The detector weighed heavy in Meralda’s hand. And here I go alone, she thought, to latch a major spellwork to the heart of the Tower itself.

“Vonashon, empalos, endera.” Meralda recalled the words, and that awful face. Walk away.Good advice, it seems, she thought. I only wish I could. “Perhaps the guilds are hiring,” she muttered to the dark.

The detector flashed suddenly, and Meralda started and gasped. But the light settled back to its normal steady cast, and Meralda took a deep breath and continued her climb.

The sphere of light cast by the detector had expanded to engulf all of the handle and Meralda’s hand and half her forearm. Grateful for the extra light, Meralda held the half-globe close to the stair, and wondered if the shade was curious about what she carried.

The shade, thought Meralda. Well, there, I’ve said it, even if only to myself. But I can hardly deny it any longer. Something here, in the dark, is watching me. Has been watching me since the day I first set foot in the hall.

The light from her magelamp caught the seamless black ceiling of the first floor, not fifty hands above. Meralda quickened her pace, well aware that she was no closer to daylight, but eager to quit the darkness below and see a floor under her feet, if only for a moment.

First floor, second floor, third floor at last. Meralda stopped, mopped sweat from her forehead, and let her bag drop to the stair.

Both shoulders ached, bruised by the bag strap. Her arms were weary from the weight of the detector, which now glowed bright as a magelamp and sent worms of cold blue fire wriggling and crawling across those parts of the Tower it touched.

“Not much farther,” she said aloud, swapping the bag strap from left to right and wincing as she hefted the bag again. “Good thing, too.”

She resumed her climb. Shadows still darted about her, but not so near, now that the detector’s glow had engulfed her. She could sense the ward spell passing occasionally, but it never ventured close or lingered too long.

Still, Meralda was wary. It’s just about this point, she thought, that most of the mages of old ran into the shade. High on the stair, nowhere to hide, nothing to do but make a mad dash downward for the hall and the park. She shuddered at the thought of running any distance down the narrow winding stair.

Soon, though, the magelamp’s light washed over the final ceiling, and then caught the tarnished brass door knob of the plain wooden door set in the upright notch at the top of the stair. Meralda found herself, if not exactly dashing, at least walking briskly the last hundred treads to the flat. As if by hurrying she could somehow miss the sudden awful appearance of the shade of dread Otrinvion.

At the door, she dropped her bag and the detector on the tread behind her and fumbled in her pockets for the key.

It wasn’t there.

At her back, she felt the darkness gather.

She put the magelamp under her chin, bent her head forward, and held the cold lamp tight against her neck while she used both hands to search her pockets. I put it in my right skirt pocket before I left for the park, she thought. I know I did.

Thunder broke, and rolled in echoes through the dark, and Meralda was overwhelmed by the sensation that if she were to turn, if she were to face the stair, something would be standing there, just past the glow of the detector. Wrathful Spectre, she thought, and shivered. A gruesome hollow man, waiting for her to turn so it could open its awful mad eyes and split its rotted face with a wide and hungry smile.

Handkerchiefs, ward wands, an old pair of theatre tickets, fused into a smooth mass of paper pulp by the wash. Then her right hand closed on cold, smooth iron, and she pulled the flat key from her blouse pocket, thrust it hard in the door, gave the key a savage twist, and shoved.

The door flew open, and daylight spilled out of the flat and onto the stair.

Meralda took her magelamp in her hand, drew in a ragged breath, and turned around to face the dark.

The stair was empty. But empty in a manner that suggested to Meralda it was only very recently emptied. Vacated, perhaps, in the brief moment immediately before she worked up the nerve to turn and look.

“No more of this,” she said. “Sight!”

Meralda closed her eyes, and for the first time since entering the Tower she willed forth her Sight.

The detector’s sphere of influence blazed like a tame globe of fire. Her bag, within the detector’s sphere, cast whirling loops and probing red and blue and green-hued tangles writhing about the stair. Meralda pushed her Sight out, into the dark, past the light that shone weakly through the open door.

Nothing. Darkness and darkness and no hint of anything else.

Meralda opened her eyes and let her Sight abate, though she did not let it fall. Normal vision and glittering Sight left the flat glowing and indistinct, but revealed only smooth stone and those things Meralda had brought. She picked up her bag, took the detector in her hand, closed the door with her heel, and walked to the center of the flat.

She dropped her bag to the floor beside her.

This is it, she thought. If the Tower is haunted, I am about to come face-to-face with the shade of Otrinvion the Black.

Or, more likely, make a complete fool of myself.

Meralda cleared her throat.

“Greetings,” she said, aloud. “I am Mage Ovis, Thaumaturge to the Kingdom of Tirlin.” She licked her lips, which had gone dry as she spoke.

“It was I who latched the shadow moving spell to this place,” she said, her voice loud and ringing in the round, empty flat. “I meant no harm, but harm I may have done, to a spellwork I did not know existed until my own spells broke apart. For this,” she said, “I am sorry.”

Shingvere, she thought silently, must never ever hear of this.

“Furthermore,” she added, “I plan to loose another spell here today. It is a passive spell, one I shall latch to the space in this room, rather than to the Tower itself. This spell is meant to reveal any older spellworks active here, so I might determine their function and assess any damage I might have unknowingly done.” She paused, considering her next words. “It is not my intent to usurp, remove, or modify any part or portion of the Tower, or its works,” she said. “Nor do I intend upon proving or disproving the existence of any, um, unseen residents to this place. I only want to know what, if any, harm I may have done. I also need to know if there is a safe way to latch a shadow moving spell to the lower half of the Tower.”

The only sound was thunder, the only shadow Meralda’s, cast briefly by distant lightning.

“That is who I am,” she said. “And that is why I am here. I ask for your forbearance, that I might do my work, and then leave you in peace. May I do so?”

Meralda kept her eyes open, and let her Sight move out into the flat.

Nothing stirred. Aside from the sounds of muted thunder and her own rapid breaths, the Tower was utterly silent, utterly still.

Utterly empty.

Foolishness, said the part of Meralda that had never believed Shingvere’s tales, never credited the old mages with anything but a fondness for strong drink and a desire to tell scary stories to a breathless court. And that face in the park? Fatigue. Fatigue and an imagination fed by a lifetime of ghost stories and Shingvere’s sincere nonsense.

“Very well,” said Meralda. She lifted the detector so the copper half-globe was level with her shoulders, took a deep breath, and spoke the long word that activated two dozen eager spells.

The flat was filled with a blue haze, as if it was suddenly flooded with still, sunlit water. Whips and bubbles of light, like shining ropes chasing fireflies, spread out from Meralda’s bag until she spoke another word and the detector removed the bag spells from view, one by one, until none were visible.