The old, old wizard is sneaking…up…on…me!

Meralda felt eyes on her back, and a chill like the stroke of an icicle raced down her spine.

Kervis began to hum. There was no mistaking the tune, or the words behind it.

“I see the door,” said Tervis, his voice suffused with relief. “We’re almost there.”

Meralda took a deep breath. I am a thaumaturge, she said, to herself. A mage. I do not quake and shiver at nursery rhymes.

“I’ll need you gentlemen to stand in the doorway while I set the ward,” she said. “Can you hold the lamp while Tervis handles my bag?”

“Yes, ma’am!” said Kervis. His grin was bright in the magelamp’s glow.

Meralda played the lamp upwards. There, not fifty steps away, was the notch in the ceiling that held the door to the Wizard’s Flat.

“I do believe it gets taller each time,” she said.

“Don’t say that,” said Tervis. “Ma’am,” he added, quickly. “Meaning no disrespect-”

“I know,” Meralda said. Twenty paces. “You’ve done well, this climb.”

Tervis sighed. “I practiced,” he said, matter-of-factly.

Ten paces. “How,” asked Meralda, “did you practice?”

“Well,” said Tervis. “There’s a big old iron oak, just outside the barracks-”

Meralda looked over her shoulder. “Guardsman,” she said. “You are not about to tell me you have taken to climbing iron oaks as practice at ascending the Tower, are you?”

Tervis’ gaze fell to his boots.

“Don’t do that,” said Meralda, with a glare at Kervis, whose wide-eyed look of innocence was not entirely convincing. “Ever again. That’s an order, from a member in full of the court of Tirlin. Is that clear?”

Tervis looked up and nodded, relief plain on his face.

Meralda turned, and was at the door.

Men, she thought. She shoved the key into the lock and prepared to push against the door, but it opened easily, gentle as a whisper.

Daylight streamed through. Meralda squinted and stepped into the flat before turning to face the Bellringers.

Both stood leaning into the sunlight, smiles on their face behind their upheld hands.

“Bright,” said Tervis.

“Lovely and bright,” said Kervis. He squinted at Meralda, laid his crossbow carefully down on the floor just inside the flat, and held out his hand. “I can take the lamp now, if you’d like,” he said.

Meralda smiled and put it into his hand.

He took it gently, like the dented brass cylinder was made of flower petals and spider webs. “Oooh,” he said, playing the light slowly about. “Magic.”

Tervis stepped past, Meralda’s bag held forth. “Here you are, Mage,” he said. “What do I do now?”

“Just open the bag, and hold it off the floor, if you will,” said Meralda. “This will only take a moment, I’ll set the ward, and then we can go.”

Tervis nodded, and unfastened the bag’s three leather straps. “Here you are,” he said.

Meralda wiped the sweat from her palms on her skirts and reached inside. She withdrew a fist-sized glass sphere, which rolled on its axis in a burnished copper cage, and a neatly folded bath towel.

Tervis lifted an eyebrow at the towel.

Meralda stifled a laugh, and took the globe and towel to the far wall of the flat. She laid the towel at the edge of the floor, took the globe in her right hand, spoke a word, and touched the copper cage gently to the Tower wall.

The spell enveloping the globe latched to the Tower.

“Watch,” said Meralda. She took her hand away.

The globe stuck to the wall, spinning like a top, waist-high above the folded towel.

Tervis stared. Kervis glanced at the globe, shrugged and went back to playing the magelamp about the darkened stairs.

Meralda counted. The spell remained latched for a full count of twenty before it lost hold of the Tower and the globe fell onto the towel.

Meralda scooped up both gently. Faint wisps of fog rose from the glass, and ice coated its surface.

“Did it, um, work?” asked Tervis.

“Oh, it worked,” said Meralda. “Now I take the globe back to the laboratory, and say the other half of the word. It will spin again, backwards this time, for the exact amount of time we just saw. I’ll measure the interval precisely and then I’ll know the Tower’s latching coefficient.”

Meralda folded the towel over the globe as she walked, and Tervis took a single step to meet her. She stowed the latching ball, bade Tervis to seal her bag, and then warned the Bellringers to stand at the door.

“It’s only a minor ward spell,” she said, as she moved to stand at the center of the flat. “It will allow me to enter the flat and dispel it. Once cast, no one else will be able to pass that door without breaking the ward.”

“What happens if they try?” asked Kervis.

Meralda smiled. “Wrack and blast,” she said, though she doubted either Bellringer would know a verse from Ovid. “Fury and flame and fie, fools, fie.”

Meralda drew the ward wand from her pocket, raised it, and spoke the word.

The wand went cold. Meralda put it back in her pocket, and walked toward the door, already dreading the long, dark descent. Behind her, the unlatched ward began its lazy orbit of the room.

Then, with only the faintest and briefest of hissings, the ward spell massed, leaped, and exploded, two short paces from Meralda’s back.

The flat rang with a thunder-clap that echoed up and down the Tower. Meralda fell, arms outstretched, half-blinded by the reflection of the flash off the rounded walls. She saw Kervis thrown backward toward the stair, saw the magelamp spin out of his grasp. Tervis whirled, one hand on the door frame, the other straining to reach his twin’s pant leg. Meralda could see that Tervis was shouting, but his cry was lost amid the echoing roar.

And then the doorway was empty. Empty and dark, though the light from Meralda’s magelamp, which spun as it fell, flashed twice across the dark before fading and dying.

“No!” shouted Meralda, though she could barely hear her voice above the ringing in her ears. She sprang to her feet and raced for the door, blinking past the bright haze that obscured her vision and the spots that danced before her eyes.

“Tervis!” she shouted. “Kervis!”

Meralda’s right foot struck her bag, and she stumbled, and in that instant Tervis came diving through the doorway, dragging Kervis by his uniform collar.

“Behind you, Mage!” cried a Bellringer, and with horror Meralda realized Kervis had snatched up the Oldmark and dropped to one knee. “He’s behind you!”

Meralda whirled, praying that Kervis had better sense than to actually loose a crossbow bolt in a space as small as the flat.

Meralda’s eyes watered, and ghostly afterimages of the door and Tervis’ mad lunge wavered and spun across her vision, but the flat before her was empty.

Except, just for an instant, a bunched, small shadow did seem to dart past the east-facing window, on the far side of the flat. Meralda blinked, and it was gone, leaving her with the vague impression that a bird might have flown past outside.

The last echoes died.

“No one is behind me,” said Meralda, quickly. “We’re alone. Put away the crossbow, Kervis. The only thing you’ll shoot here are mages and guardsmen.”

“There was a man behind you,” said Kervis. Meralda noted with relief that Tervis forced the crossbow down with the palm of his hand. “I saw him!”

“I saw something too, ma’am,” said Tervis. His voice shook, and his eyes darted about the flat. “Not sure it was a man, but it was there.” His hand went to his sword hilt, and he drew it swiftly, as though he had only just remembered he was armed. “It can’t have gotten out.”

Meralda lifted her hand. “Listen to me,” she said. The skin on the back of her neck began to tingle and itch, as though sunburnt, and the faint odor of singed hair began to waft through the room. “Something broke the ward, yes. But it could have been an old Tower spellwork, or a fault within the ward itself. What you saw was probably the ward uncoiling.”