Lord of Stormweather

CHAPTER 19

"My Lord Uskevren," said Escevar from the doorway. He cleared his throat for the second time.

"Wait a moment," said Tamlin. "Wait! Wait… Oh, bother."

Tamlin's concentration teetered when he first heard the door open, and he struggled to remain focused on the puzzle before him even through the interruption. Unfortunately, his thoughts were balanced on a most precarious problem, and at last they fell into complete disarray.

For hours he'd been annotating a copy of the Baerent letter, by turns transposing words and individual characters. The clue of the family motto had proven true, but it was only a means of organizing the rest of the cipher. Of that much he was certain.

The rest remained guesswork and supposition, but Tamlin had a working theory. Based on the names mentioned in the seemingly innocuous letter and the frequency with which usually staid nobles made trifling jests and relayed dull anecdotes about their pets, Tamlin was beginning to believe his father was gathering support for some political action.

If remarks involving a dog meant agreement and those about cats or foxes meant opposition or neutrality, then Gorkun Baerent at least was conspiring in alliance with Thamalon.

That made sense to Tamlin, because Gorkun disappeared under similarly mysterious circumstances. There had been no reports of thunder in Sundolphin House, where the head of the family had been last seen. However, Dolly reported hearing from the domestics' grapevine that Gorkun had recently received a gift the size of a painting.

Tamlin would have paid good coin to know the identity of the artist.

Unfortunately, Stellana Toemalar, whom Gorkun reported as telling a rather dry fable about a fox and a hen, was famously uninterested in art in general and that of Stannis Malveen in particular. Even assuming Thamalon's enemies were attacking those loyal to his plan, why eliminate Stellana if she weren't clearly in the loyal camp?

The more difficult problem came with Thuribal Baerodreemer. The man was simply not mentioned in Gorkun's missive. Either his death was unrelated to the list, or the letter simply didn't mention every member of the scheme.

The most intriguing element was the mention of Presker Talendar boasting of his new hunting dogs. That made sense only if he'd feigned alliance, only to turn on the others. The man had done worse things to the Uskevren in the past, so that seeming discrepancy only strengthened Tamlin's confidence in his developing theory.

Tamlin needed to see more of the letters before he could finish solving their riddle.

"What is it now?" he asked.

Realizing how testy he sounded, he threw a weak smile after the words by way of apology.

"The mage has finished preparing her devices," replied Escevar. Vox stood behind him, having risen from his chair just inside the door. "She awaits your pleasure."

"I thought she was meant to arrive at dusk."

"It is an hour and a half past, my lord."

Escevar smiled as he intoned the formal address, but the playful glint in his eye dispelled any notion of disrespect. Obviously, he enjoyed playing first-among-servants to a master who'd inherited power before his time. He'd already donned the dark livery of butler, though he cut a distinctly different figure than had the tall and gaunt Erevis Cale before him.

"Ah, very well then," Tamlin replied. He clapped his ink-stained hands, gathered up the coded list, the Baerent letter, and all his notes into a calfskin portfolio, and tucked it under his arm. "Let us go down at once."

They hurried across the east wing and into the library.

The servants had cleared the area around Thamalon's desk. On its surface rested a fantastic contraption resembling a metronome smothered in a collapsed house of gold foil cards over which someone had sprinkled the contents of a six-year-old boy's vacation treasure chest. Tamlin spied an owl's skull and a cork-two fetishes he'd seen on the previous contraption Magdon had devised for him.

The wizard stood behind her work. She had changed considerably in the time since Tamlin had first met her. She was no taller than Escevar, but she'd shed a stone or two in weight. She was still no nymph, but the word "ample" was more accurate than "chunky." Her hair and skin were both as white as chalk, with a faint pink blush at her lips, nostrils, and eyelids. Instead of her apprentice robes, she wore a long coat of deep burgundy. It had enough pockets to store the entire contents of an alchemist's shop.

She bowed as Tamlin approached and said, "My Lord Uskevren."

He nodded back at her and said, "Escevar has told you of my needs?"

"He has," she said with a brief glance at the butler.

For an instant, Tamlin imagined some conspiratorial message pass between their eyes. He wondered briefly whether she was flirting with Escevar.

Well, he thought. Good for him if so.

"You wish to detect any lingering indication of powerful magic," she said. "Specifically, teleportation spells."

"Yes," agreed Tamlin. "That's my principal interest. However, I have recently noticed certain… manifestations that seem to indicate I might have some sorcerous abilities of my own."

Magdon grimaced at his words, as if expecting but dreading them.

"My lord," she said, "I inquired of the archives before leaving the guild hall. You have been tested before, both for proficiency at wizardry and innate talent."

"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 angle 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 long 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."