The Unwelcome Warlock loe-11

by Lawrence Watt-Evans

  “I suppose he might.” She sighed. “The thing Hanner’s trying to retrieve from that wizard? I don’t know what it is, but it’s supposed to help accommodate some of these homeless warlocks somehow.”

  It was reassuring to hear that Hanner was aware of a potential problem and trying to address it, but Sterren would have been happier if he had some idea just what Hanner had in mind. “Those people in the parlor — they seemed pretty intent on something. Do you know what they’re talking about?”

  “Last I heard, they were making plans to find a tailor and get some clothes, if they could figure out a way to either pay him or arrange credit.”

  Sterren looked at Rudhira’s own attire; she was wearing an embroidered white tunic and a good green skirt, but both had clearly seen better days. “What about you? Do you have any other clothes?”

  “None of us do, Sterren,” she said, picking up a pea-pod. “We were Called, and I have never heard of a Called warlock taking the time to pack.” She snapped the pod open, and flicked the peas into the bowl. “I was living here when I was Called, and I’ve already looked — there’s nothing of mine in the closets. I doubt anyone remembers what happened to my clothes after more than thirty years, and I doubt they’d be fit to wear in any case, and really, I wouldn’t want to wear them.”

  There was definitely some history here he was missing, Sterren thought.

  She tugged at her white silk tunic. “This isn’t really mine,” she said. “Hanner’s uncle kept clothes here for his women, and I borrowed these. All those clothes are gone, too, or hidden away somewhere; except for Zallin’s, the closets and wardrobes are empty. I used money from the Council’s treasury to buy this food, so we would all have something to eat tonight, but I didn’t take any for myself, for clothes or anything else. That’s a matter for another day.”

  “I see,” Sterren said. “You’re sure you have no family to help you?”

  “I had no family before the Night of Madness. I doubt one magically appeared in my thirty-year absence.”

  “Oh.”

  Some of these former warlocks probably did have family or friends who would help, and just hadn’t found them yet, but Rudhira was surely not the only one who was genuinely alone in this new World. The magic Hanner had gone to recover might be something that would locate missing relatives, but that wouldn’t take care of everyone.

  Vond wasn’t going to like this; Sterren was fairly certain of that. What he would do about it remained to be seen. He had declared himself Chairman of the Council of Warlocks, so he might feel responsible for helping these people — or he might just dump them all in the Hundred-Foot Field.

  Or in the harbor.

  “Is there any word from Vond or Zallin?” he asked.

  Rudhira shook her head.

  Sterren wasn’t sure what to make of that. Vond had wanted to look at the city, and see what had or hadn’t changed in his absence, but Sterren had expected him to get bored quickly and come back. That clearly hadn’t happened. He must have found something interesting.

  He could be out there somewhere in the midst of a magical duel with witches or wizards, or tearing apart his old neighborhood looking for mementos of his childhood, or plundering the shops on Extravagance Street.

  In fact, he could be anywhere — not just anywhere in the city, but anywhere in the World. He might have decided that Zallin made a better aide than Sterren, and flown back to Semma. He might have headed for Tazmor intent on rebuilding the Northern Empire, or out to the edge of the World to take another look at the poisonous yellow mists that lay beyond. Vond could be whimsical, and had the power to do anything he pleased.

  This, Sterren thought, might be a good time to disappear into the streets of Ethshar — except that he didn’t know where his own family was. Emmis hadn’t heard anything from them yet. Lar Samber’s son had sent a very brief message, saying he was on his way and would meet with Emmis as soon as he reached the city, but that was the only word Emmis had received from the empire since Vond’s return.

  Still, Sterren could find himself a place of his own, rather than staying here with these former warlocks. He could keep in touch with Emmis until Shirrin and the children arrived. Vond didn’t know anything about Emmis, so he couldn’t use that connection to track Sterren down.

  In fact, Sterren was beginning to wonder why he had come back here at all. Things were going to get ugly here, one way or another, he was sure. Vond might massacre all these former warlocks, or he might pick a fight with the Wizards’ Guild, or with the city guard. If Vond didn’t start any trouble, the Guild might, or some other magicians — and then there was the Cult of Demerchan. Sterren strongly suspected that Demerchan would try to assassinate the emperor; he had told Emmis as much, and instructed him to cooperate with Demerchan should the opportunity arise. It wasn’t that Sterren especially wanted Vond dead, but he was certain that sooner or later, Vond was either going to kill people or get killed, and Sterren thought it would be better if Vond died without taking anyone else with him. The legends said that Demerchan hardly ever killed or injured anyone other than the intended targets.

  “I think I might go out for another walk,” he said.

  Rudhira glanced at him, but did not bother to reply before returning to shelling peas. She was almost done.

  “If his Majesty asks, I’m not sure when I’ll be back.”

  “I doubt the emperor will deign to speak to me,” Rudhira said. “If he does, I’ll tell him that.”

  “Thank you,” Sterren said. Then he turned and headed upstairs to get his baggage — or some of it, anyway; he couldn’t carry the trunk by himself, but he could get the rest.

  If anyone asked, he told himself, he could say he was going to take a room at an inn to make more space for warlocks. He hoped no one would ask.

  At least none of these people would have magic to tell lies from truth; that was a talent found among witches, not warlocks — though wizards and theurgists also had slower, less direct methods of detecting falsehoods.

  He remembered that Hanner had said Ithinia didn’t want any more warlocks around, and wondered if she had talked to any witches about it. There were stories about witches being able to partially suppress warlock magic, and even muffle the Calling. In the fifteen years since Vond’s departure Sterren had done quite a bit of quiet research into the nature of warlockry, more for his own sake than because he had ever expected Vond to return, and had heard several accounts of witches interfering with warlockry. Some warlocks had reportedly gone as far as hiring witches to block the Calling, but it had never worked for more than a few days; it was exhausting for the witch, and grew steadily harder over time, so that sooner or later the spell would slip and the warlock would be gone.

  Sterren had never had to worry about the Calling; he simply wasn’t that powerful a warlock. He was barely a warlock at all. He had toyed with the idea of hiring witches to see if they could suppress his own ability completely, perhaps reverse what Vond had done to him, but he had never followed through; there were too many risks.

  He knew that no witch had ever managed to undo the transformation that made someone a warlock in the first place. Every so often an apprentice warlock would have second thoughts, especially if his master began having the nightmares that were the first real sign of the Call, and want to back out of becoming a warlock, but it couldn’t be done — warlocks couldn’t undo the change without killing the apprentice, witches couldn’t reverse it, wizards’ restorative spells couldn’t touch it. Theurgists said the gods couldn’t even see warlocks, so they couldn’t help.

  That was all moot now that there were no more warlocks — or it would be, if not for Vond and his second source.

  But witches’ limited ability to suppress warlockry might be useful somehow in dealing with Vond. Ithinia had probably thought of that.

  It wasn’t his problem, Sterren reminded himself. He had himself and his family to worry about, and other people could deal with warlocks and witches and e
mpires for now. He slung one bundle on his left shoulder and carried the other in his right hand as he hurried down the stairs and out of Warlock House.

  The temperature was dropping, and the sky was gray and threatening; Sterren thought it might rain, or even snow, in another hour or so. He turned west on High Street, heading back toward Emmis’ office in Spicetown, but not before taking a quick glance around. He pretended not to notice the gargoyle perched on the house across the street, a gargoyle that had never been there before. He ignored the spriggan that clung to the iron fence and stared at him. He paid no attention to the shimmer in the air above Warlock House, and in fact, he wasn’t sure just what sort of magic that might be — sorcery, perhaps?

  And he genuinely didn’t see the woman who was loitering by the gate. Where it was Sterren’s idea to ignore the other signs of magical attention, it was the woman’s decision not to be seen. She wasn’t actually invisible; rather, she simply made sure that Sterren never quite looked at her. It wasn’t a talent witches bragged about, but it was a useful one, and Teneria of Fishertown was good at it.

  If Sterren had seen her, though, he would have been relieved to know that a witch was there, taking an interest. The more other people concerned themselves, the less responsible he felt he needed to be, and he really did not want the responsibility of dealing with Vond.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Hanner did not want to knock, but he forced himself to raise his fist and rap his knuckles on the door. He hated being back here on Mustard Street. He did not want to see Mavi again — at least, not so soon, and not under these circumstances, when he was still in the same clothes and had done so little to make a new place for himself. The heavy overcast and cold wind that soured his mood did not help.

  He had no choice, though, if he wanted to provide a refuge for former warlocks. Arvagan had been very definite — the tapestry had been Hanner’s property, and had therefore been delivered to his heirs when he was Called. It had been brought to Mavi at Warlock House, and Arvagan had no idea what happened to it after that. “You’ll have to ask your wife,” he said.

  “Ex-wife,” Hanner had answered, and the wizard had turned up an empty hand.

  “Ex-wife, then,” he said. “I gave it to her, and haven’t seen it since.”

  It could have been worse, Hanner told himself as he waited for an answer to his knock. At least Arvagan had still been operating the same shop, and had remembered the tapestry in question. The tapestry hadn’t been destroyed, so far as the wizard knew, nor sold.

  And it wasn’t raining yet.

  The door opened, and Mavi was standing there, but Hanner barely had time to recognize her before he was almost knocked backward by someone else shrieking, “Hanner!” and throwing her arms around him. “You’re alive!”

  “Ah,” he said. “Who?” He looked down at the plump, dark-haired woman embracing him, her face buried in his shoulder. She lifted her head to look up at him, and he exclaimed, “Nerra!” She was heavier than when he last saw her, and her face was showing signs of age, but it was unmistakably his sister.

  “Hanner,” she said, hugging him again. “We thought you were dead for so long, and then there were stories about warlockry not working, and the Called coming back, so I came to ask Mavi if she had seen you, and here you are!”

  “Here I am,” he agreed, hugging her back. “It’s good to see you.” He decided not to mention that from his point of view, he had seen her — a much younger her — scarcely a month ago.

  “What’s happened?” Nerra asked, raising her head and releasing her hold. “And...you haven’t changed! You look so young!”

  “I...” He hardly knew where to begin. He looked over his sister’s head at Mavi.

  “Hello, Hanner,” she said. “I wrote them out for you.” She reached over to a table by the door and held up a sheet of paper.

  “What?”

  “The children’s addresses. Isn’t that what you came back for?”

  “Oh — actually, no,” Hanner admitted.

  “Then what? You didn’t know Nerra was here, did you?”

  “No, I didn’t,” Hanner said, looking back to his sister. “That was a pleasant surprise.”

  “Then what did you want?”

  Mavi and Nerra were both staring at him in a most distracting manner — Mavi, who he would have expected to be affectionate if not for last night’s events, looked downright hostile, while Nerra, who had never been very demonstrative of family feeling, looked almost adoring. Hanner could not get his thoughts sufficiently in order to answer.

  “I see you didn’t bring your whore with you,” Mavi. “Did you think I might reconsider taking you back?”

  “She’s not my whore,” Hanner protested. “She’s a fellow Called warlock. And I’m here on behalf of other Called warlocks — I need to know what happened to the tapestry I commissioned.”

  Mavi’s stare changed from hostile to puzzled. “The one that got you Called?” she asked.

  He started to argue that the tapestry hadn’t been responsible for his Calling, but caught himself before a single word escaped. It had gotten him Called, after a fashion, by letting him lower his guard, and besides, that didn’t matter anymore. “Yes,” he said. “That one.”

  “We put it in storage with your uncle’s old things. I didn’t want it, and I thought maybe the Council would find a use for it someday. I thought maybe they could figure out what went wrong, why it didn’t work the way you expected.”

  Again he was tempted to argue, since the tapestry had worked more or less as he had expected, but he resisted. “In storage? Where?”

  “In the house on High Street, of course. Up on the fourth floor.”

  So it had been right there in Warlock House all along? Or perhaps not — there was no telling what the Council might have done with it in the seventeen years since his Calling. “Where?” he asked again.

  “I can show you,” Nerra said, before Mavi could reply. “Alris and I helped sort through your belongings after you...after you left.”

  Startled, Hanner said, “You did? You can?”

  “I’d be happy to. It will give us a chance to talk.”

  “I’d like that,” Hanner said. “Thank you.” He turned to Mavi. “I’m sorry to have troubled you.”

  He was caught completely off-guard, as completely as when he had emerged from the tapestry world into the attic of Warlock House and been hit by the renewed Calling, when Mavi burst into tears. He stood, silent and helpless, as she sobbed; he wanted to reach out for her, to comfort her, but she was no longer his wife; it wouldn’t be right. He started to reach toward her anyway, before he could stop himself, but she pulled away. He felt a tightness in his own throat, and a stinging in his eyes; he blinked.

  Nerra turned to Mavi, and gave Hanner a shove. “Wait outside,” she said, stepping back into the house and closing the door.

  Hanner waited, trying to regain his calm. He looked up and down Mustard Street, hoping he didn’t appear too suspicious or out of place. No one seemed to pay him any particular attention; the street was not very busy, and the people he saw were intent on their own business, walking past without giving him much more than a casual glance.

  Then the door opened again — not fully, just enough for Nerra to slip out, a piece of paper in her hand. “Here,” she said, handing it to Hanner. “Those addresses.”

  “Thank you,” he said, accepting the list. “I...Is Mavi...”

  “Terrin’s comforting her. The sooner you get away from here, the better — shall we go?”

  He had to blink away tears again. “Yes,” he said. He let Nerra take his elbow and turn him away from the door, pointing him toward North Street.

  He wanted to turn back, to go back to Mavi, but he knew he shouldn’t. He let Nerra guide him.

  “Alris will want to see you, too, you know,” Nerra said conversationally. “And your children, of course. It’ll be very strange for them, seeing you again — not as bad as for Mavi, o
f course, but...strange.”

  “Yes,” Hanner replied, not trusting himself to say more just yet.

  “The whole city is...well, it’s a surprise, having all you warlocks come back. No one expected it.”

  “I know,” Hanner said. “Thousands of us.”

  “None of you can do magic any more, is that right?”

  “Almost none,” Hanner said, without really thinking about what he was saying. “The ones who were witches or theurgists before the Night of Madness got their old magic back. And...”

  He stopped himself before mentioning Vond. He wasn’t sure whether Ithinia, or Vond himself, wanted it generally known that the emperor was in the city.

  “So you spent seventeen years trapped in some cave in Aldagmor?”

  “Not a cave,” Hanner said, still not paying much attention to the conversation. “A crater.”

  “I’m surprised most of you didn’t go mad from boredom.”

  “What?” That distracted Hanner from thoughts of Mavi. “No, no. We were all trapped in a preservation spell — we weren’t conscious. It was like being asleep, or in a trance. To me, that seventeen years passed in an instant; it feels as if I haven’t been gone even seventeen days.”

  “A preservation spell? So that’s why you look so young?”

  “Exactly.” He glanced at her, taking in the lines on her face, the sagging here and there. She had been thirty-five when he last saw her, and now she was...fifty-two? Was that right?

  She was older than he was now — how very strange! He had gone from being the oldest of the three siblings to the youngest.

  “Tell me all about it,” she said. “About the Calling, and your release, and coming back to Ethshar, and all of it. I’ve heard stories, but they were all third- or fourth-hand; you can tell me what really happened.”

  Hanner took a moment to gather his thoughts, then said, “Well, I’d commissioned a Transporting Tapestry because I hoped to find a place warlocks could hide from the Call...”

  By the time he had told her the entire story they were walking up the slope of Coronet Street, scarcely a block from the front door of Warlock House. Telling the tale had distracted him from the emotional turmoil of his encounter with Mavi.