one but the Highnesses saw the Hang until he turned and began to walk away.”

Yvin snorted. “He’s a wizard, Captain,” he said. “Don’t fault yourself for not seeing through a foreign caster’s spells.” The king looked through bushy eyebrows at Meralda. “That’s where the thaumaturge here comes in.”

Meralda kept her face impassive. “You want me to find this Hang,” she said.
How,
she thought,
does one look for an invisible man?

“We want you to find his trail,” said the captain. “He must have used sorcery to conceal his movements, until he reached the king. He must have used sorcery to leave. If, indeed, he is gone.”

“He’s gone,” said Yvin, softly. “He said what he came to say, and he left. I’m sure of it.”

“I am not,” said the queen, still gripping Yvin’s arm. “He found his way into the Gold Room. Why not our chambers? What is to stop him?”

“I am,” said the captain. He turned toward Meralda. “If he used sorcery, can you find it?”

Meralda took a breath.

“Of course she can,” said Yvin, before Meralda could speak. “But she can’t do it locked away in this iron-plated hidey-hole. You, there,” barked the king, at a round-eyed Red Guard. “Bring us some chairs. And you,” added the king to Meralda. “You go find this Hang wand-waver’s trail.”

Meralda picked up her bag. “Yes,” she said aloud, while inside she seethed.
Oh, yes,
she thought.
I’ll just find the foreign magics, I will. After all, Hang spells are only the products of an arcane science probably older and certainly much different from our own. How bloody hard could it be to find traces of a thing you’ve never seen before, especially if the spellcaster took pains to conceal his passage?

A pair of guards pulled the doors to the hallway open. The captain motioned Kervis and Tervis out.

“Go with the thaumaturge, Captain,” said the king.

“Sire—”

“Go with the thaumaturge,” repeated the king. “We’ll be fine. Go.”

The door closed.

Kervis and Tervis, their matched eyes wild, looked to each other and then to Meralda. The captain, his grizzled face ruddy, looked toward her, too.

“What do you need?” asked the captain.

Meralda bit back a word Angis seemed fond of, when the traffic masters failed to suit him.

“I need to follow our visitor’s route,” she said, instead. “Show me where he went. From the first time this Hang was seen, to the time I presume he vanished in a puff of fog. Show me all of it. Quickly.” She put her bag on the floor. “Tervis,” she said.

Tervis jumped. “Yes, ma’am,” he said, straightening.

“Take my bag, if you will,” she said. “I need both hands for my staff.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“That way,” growled the captain, pointing down the hall, toward the west door entrance to the Gold Room. “No one saw him, of course, but I suspect he walked right through the west doors, regal as a lord.”

Meralda nodded. “We’ll need to check all doors, Captain, but we’ll start with this one.” She motioned him forward. “If you please?”

The captain turned and stamped off down the hall, his boots making dull thumps in the thick Rist Hill carpet. Meralda followed, the Bellringers close behind.

Her fingers traced a small pattern on the staff’s center, and when the black wood grew cold Meralda whispered the first three syllables of a word. The spell unlatched, but not completely. It tugged at the wood, leaving Meralda with the impression that she was forcing the staff through a vat of molasses.

The staff’s movements were random and unfocused. If a spell had been released nearby, the staff would be repelled by even the faintest leavings, thus allowing Meralda to at least guess the spellcaster’s position and perhaps his skill.

Instead, she found nothing.
Not that I expected anything different,
thought Meralda.
I can think of half a dozen ways to confound such a search. So, I’m sure, can others.

The captain stopped at the door and lifted his eyebrows at the sight of Meralda’s lazily swooping staff. “Anything?” he asked.

“Nothing yet,” she replied. The captain threw open the west doors, bellowed at the guards on the other side, and stepped into the throne room.

Meralda followed, holding the staff gingerly at its center as she passed over the threshold, feeling for even the slightest hint of steady pressure.

“Nothing,” she muttered. The Gold Room was empty. Tables and chairs were strewn about, some overturned, some in stacks, as though workmen had been called away in a panicked rush. A crystal pitcher of water sat on a table nearby, and the water still rose and fell slightly, lapping at the top as if recently disturbed. “Nothing at all.”

The captain grunted. Meralda halted. “Where was the king seated?” she asked.

“Over there,” said the captain, pointing across the Gold Room to one of the small, plain tables scattered about the northeast corner of the room. “The Highnesses had missed breakfast, what with all the goings-on, and Yvin had the porters set up a brunch here.” The captain frowned and raised his hands. “This wasn’t planned, Thaumaturge. No one knew where the king was going to be at nine of the clock today. And yet he walked right up—”

Meralda shrugged. “Even so,” she said. “But if one were looking for a king, the throne room seems to be a likely place to begin one’s search, does it not?”

“He may have wandered about for hours, if he was invisible,” said Tervis. The captain’s neck went crimson, and the color began to creep up his face.

“He was never invisible,” said Meralda, quickly.

“Then how did he just walk into the Gold Room?” said the captain.

Meralda wheeled her staff back and forth before her. “How many people were in this room, Captain?” she asked.

“Two hundred and eighty-six,” said the captain. “Not counting myself, the Highnesses, the Eryan ambassador who was seated with them, and forty-four of my lads, spread all about the place. They’re all being held in the big conference room on the second floor while we take their statements.”

Meralda slowly started for the table the captain had pointed out. The staff continued to wobble and float, though it detected no hint of sorcery, foreign or otherwise.

Meralda bit her lip.
This isn’t going to work,
she thought. “Captain,” she said, and then the staff swung about, as though struck. When it halted, the ends were level with the floor, the shaft lay in a straight line between the west doors and the king’s brunch table, and the wood was growing cold to Meralda’s touch.

The captain halted. “Thaumaturge?” he said.

“Hush a moment,” said Meralda. She took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and forced her perceptions out along the faint traceries of the faded spell she’d found.

The spell was faint. “Faint as smoke from yesterday’s fire,” Mage Fromarch had once said. Meralda found the phrase doubly fitting, as she tried to make sense of the twisting debris.

There,
she thought.
And there.
Anchor points, and common enough. But what were those structures out along the periphery? Meralda frowned. The more she searched for the terminal ends of the operative functions, the more it seemed they looped back to the latching point.

Meralda pushed again, and her staff grew so cold the air about it steamed. The smoke-like remains of the spell vanished in a flash that Meralda saw clearly through her tightly shut eyes.

“Thaumaturge!” bellowed the captain, and at least one of the Bellringers. Boots thudded on the Gold Room tiles.

Meralda opened her eyes, blinked at the dots that swam before her, and dropped her staff before it froze tight to her hands.

“I’m not harmed,” she said, at the blurs that approached. “Don’t touch my staff.”

“What happened?” asked the captain. “Were you attacked?”

“I thought I saw a twinkling in the air,” said Tervis.

“Me, too,” said Kervis. “Ma’am.”

Meralda struggled to make out faces. “My bag, please,” she said, at what she hoped was Tervis. “Open it, if you will.”

Tervis fumbled with the latches. “Here,” he said. “What happened? Did you find something?”

“I did,” said Meralda. She fumbled in the bag’s recesses for a pair of heavy copper-lined gloves, blinking furiously while she decided which was left and which was right. “Someone cast a spell here, recently,” she said. “A very strange spell.”

The captain frowned. “Can you tell what it did?”

Meralda shook her head. “Someone didn’t want me to know,” she said. “They even left a surprise for anyone who looked.” She held up her right hand, anticipating the captain’s next words. “No, the caster is not still here. No, I can’t tell you if it was a Hang spell. Yes, it might have been a charm of concealment. And no, I’m not hurt.”

The dancing blobs of light were fading. She could see clearly enough now. The Bellringers stood close by, watching her intently, concern mirrored on their faces. The captain, too, watched Meralda as if expecting her to fall into a swoon at any moment.