Chandler nodded soberly. “What brings you out of Chicago?”

“I heard about Morgan.”

The young Warden’s expression darkened. “Yes,” he said quietly. “It’s . . . hard to believe. You’re here to help find him?”

“I’ve found murderers before,” I said. “I figure I can do it again.” I paused. For whatever reason, Chandler was almost always to be found working near the Senior Council. If anyone would know the scuttlebutt, he would. “Who do you think I should talk to about it?”

“Wizard Liberty is coordinating the search,” he replied. “Wizard Listens-to-Wind is investigating the scene of the murder. Ancient Mai is getting the word out to the rest of the Council to convene an emergency session.”

I nodded. “What about Wizard McCoy?”

“Standing by with a strike team, when last I heard,” Chandler replied. “He’s one of the few who can reasonably expect to overpower Morgan.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Morgan’s a pain in the ass, all right.” I shivered and stamped my feet against the cold. “I’ve got some information they’re going to want. Where do I find them?”

Chandler considered. “Ancient Mai should be in the Crystalline Hall, Wizard Liberty is in the Offices, Wizard McCoy should be somewhere near the War Room and Wizard Listens-to-Wind and the Merlin are in LaFortier’s chambers.”

“How about the Gatekeeper?” I asked.

Chandler shrugged. “Gatekeeping, I daresay. The only wizard I see less frequently than he is you.”

I nodded. “Thanks, Chandler.” I faced him soberly and put a formal solemnity in my voice as I adhered to security protocols more than five centuries old. “I seek entry to the Hidden Halls, O Warden. May I pass?”

He eyed me for a moment and gave me a slow, regal nod, his eyes twinkling. “Be welcome to the seat of the White Council. Enter in peace and depart in peace.”

I nodded to him and walked forward through the archway.

I’d come in peace, sure. But if the killer was around and caught onto what I was doing, I wouldn’t depart in peace.

Just in pieces.

Chapter Fourteen

The Hidden Halls of Edinburgh were the redoubt and fortress of the White Council of Wizardry from time immemorial. Well, actually, that last bit isn’t true. It’s been our headquarters for a little under five hundred years.

The White Council has existed since pre-Roman times, in one form or another, and its headquarters has shifted from time to time, and place to place. Alexandria, Carthage, Rome—we were in the Vatican in the early days of the Church, believe it or not—Constantinople and Madrid have all been home to the Council’s leadership at one time or another—but since the end of the Middle Ages, they’ve been located in the tunnels and catacombs hewn from the unyielding stone of Scotland.

Edinburgh ’s tunnel network is even more extensive than those beneath the city of Chicago, and infinitely more stable and sturdy. The main headquarters of the complex is located deep beneath the Auld Rock itself—Castle Edinburgh, where kings and queens, lords and ladies, have defied, besieged, betrayed and slaughtered one another since pre-Christian times.

There’s a reason a fortress has been there for as long as mankind can remember—it is one of the world’s largest convergences of ley lines. Ley lines are the natural currents of magical energy running through the world. They are the most powerful means of employing magic known to man—and the lines that intersect in the earth deep below the Auld Rock represent a staggering amount of raw power waiting to be tapped by someone skilled or foolish enough.

I walked over a ley line about three steps after I entered the Hidden Halls, and I could feel its shuddering energy beneath my feet, rushing by like an enormous, silent subterranean river. I walked a bit faster for a few paces, irrationally nervous about being swept off of my feet by it, until I could only sense it as a dim and receding vibration in the ground.

I didn’t need to call up a light. Crystals set in the walls glowed in a rainbow of gentle colors, bathing the whole place in soft, ambient illumination. The tunnel was ancient, worn, chilly, and damp. Water always seemed ready to condense into a half-frozen dew the instant it was given the opportunity by an exhaled breath or a warm body.

The tunnel was about as wide as my spread arms, and maybe eight feet high. The walls were lined with bas-relief carvings in the stone. Some of them were renditions of scenes of what I’d been told were the historical high points of the White Council. Since I didn’t recognize anyone in the images, I didn’t have much context for them, so they mostly just looked like the crudely drawn cast of thousands you see on the Bayeux Tapestry. The rest of the carvings were wards—seriously world-class heavyweight wards. I didn’t know what they did, but I could sense the deadly power behind them, and I tread carefully as I passed deeper into the complex.

The entry tunnel from the Nevernever was more than a quarter of a mile long, sloping gently downward the whole way. There were metal gates every couple of hundred yards, each of them manned by a Warden backed up by a pair of Ancient Mai’s temple-dog statues.

The things were three feet high at the shoulder, and looked like escapees from a Godzilla movie. Carved from stone, the blocky figures sat inert and immobile—but I knew that they could come to dangerous life at an instant’s notice. I tried to think about what it might be like to be facing a pair of aggressive temple-dog statues in the relatively narrow hallway. I decided that I’d rather wrestle an oncoming subway locomotive. At least then it would be over quickly.

I exchanged polite greetings with the Wardens on guard until I passed the last checkpoint and entered the headquarters proper. Then I took a folded map from my duster pocket, squinted at it, and got my bearings. The layout of the tunnels was complex, and it would be easy to get lost.

Where to begin?

If the Gatekeeper had been around, I would have sought him out first. Rashid had been my supporter and ally on more than one occasion, God knew why. I wasn’t on what anyone would call good terms with the Merlin. I barely knew Martha Liberty or Listens-to-Wind. I found Ancient Mai to be a very scary little person. That left Ebenezar.

I headed for the War Room.

It took me the better part of half an hour to get there. Like I said, the tunnel complex is enormous—and after the way the war had reduced the ranks of the Council, it seemed lonelier and emptier than ever. My footsteps echoed hollowly back from stone walls for minutes at a time, unaccompanied by any other sound.

I felt intensely uncomfortable as I paced the Hidden Halls. I think it was the smell that did it. When I’d been a young man, hauled before the Council to be tried as a violator of the First Law of Magic, they had brought me to Edinburgh. The musty, wet, mineral smell of the place had been almost all I knew while I had waited, hooded and bound, in a cell for a full day. I remember being horribly cold and tortured by the knots my muscles worked themselves into after so many hours tied hand and foot. I remember feeling more alone than ever in my life, while I awaited whatever was going to happen.

I had been scared. So scared. I was sixteen.

It was the same smell, and that scent had the power to animate the corpses of some of my darkest memories and bring them lurching back into the front of my thoughts. Psychological necromancy.

“Brains,” I moaned to myself, drawing the word out.

If you can’t stop the bad thoughts from coming to visit, at least you can make fun of them while they’re hanging around.

In a stroke of improbable logic, the War Room was located between the central chambers of the Senior Council and the barracks rooms of the Wardens, which included a small kitchen. The smell of baking bread cut through the musty dampness of the tunnel, and I felt my steps quickening.