“So you’re saying,” Ser Deirdre said, frowning, “whatever he kept in here was more valuable than his grimoires and his enchanted research equipment?”

  Aefric nodded.

  She whistled. “Makes you wonder.”

  “Question for another time,” he said, and nodded to the door.

  There were indeed stairs behind that door.

  They checked the roof, then, but it was empty. Aefric and Ser Deirdre checked for illusions as well, but found none, nor anything that had been rendered invisible and left behind.

  They trooped back down the stairs then, and after Aefric spell-locked the door to the roof, they began checking the secret passages of the sixth floor.

  Aefric insisted they check the areas away from the spell-locked door that masked latent magic first, just to be certain that they missed nothing.

  They missed nothing. The secret passages up here were just as tight and dusty as those of the other floors. And just as empty.

  Finally, Aefric and his knights found themselves standing at a second spell-locked door. One that had to lead into the same room as the spell-locked door on the sixth floor landing.

  Two doors among the secret passages. Both of them spell-locked, by the same wizard who’d trapped the treasury, and cast other spells that had been causing problems. A wizard Aefric now knew as Larus Hrafntonn.

  Two spell-locked doors. Both leading into a room where Aefric could sense latent magic, but no details.

  In the back of his mind, Aefric couldn’t help wondering about the curse Larus Hrafntonn had left for him…

  “Which door?” Ser Yrsa asked, breaking Aefric from his reverie about wizards and curses.

  “Pardon?” he asked.

  There was only the one door in front of him here, after all, in the cramped, dusty secret passage on the sixth floor.

  “I’ve been keeping a rough layout of this castle in my head,” she said. “And finding the secret passages has been a big help with that, I don’t mind admitting.”

  She pointed to the spell-locked door in front of Aefric. It just looked like an ordinary oaken door, like so many others in this castle. Style was a bit archaic, but otherwise unremarkable.

  “By my estimate,” she said, “with the exception of the escape shafts, very little of this castle remains unexplored. And what little there is holds some kind of latent magic, and lies between two doors. This is one of those doors. The other is also among the secret passages, on the landing above the stairs from the fifth floor.”

  “You think there’s a tactical advantage to choosing one door over the other?” Aefric asked.

  “It stands to reason,” Ser Yrsa said. “If we’re expecting a physical fight, as with the skeletons, this is the better position. We won’t be ceding high ground. But if the threat is magical, the stairs might provide a safe haven for your grace while we enter.”

  “I trust,” Ser Beornric added softly, from beside Aefric, “that your grace won’t dispute our entering first.”

  All around Aefric, knights were nodding agreement.

  “The only question,” Ser Yrsa said, “is what kind of threat we’re expecting.” She gave Aefric a frank look. “Your grace has had a chance to examine different spells cast by this Larus Hrafntonn. What manner of curse should we expect? How will it manifest?”

  “I can’t tell from here,” Aefric said. He raised his free hand before Ser Yrsa could object. “I’m not suggesting entering first. I’m merely saying that the best attack is unexpected, yes?”

  Ser Yrsa nodded stiffly.

  “Which means that Hrafntonn’s curse won’t be illusion, or skeletons, or anything resembling that fire trap he’d laid on the treasury. In fact…”

  Aefric confirmed once more that the door in front of him was real, and untrapped.

  “There’s no trap on the door at all.”

  “Then may I open it, your grace?” Ser Deirdre asked.

  “Not this time,” he said, and over Ser Yrsa’s rising objections he spoke louder. “I’m not arguing for entering first. But right now I can’t tell anything about that latent magic except that it’s there, and it’s not a trap. I should undo the spell lock myself, to make sure that nothing in the spell lock has the chance to connect to or otherwise activate that latent magic.”

  “Or,” Ser Yrsa said, “we send for Karbin and have him do it. Or does your grace not trust the skills of his chosen court wizard?”

  “Of course I do,” Aefric said. “But sending for Karbin would be an adventurer’s solution, not a duke’s.”

  “I doubt that a great deal,” Ser Yrsa said.

  Aefric chuckled.

  “On the one hand, my general, you’re not entirely wrong.” He smirked. “As an adventurer, I’d likely try that spell lock myself.”

  “Then what does your grace mean?” Ser Beornric asked, before Ser Yrsa could reply.

  Aefric thought he saw recognition in Ser Beornric’s eyes. Perhaps he understood Aefric’s point. Or was close to it.

  “I have a reputation here in Kivash,” Aefric said. “Frozen Ridge saw to that, if nothing else. What will happen to that reputation if I balk before a single spell cast by Larus Hrafntonn?”

  “Word will get out,” Ser Beornric said softly. “It always seems to.”

  “Pro-Malimfar factions here in Kivash will use it as a rallying point,” Ser Yrsa said, disgustedly. “They’ll try to dismiss what happened at Frozen Ridge as a fluke, or exaggeration.”

  “Exactly,” Aefric said. “They’ll make Ashling’s life harder. They’ll push to bring the Hrafntonn family back, which means fighting to keep my new castle. And it may make me a more likely target for assassins, if my enemies see me as vulnerable.”

  He put a hand on Ser Yrsa’s shoulder and looked her in the eye.

  “I need to be able to leave here, laughing at the ‘feeble’ magic of Larus Hrafntonn.”

  Ser Yrsa shook her head, and sighed harshly.

  “Your grace is right, of course,” she said. “Though it pains me to see him risk himself.”

  “I’ll undo the lock,” he said. “But I’ll stop there.”

  “Wait,” Ser Yrsa said. “The question remains. This door? Or the other?”

  “This one,” Aefric decided.

  “Why?” Ser Yrsa asked. “I know it’s the closest, but is there another reason?”

  “We wouldn’t start hunting for secret doors on this floor. We’d start as we did, on the first. Which means that we had five whole floors to find the hidden passages. And since those tend to be the best way into rooms, it stands to reason that we’d progress just the way we did, following the secret passages instead of the main hall.”

  “So we’d come to the other door first, on our way up from the fifth floor,” Ser Yrsa said with a nod. “Meaning it’s the door he expected us to take. This one would be precautionary.”

  “I believe so, yes,” Aefric said.

  “All right then,” she said with another nod, but a quirked smile. “So long as your grace has a tactical reason beyond convenience.”

  “Don’t knock convenience,” Aefric said, smiling. “It definitely has its place.”

  Ser Deirdre stayed near at hand as Aefric approached the door, but she didn’t crowd him this time.

  “I have an idea, your grace,” she said softly.

  “What?” Aefric asked.

  “I’ve disarmed one of this man’s spell locks before,” she said. “Should be easy for me to do now. Perhaps I could disarm the lock, while your grace studies its magic and prepares to counter anything it tries? Or, if necessary, severs any ties to the latent magic?”

  “That … makes sense,” Aefric said quizzically.

  “I take risks with my life, your grace,” she said with a small smile. “Not yours.”

  “All right,” Aefric said. “Give me a moment to prepare, then begin.”

  Aefric relaxed through a deep breath, and shifted his focus outward through the flows of Qorunn’s magic.

  Looking at the door this way, he could now see the structure of the spell lock as an ornate mandala of red and black coruscating energies.

  It had no ties to anything outside itself. Whatever that latent magic beyond the door was — and the spell lock prevented Aefric from sending his attention past it — that latent magic was unrelated to the spell lock.

  Ser Deirdre began casting then. Her hand, waving as though boneless. Her sigil burning the air maroon, leaving the smell of burnt blackberries in its wake.

  Seen this way, Aefric gained a much stronger sense of Deirdre’s magic. Its nature was as playful and clever as the woman herself. She used magic the way she used her rapier — even that sigil was, in its own way, a work of feints and tricks, setting up the kill…

  “Hah!” Ser Deirdre cried out and thrust her hand through the sigil’s center.

  Its power rained down on the spell lock, hitting seven different weak spots at the same time.

  The spell lock sparked, flared, and came apart in a trail of red and black.

  “Anything?” Ser Deirdre asked cautiously.

  “No,” Aefric said. “The lock is gone, and it didn’t trigger anything else. Well done.”

  But Aefric’s attention was past the door now, to the latent magic that he could sense more clearly, without the spell lock obscuring it.

  Aefric could tell now that the latent magic was the work of Larus Hrafntonn. Which meant that on the other side of this door had to be the curse.

  For safety’s sake, Aefric agreed to resume his position back down the secret passage and closer to the middle of the group. Thus, he allowed Sers Deirdre, Yrsa and Beornric to enter the room ahead of him, while the Knights of the Lake handled rear guard, just in case.

  Didn’t mean he had to like it. All the years Aefric had spent as an adventurer had given him a real taste for exploration. He didn’t like having to let others make sure a room was “safe” before he entered it.

  Cost of being a duke. At least the perks were nice.

  A thought that made Aefric smile. After all, this very castle was a “perk,” and one he wouldn’t have gotten to explore at all, were he still just an adventurer.

  At the front of the group, her rapier in hand and limned in that dark red light, Ser Deirdre opened the door and stepped cautiously inside…

  Moments later, her disappointed voice.

  “Empty,” she said. Aefric could hear her scuff the dusty floor with her boot before continuing, “Just a servants’ waystation.”

  Sers Yrsa and Beornric entered, their weapons shining with the white light of Aefric’s spells, letting him see in as well.

  Sure enough, it looked like a small servants’ waiting room. A simple wooden couch. A bed. Two small tables with one chair each. Did have a small, enchanted stove in the corner, perhaps for keeping food hot without fire, and a cabinet full of different kinds of alcohols, along with glasses and silver serving trays and utensils.

  “Seems safe enough, your grace,” Ser Yrsa said, though she sounded uncertain on that point.

  Aefric entered.

  The room was small, hardly big enough for the four of them, while they had their weapons out. And it didn’t look to Aefric as though it was intended for its current use. Too small. Too … odd a location. Especially on a floor that had more than one servants’ waiting…

  On a hunch, Aefric tested the bed with a hand.

  It was soft. Feather stuffed, with silk sheets.

  He started laughing. “It’s a trysting room.”

  “It is?” Ser Deirdre took another look around, then gave a chagrined smile and shook her head. “How did I not see that?”

  “Doesn’t matter,” Aefric said, turning his attention back to a more serious matter.

  The latent magic.

  There was some kind of spell here, just waiting to be activated.

  And it felt like Larus Hrafntonn’s magic.

  “All right,” Aefric said, tracking the feel of the latent magic to the white stone wall across from the bed. “The latent magic is here somewhere. And it feels like Hrafntonn’s work.”

  Ser Deirdre immediately interposed herself between Aefric and that spot on the wall.

  “Deirdre?” he asked.

  “It’s latent, your grace,” she said. “Which means the curse hasn’t hit yet. Let it hit me first.”

  “Ridiculous,” Aefric said. “Stand back, and let me figure this out.”

  “And if the trigger is someone investigating the magic?” Ser Yrsa asked.

  “It’s not a…”

  Aefric made the mistake of speaking while casting, and discovered he’d spoken too soon. His trap detection spell seemed to be reacting to that spot on the wall, where the latent magic was.

  And yet, the spell wasn’t quite responding right.

  Seen through the many images of the facets in the Brightstaff’s yellow diamond, a trap should have looked solidly red in multiple facets.

  But…

  Some of the facets made the wall look innocent. Untrapped. But that was consistent with the spell, because the pattern of the facets — which were red and which a normal yellow — helped differentiate types of physical and magical traps.

  The images that glowed red this time, though, were the problem. They should’ve stayed red. Solidly. But they didn’t. They seemed to ease in and out of red.

  But that made no sense at all.

  “Something’s off,” Aefric said, and before he could say anything further, Ser Deirdre twirled her dagger, leaving a maroon trail in its wake.

  The illusions broke. And it was plural, because there were multiple levels of illusion here.

  First, the “trap” responses to Aefric’s spell all vanished, and that one section of wall looked clean in every yellow image.

  Second, the sense of Larus Hrafntonn’s magic was gone from the remaining sense of the latent magic.

  Third, that section of wall was now etched with writing, some of which was covered by a parchment note.

  Aefric had to give Hrafntonn this much. The man had a creative mind, when it came to illusions.

  Ser Deirdre gave Aefric a proud smile.

  “Noticed the illusions the same time your grace did,” she said. “Hope your grace doesn’t mind my taking care of them. Hrafntonn’s illusions follow the same kind of structure as his spell locks. Easy, once you’ve handled a couple.”

  “Deirdre,” Aefric said with a half smile, “I could kiss you.”

  “Your grace should, of course, follow his instincts in all things,” she said with a playful smile.

  Ser Yrsa cleared her throat.

  “Killjoy,” Ser Deirdre said.

  “More important matters concern us than your libido, Deirdre,” Ser Yrsa said.

  Aefric turned his attention then to the note.

  Dear Usurper,

  Congratulations. You have found your doom. And it has been written by an even greater wizard than myself. My hands may have carved the letters you see before you, but my master himself inscribed the scroll I used to seal your fate.

  Well, that would be consistent with the sense of the latent magic now. It had a vaguely familiar feel, but was definitely not the work of Larus Hrafntonn.

  A spell scroll would explain that. They tended to carry the feel of the magic-user who created them, not the magic-user who used them.

  Aefric continued reading.

  If you’ve any skill at the Art, you’ll note that the curse feels latent. As it shall, while it lingers above your head, becoming active only in the instant that it strikes.

  As I cannot expect you to read a language so old and forgotten as that of the curse, I shall do you the favor of translating.

  The words read:

  “Woe to you, oh fallen.

  How days wither you like years.

  How your spells fail, as though forgotten.

  How red now, your bloody tears.

  Death circles you. Your body fails.

  Your spirit weak. Your future pales.

  Soon only foulness shall remain.

  And forgotten be your deeds and name.”

  On Midwinter I shall activate this curse. You shall be dead before the new year dawns.

  You possess one and only one chance to avoid your fate. Contact me at Svarturvigi. Deal fairly with me for my grimoires.

  Do this, and I shall give you the secret to shattering the curse. Do it not and die. Painfully.

  This I swear.

  Larus Hrafntonn

  Aefric read the note three times, but the message didn’t get any better.

  “May I, your grace?” Ser Yrsa asked.

  Aefric handed her the note.

  She read it aloud.

  And suddenly all his knights were talking and shouting and at least one pair of hands grabbed Aefric and tried to spirit him away.

  “Stop!” he shouted, though his voice went unheard over the din of ideas and concerns.

  Aefric smacked the butt of the Brightstaff against the white stone floor, causing the hands to release him and a thunderclap to boom in the tight confines of that room.

  In the echoing silence, Aefric said, “I’m not going anywhere.”

  Silence reigned in that little room for a moment after Aefric’s proclamation.

  No wonder the little trysting room had felt so crowded. Sers Micham, Temat, Arras and Vria had wedged in among the furniture, and Sers Wardius and Leppina hovered in the doorway.

  Sers Yrsa and Beornric were closest. Apparently they’d been the ones to grab him, one hand each, intent on hauling him bodily out of the room.

  Ser Deirdre, meanwhile, had her weapons out and glowing red, over beside the words graven into the wall.

  “Ser Deirdre, stop right there,” Aefric ordered.

  “But, your grace, perhaps I can—”

  “I said stop.”

  She bowed her head and lowered her weapons. Though her expression was as determined as ever. Aefric suspected she’d already sworn to herself to find a way to save him from the curse.

  “Your grace,” Ser Yrsa said, “we must get you out of here. We must call for Karbin. Your grace cannot deny now that he needs aid in facing this curse.”