The spell hadn’t been cast by any magic-user Aefric knew. He could tell that much. And that included those who’d done the spells he’d encountered so far in Hrafnvigi.

  No, this was something different.

  But what was it? A secret cache? A teleportation link? Something else entire—

  Damnation. Why did he have to think of teleportation?

  Aefric sat back and sighed.

  “I’ve found something,” he called out to the other room.

  Sers Yrsa and Beornric entered quickly, weapons drawn.

  “There’s magic here,” Aefric said, pointing out the spot on the wall. “Old magic. Not a door or a trap. Beyond that I’m not sure yet.”

  “We should send for Karbin,” Ser Yrsa said at once.

  “Wait,” Ser Beornric said, his free hand raised. “How can you be certain it isn’t a trap?”

  “Because I checked for traps yesterday. I would have found this, if it were.”

  “But could your spell have found this? Neither you nor Deirdre sensed it then, so maybe your trap detecting spell missed it?”

  “Not the way that spell works,” Aefric said, shaking his head. “It will detect traps, even if they have other qualities I can’t sense. Same with doors. So it’s neither.”

  “Still—” Ser Yrsa started, but Aefric cut her off.

  “And I’m not summoning Karbin to deal with this,” he said. “I need him at Water’s End, doing what he’s doing. Besides, I’m here, and I’m not exactly a slouch at magic.”

  “I didn’t mean to imply that you were, your grace,” Ser Yrsa said smoothly. “Only that your grace selected Karbin to serve as court wizard because as skilled and knowledgeable as your grace may be when it comes to magic, Karbin is more so.”

  “Nevertheless. Unless it proves to be beyond my skill to figure out, I’ll handle this without him. This is my castle now, and my mystery to explore.” Aefric frowned, looking around. “In fact, this is my treasury now, and I want it organized.”

  Aefric cast the wizard’s valet, and set it to properly sorting the chests of mixed coinage and gemstones.

  Sers Yrsa and Beornric looked at each other, likely not quite sure what to make of Aefric’s abnormal tone. But surely they couldn’t expect him to simply defer to others for everything.

  “And now,” he said, “I’m going to figure out this strange magic I’ve found.”

  Investigating that little bit of old magic in the Hrafnvigi treasury was like…

  It was like trying to look head-on at something Aefric could only see out of the corner of his eye.

  It was like trying to hear a single soft sound in the middle of a battle.

  It was like trying to smell a faint hint of roses in a field of manure.

  It was like trying to distinguish between the tastes of two specific grapes, after he’d already bitten into a whole handful.

  In short, it was a demanding effort.

  A proper wizard would probably have had a very thorough and systematic method for sifting through what Aefric could tell about that strange magic, so that each detail added a small piece to a greater puzzle. Likely, with enough time, the wizard could then step back and examine the puzzle — mentally filling in any gaps — until he understood the image, and thus, the magic.

  But Aefric was a dweomerblood. His approach to magic was far less rigidly organized, and far more intuitive and organic.

  That was often a great help to him.

  This time, it seemed to be a hindrance.

  A wizard might be able to glean information from the position of the spell, its age, the precise amount of power. And likely a wizard could make subtle adjustments to his perceptions with each pass, eliminating possibilities to what he was seeing until what remained had to be the answer.

  Alas, Aefric couldn’t work that way.

  In fact, for the longest time, all he could tell was that there was magic there. Filling the space of about the length and breadth of his hand, there, where the white stone wall joined the floor. Not much. Just a faint bit.

  He passed his perceptions over and over and over that spot. Trying to gauge the structure of a spell his attentions couldn’t quite grasp.

  If he could discern even a single quality, he might be able to use that quality as a link to allow himself to learn more, and eventually puzzle through the whole of the magic involved.

  When Aefric finally caught his break, he almost didn’t notice it.

  The spell had a temperature.

  Magic could sometimes feel hot or cold to Aefric. Yes, often that had to do with the element of the spell involved — fire magic felt hot and ice magic felt cold — but sometimes it had to do with the amounts of power and the spell’s purpose.

  A spell cast to manipulate someone often felt warm. But a soothing kind of warmth. A spell intended to defend against attack, often felt a little cold. As though from the breeze created by a barely missed strike.

  After a good deal of time feeling as though he were trying to clutch fog — albeit with magic and not his fingers — Aefric came to realize that the room about him was moderately warm, compared to what was likely a hot day outside.

  And the spell, like the room, was moderately warm too. Room temperature.

  That was unusual.

  A spell that carried no sense of temperature was no less common than one that carried a sense of heat or cold.

  But one that felt the same temperature as the room around it?

  Only one kind of magic ever felt that way to Aefric.

  The magic of clay and stone.

  There was a whole branch of wizardry devoted to the magic of clay and stone. Its adherents were known as vohlcairns. Aefric knew only a little of that kind of magic, but he knew some.

  And once he had a fix on that quality to his sense of that small bit of magic, he came to understand it a little. The walls, the floor, the whole of this castle was stone. The magic of clay and stone would need little power to do something here.

  So long as that something were small. Innocuous. Something that wouldn’t draw attention. Possibly something latent, waiting for a trigger…

  A hidden cache?

  No. Not quite…

  Now that Aefric understood that he was dealing with the magic of clay and stone, he was able to refine his attention.

  That frustrating little bit of magic wasn’t like fog after all. No. It was like the finest grains of sand, and that was by design.

  The natural way to understand a spell was to grasp it. But trying to grasp this spell would make it slip through Aefric’s metaphorical fingers.

  Now that he understood that, he was able to spread his focus and come at the spell as a whole, rather than trying to pick it apart.

  Picking a spell apart element by element was usually the best approach. But now that he knew more about what he was dealing with, Aefric could discern how to approach the whole of the spell so that he could do something closer to the equivalent of scooping up a handful of fine sand, rather than clutching it.

  Yes, the magic of clay and stone.

  Yes, just a small amount here. Just enough to…

  …to secret something away in this one stone?

  No. This was not a cache. Aefric had encountered caches made with the magic of clay and stone. They tended to run just a hair hotter than their surroundings.

  This spot, this was a keystone. For some kind of magic that underlay the entire structure of…

  No.

  Was this a self-destruct key? Could this spot be triggered to collapse the entire castle?

  No.

  Not quite.

  That felt close, but the temperature was wrong. A spell that could do that, even using the magic of clay and stone, would feel colder than the room around it.

  Besides, Aefric was pretty sure that the concept of “self-destruct keys” didn’t exist in Qorunn. All of his referents to the idea were from Keifer’s memories of Earth. And as Keifer he didn’t recall anything about “self-destruct” options from the Torn Kingdoms campaign setting.

  Of course, there was always the possibility that Del Baker was adding that to the sixth edition. But better to assume that this magic tied into something that already existed within the lexicon of Qorunn. Especially since it felt old.

  And the closest thing that Qorunn had to that idea were certain magic items that could be broken, explosively unleashing all their power at once.

  That … would feel hotter than its surroundings. Even if only in pulses above room temperature, to indicate the restrained power.

  So likely not a self-destruct option then.

  All right. What did Aefric know?

  He knew he’d found a place within his castle — a single spot within a hidden room — that contained a very old, very intricate, but apparently not very powerful enchantment. An enchantment of the magic of clay and stone.

  Wait. Was it not very powerful? Or did it seem to be a relatively weak enchantment because it was latent, as opposed to active?

  Any spell, while latent, could appear less powerful than it would while active. And if this was a keystone spell, as Aefric thought it, then perhaps it only needed enough power here to activate other key spots when triggered…

  A possibility fluttered through Aefric’s gut. Excitement tried to swell in his chest. He quelled both through a deep breath.

  This was either the oldest castle in the area, or the second oldest. And yes, the spell he was sensing, that could well be old enough for its magic to have been woven in with the construction.

  The word “construction” caused that flutter again, and Aefric suppressed it.

  There was a vague, background sense of magic to the whole of the castle. He’d noticed it before entering, and convinced himself that what he was sensing were wards. Light spells. All the other little magics that a castle like this tended to have.

  In fact, he’d started ignoring that background sense of the castle’s magic when they entered the great hall yesterday, and even here, today, he’d been ignoring it by reflex.

  But what if he’d been picking up a thread of magic woven through the whole of the castle itself?

  And if so, what if this little spot along the wall in this hidden room turned out to be the key to magics woven all through the castle’s structure.

  It made sense. Oh, it made sense.

  And if Aefric was right, then this whole castle was a brilliant bit of magic. An elaboration of Raend’s famous work.

  The great vohlcairn Raend had once developed an enchanted item he called the Instant Tower. It looked like a cube, no larger than a gaming die. But when activated, it expanded to become a four-story stone tower. Magical lights inside, enchanted servants, and the like.

  All the comforts of home, in a tower that could be carried in a pouch at one’s belt.

  Could this whole castle be an extension of Raend’s work?

  Raend himself had vanished one day, hundreds of years ago. And he’d never taught the secret of the Instant Tower to anyone. He’d made a dozen or two himself, but he’d never allowed anyone else to make one.

  But what if someone else had figured out the secret?

  Then again, if that were true — and this castle were built the same way as one of Raend’s towers — then there should have been magic light available in every room.

  So why the light spells in places like the museum rooms?

  Hrafnvigi was an old castle. Perhaps the keywords for the lights and magic servants had been lost?

  Maybe.

  Unfortunately, there were only two ways to know.

  He could try to activate the spell — which could be dangerous if he was wrong.

  Or he could try to compare it to one of Raend’s creations. But where could he—

  That tower here in town. The one where the wizard Relimmorea lived. Aefric had known there was something familiar about that tower.

  Now he realized why. The triangular windows and crenellations. That was why that freestanding tower had looked so familiar.

  Apart from the color of the stone, it was just like the Instant Tower he’d stayed three nights in down near Kesh, during the Godswalk Wars.

  That one had been inherited by its current occupant —one Baroness Helva — and strangely she hadn’t wanted to talk about how her family came to own it.

  So one of Raend’s towers was here in Kivash.

  Aefric needed to pay this Relimmorea a visit.

  When Aefric returned his attention to his body, his back was stiff and his legs were asleep from sitting cross-legged before a wall for far too long.

  Aefric rolled his neck around, listening to the pops and cracks of muscles and tendons too long inactive.

  “Can your grace hear me now?”

  Ser Beornric’s voice, long-suffering, from somewhere over Aefric’s left shoulder.

  “I can,” he said, rolling his chest now to ease the stiffness in his back. The tingling in his legs, he ignored for the moment. “All is well?”

  “You tell me,” Ser Beornric said. “Your grace has sat there staring at the wall for most of the day. We couldn’t rouse your grace for lunch. I had to talk Ser Yrsa out of sending for Sirondfar, to make sure you were all right.”

  Leaning on the Brightstaff, Aefric made his way to his feet and began shaking sensation back into his legs.

  “You were right not to. I was just … heavily involved in a magical investigation.”

  “And if something had gone wrong?” Ser Beornric asked, with dwindling patience in his voice. “Suppose we’d found ten times as many skeletons waiting for us on the second floor. How would we have gotten your grace’s attention?”

  Aefric looked up at the glowering knight.

  “You’ve covered the second floor already?”

  The glower intensified.

  “All right, all right,” Aefric said, waving dismissively. “If you’d shaken me, I’d’ve come out of my trance. I wouldn’t have been happy about it, though, unless there’d been a compelling need.”

  “So shaking you would have worked?” Ser Yrsa asked, stepping into the room. “Ser Deirdre said it would, but that might have been one of her jokes.”

  “No, she was right about that,” Aefric said. The pins and needles were gone now, but he really needed a bit of walking, to get his legs feeling right again.

  “Would slapping you have worked?” Ser Yrsa asked. “That was my idea.”

  It would have, but Aefric wasn’t sure that confirming as much was in his best interests. Especially not if Ser Yrsa did the slapping.

  “Shaking me would be better,” Aefric said. “More certain.” He raised an eyebrow. “And less likely to draw a … protective reaction.”

  Ser Yrsa gave Aefric a sinister lopsided grin. “Fair enough, your grace.”

  “What did today’s explorations yield?” Aefric asked, walking out into the main part of the accounting office, where the rest of his local knights all stood around by lamplight.

  “No traps or battles, today,” Ser Yrsa said. “Guest rooms, parlors, and the like. An armory, fully stocked, and so forth. But that wasn’t the most interesting thing. Beornric?”

  “Thanks to the hidden passages — which go all through the castle, your grace — we found the way into the back of the first floor.”

  Ser Beornric smiled. “It’s … a sybarite’s paradise, your grace. Sumptuous, for the most part, but also…”

  “Their tastes ran towards the kinky, your grace,” Ser Deirdre said, grinning. “Apart from the tubs and pools and overdone couches and beds and rooms full of pillows, they also had rooms set up like torture chambers. Except that all the cuffs and chains were padded to prevent chafing.”

  “Still bloodstains on the floor, though,” Ser Vria said, shaking her head.

  “As I said,” Ser Deirdre said with a shrug. “Kinky.”

  “But I thought Malimfar didn’t practice the noble privilege,” Aefric said.

  “Officially, they don’t,” Ser Beornric said. “Publicly they look down on us for it, and claim to practice celibacy before marriage and strict monogamy when married. But apparently, in private, they play by very different rules.”

  “Even that door near the garden,” Ser Yrsa said with a frown. “The unhidden door. It doesn’t lead to a gardening shed. It’s a separate entrance to the family … playrooms.”

  “Convenient,” Ser Deirdre said. “Someone could approach through the streets in secret, cloaked. They could knock on the small iron door at the foot of the hill. Be admitted, escorted by guards to that door, and then straight into the playrooms for a few hours, before being escorted out again.”

  “Assuming they were allowed to leave, afterwards,” Ser Vria said. “Some of those bloodstains were … prodigious.”

  “I’m sure I’ll find other uses for those rooms,” Aefric said.

  “Your grace won’t even try them out first?” Ser Deirdre asked.

  “Deirdre,” Ser Yrsa warned, and the dweomerblade bowed an apology that didn’t quite reach her smiling eyes.

  “I only meant that some of the tubs look as though they would serve your grace well,” Ser Deirdre said. “Their temperature can be regulated by keywords. And the fireplaces light with the right command word as well.”

  “Do you know the command words?” Aefric asked.

  “I’m not as good at ferreting such things out of spells as your grace,” Ser Deirdre said. “But I sensed the magic of them.”

  She frowned. “In fact, there was more magic back there than I expected. Some of which I couldn’t quite puzzle through.”

  That might make sense. If the castle were what Aefric thought it was, its heart would be someplace not easily accessible from the outside.

  Of course, the existence of that one door at the back of the castle would seem to indicate that the heart couldn’t be in the “family playroom” side of the first floor either.

  “Ser Deirdre, have you ever stayed in one of Raend’s towers?”

  “Never had the pleasure,” she said sadly. “I love the idea of them, though. A little cube you toss on the ground, then say the right word and bam!” She smacked her open hand. “Instant tower.”