The guardsman looked uncertain, but he came, holding the torch high. “What’s going on?” he demanded. “Who are you?”
Calling himself Chairman of the Council probably wouldn’t mean anything to this man; if Hanner was right, he had been in Aldagmor since before the Council was created. Still, Hanner thought he knew a name the man would recognize and respect. “I’m Lord Faran’s nephew,” he said. “I’ll explain the rest later — I’m sure there are a lot of people here who don’t understand. For now, we just need to make sure everyone’s safe.”
“Lord Faran? From Ethshar of the Spices?”
That caught Hanner off-guard. “Yes, from Ethshar of the Spices,” he said. “Where are you from?”
“Ethshar of the Rocks.”
“Ah. Well, we’re in Aldagmor, in the Baronies of Sardiron, right now, so I don’t think it matters which of the three Ethshars we’re from. Here, see if you can get more torches lit without setting the grass on fire — it’s cold and dark, and some of these people may be in trouble. We need light, and we can probably use the heat, too.”
“Yes, my lord,” the soldier said, raising a hand in acknowledgment. He turned toward the heart of the crowd.
Hanner, on the other hand, was still heading away from the center, to make room, to get some breathing space, and to see if he could find a better vantage point. He was also looking for the woman who had been shouting. The more level-headed helpers he could find, the better. As he moved he pushed people in various directions, trying to get them spread out, and kept calling instructions.
“Chairman Hanner!” someone called, and there she was, the woman who had been shouting. She was a little on the short side and appeared to be at least fifty; her hair was graying and her face lined. He felt a twinge of jealousy; he hadn’t made it to fifty before being Called, but only into his late thirties, despite trying to avoid doing any strong magic.
He hadn’t been very successful at avoiding it. His position as chairman had required him to use magic sometimes, and his own natural tendency toward sloth had contributed as well — it was so much easier to fly than to walk, or to use magic rather than arms and legs to lift and carry. A warlock spark was so much more convenient than flint and steel, and making the air glow worked better than a lantern. Especially when his children were young and constantly demanding attention, warlockry had just been so handy that he had used it constantly, even though he knew he was inviting the Calling.
He had thought the Calling meant death. He smiled wryly. It seemed they had all been wrong about that part.
In fact, remembering the soldier and looking around, he wondered just how many warlocks had actually died in all those years. Not many, he guessed. Warlocks didn’t die of old age; they were always Called first. They generally didn’t die of disease or injury, either; their magic could be used to heal. A few had managed to get themselves killed, by other magicians or by assassins, but most had been Called and vanished into the mysterious depths of Aldagmor.
“Hai,” he said. “Who are you?”
“My name is Sensella of Morningside,” the woman replied. “I was Called about a day and a half ago.”
“I’m sure we all think it’s just been a day or two —” Hanner began.
“No, Chairman,” Sensella said, interrupting him. “I never reached the...the...that pile. I got here the same time that big glowing thing did. I wasn’t caught in the guarding spell the way everyone else was.”
“Oh? Then I’ll want to talk to you, but for now I think we need to concentrate on everyone’s safety. We need to get them out of that...where the thing...”
“Out of the pit,” Sensella said. “I agree. What can I do to help?”
Hanner turned to look and assess the situation. Things seemed to be more under control now; he no longer heard actual screams, though there were still shouting voices, and someone was crying somewhere.
“We’ll need fires to keep everyone warm,” Hanner said. “Shelter, and water, and food. Are there any farms nearby?”
Sensella looked at him with an expression he hoped to never see again, as if he had not merely failed her, but had failed her so stupidly it amounted to betrayal. “Chairman, we’re in Aldagmor,” she said. “No one has lived within miles of this place for thirty years!”
“Thirty?”
“More, really. Thirty-four. You were Called a long time ago.”
A sudden realization burst upon him. “But my wife...”
Hanner was interrupted by a sudden blaze of light. As he turned he thought at first that that fool soldier had started a grass fire, but then he saw just how bright the light was, and that it was coming from somewhere high up, and he thought that perhaps that glowing thing had returned.
Then he saw the black-robed man hanging in mid-air, glowing like a bit of the sun, and his mouth fell open.
“I don’t understand,” Sensella said from beside him. “I thought the magic was all gone!”
“Our magic is gone,” Hanner said. “This is something else.”
“A wizard, maybe?”
Before Hanner could reply the glowing man spoke, and his voice was magically amplified until it was as loud as thunder.
“I am the Emperor Vond,” the apparition said, his words rolling across the crowd and echoing from the surrounding hills. “I am the absolute master of the southernmost part of the Small Kingdoms, and as you can see, I alone, out of us all, am still a warlock. It is by my magic that I built my empire, and by my magic that I rule. I am going to return to my realm now, and I wish to return in a manner befitting my station — with an honor guard. Any of you who swear fealty to me will accompany me to my empire, where you will be given positions of authority under my rule. If you wish to join me, simply raise your hands above your head!”
“By all the gods,” Hanner said. “Who is that? What’s he talking about?”
“Don’t raise your hands,” Sensella said. “I’ll explain later.”
Hanner had no good reason to trust Sensella, but he had no reason to trust this Vond, either; he kept his hands by his sides.
Hundreds of others, though, were less restrained, and as each pair of hands rose, the owner of those hands rose as well, soaring up into the sky to hover a dozen feet below the self-proclaimed emperor.
Others shouted questions or protests in a variety of languages, but Vond ignored them; he simply lifted his new followers skyward, one by one.
After about eighty or ninety, by Hanner’s estimate, they began to rise less steadily, and not as quickly; he guessed that this Vond was reaching the limits of his power. Not long after, people stopped rising at all; the remaining raised hands were ignored.
“Farewell,” Vond said, his voice booming out in a thoroughly unnatural fashion.
And then he, and his hundred or so volunteers, flew away southward, leaving Hanner, Sensella, and thousands of others in the cold darkness of Aldagmor.
Chapter Four
Kelder of Radish Street had gone to bed early after a long day moving furniture, but he had been asleep for less than an hour when he was awakened by a loud thump. His head jerked up and his eyes sprang open.
The room was dark; he rolled out of bed, found the shutters by feel, and opened them, letting in what little light the surrounding city and the greater moon provided. So far as he could see in that dim glow, nothing looked out of place; he was alone in his attic room, just as he should be, and the furnishings seemed undisturbed.
Then he heard a scraping, and what he thought might have been a moan, and realized that the sound came from above. Someone, or something, was on the roof.
He turned to the window, pushed the shutters back, and opened the casement. He leaned out and looked up, but the eaves extended out too far for him to see anything above. Cautiously, he climbed up on the windowsill, hooked his left arm around the window frame, and leaned out further, craning his neck to see over the eaves.
“Help,” someone said weakly, and the sound guided his eyes.
“What’s going on?” Kelder called.
“I don’t know,” the woman answered, her voice thin and unsteady. “I fell.”
Kelder glanced around, confirming what he already knew — old Tarissa’s boarding house was the tallest structure on the block. There wasn’t anywhere this person could have fallen from other than the sky.
That meant magic was involved. The black clothes probably meant she was either a warlock or a demonologist, but witches or wizards sometimes wore dark colors, too.
“Are you hurt?” Kelder asked.
“I think so,” the woman answered.
“Can you move?”
There was another scraping, and she inhaled sharply. “It hurts when I try,” she said. “I think something’s broken.”
Then she wasn’t a warlock; even if for some reason her magic had not protected her from the fall, a warlock could mend broken bones. For that matter, Kelder had heard that witches could block pain and do some healing, so she probably wasn’t a witch, either. He didn’t see a flying carpet or any other devices, but if she was a wizard, a failing levitation spell might explain her presence. Still, it didn’t seem the most likely possibility. “Are you a demonologist?” he called, looking around for anything that might be flying near. “Did a demon drop you here?” He did not want to climb out there and find some horror from the Nethervoid waiting.
“No. I’m a warlock,” she said.
“But...” Kelder was confused. “But then how... Why can’t you move? Why can’t you heal yourself?”
“I don’t know!” she said miserably. “I was flying, and then I wasn’t — it was as if my magic just disappeared.”
Kelder had never heard of anything like that. Magic didn’t just disappear unless a magician wanted it to. Oh, there were stories about places where wizardry didn’t work — there were rumors that the overlord’s palace in Ethshar of the Sands was such a place, ever since that madwoman Tabaea, the self-proclaimed empress, had died there — but warlockry wasn’t like that. The only places it might not work were out at the edges of the World, too far from the source in Aldagmor. Here in Ethshar of the Spices, it worked just fine.
He looked at the injured woman, lying helpless on the roof tiles, and then looked down at the street four stories below. There was no way to get her in through his window safely, not if she was really hurt, and there was no door or trap opening onto the roof.
“I’ll go get help,” he said. “Is there some other warlock I should ask to come get you?”
“Maybe. Where am I?”
“You’re on the roof of a boarding house on Old Market Street, in Hempfield.”
“Hempfield? I don’t know anyone in Hempfield.”
“That’s unfortunate. Let me see if I can find someone. I’ll be back as quickly as I can.”
She made a noise that he didn’t think was intended to be words, and he carefully lowered himself back into his room. Then he paused to think.
The obvious solution would be to find a ladder and get a couple of people up there to carry her down, but Kelder didn’t know anyone with a ladder long enough. No, they needed a magician.
Hempfield was not exactly the Wizards’ Quarter. There were three herbalists in the neighborhood, if one defined “neighborhood” broadly, and a few blocks to the north lived a witch of dubious reputation by the name of Kyrina of Newmarket, but the nearest warlock Kelder knew of was a journeyman calling himself Berakon the Black, who had a place on Locksmith Alley in Allston. Kelder was not at all sure Berakon could even fly — he had located his shop in Locksmith Alley because he earned most of his living working with locks and other small hardware — but he was a warlock and only about a dozen blocks away.
Kelder pulled on his tunic and boots, grabbed a jacket, and headed out the door.
He called a brief explanation to the landlady on his way, but did not take the time for more. The sooner he found help for that poor woman, the better.
Ten minutes later he was at Berakon’s tiny shop — or really, his stall; it was a single room, barely wider than its double doors and perhaps ten feet deep. Kelder had wandered past it several times and looked it over, so he was familiar with its appearance. He knew he had the right place.
But it was closed. The doors were shut and secured by a large brass padlock.
Kelder frowned. Locksmiths usually worked late, since people found themselves locked out at all hours, but Berakon’s stall was definitely closed. He hurried to the much larger but non-magical locksmith’s shop next door.
A bell jingled as he opened the door, and the proprietor looked up from a disassembled mechanism.
“Where’s the warlock?” Kelder asked. “There’s an emergency.”
“He closed up a few minutes ago,” the locksmith said. “Said he wasn’t feeling well. He asked if I knew a good healer witch.”
Kelder blinked. That didn’t make sense. “A warlock not feeling well?”
The locksmith grimaced. “I know, but that’s what he said.”
Kelder shook his head. “What did you tell him?”
“I sent him to Alasha of the Long Nose, up on Superstition Street.”
Superstition Street was another four long blocks to the south, toward the Arena. Kelder was not eager to range that far from home.
“Thank you,” he said. “Do you know of any other warlocks around here?”
“Around here?” The locksmith shook his head. “No.” He hesitated, then asked, “What’s going on? Why do you need a warlock?”
“One fell out of the sky and is stuck on my roof,” Kelder said. “She says her magic stopped working. I thought another warlock could get her down and maybe figure out what was wrong.”
The shopkeeper studied him for a moment, then said, “Berakon borrowed a padlock.”
Kelder had been trying to decide whether to head for Superstition Street, or back to the boarding house, or maybe to Warlock Street in the Wizards’ Quarter, so he had not really been listening.
“What?” he said.
“Berakon borrowed a padlock,” the locksmith repeated.
“I’m sorry, I don’t see...” Kelder let the question trail off.
“He never needed a padlock before,” the locksmith explained. “If he went out, he used his magic to weld the doors shut, and then undid it when he got back. I didn’t think he really needed to lock it at all, because who would be stupid enough to steal from a warlock? But he did it anyway, every time. Until tonight, when he asked me if I knew where he could find a witch, and then borrowed that lock from me.”
Kelder stared at him.
“You think they both lost their magic,” he said. He tried to think how that could happen. Might there be some contagious disease that stole a warlock’s magic? He had never heard of such a thing, but that didn’t mean it couldn’t happen.
“Maybe,” the locksmith said. “Maybe they did. And maybe it’s not just the two of them. I mean, warlockry just appeared out of nowhere on the Night of Madness, didn’t it? That’s what my mother told me. I was just a baby, so I don’t remember it myself.”
“I wasn’t even born,” Kelder said, “but yes, that’s what I always heard.”
“Well, maybe tonight it just stopped, as suddenly as it started.”
Kelder started to protest, then hesitated.
Why not? Maybe it had just stopped.
If so, then there wasn’t any point in looking for other warlocks. He needed some other way to get that poor woman off the roof. What other magic might work?
Well, wizards had various ways to fly or otherwise reach inaccessible places, but wizardry was expensive. A demonologist could probably get her down, but they were dangerous. Kelder wasn’t about to hire a demonologist without a much better reason than this. He had no idea whether a theurgist, or a witch, or a sorcerer, or some other sort o
f magician could do anything to help.
Maybe he had been hasty in deciding magic was called for in the first place. He had never seen a ladder tall enough to reach that high from the ground, but couldn’t it be set on the roof next door?
“Thank you,” he said. He dropped a copper bit on the counter, then turned to go.
Rander the house-carpenter had some good ladders. Maybe he could help.
Lador the Black was leaning over the girl’s sickbed, systematically sweeping the poisons from her blood, when suddenly he could no longer sense anything beneath her skin at all. He could still see her face, her brow slick with perspiration, and the soft green blanket tucked up to her chin. He could hear her labored breathing, smell the foul odor of illness, but everything below the surface had vanished.
His head felt strange, almost empty. All the things he normally perceived that ordinary people could not were gone — including that nasty, insistent murmuring that he knew would someday have drawn him away to Aldagmor. His hand, which he had been holding over her chest for dramatic effect, was no longer glowing; the only light came from the oil lamp on the shelf over the bed.
He blinked and straightened up, confused.
“Something’s wrong,” he said.
“What?” the girl’s mother asked. “What is it?”
“I don’t know,” Lador said.
“Is she worsening?”
Lador shook his head. “No,” he said. “No, something’s wrong with me.” He looked down at the girl, who seemed to be breathing a little easier. “She’s no worse. I think I helped her a bit. But...something is wrong. I can’t do any more. I’m sorry; you’ll need to find someone else.”
“But you said you could cure her!”
“I thought I could,” Lador said. “I’ve seen this kind of fever before, and I’ve cured it, but this time...” He frowned. “I’ll return your fee, of course.”
“But what about Larsi?”
“You’ll need to find another magician,” he said. “Perhaps a witch would do better.”
As he spoke, he had been trying several little experiments — trying to extinguish the lamp, trying to move the blanket, trying to lift himself off the floor, trying to warm his hand.
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