“Hang Fleet-Arrival or Invasion?” screamed the Times. The Post was calmer. Meralda noted with approval at no point in the article did the word invasion appear, but the sidebar detailing the dates and summaries of past Hang visits did hint that this latest incursion was the culmination of five centuries of stealthy surveillance.
Angis bellowed at a trolley and lurched to a halt at Weigh. A pair of hotel bellhops ran past, hats in hand, shouting at each other as they darted ahead of Angis and the trolley.
Meralda finished her coffee. The morning air was crisp, and, since the wind was from the north, it lacked the stench of the stockyards south of the college. Tervis caught her eye and grinned, and Meralda found herself smiling back.
“I know there’s Hang afoot, ma’am, but it is a lovely day, isn’t it?” he said.
The cab charged ahead. Meralda nodded, and Tervis turned away, his eyes on Tirlin. Meralda shuffled papers and continued to read.
The back pages of the papers held news only slightly less alarming than the Hang. The Phendelit delegation had sent word to the palace that they would be arriving two days early. Possibly even later that same day, Meralda realized with a shock.
Not to be outdone, the Alons had also sent word ahead. Hang or no Hang, they were determined to make Tirlin on schedule. “We welcome our friends from across the Great Sea,” the Alon queen was quoted as saying. “We only hope to arrive in time to compose ourselves before we meet.”
Meralda frowned at the latest statement by the Vonats. They ignored the arrival of the Hang, stating instead that due to the deplorable condition of the Eryan roadways in southern Fonth they would be delayed, placing their arrival three days hence. The unnamed Vonat spokesman also offered to give the Eryans lessons in modern road building as an expedient to further cultural exchanges.
Meralda folded the Post and imagined the turmoil that must be transpiring in the Gold Room. Any one of the calamities could be handled. Indeed, any one disaster was, aside from the Hang arrival, expected. But all taken together?
As the cab rolled to a halt by the palace gates, Meralda almost felt sorry for Yvin.
The palace was abuzz. The wide, carpeted halls were thick with guardsmen and nobles and Eryans and penswifts, all marching determinedly to and fro. Except, Meralda noted, for the penswifts, who tended to lurk in corners before leaping out at distracted court members.
Meralda had to wait for admittance at the doors, and once inside she had to practically shoulder her way through the hall to the foot of the west stair.
A penswift, not one she recognized, charged up the west stair behind her, calling out “Thaumaturge! A moment, please!”
Meralda didn’t slow, nor did she look back, but the Bellringer’s treads halted, and the penswift’s cries came no closer.
Meralda smiled and climbed serenely up the stair. At the top, she found her key, opened the laboratory doors, and stepped quickly inside. She dropped the papers in a heap by the door.
The Times fell face-up, displaying the words “Hang Invasion” in tall black letters.
A single flickering gas lamp lit the laboratory. Tiny hints of movement played about the shadows, and though Meralda knew they were merely reflections of the gas lamp on various reflective surfaces she couldn’t help but be reminded of tiny hands waving.
Meralda kicked the paper flat and unlatched the ward spell with a word and a pat on the polished copper globe that sat atop her biggest spark coil apparatus.
The ward spell collapsed. Papers rustled throughout the laboratory, fluttering and waving in the still air as if blown by a sudden gust of wind. The big old scrying mirror bolted to the middle of the east wall flashed, bright and brief, behind the blanket Meralda kept hung over the glass.
“Lights,” said Meralda, when the ward spell static discharge faded.
A pair of head-high spark coils surrounded by a cage of shiny copper bars whined and crackled in the corner. On the high stone ceiling two dozen glass rings flickered, brightened, and filled the windowless laboratory with soft white light.
“Music,” she said, and from the clutter of bisected brass globes and wire-wound glass tubes heaped on a work bench just beside the door came the soft strains of an Alon violin.
“Miracles,” she muttered. The big old scrying mirror pulsed blue behind its blanket, and a few of her more intelligent instruments make querulous chirps, but nothing else occurred.
Meralda sighed, and gazed around. She stood in the midst of what was arguably the best equipped, and certainly the oldest, magical research facility in the Realms. She could take two steps and put her hands on old Phillitrep’s Mathematical Calculating Engine, which was still working, gears and rods awhirl, three hundred years after commencing calculations for Phillitrep’s last “little” problem. She could walk to the rear of the room and, along the way, stand beneath the tall, gleaming bulk of Arkot’s Walking Barge, touch the carefully folded fabric of the very first gas-filled airship, or watch the prototype of Lafrint’s Steam Motor hiss and turn its heavy steel axles.
Eyes, some of steel and glass, others of stone and iron, turned and fixed themselves upon Meralda. Imeck’s Pondering Noggin winked at her, and she waved idly back at it. Tarmore’s Watcher blinked at her, and a moment later Meralda heard the steady scratching of a mechanical pen drawing her likeness on the same scrap of parchment she’d fed the machine months ago. All about the shelves and alcoves of the laboratory, lightning danced, caught in the glass of this or the coils of that. Some of the devices were only half finished, some so old their names and purposes were long forgotten. Still, Meralda could not look upon them without thinking that the least of them held wonders, or the keys to wonders.
Meralda turned her eyes from the ranks of intricate devices. She stalked to her desk, snatched up a fresh sheet of architect’s paper, and began to draw the Tower.
Meralda heard voices beyond the door. One was Tervis. One was not. When she heard her name called Meralda put down her pencil and stretched. Time for a break anyway, she thought. She counted rings on the face of Opp’s Rotary Timekeeper. Ten of the clock, and high time for a snack.
Meralda rose as Tervis began to knock. “Pardon, Thaumaturge,” he said. “Urgent summons from the crown. May we have a word?”
Meralda winced. Urgent summons from the crown, she thought. Those have to be my least favorite words.
Meralda threw the door open, stepping back as she did. A trio of grim-faced, black-clad palace guards stood between Kervis and Tervis.
“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.