The Unwelcome Warlock loe-11

by Lawrence Watt-Evans

  He didn’t say that, though; it wasn’t his business. Instead he said, “I wasn’t going to throw you out. I was worried that...that you might be missed.”

  “Anyone who missed me has had thirty years to get over it.”

  Hanner could not argue with that. Mavi hadn’t waited for him, and he had been gone only half as long as Rudhira. “There’s something I want to show you, up on the fourth floor,” he said.

  She eyed him suspiciously, and threw a glance at Nerra.

  “We aren’t going to hurt you,” Nerra told her. “We need a volunteer to test something, though.”

  “Something magic?” Rudhira asked. “And presumably dangerous, if you’re worried about whether anyone will miss me if I don’t come back.”

  “It’s magic, yes,” Hanner said. “It’s not exactly dangerous. I mean, it won’t kill you. Come upstairs, and I’ll explain.”

  “You don’t have to do it if you don’t want to,” Nerra assured her. “But we’d appreciate it if you at least took a look at it and gave it some thought.”

  Rudhira essayed a curtsey. “For you, Lady Nerra, I will take a look.”

  Together, the three marched back up the two flights to the fourth floor, and into the front bedroom where two dormer windows overlooked High Street, and Hanner’s Transporting Tapestry hung on the north wall.

  Hanner stepped aside as soon as he was through the door, and watched as Rudhira took in the hanging tapestry, its sunny colors so bright they seemed to glow, and the discarded old non-magical tapestry lying heaped on the floor. She glanced at the canopied bed and the twin night-stands badly in need of dusting, at the gold-edged ewer, the unlit oil lamps, and the other furnishings, and Hanner could see her dismissing them as irrelevant and focusing her attention on the magical hanging.

  “Is that what it appears to be?” she asked, standing well back and studying the scene from a safe distance.

  “It’s a Transporting Tapestry, like the ones the wizards brought for the people from the other two Ethshars,” Hanner replied. “If you walk up to it and touch it, you’ll step through into the place in the picture.”

  “That’s what you want me to test?” Rudhira frowned. “Where’s the difficulty? It either works or it doesn’t, right? Or is there some way it can go horribly wrong?”

  “I don’t think it can go horribly wrong,” Hanner said. “It worked fine seventeen years ago. But we aren’t completely sure you can get back.”

  “I can’t just turn around and walk back through it?”

  “No,” Hanner said. “It’s not there on the other side. You’ll be in an empty field, with no way to come back through this tapestry.”

  “I see,” Rudhira said. She looked over the tapestry, not moving any closer to the fabric. “You say it worked seventeen years ago? Someone went through it?”

  “I did,” Hanner said. “I wanted a place where warlocks would be safe from the Calling.” He gestured at the tapestry. “I found one, in there. But then I came back out, and was Called before I could tell anyone it was safe.”

  “So there is a way out?”

  “There was,” Hanner said. “We don’t know whether it’s still there, and still working, or not.”

  “Ah, and that’s what you want me to test?”

  “Exactly.”

  “And if it isn’t still there?”

  Hanner and Nerra looked at one another.

  “We hadn’t really thought that part through yet,” Hanner admitted.

  “We would find a way to get you back out,” Nerra said.

  “But it might take awhile,” Hanner said. “Possibly a year or more. Probably not that long, but it’s possible.” He hoped they would be able to find some other way to retrieve Rudhira if she became trapped in the tapestry’s world, perhaps by buying or borrowing an existing tapestry, but in the worst case, he would commission another new one.

  Paying for it might be a challenge, though. He hadn’t discussed money with Nerra yet, and while he was sure his family wouldn’t let him starve, paying for a new tapestry was something else entirely.

  Rudhira considered the blue sky, the golden sunlight, the green grass. Wherever that was, it certainly looked warmer than Ethshar was right now. “Tell me about the return magic,” she said.

  Hanner let his breath out with a sigh of relief; he hadn’t realized he was holding it. “You see those houses there?” he said, pointing.

  “They’re pretty,” Rudhira said.

  “Yes, they are,” Hanner agreed. “Well, in that one, on the right, there’s another tapestry — or there was, anyway. Arvagan’s apprentice hung it there seventeen years ago, and it brought me back to Ethshar. If it’s still there, and it works, it will transport you to the attic, right above us.”

  “Right here in this same house?”

  Hanner nodded. “Yes,” he said.

  “And if it doesn’t work?”

  “If you aren’t back in an hour, I’ll go talk to a wizard about the best way to get you out,” Hanner said. “We’ll use the Spell of Invaded Dreams to let you know what I learn.”

  “And if it does work?”

  “Then you’ll be back safely.”

  She looked at him with an unreadable expression. “I mean,” she said, “what are you going to do with this thing? Why is this so important?”

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” Hanner said, and barely prevented himself from adding, “I thought it was obvious.” He smiled. “This is somewhere all the Called warlocks can live. Those houses are empty — or they were seventeen years ago, anyway. It’s warm and sunny, there’s water from a lovely little stream just over the hill, the sea is over that way — it should be a fine place to live.”

  “Live?” Rudhira studied the tapestry again, her expression rather different; where before she had appeared to be peering closely, taking in every detail, now she seemed to be leaning back, looking for a general impression.

  “You’d be welcome to live there, if you want to,” Hanner said. “But please come back and let us know it’s possible, first.”

  “If you don’t want to risk it, we can find someone else,” Nerra said.

  “Oh, no, my lady,” Rudhira said. “I’ll try it. No need to risk anyone else.”

  “That’s not what —” Hanner began, but before he could finish the sentence Rudhira had stepped forward, hand outstretched. He started forward instinctively, intending to stop her, even though this was exactly what he had wanted her to do.

  But then her fingers touched the cloth and she was gone, leaving Hanner and Nerra alone in the unused bedroom.

  For a moment, the two of them stared at the tapestry. Then Nerra said, “I like her. Shall we go upstairs and wait?”

  Hanner nodded. He was unsure why he had reached out to stop her, and why he felt so uncomfortable that Rudhira had gone through the tapestry; wasn’t that what he had wanted? The sight of her disappearance had been almost painful, but he didn’t understand why. He tore his gaze away from the tapestry and followed his sister back to the attic stair.

  “We need to be careful to stay out of the area that’s shown in the other tapestry,” Hanner said, as they climbed the steps. “If the reality doesn’t exactly match the image, the spell may not work.”

  Nerra looked back over her shoulder. “Match how?”

  “Well, if we were anywhere in the attic that’s visible in the image, that could block the magic, because we aren’t in the image.”

  Nerra frowned. “You mean that if we stood in the middle of the floor, she’d be trapped in that other world?”

  “Yes,” Hanner said. “Or she might be, anyway — there’s some variation from one tapestry to another. Quite a lot of variation, really. It’s one reason these tapestries aren’t more widely used — the wizards can’t tell in advance just how easily the spell will be to disrupt. They can be very delicate.”

  “Are the stairs in the image?”

  Hanner tried to remember; it had been a few days since his brief sojourn in h
is magical refuge. “No, I’m pretty sure they aren’t,” he said. “We designed it to have as few variables as we could, so the window isn’t visible, and I’m fairly certain the stairs aren’t, either.”

  “We should stay back, though,” Nerra said, stopping a step below the attic floor.

  Hanner stopped as well, a few steps lower, and backed down a step so as not to crowd his sister.

  His foot hit something, and it was all he could do to keep from tumbling down the stairs when whatever he had stepped on let out a high-pitched squeal and slapped at his ankle.

  “What in the World?..” He looked down to see a pointy-eared froglike green face glaring up at him angrily.

  “Hanner? What’s going on?” Nerra turned.

  “It’s one of those...those little green things,” Hanner said, pointing. He had forgotten what the creatures were called.

  “What little green...oh, it’s a spriggan. What are you doing here?”

  “Wanted to see magic!” it squeaked.

  “Well, don’t get underfoot, or you’ll get stepped on,” Nerra told it. The spriggan started to reply, and to climb up the next step, but she cut it off. “And don’t go out there in the attic, or the magic won’t work.”

  “Where spriggan go, then?” it protested.

  Hanner stared at it, fascinated, as Nerra said, “I don’t care where you go, as long as you stay out of the way.”

  “Here,” Hanner said. “Would you like to climb on my shoulder?”

  “Oooh! Oooh!” the spriggan replied, jumping up and down. “Yes, yes, yes!”

  Hanner held out a hand, intending to lift the little creature, but instead it jumped up, grabbed his wrist, pulled itself up onto his forearm, and scampered up to his shoulder. Then, using his ear as a ladder, it scrambled to the top of his head, where it clung to his hair, swaying unsteadily, its own head missing the rafters by no more than an inch or two.

  “That’s not what I —” Hanner began.

  “Wanna see magic!” it shrieked, drumming its heels on Hanner’s temples.

  Nerra gave her brother a disgusted look. “Don’t encourage it,” she said.

  “Why not?” Hanner said. “It seems friendly enough. Maybe these things could be useful. Maybe we could train them to run errands.”

  “It’s been tried,” Nerra assured him. “Yes, they’re friendly enough, but they’re stupid. You can’t count on them to remember what they’re supposed to be doing. They get into everything, they break things and make messes. Even if you did train one to run your errands, it wouldn’t be worth the aggravation.”

  “Is true,” the spriggan said, nodding sadly. “Spriggan very stupid. Make messes everywhere.”

  Hanner had a suspicion that the spriggan might not be as stupid as it wanted everyone to think it was. Maybe it didn’t want to be trained to run errands. If that was the case he could hardly blame it; he had never liked running other people’s errands, either. “Well, don’t make a mess here,” he said. “We need this attic to stay exactly as it is, so the magic will work.”

  “Spriggan try.” It started to nod again, but whacked its head on a rafter and stopped, looking up resentfully at the wooden beam it had hit.

  Nerra looked at the spriggan, then at her brother’s face, then back at the empty attic. “No sign of her.”

  Hanner turned up an empty palm.

  They waited another few minutes in silence. Then Nerra asked, “You went through that tapestry?”

  “Yes.”

  “How long did it take you to come back out?”

  “You’d probably know better than I do,” Hanner said. “There’s no way to tell time in the other world, or at least I didn’t notice any, and I don’t know what time it was when I emerged because I was Called the instant I was back in Ethshar.”

  Nerra considered that, frowning. “I don’t remember how long you were gone — if I ever actually knew. You hadn’t told me what you were doing.”

  “However long it was, it doesn’t mean much. I didn’t rush. I enjoyed the sensation of not having the Call muttering at me all the time. Rudhira should be quicker.”

  “Or maybe she’ll take time to enjoy the sunshine, too.”

  “Maybe,” Hanner admitted. “And she does need to walk over the hill and find the right house.”

  “So we could be here all night.”

  “I don’t think the tapestry will even work after sunset. The image shows the attic in daylight. Dim daylight, but daylight.”

  Nerra considered that. “So if she doesn’t reappear soon, she won’t until morning?”

  Hanner had not noticed how late in the day it was, but now that Nerra mentioned it he could see that the daylight was indeed starting to fade. “Probably,” he said.

  Nerra turned to face Hanner. “Maybe we should just settle in —”

  She was interrupted by a squeal from the spriggan, and there Rudhira was, standing in the middle of the attic. She had arrived facing away from the stairs, but upon hearing the creature’s noise she turned.

  “It seems to work,” she said. She started toward the stairs, then stopped.

  Hanner realized she was staring at the spriggan, and he reached up to grab it, whereupon it sprang away, bouncing off the sloping ceiling and tumbling awkwardly to the floor. It did not appear to be hurt by the impact, as it quickly regained its feet and scampered over to embrace Rudhira’s ankle. “Pretty hair!” it said.

  “Not on my leg,” Rudhira retorted, kicking it gently away. She looked at Hanner. “What is this thing doing here?”

  “It wanted to see magic,” Hanner explained.

  “How was it on the other side of the tapestry?” Nerra asked.

  “Lovely,” Rudhira replied. “In fact, I want to go back. I’d have stayed, but I didn’t want to worry you.”

  “You can go back,” Hanner told her. “Now that we know it’s safe, and that there’s a way out.”

  “All right,” Rudhira said. She gave him a look that Hanner couldn’t quite interpret. “What about you?”

  “Oh, I’ll stay here for now,” he said. “I need to keep an eye on things. But now we have somewhere to put all those people downstairs.”

  Rudhira nodded. “It’s nice there. At least, the parts I saw. For one thing, it’s warm.”

  “And the return tapestry works, so they can come back any time they want,” Hanner said.

  “They’ll still need food,” Nerra said. “And other things.”

  “I know,” Hanner said. “Still, it’s a start.” He turned and headed down the stairs.

  Nerra followed closely. Rudhira took a final look around the attic, then came along on Nerra’s heels.

  Hanner wasn’t sure whether he really heard, or merely imagined, Rudhira’s voice murmuring, “A start to what?”

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Kirris of Slave Street watched yet another group of ragged former warlocks make their way through the door into the High Street mansion, and bit her lip. It must be getting crowded in there, she thought. She had seen scores of people admitted, and she had only arrived around sunset.

  Going unnoticed in a crowd shouldn’t be difficult, and it was clear that these people didn’t all know one another, so getting into the house would be easy enough, but if anyone questioned her she was not sure how convincing a story she could tell. Her witchcraft would ordinarily keep people from paying any attention to her, but it didn’t actually render her invisible, and if they were systematically interrogating each new arrival, she would almost certainly be included. If they were looking for her, they would see her.

  Obviously, if questioned she would pretend to be another former warlock, but would it be better to claim she had been Called on the Night of Madness, and therefore knew nothing about being a warlock and using their magic, or to say that she was only recently Called, to explain why she didn’t know what Ethshar was like thirty-odd years ago?

  Well, why she didn’t know much about what it was like back then — she had been four
on the Night.

  Either way, she would be expected to know first-hand what had happened to the Called from the time the Calling ended until Asham opened the portal to Eastgate Market, and of course, she had only second- or third-hand reports.

  Still, she couldn’t see any reason anyone would ask her too many questions about that, or why they would be suspicious in the first place. She was a witch; she ought to be able to lie convincingly just by reading people’s reactions and telling them what they wanted to hear.

  Not that witches generally did that, other than when they were comforting the dying, or calming the grieving friends and family of the newly dead. The Sisterhood wanted witches to maintain a reputation for truth-telling — it was supposed to make the lies they did tell that much more effective. But it meant Kirris hadn’t had much practice in the art of deception.

  She really hoped that none of the three warlocks she had tried to help were in there, but she thought her odds were fairly good on that. They had only been Called a few years ago, and had probably found friends or family to take them in, rather than coming here — Warlock House was a last resort. Any of them would probably recognize her instantly if they saw her, despite her being older; she hadn’t changed that much, and from their point of view, as she understood it, those failed experiments had taken place just a few days ago.

  But there were just three of them, which is why she was here, rather than Teneria. Teneria had devoted years to meddling with warlocks, and had probably worked with forty or fifty in all, any of whom might be in there. Kirris had much better odds of not being recognized, and of getting in that door without anyone realizing she was a witch.

  Once she was inside she would still need to get close to Vond if she was to carry out the scheme that the gathering at Ithinia’s house had devised, but that shouldn’t be too difficult — Warlock House was big, but it wasn’t that big. It wasn’t as if the Emperor had taken over the overlord’s palace, the way that horrible Tabaea did in Ethshar of the Sands a decade back.

  The last of the Called were being ushered in, and the man who let them in was looking up and down the street for stragglers. Kirris almost moved out of the shadows, but then hesitated. If she went now she would be too noticeable. She would go with the next party.