“No, master. You were most specific. I wrote it down on my little slate, see? You said to fetch word and bring it to you here at once. Since here is here, I did precisely as you instructed and hurried right back.”
“But I was out in the garden. Someone had neglected to water the lillobays and quentians again. Did you not hear them weeping?”
“Not at all. My mind was firmly on my task. And since you were not here any longer—”
Amberlin raised his hand. “As you say. Well, now I am here and I am dreaming of penalties. What word from the brothers?”
“The Copsy Door has formed, true and sure, as you predicted, master, and will no doubt last the day before slipping off again. The brothers have been hiding it behind the baffle screen as you instructed and will continue to honor their agreement in every respect. Once you find a way inside, then it’s a full quarter for them of whatever is within.”
“To which their response was?”
“Nothing but the happiest of smiles, master, and an idle remark that perhaps a third share would mark you as a benefactor to watch. They are actually stalwart, good-natured fellows, clearly maligned in the tales of those who do not know them as well as you or I.”
“Indeed. You told them I am wary of any of the tricks for which they are also known?”
“Just so, master. They are not too sure of what ‘wary’ means in the sense you use it, but they said that it was always good to have the full measure of one’s skills appreciated.”
“You said nothing else?”
Diffin shook his loose-jowled head. “Only that my name was Diffin, in the event they had forgotten and there was a gratuity on offer.”
“They said nothing else?”
“Nothing. I would have written it on my slate. Ah, wait. Now I remember. That they would hope to expect you at mid-morning.”
“What! It is that now! Diffin, you are far too lax!”
The creature pulled at his long chin as if deep in thought. “Perhaps I wrote it down and the slate is faulty. That would explain much.”
“Perhaps you will benefit from fetching my Holding Book so we can refresh our memories on the more instructive aspects of Genial Compliance.”
“But, master, there is no time! While tidying up, I took the opportunity of placing that least kind of books safely in the west tower library to give it a change of outlook. Also, as you well know, the book is so heavy and now resides at the top of a very tall bookcase. Would it not be better if I saved you the trouble and made recompense by staying here and keeping a sharp and dutiful watch for strangers and vagabonds approaching?”
Amberlin turned, regarded the wonder of a golden sun in the clear blue sky of aeons past. “Through the Clever Window, of course?”
“Oh yes, master. There are erbs reported out by Callow Tree. If they dare come this way, then they will look so much friendlier under a yellow sun.”
CLOSE BY the confluence of the Scaum and the River Tywy, the archmage Eunepheos the Darke had once built the splendid shadow-manse of Venta-Valu, an edifice of cunning pentavaults and intricate schattencrofts, the whole set under six fine dormers crowned with ghost-chasers and spin-alofts in one of the classic styles of Grand Motholam.
The centuries had been kind to the structure, all things considered, but following Eunepheos untimely vanishment into the Estervoid, supposedly at the hands of his great rival Shastermon, steadily, inevitably, the cohesion spells had spoiled and Venta-Valu had fallen into ruin. The intricate shadowforms were soon plundered by visiting adepts and shadow-factors, and much of what remained was leached away by shadow-wights and other creatures drawn to compressed darkness, so that, by the 21st Aeon, the residence was little more than a handful of glooms and hollows scattered along the riverbank, too insubstantial to bother with.
Except for whatever lay behind the Copsy Door. Eunepheos had been as wily as any of his fellows, and had installed what appeared to be a particular cellar or basement that remained both sufficiently corporeal and yet resistant to all attempts at entry. Sealed by a here-again, goneagain Copsy Door calibrated to the protracted time-values of its maker’s favourite requiem, it was set into the embankment well above the Scaum, as if left as a deliberate taunt to the greedy and the curious.
Amberlin believed he finally knew the way in.
Now, studying his reflection in the Safe Mirror as he prepared himself for his journey, he was by and large pleased with what he saw. He was in his final years, no doubt, like the old sun itself, but was still impressively tall and certainly formidable-looking in his dark green robe set with old-gold frogging, maiden-thread serentaps, and gilt curlicues. His long grey hair and stylish tripartite beard held by its three opal clasps still had enough flecks of black, and he liked to think his eyes were bright with resolve and old-world cunning rather than an excess of brandywine, rheum, and too many late nights spent reading in front of the fire. He felt as ready for the Door and the brothers with their interminable schemes as he could ever hope to be.
And while Amberlin knew better than to let the Copsy Door be the sole answer to his troubles, hope remained the only meal worth having these last few decades. If not this, then what else was there? Nearly a century before, at the full blush of his powers, he had known upwards of fifty spells and cantraps. He could recite them from memory—the intricate syllables and pronunciations uttered just so—even the most exacting convolutes, glossolades, and prattelays, with no need of spell books or prompt lists, no reliance on the often fractious, sometimes duplicitous sandestins and daihaks in his employ to whisper embarrassing reminders.
But then, even as years and failing memory had worn those fifty-plus spells down to a zealously guarded twelve, Amberlin had experienced his worst of days.
In the workings of an ancient feud, specifically a longstanding dispute over the ownership of a particularly fine gossawary tree in the Robber Woods, that spiteful parvenu Sarimance the Aspurge had blighted him with Stilfer’s Prolexic Inflect, so that the syllable patterns of every spell Amberlin then uttered, every conjuration that he could still remember, were tweaked, spoiled, and sent awry in some way or other: by a lengthened vowel here, a protracted consonant there, a sudden diaresis shift or interogative. Something once as trivial as renewing the Genial Compliance on Diffin—an utterance of seconds—now required an hour of careful concentration, while only rarely did a spontaneous conjuration prove effective in any way.
What an embarrassment to engage in that trifling exchange with Tralques at the Iron Star Inn that day and then, having invoked his greatest display spell, Aspalin’s Fond Retrieval, being left to explain why he had countered the upstart’s dazzling conjuration of a troupe of performing silver dryads with nothing more than a lowly earthenware teapot reciting bawdy ballads from the Land of the Falling Wall. What an agony to escape the deodand at Wayly Corners, then from his refuge in the tossing heights of a lamplight tree see his Astemic Sunderblast turn an entire hillside into yellow flowers with softly chiming wind-bells. The deodand had either been discouraged by the sheer novelty of the display, or had more likely wandered off out of boredom, but Amberlin had been left to justify to neighbors and curious passers-by why he had preferred to stay aloft swaying in the breeze for four hours instead of simply blasting the creature outright.
The whole affair had given Amberlin a not altogether unwelcome reputation for subtlety, capriciousness, and new-found stoicism. Some even called him, and never entirely in jest, Amberlin the Philosophe, and drew pleasing if somewhat off-handed parallels with his fabulous namesakes, Amberlins I and II, two of the mightiest after Phandaal in all the long history of Grand Motholam. It could have been worse.
But Amberlin knew it was only a matter of time before the spiteful Sarimance, that upstart Tralques, the Anto brothers themselves, or even that wilful mooncalf Diffin brought forth the various bits and pieces they knew and saw how