A Narrow Foundation

Maeril found the catch inside the secret seam. The stone panel shifted with a dry scrape.

Rishi took up his staff and entered first. After the noise they had made, he expected company.

The hidden room smelled like a tomb.

Cobwebs veiled an oval canopy bed. Bones showed beneath the rotted covers. Two narrow shelves stood against the walls, their uneven rows advertising how much had already been removed.

A blackened skull floated in the center of the chamber, green flame burning in its sockets. It turned as Rishi entered. “Get out of my house!” it shouted.

Rishi planted a foot on the bedframe and rose into a two-handed blow. His staff cracked the skull from crown to cheek and sent it spinning through its own fire.

It caught itself in the air and looked past him to Maeril. An orange spark formed between its jaws.

“Down!” Maeril shouted. She turned behind the nearest shelf as the spark crossed the room. Fire burst through the cobwebs and curtains. Books shed burning leaves. Rishi folded beneath the blast and rolled behind the bedframe, staff pulled close. Heat charred his robe.

Across the room, Maeril hit the floor in a flare of frost-white wards. Fire split around her cuffs and collar. She came up on one knee, her sleeve smoking, as the skull turned toward Rishi again.

She thrust a hand through the hot air. Psychic force struck the crack his staff had made. The fracture forked across the skull’s face, spilling green fire, and the bone burst apart. Fragments bounced through the ash.

“That was quick,” Maeril said.

A green ember glowed inside one fragment.

She watched it pulse. “Do not.”

Rishi summoned a small warm light in his free hand while she searched. With most of the webs and dust burned away, the skeleton lay plainly beneath the bedclothes. Maeril lifted a scorched book from one shelf and shook loose a fall of ash.

On the floor, two pieces of skull scraped toward one another.

Maeril found The Man from Damara wedged among the books. Its spine had no flex, and dust sat wrongly around it. She pulled the painted block. A hidden compartment sprang open beneath the shelf.

Inside lay a wand.

Maeril held it close to her eye, turning the shaft between her fingers. “A binding wand. He kept one useful answer.”

She stowed the wand and checked the walls. A second secret door opened toward the trapped corridor.

Rishi’s light reached through the narrow gap. It showed the dead apprentice and the brass ring on his extended hand. Beyond him, the demon lay near the stair.

The bitter smell remained.

Maeril shut the panel. “No.”

Rishi looked once at the ring they were leaving behind. “No.”

They crossed the scorched bedroom. The skull fragments dragged themselves together behind them, each movement small enough that stopping to watch would have been absurd. If the rune chamber offered no way upward, the dead wizard might be the only guide left.

The first secret door returned them to the rune chamber. Maeril searched the walls, finding only the two doors they already knew.

She closed her eye. “Of course.”

Maeril rested her palm against the cracked stone where the rune had been. “The wall is down. That matters.”

Rishi nodded toward the bedroom.

“If he kept a familiar,” Maeril said, “he might have kept a cage.”

Rishi followed her through the secret door. “That is a narrow foundation for a plan.”

“It is more than the tower has given us.”

On the bedroom floor, pieces of the skull scratched through the ash toward one another.

Rishi searched under the bed while Maeril watched the bone rebuild itself.

He drew out a long iron box. Rust mottled its sides. A barred lid sat on stiff hinges, its gaps narrow enough to stop a fist, and short spikes pointed into the dark interior. “Not a familiar’s cage.”

Maeril examined the hinges. “No. But the dimensions are excellent.”

Rishi set the box beside the gathering fragments and levered the lid open with his staff. As each piece dragged close, he nudged it inside with the ferrule. Maeril used a spectral hand to collect those beyond his reach.

They waited.

The skull took the better part of half an hour to reassemble inside the box. Teeth settled into its jaw. Cracks joined with dry clicks. Green flame passed from piece to piece until the whole skull rose toward the open lid.

Its mouth opened. “Get out of my—”

Rishi drove the barred lid shut with the ferrule of his staff. Maeril dropped the latch.

Iron rang. Green fire flashed between the bars as the skull slammed against the lid. The box jumped across the floor. Rishi planted one sandal on top and held it against the stone.

Maeril crouched beside it.

Her good eye brightened. Her voice filled the burned room, deeper than her chest should have held, and the shadow of her horns stretched over the wall. “Shout again and Rishi will break you apart. When he finishes, I will dispel whatever tries to put you back together.”

The flameskull struck the bars once more.

Rishi leaned more weight onto his foot.

The skull became still.

Maeril let her voice return to its ordinary register. “We are not here for you.”

“I am Duhlark Kolat. You are in my house.”

“So is Manshoon.”

The fire inside the box flared hot enough to redden one bar.

“Thief,” Duhlark said. “He came after I died and would not even leave me that. Young face. Old rot. A false hand and a borrowed name.”

Maeril sat back on her heel. “I am an abjurer and a ward-maker. I have seen enough of this place to know what it took to build.”

“You destroyed the field.”

“I can recognize fine work and still refuse to let it kill birds.”

The skull’s jaw tightened.

“You built all of this alone?” Maeril asked.

“With my brother. Alcedor invited every passing fool to admire our work. I raised the field to keep them out.”

“And your brother?”

“He left. He would have opened our work to parasites.”

Rishi looked at the spikes pointing into the box. “Did everyone get to leave?”

The green flame drew close around the bone. “Lady Gondafrey came asking about missing workmen. Apprentices. The Watch did not understand what we were doing here.”

“What did you do to her?”

“A gargoyle does not grow old. I gave her permanence.”

“You put her into stone because she would not stop asking what you had done,” Maeril said.

The skull did not answer. Rishi shifted his weight, and the lid creaked beneath his sandal. “Is she still here?”

“Manshoon kept her. He keeps what amuses him. He raised me to guard my own bones.”

His fire turned toward the ruined bed. “He wears my house. My work is a ladder beneath his boots.”

“We need the circle that leads to him,” Maeril said.

“At the top of the outer tower. His rooms are beyond it.”

“We followed the stairs from the reading room,” Rishi said.

“And arrived in my bedroom. The bridge is below you.”

Maeril leaned closer. “There was no other door.”

“The wall beside the library door. A latch beneath the molding. Had you opened it, you would have found the bridge.”

“Will it show now that the field is down?”

“You broke the field, not the door’s disguise. Find the latch.”

Rishi looked at Maeril. “Grim sent us upstairs.”

Her mouth thinned. “We will ask him about that.”

She turned back to the skull. “A human woman was brought through recently. Lysaerra Harlowe. A mapmaker. Someone damaged her memory before Manshoon took her.”

The fire lowered.

“I do not know that name.”

Rishi’s fingers tightened around his staff.

Duhlark continued, “I heard a woman on the stair. Drugged or bound. She would not scream for him.”

Rishi leaned toward the box.

“He asked her about old streets. Cellars,” Duhlark continued. “She told him she could not remember. He said, ‘The absence is more useful than the memory.’ Then he took her through the circle.”

“She was still alive?”

“When she crossed. He had not finished with her.”

“Is he there?” Rishi asked.

“His true rooms are there. Whether the man waits in them, I cannot say.” Duhlark’s fire turned toward him. “Do not trust the face he wears. Do not trust reason from him. Do not let him make your mercy useful.”

The warning found its place too easily.

Maeril shifted nearer to Rishi until her shoulder touched his arm. “Why help us?”

Duhlark was silent long enough for Rishi to hear rain ticking against the window. Then he said, “I ruined this house. He did not earn the right to wear it.”

Maeril held his green gaze through the bars. “You admit what you were?”

“I remember in pieces.”

“You were terrible.”

“Yes.”

“Manshoon is worse.”

The flames lifted. “Yes.”

Rishi removed his foot from the lid. Duhlark did not move.

“Can Gondafrey be freed?” he asked.

“Her door is locked and carries Manshoon’s mark. The glyph takes sight. She will know the tower. She will know justice.” The skull paused. “She will not be pleased to see me.”

“Good.”

Maeril stood. “Then this is the arrangement. You come with us, stay quiet and tell us the truth. We remove Manshoon from as much of your tower as saving Lysaerra permits. Lie, and I unmake you. Help, and someone better than either of us can decide what remains of Duhlark Kolat deserves.”

“I am Duhlark Kolat.”

“You are a skull in a disciplinary breadbox. You can stay in this room if you prefer.”

“That condition is temporary.”

Rishi crouched beside the box. “Come, and you can know how it ends.”

The rain-scented air moved over the charred bed. Duhlark turned inside the box, a tooth dragging across one of its inward spikes. “I will help remove Manshoon.”

“Gondafrey?” Maeril asked.

The fire became thin and hard.

“I will not prevent you from freeing her.”

“That is less than I asked.”

“It is more than I owe.”

“You owe her everything.”

Duhlark did not answer.

Maeril secured the latch. “It will do until she can answer you herself.”

“Take the binding wand.”

“I found it.”

The skull considered this. “Good.”

“Awful man.”

“Leave my house.”

“When we are finished.”

Rishi wrapped torn curtain cloth around the heated handle, then threaded an old leather strap through it. He slung the strap across his shoulder and let the box ride at his opposite hip, clear of his staff. Green fire shone between the bars.

They opened the second secret door in the bedroom.

Bitter air seeped through the opening.

Maeril kept herself outside the threshold. A pale, spectral hand appeared over her palm and drifted into the corridor. It stayed above the level of the vents until it reached the body.

The apprentice’s finger had swollen. The ring caught at the knuckle.

Maeril eased it free.

No hiss came from the wall. The ghostly hand returned and laid the ring in her palm.

“Three,” Maeril said.

“Competent counting from a woman who repeatedly chooses the wrong door,” Duhlark said.

She slipped the ring into a pouch. “I can hang the box upside down.”

The green fire withdrew from the bars.

The corridor still separated them from the stair down. Maeril placed one hand on Rishi and made sure the box was clear of the wall before she bent space around them again.

They emerged beside the broken stair on the safer side.

“More magic spent,” she said.

“A consequence of your shortcut.”

“A consequence of your architecture.”

They descended through the wrecked workshop, stepping around the scattered iron limbs.

In the summoning chamber, the other two bodies lay near the ruined circle. One brazier still smoked. The smell of fiend and burned blood clung to the stone.

Rishi knelt at each body. He checked breath and pulse before removing the brass rings, although certainty had reached him before his hands did.

He held the tokens with none of the satisfaction of finding tools.

“Manshoon’s spell-children,” Duhlark said.

Maeril looked at the box. “You had apprentices.”

The green light dimmed.

“Yes.”

Rishi closed his hand around the rings.

They had enough to take others through the circle now. The cost of that advantage lay at his feet.