The door flew open, and daylight spilled out of the flat and onto the stair.
Meralda took her magelamp in her hand, drew in a ragged breath, and turned around to face the dark.
The stair was empty. But empty in a manner that suggested to Meralda it was only very recently emptied. Vacated, perhaps, in the brief moment immediately before she worked up the nerve to turn and look.
“No more of this,” she said. “Sight!”
Meralda closed her eyes, and for the first time since entering the Tower she willed forth her Sight.
The detector’s sphere of influence blazed like a tame globe of fire. Her bag, within the detector’s sphere, cast whirling loops and probing red and blue and green-hued tangles writhing about the stair. Meralda pushed her Sight out, into the dark, past the light that shone weakly through the open door.
Nothing. Darkness and darkness and no hint of anything else.
Meralda opened her eyes and let her Sight abate, though she did not let it fall. Normal vision and glittering Sight left the flat glowing and indistinct, but revealed only smooth stone and those things Meralda had brought. She picked up her bag, took the detector in her hand, closed the door with her heel, and walked to the center of the flat.
She dropped her bag to the floor beside her.
This is it, she thought. If the Tower is haunted, I am about to come face-to-face with the shade of Otrinvion the Black.
Or, more likely, make a complete fool of myself.
Meralda cleared her throat.
“Greetings,” she said, aloud. “I am Mage Ovis, Thaumaturge to the Kingdom of Tirlin.” She licked her lips, which had gone dry as she spoke.
“It was I who latched the shadow moving spell to this place,” she said, her voice loud and ringing in the round, empty flat. “I meant no harm, but harm I may have done, to a spellwork I did not know existed until my own spells broke apart. For this,” she said, “I am sorry.”
Shingvere, she thought silently, must never ever hear of this.
“Furthermore,” she added, “I plan to loose another spell here today. It is a passive spell, one I shall latch to the space in this room, rather than to the Tower itself. This spell is meant to reveal any older spellworks active here, so I might determine their function and assess any damage I might have unknowingly done.” She paused, considering her next words. “It is not my intent to usurp, remove, or modify any part or portion of the Tower, or its works,” she said. “Nor do I intend upon proving or disproving the existence of any, um, unseen residents to this place. I only want to know what, if any, harm I may have done. I also need to know if there is a safe way to latch a shadow moving spell to the lower half of the Tower.”
The only sound was thunder, the only shadow Meralda’s, cast briefly by distant lightning.
“That is who I am,” she said. “And that is why I am here. I ask for your forbearance, that I might do my work, and then leave you in peace. May I do so?”
Meralda kept her eyes open, and let her Sight move out into the flat.
Nothing stirred. Aside from the sounds of muted thunder and her own rapid breaths, the Tower was utterly silent, utterly still.
Utterly empty.
Foolishness, said the part of Meralda that had never believed Shingvere’s tales, never credited the old mages with anything but a fondness for strong drink and a desire to tell scary stories to a breathless court. And that face in the park? Fatigue. Fatigue and an imagination fed by a lifetime of ghost stories and Shingvere’s sincere nonsense.
“Very well,” said Meralda. She lifted the detector so the copper half-globe was level with her shoulders, took a deep breath, and spoke the long word that activated two dozen eager spells.
The flat was filled with a blue haze, as if it was suddenly flooded with still, sunlit water. Whips and bubbles of light, like shining ropes chasing fireflies, spread out from Meralda’s bag until she spoke another word and the detector removed the bag spells from view, one by one, until none were visible.
The flat was empty now. Meralda turned in a circle, but found nothing, not even at the notches in the floor where once Otrinvion’s twin staves were said to stand.
Meralda spoke another word, and the glow from the detector intensified.
She swept the flat again, spoke another word, turned and looked. And though the glow from the detector shone bright now, no hint or sign of disturbance marred its face.
The detector’s handle grew warm in her hands. Meralda urged her Sight further, finer, knowing the spells couldn’t be maintained much longer.
“Three more words,” she said aloud. No need to become discouraged yet, either, she thought. If the spells are there, I’ll find them.
She said another word, and the detector buzzed faintly in response as copper bands began to shake and blur. The mist became a fog, so thick now that Meralda could barely see the door. But still, no trace of hidden spellworks appeared.
Meralda spoke the next word, and the handle grew hot, but Meralda held on. The fog went thick and bright, and the outline of the door vanished, then the walls, until only the faint squares of the windows remained.
“I’m only trying to help,” said Meralda, through gritted teeth. The buzzing became a sizzle, and acrid wisps of smoke began to curl toward Meralda’s face. “Do you understand that? I only want to help.”
The blue fog blazed suddenly, and the detector spat a stinging glob of molten copper on Meralda’s right boot toe. Meralda shouted her final word.
The flat exploded. There was no noise, no felling blow, but the rush of light was so sudden and intense Meralda dropped the detector and fell to her knees, her hands flying to cover her eyes, her Sight all but obliterated by the ferocity of the blast.
But in that instant, before the detector fell, she saw the flat ablaze with the glow of a massive spellwork. Like a monstrous tree, it rose through the floor of the flat, engulfed Meralda whole within its fiery trunk, and sent branches thrusting horizontally outward to meet the Tower walls on every side. The branches were not still, though. Even in the brief Sight presented to Meralda, she saw they rose and turned in unison, spiraling upward and around the central trunk in a dizzying whirl.
Meralda’s head reeled. She’d reached out with her Sight, tried to look closer, tried to follow the shuttling and turning of a single line of power around and through the trunk. But the effort had been too much, and she knew, had the flash not blinded her Sight, she might have lost it forever in the tangled midst of the Tower.
Meralda forced her hands from her eyes and rose from her knees. Her normal vision was blurred, criss-crossed and overlaid with fading images of the spellwork she knew still engulfed her.
Now I know the Tower’s secret, she thought. The Tower isn’t haunted.
The Tower is alive.
The spellwork flared. Even with the tiniest vestige of her Sight remaining, Meralda saw the shimmering air and took a step backwards.
It heard me, she thought. It knows I know.
The flat went dark, and the floor seemed to tilt and fall a finger’s breadth away. Meralda stumbled, nearly went to her knees again, and groped for her magelamp. She took a single step forward in the dark, determined to remove her body from the midst of the hidden spell that filled the flat, and then she brought forth her magelamp and stroked the brass tube.
Light shone, and Meralda gasped. Her Farley and Hent raincoat lay two steps from her feet, still spread wet upon the floor. The foot of the stair stood dim at the edge of the light, and on the first dozen treads Meralda saw plain her own damp boot prints, leading up into the dark.