All the Paths of Shadow by Frank Tuttle Page B

darted away.
    “Sorry, ma’am,” said Kervis.
    “No matter,” said Meralda. “It’ll all be in the papers tomorrow anyway.”
    Meralda swallowed the last bite of her ham on rye and washed it down with ice-cold Phendelit day tea.
    “A five-master,” she said, wiping her chin, “is a ship. A Great Sea ship, half as long as the Tower is tall. The Long Dragon is the flag of the Chentze, which is the Hang equivalent of the house of a king.”
    The Bellringers simultaneously lifted their right eyebrows.
    “Big ship,” said Kervis.
    Meralda took another long draught of her day tea. “They cross the Great Sea,” she said. “I suppose they have to be.”
    Tervis frowned. “No one but the Hang has ever crossed the Great Sea,” he said. “Is that right?”
    “It is,” said Meralda. “Eryans, Phendelits, us, the Vonats. Everyone has tried. But the ships either turn back, or vanish.” Meralda put down her glass. “Current thinking holds that the sea extends at least twenty thousand miles from every coast,” she said.
    “Fly it,” said Kervis, matter-of-factly. “Why not send an airship?”
    “It’s been tried,” said Meralda. “The ones that made it back all told the same story. No land past the Islands. Not a speck. Just sea and storms and it goes on forever,” she said. “That’s a quote, from the master of the airship Yoreland . They were aloft for more than two months.”
    Tervis whistled. “Two months?”
    Meralda nodded. “No one has tried since,” she said. “At least, no one of the Realms.”
    Tervis shook his head. “These Hang,” he said, after a furtive look around. “What do they want?”
    Meralda wiped her hands on her napkin. “People have been asking that for nine hundred years, Tervis,” she said. “I wish I knew.”
    The palace bells struck twice. Meralda covered her plate with her napkin, and after a moment, Kervis and Tervis did the same. Meralda smiled.
    “Well, gentlemen,” she said, as their red-haired Phendelit waiter appeared. “Time to go.” She dropped a small silver coin into the waiter’s hand and grinned into his astonished face. “A Hang fleet is heading for Tirlin,” she whispered, as the man blushed furiously. “Fifty ships, each longer than five Towers and each laden with forty thousand four-armed, two-headed, venom-spitting half-wolf Hang warriors. When you tell the penswifts, do try to get the numbers right.”
    Kervis raced around to Meralda’s side of the table and pulled her chair back. “You probably shouldn’t mention the war dragons or the marching ogres, ma’am,” he said. “Might cause a panic.”
    Meralda nodded solemn agreement, turned, and bade the Bellringers to follow. The Phendelit waiter watched for a moment, shook his head, and darted off to refill another round of tea glasses.
     
     
    The Thaumaturgical Library buried deep within the palace cellars held little in the way of research concerning directed refraction. Instead, Meralda found page after page of intricate, improbable spellworks intended to render mages and kings invisible.
    “Nonsense,” she muttered, skimming past the last ten pages of an entry listed as “Mage Mellick’s Wondrous Optical Void.” Frowning, she decided the only thing this Mellick ever made vanish was a monthly portion of the crown’s purse.
    Disgusted, she rose, closed the heavy wood-bound volume, and padded barefoot on the cool stone floor back toward the library stacks. The foxfire she’d cast followed her, maintaining its station just above her left shoulder, sending shadows darting and bobbing down the long, high ranks of books arcane.
    Boot steps sounded down the corridor outside the library, causing Meralda to frown until the footfalls turned and ended with the slamming of a door. She’d practically had to threaten the Bellringers to make them stay out of the library. The last thing she wanted now was an apprentice wizard from the college pestering her with sidelong looks and first-year