“Wasn’t magically locked,” Ser Deirdre said. “They had me check.”

  “Good finds, all the same,” Aefric said, giving Sers Temat and Vria a smile. “In fact, let’s get everyone’s reports, staring with the left side of the first floor.”

  “We found servants’ quarters,” Ser Arras said, including Ser Leppina in her report. “Simple beds. Simple chests full of simple clothes. Nothing hidden or concealed, except the sorts of small treasures that the poor servants should probably have gotten to take with them.”

  “She means a silver-plated comb here,” Ser Leppina said, “a pewter bracelet with a garnet in it there. That kind of thing. Little of it worth much, apart from sentimental value.”

  “The hall did lead to the kitchen, as well,” Ser Arras picked up. “That was more interesting. Big enough to cook for maybe … sixty?”

  “I thought eighty,” Ser Leppina said.

  “Eighty then,” Ser Arras, said, shrugging one shoulder of her full plate armor. “Some of the food’s turned by now, but there’s still plenty good in the pantry. And the stairs down look like a wine cellar and probably more storage, but we didn’t check.”

  “Figured we should get permission to leave the floor,” Ser Leppina chimed in.

  “And you were right to do so,” Aefric said. “Just in case. Anything else?”

  “Not really,” Ser Arras said. “Staircase going up, but that’s it.”

  “Bedding for how many servants?” Ser Yrsa asked.

  “Thirty or so,” Ser Arras asked Ser Leppina.

  “Sounds right,” Ser Leppina agreed. “Not private rooms though. Six rooms with five bunks each, and oak chests for personal belongings.”

  “The main castle servants then,” Ser Beornric said. “We’ll likely find some better servants’ quarters on an upper floor for your grace’s valets and the like.”

  Aefric nodded, then turned his attention to Sers Wardius and Micham.

  “We had the double-doors on that side,” Ser Wardius said.

  “A music room with a harpsichord,” Ser Micham said, “as well as three harps set up as though they’re always there and ready.”

  “Out of tune though,” Ser Wardius said. “The harps, I mean. The harpsichord’s fine.”

  “Closet in there,” Ser Micham said, “with more instruments.”

  “After that, a sort of family museum,” Ser Wardius said. “Two large rooms on either side of the hall. Both decorated with weapons and armor, paintings, tapestries, sculptures. A few important edicts. That kind of thing.”

  “Magic light always on in those rooms,” Ser Micham added. “And we found a hidden … no, a concealed door behind a tapestry. It was locked, so we didn’t try it.”

  “After that, four guest rooms,” Ser Wardius said. “Pretty nice, considering they’re single-room affairs. Copper tubs and wash basins. Feather beds. Calinwood armoires, and the like.”

  “I thought I found a hollow spot along the outer wall in those rooms,” Ser Micham said.

  “You did find a hollow spot,” Ser Wardius confirmed. “Just because we couldn’t find a catch or groove or anything, doesn’t make that wall solid.”

  “No, that makes sense,” Aefric said. “There’s probably a series of hidden passages in this castle, like the servants’ backways at Water’s End and Behal.”

  “Or at the very least,” Ser Yrsa said, “a spyhole, for watching guests.”

  “Ugh,” Aefric said with a grimace. “You think so?”

  She gestured to the … aggressive tapestries decorating the walls of the great hall. “Don’t they seem the type?”

  “I suppose they might,” Aefric said.

  “That’s all we found on the left side,” Ser Wardius said.

  “We found several rooms used for storage,” Ser Temat said. “Furniture for this room, for different kinds of events. Small stages. Tables and chairs. A lectern. That kind of thing.”

  “Hard to check for secret passages in those rooms,” Ser Vria said. “We’d have to start moving furniture, and that would take a while.”

  “Yeah,” Ser Temat said, shaking his head. “I don’t know what organizational system they used, but it doesn’t make sense to me.”

  “We’ll leave that for the servants to straighten out,” Aefric said.

  “The end of that hall led into the kitchen as well,” Ser Vria said. “Arras and Leppina were already in there, though, so we left them to it. Which was pretty much all there was to see down our hallway.”

  “Your grace already heard about the magic light in the museum rooms,” Ser Deirdre said, picking up her turn. “Apart from that, two of the weapons on the walls have magic to them. A spear and a gladius.”

  “Gladius?” Ser Beornric asked in disbelief. “No one’s used a gladius in five hundred years.”

  “Not in this part of Qorunn, at least,” Ser Yrsa agreed.

  “Must by why it’s on the wall and not in a scabbard,” Ser Deirdre said, shrugging one shoulder.

  Interesting that her leathers didn’t creak when she moved.

  She turned her attention back to Aefric.

  “Their magic isn’t exactly impressive. Hardly noticeable. Given how old that gladius must be, they’re probably fading.”

  “The spells would only fade if the enchantments were done wrong in the first place,” Aefric said.

  “Again,” Ser Deirdre said, “probably why they’re hanging on walls, and not in hands.” She shook her head. “No other magic on that side of the castle.”

  “All right,” Aefric said, “let’s go see about these hidden doors and magic weapons.”

  Sers Wardius and Micham led the way, and Aefric had them lead to the guest rooms first. While they were doing this, Ser Beornric sent Sers Vria, Temat, Arras and Leppina to check out the stairs leading down from the kitchen.

  Aefric asked Ser Deirdre to accompany them, checking for magic.

  The guest rooms were on the low end of nice, when it came to accommodations for nobles, just as his knights had described them. The copper for the tubs and basins was finely hammered. The calinwood armoires well built and polished.

  The walls and ceiling were plastered and painted a dark red. The floor wasn’t plastered, but the much of the white stone was covered with rugs of woven rushes that had long-since lost their sweet scent.

  No windows but arrow slits, which Aefric just found weird for guest rooms. Even the room he’d been given at Forest’s Edge by recalcitrant Count Ferrin had good windows.

  Then again, that room hadn’t been on the first floor, either.

  Ser Deirdre was right that there was no magic in here. Candles and oil lamps for light, ordinarily, though at the moment the spells on the weapons of Sers Yrsa and Beornric cast more than enough light for the guest rooms.

  The hollow spot that Sers Micham and Wardius had spoken of was within arm’s reach of the armoire. So Aefric looked where his knights hadn’t thought to, and found the catch just behind the armoire, near the floor.

  A panel of wall silently slid aside, revealing a narrow hallway running both directions.

  “All right,” Aefric said. “Once we’re ready to continue, I’ll want everyone following these secret passages, opening every door they can find. The hidden doors will be much easier to find from that side.”

  “Good,” Ser Yrsa said. “That tapping on walls thing was going to drive me mad.”

  “I’ll remember that,” Aefric said with a smile. “Now. Let’s see about those weapons.”

  The two museum rooms made Aefric feel wistful.

  Not because of the contents. They were uniformly martial. Each painting and tapestry depicted some great battle or other. Often victories, but apparently the Hrafntonn family — their names were on little placards below each piece of art — even commemorated great defeats.

  And like the tapestries in the great hall, the art did not stint on blood.

  Even the sculptures were not simple busts of great members of the Hrafntonn line. They were full-body works, complete with armor and weapons.

  No, it wasn’t the nature of the work that made Aefric feel wistful. It was seeing all of it so clearly in the bright perpetual light of the spells here.

  Dusty. Forgotten.

  Aefric might’ve found the art as distasteful as the dust on his tongue, but no doubt every piece of art in here evoked pride in the Hrafntonn family.

  “Your grace,” Ser Beornric said. “Did you wish to see the concealed door or the weapons first?”

  “The concealed door,” Aefric said. “Better find out if it leads to the same secret passage as the ones in the guest rooms.”

  “Doubtful, your grace,” Ser Wardius said. “It’s on the wrong wall.”

  Sers Wardius and Micham moved aside a tapestry featuring a vicious battle with those hideously fishlike humanoids known broadly as the sea devils.

  They were right. This was on a short, side wall. Not the long wall, where the secret passage was. Plus, it was visibly a door. Regular brown oak, against the dark smoke gray paint on the plaster of the walls.

  Hardly the sort of thing used to hide the entrance to something like a servants’ backway.

  Aefric used the Brightstaff to check it for traps.

  “Clear,” Aefric said to Ser Beornric, who began trying keys.

  He grunted in surprise when one of them turned in the lock.

  The knights readied their weapons, just in case.

  Ser Micham pushed open the door.

  Storage room, with more armor and weapons. More paintings. Even a few more sculptures.

  No magic in there. And Aefric gave the room a quick spell-check to determine that there were no doors in there, secret, concealed or otherwise.

  “All right,” Aefric said. “The magic weapons are across the hall, I take it?”

  “Yes, your grace,” Ser Micham said. “This way.”

  If anything, the art on this side of the hall was even bloodier. Aefric didn’t waste time studying it. He already had an idea about what he wanted to do with the contents of these two museum rooms, and it didn’t involve studying the art.

  The spear and the gladius, though, drew his attention immediately.

  The spear was old enough that its haft was worn down, and its head was fashioned from bronze, not steel.

  The gladius was steel, but it was visibly old steel. Before more modern techniques had refined the process.

  And yet, both the spearhead and the gladius looked razor sharp and ready to do damage.

  But that shouldn’t be the case. Not if they were old magic weapons that hadn’t been enchanted right in the first place. They should have been notched, or at least scuffed.

  His knights clucked disappointment in the two weapons. Muttered about archaic designs, and the drawbacks they personally saw in each.

  Aefric considered the possibilities. What it might mean that these two weapons looked old in some senses, but battle ready in others…

  Aefric tuned out his knights. His gut fluttered with excitement. He fought to tamp it down. Yes. If he was seeing what he thought he was seeing, these two weapons were a find. But still.

  He had to be sure.

  Aefric slipped quickly into the kind of meditative state he’d never normally trust while exploring a strange keep. But this keep was unoccupied. if his knights couldn’t keep him safe here, where could they?

  He slid his awareness out of himself and into the flows of magic inherent to Qorunn. And from there into…

  …yes. The spear first. It was older. It was more likely…

  No.

  No conclusions. Too early for conclusions. What mattered now was investigation.

  He followed the flows of magic first around the spear, starting from the spearhead and then down along the haft.

  The feel here was right. The natural magics of Qorunn moved around this spear almost the way they’d move around a normal weapon.

  Almost. But not quite. Here and there, they bent towards the spear. Flowed along its length. Shifted through it, even.

  Good. Very good.

  And once Aefric’s attention returned to the spearhead, he noticed that the shifting and flowing was more pronounced here. As though the local magic were … not pulled, per se, but inclined to move through the spearhead, rather than around it.

  Oh, this was looking even better.

  Aefric finally moved his awareness inside the spear itself. First along the haft, for comparison.

  And here, most notably, Ser Deirdre was right. The haft felt almost as though it had no magic at all. So little that a rushed magic-user might overlook it completely. And an apprentice definitely would.

  Yes. Exactly what Aefric was expecting there.

  Now into the spearhead…

  Hah!

  There was no core of enchantment here at all! Oh, magic was flowing through it. Not a lot, true, but some. But not because some magic-user had lain spells upon it, casting them during the forging process so that weapon and spell became one.

  Oh, no.

  Nor were these dweomerblade weapons, which came to develop enchantments through their constant use in spellwork that suited their design and purpose. Developing as their wielder developed.

  Uh uh.

  If Aefric was right — and he’d need probably a full day of study to be sure he wasn’t missing something — this spear was becoming magical.

  Slowly, yes. Very, very slowly. And yet, without the spells or even the guidance of a single magic-user.

  This weapon’s history and regard were so strong that, over time, the ambient magic of Qorunn itself had begun to enchant it.

  If Aefric was right, given another hundred years, this spear would be superior to any mundane spear, no matter the brilliance of its design, the quality of its materials, or the skill of its maker.

  Three hundred years, and other magic spears would be hard pressed to stand against it.

  Five hundred or a thousand years? This spear might become a thing out of legend.

  Aefric forced himself to calm.

  But by the time he confirmed that the same was true of the gladius, he started babbling like a loon before he was even fully aware of his surroundings again.

  “…don’t you understand?” he said, not yet checking to see who might be listening. “This family is so warlike and so reverent to its past that this reverence is literally making two ordinary weapons magical!”

  The audience turned out to be all his Knights of the Lake, plus Sers Yrsa and Deirdre.

  “Over the course of a thousand years,” Ser Yrsa said. “Your grace will understand, I trust, if I care little about a weapon that won’t see any power at all until centuries after I’ve died?”

  All of his knights seemed to agree. Even Ser Deirdre.

  “I should’ve brought Karbin along,” Aefric grumbled. “He’d get it.”

  “The stairs in the kitchen,” Ser Yrsa said, “appear to lead down into storage cellars. Nothing more interesting than that.”

  “Though the quality of some of the alcohol is interesting to some of us,” Ser Deirdre said. “They have entire casks of ishka, your grace. Still aging. They must have a distillery nearby.”

  “As well as plenty of wine, beer, and more,” Ser Yrsa added.

  “Yes, but the ishka,” Ser Deirdre said, earnestly enough that Aefric laughed.

  “Well,” he said, “we’ll see about the ishka later. For now, let’s go back to the great hall, and hear about the right side of this castle.”

  Back in the great hall, still lit by Aefric’s spells on the iron chandeliers, the knights arranged seating, along the right-hand wall. Ornate single chairs for Aefric and Sers Beornric and Yrsa, and two elaborate benches for the other knights.

  Furnishings that looked great, but weren’t as comfortable as the ones he was used to from Water’s End.

  The spot his knights had chosen was central along that wall, which made it conveniently close to all three passages leading out into that part of the castle.

  Unfortunately, this also left them under a particularly graphic depiction of some Hrafntonn patriarch or other holding up a pair of longswords while standing on a pile of dismembered and disemboweled borogs.

  Blood was everywhere. On the swords, the armor, all over the corpses and whatever hilltop lay beneath. Even the skies above seemed to be bleeding, though that was probably just because the sun was setting in the scene.

  The face of the patriarch, of course, was clean except for a single artistic streak of blood on his cheek, that clearly wasn’t from any wound of his.

  Aefric had to fight down an urge to set fire to the damned thing.

  “All right,” he said. “Who wants to go first?”

  “Why don’t we, your grace,” Ser Yrsa said. “The others should know what we found. It might even shed some light on their own discoveries.”

  Aefric nodded, and let his knight-advisers describe everything they’d found on the other side of the concealed door behind the dais. The false doors. The stairs up to a guard post. The handle-less door at the back, which had to be the same as the hidden door they’d found beside the gardens.

  And perhaps most important, the hidden room, where the lords of the castle could hide from invaders.

  Unfortunately, nothing about that concealed passage seemed to resonate with anything the others had found.

  “We found a guard post,” Ser Micham said, including Ser Wardius with his report. “Just inside the first door. After that, the hall looks like a guards’ area. A couple of small quarters with two bunks each, and wooden chests. A pretty good-sized common room with couches and a round table. Cards, dice, that kind of thing.”

  “After that, a small armory,” Ser Wardius added. “Decent selection of weapons and armor. Opposite that there’s even a small forge. Though it doesn’t have nearly enough ventilation.”

  “That’s because the forge is enchanted,” Ser Deirdre added lazily. “Sucks away the smoke and fumes.” She smiled at Aefric. “Nifty bit of work. I think they may have a bound air elemental handling things. But if so, it must be tiny. Can’t get a fix on it.”

  “I’ll check it out in a bit,” Aefric said. “What else?”