“We are but ghosts now,” he said. “That task is yours, and yours alone.”
Meralda sighed. “I don’t know if I can do it,” she said. Her voice shook. “I just don’t know.”
“I would be troubled if you said otherwise,” said Tim. “I, on the other hoof, have the utmost confidence in you, Mage.”
“Everyone keeps saying that,” said Meralda. “This is pre-kingdom magic. It doesn’t make sense, half the time. It’s like trying to untie knots in the dark. I could fail as easily as not.” Meralda felt her face flush hot, and a sudden anger ran through her. “And you know what they’ll say? They’ll say I failed because I’m a woman. That will be my legend. Fool scrap of a girl let the kingdom burn.”
Tim nodded. “I felt much the same burden, so many times. The stuff of legends is nothing but trouble to the persons unfortunate enough to make them. On the whole, I’d rather have been off fishing.”
Meralda surprised herself by laughing.
“I’ve always wanted to meet you. You’re the reason I’m here, really.”
Tim bowed. “My apologies, then. It was never my intention to be a bad influence on the youth of Tirlin.”
“You’re exactly as I imagined.”
Tim stepped forward, his horse head swaying to and fro as though seeing who was close by.
“May I tell you a secret, Mage Meralda Ovis?”
“Please.”
Tim’s whiskery horse mouth tickled Meralda’s right ear.
“You’re not the first woman to wear the robes.”
“What?”
Tim’s horse head flashed, and when the light died, he-she-looked back at Meralda from a woman’s smiling face.
“I knew I’d never be named Mage as a woman, back in the bad old days of 1517,” she said. She looked down at her bosom ruefully and shrugged. “But it occurred to me that the robes would hide everything but my head and neck.”
“You’re not Tim?”
“Tam, actually. I even developed a taste for hay. Imagine that.” She ran fingers through her long brown hair. “Tam couldn’t even read for the college. Tim took the robes and saved the kingdom, more than once. What a difference a single letter makes. And a bit of magic.”
Meralda remembered to close her mouth.
“I’m not the only one, either. Brontus. Caplea. Sebrinal.”
Shapes stirred, stepped forward, waved.
“I’m the fifth woman to wear the robes?”
“We’re not sure about Abelt, and he or she won’t say. Fifth or sixth. But you’re the first who hasn’t hidden who you are.”
“I had no idea.”
“That’s rather the point. But see here, Mage. This business with the curseworks. Have you given any thought to how you might use them, to Tirlin’s advantage?”
“Use them? The only sane thing to do with them is keep them where they are. Isn’t it?”
“Indeed. They’re monstrous. Each an abomination. Combined? We’re not sure any of the Realms would survive their release.”
“Making them useless.”
“Not exactly,” said Tam. Her face was long and plain, but her eyes were merry and bright. “Often, I found that the perception of a thing was far more useful than the thing itself, if you get my meaning. Remember Covair?”
“You held off fifty thousand Vonats with a pair of silver wands.”
Tam’s eyes twinkled.
“Ten thousand, perhaps. The wands weren’t even silver. I painted a pair of sticks. I’d run right out of spells, Mage. I had a biscuit in my pocket and a knife in my boot. And not a single Vonat pikeman dared cross a line I scratched in the sand with my boot, just because I grinned at them and invited them to try.”
Meralda stared.
“That’s history for you, Mage. Half of it is misquotes and the other half is flummery. I enjoyed the flummery most of all. In fact, I highly recommend it. Am I being too mysterious?”
“You want me to use the curseworks to scare the Vonats into behaving themselves?”
“It’s just a suggestion. You’d have thought of it yourself, sooner or later. We just wanted to save you the time. Mage to mage, you know.”
Meralda’s mind raced.
“The curseworks? Weapons?”
Tam beamed. “Just so.” She took a step back, and her horse head reappeared.
“We wish you well, Mage Meralda Ovis,” said Tim, shaking his mane back into place. “Know that we are all very proud to call you sister.”
“Don’t go. Please, I have so many questions.”
“My time here is nearly spent, Mage. You face a dark hour. You will soon be forced to choose between power and stealth. Between might and wisdom. Between the easy way, and the hard. I do not envy you that.”
Tam raised a hand in salute. “Oh, aisle ten, shelf twenty-two, slot fifteen. A little something not in the Inventory. Better range than the speaking jewel you’re using now. And get yourself a new chair. That one will ruin your back.”
Before Meralda could speak again, she awoke, face down on her desk.
She bolted upright, found her arm asleep, her back aching.
Mug stirred restlessly on her desk, his eyes still closed and drooping. The Bellringers were gone, as was Donchen. Goboy’s glass was focused on the palace spire, which glowed in the first faint rays of dawn.
It was a dream, she thought. But was it just a dream?
Meralda rose, stiff and sore. Her pencil lay on her topmost page of notes, just where she’d dropped it. The paper was filled with diagrams and calculations and scribbled questions for which there were no good answers.
Something in the top right corner caught Meralda’s weary gaze.
A calculation had been crossed out and rewritten.
The hand wasn’t hers.
Below the revised equation was a note, penned in a tiny precise hand.
You dropped the Esrat variable there, Mage. I did the same thing when I was sleepy.
Below that was a T.
Meralda shivered.
“Thank you, Mage,” she said, aloud. “Thank you.”
“Crawling up the windowpanes, I don’t know,” mumbled Mug.
Meralda stroked his topmost leaves and shuffled toward the water closet.
At noon, Mug awoke.
“You see what trouble all this moving about brings, mistress,” he said, spreading his leaves to the sunlight pouring from Goboy’s glass. “Bruised stems, eyes gone missing.”
Meralda came running from the shelves, her hands full of holdstones and long silver wands.
“Mug!”
“Mistress!” Mug turned half a dozen eyes toward Meralda as she dumped the contents of her arms down on her desk and leaned over Mug’s bedraggled fronds. “How long have I been resting?”
“Two days.” Meralda stroked his leaves. “I was afraid you weren’t going to wake up at all.”
Mug gently wrapped Meralda’s wrist in a vine and squeezed. “You seem to have all your limbs. What of the lads? And Angis?”
“All fine. Donchen got the worst of us all, fighting those things in the sewer beneath us.”
“So I take it we won the day.”
Meralda nodded. “Nameless and Faceless appeared. I took them up. No more magical rope men.”
Mug turned more eyes toward Meralda. “They just swatted the nasties in a show of selfless goodwill, did they?”