“No one outside the cult knows its origins and purpose.”
“That is not literally true,” Kelder assured him. “There are exceptions. And you, my lord, are about to be, at least partially and briefly, one of those rare exceptions.”
Sterren did not at all like the sound of “briefly,” but he ignored that and said, “Go on.”
“You are aware, of course, that the Small Kingdoms were once a single nation?”
“Old Ethshar. Of course.”
“Yes, the Holy Kingdom of Ethshar. Which went to war, centuries ago, with the Northern Empire.”
“Yes.”
“You know that the Hegemony of the Three Ethshars was created after the war by the military of Old Ethshar.”
“Yes.”
“You know that the founders of the Hegemony, Azrad, Anaran, and Gor, made no attempt to reunite the fragments of Old Ethshar.”
“Yes, I know that,” Sterren said, baffled as to where this was leading.
“They were unable to decide which of the hundreds of squabbling governments in the Small Kingdoms was the legitimate heir to the old national government, so they stayed out of the old homeland. They had had enough fighting and bloodshed, and did not want to intervene in any internal disputes.”
“Yes. What does this have to do with Demerchan?”
“Patience, my lord. Now, think back to when you first came to Semma and were thrust into the role of Ninth Warlord, and ordered to defend the kingdom against its neighbors. What resources did you have for your war?”
“Resources?” Sterren was puzzled. “I had a miserable, under-sized, half-trained army.”
“What else?”
Baffled, Sterren said, “I had a reasonably defensible castle, and the king let me have some money to hire Ethsharitic magicians.”
“What else? Or perhaps I should say, who else?”
Sterren tried to think back. He had been a boy in his teens, dragged from Ethshar at sword-point. Lady Kalira, then the king’s trade expert, had been sent to fetch him, accompanied by a couple of the kingdom’s biggest soldiers, and had brought him back to Semma Castle, where he had been given his great-uncle’s rooms and dressed in his great-uncle’s clothes. He had met his officers, and...
And Lar Samber’s son. “My spies,” he said. “My intelligence service.”
“Ah! Yes,” Kelder said. “Now, you know that Old Ethshar’s armies became Ethshar of the Sands and Ethshar of the Rocks, and Old Ethshar’s navy became Ethshar of the Spices, and Old Ethshar’s hired magicians became the Wizards’ Guild and the Sisterhood and the various schools of magic. But of course Old Ethshar had an intelligence service, too.”
“Devoted to collecting secrets, and making sure only the right people knew them,” Sterren said. He nodded. “I see. You’re claiming that the intelligence service became the Cult of Demerchan.”
“Oh, I not only claim it, we can document it. We still operate out of some of the same hidden bases our ancestors used in the Great War. We have tunnels and secret passages and hidden rooms all over the Small Kingdoms. We have ancient magic that has been lost everywhere else.”
“Do you?”
Kelder nodded silently.
“Yet the cult of Demerchan let Old Ethshar disintegrate?”
Kelder spread empty hands. “When the government broke apart, like the generals and Admiral Azrad, we didn’t know which faction to back. We did know that we should stay united, and fight only the Northerners, not one another, so we stayed neutral. We thought that in time the rifts would heal, but instead everything just kept splintering. Eventually we did begin to intervene — it was the cult that first introduced and enforced the rule that no magic is used in wars in the Small Kingdoms, and over the centuries we did remove various individuals who threatened to make matters even worse. I’m sure you’ve heard that we were available for hire, and we have indeed been happy to accept payment for our actions, but in truth, we always chose our own targets in accord with our own goals.”
“I always heard that you refused commissions if you considered the intended target to be morally superior to your client.”
“That was a handy explanation, but in fact we removed those we considered dangers to the well-being of the Small Kingdoms as a whole, whether we were hired to do so or not. We tried to find them before they did any real damage. You were one of our failures, Lord Sterren — we had our limited resources elsewhere and did not notice when you brought your little band of third-rate magicians to Semma’s aid. The far south had never been an area of great interest for us, as it was poor in magic and the other resources we cared about, so your arrival was not seen as anything of immediate importance. Then, when Vond began his conquests, we did not react quickly — partly because we did not understand where he got his power, but also partly because we did not see the removal of King Phenvel as a bad thing, and Vond’s relatively bloodless unification of the southernmost Small Kingdoms seemed like quite a good idea to us. In fact, we still think the Empire is an improvement on what was there before, so we did nothing to interfere with it.”
“Well, thank you for that,” Sterren said. “I suppose that any interference would have involved my assassination.”
“Probably,” Kelder agreed cheerfully.
“But you knew I was a warlock all along?”
“Oh, not all along, but we did figure it out after a year or two.”
“But you didn’t do anything about a warlock ruling the Empire? A magician holding political power?”
“We aren’t the Wizards’ Guild, my lord, and we don’t enforce their rules. We don’t even obey their rules. We have our own. We are much older than the Guild, my lord.”
Sterren stared at the other man.
The only other person he had ever heard speak of the Guild so dismissively had been Vond, and Vond was dead — but the Cult of Demerchan had indeed been around for a long time. Perhaps not as long as this Kelder claimed, but a long time, all the same.
Seeing that Sterren was not going to reply, Kelder continued, “Demerchan failed to preserve Old Ethshar’s unity, my lord, but we have preserved most of its secrets, and we have deliberately kept them out of the hands of the kings and councils of the Small Kingdoms, so that they will not be misused, or turned against other heirs of Old Ethshar. In particular, we have preserved as much as we could of the Holy Kingdom’s magic. The Wizards’ Guild has surpassed us in their own field, and to some extent a witch’s abilities depend on the individual rather than anything we can teach, but in sorcery, science, demonology, and theurgy we are the greatest magicians in the World today. It was the cult that kept warlockry severely limited in the Small Kingdoms, but we had our own warlocks, hidden away, until the Calling ended. We have every sort of magic we could discover, and we use that magic to keep the peace, as much as we can.”
“That can’t be much, then,” Sterren said. “There are always wars being fought in the Small Kingdoms.”
“Small ones, with relatively little bloodshed. We don’t want to interfere too much, or make ourselves obvious, so we do not suppress every little squabble between kings. We do keep them from getting out of hand.”
Sterren could think of several questions and arguments he could make in response to this claim, but none of them seemed very important just now. He was more concerned with his own situation. “You don’t have any other warlocks left?” he asked. “You’re based in the Small Kingdoms — no one else ever learned to use the power in Lumeth?”
Kelder shook his head. “No. We’ve tried. We’ve particularly been watching the warlocks who came back from Aldagmor with Vond, and none of them have managed it. They just get headaches; they never make the transition Vond did. We’ve tried to help them, but we couldn’t make it happen. Vond must have been a fluke, a freak of nature, one of a kind. We’ve given up trying to duplicate his experience; there’s no point in torturing those poor people. Apparently the headaches are agonizing.”
“They did appear to be painf
ul,” Sterren said.
“And useless.” He shook his head. “No, we haven’t found another Vond, another person who could spontaneously attune himself to the Lumeth source. And Vond didn’t create any others. You’re the only warlock left.”
Sterren nodded. “So I’m the only one. So you want to control the remaining warlock, to ensure I don’t start any wars or go sending palaces flying?”
“Oh, we aren’t worried about you starting any wars or smashing any cities,” Kelder said with a wave. “We watched you administer Vond’s empire for fifteen years; we know you aren’t going to do anything stupid or destructive. No, we want to protect you, to preserve the secret of warlockry. You can live almost anywhere in the Small Kingdoms you please, and do what you want, so long as you allow us to keep watch over you, and permit us to study your abilities, so that we can ensure that you don’t do anything that would drastically impair our own activities. Perhaps, in time, you might take an apprentice, and should that happen, we would want to be closely involved in selecting a trustworthy candidate.”
“That’s all?” Sterren waved a hand. “You said you wanted me to be an acolyte; I won’t need to wear a robe and live under guard in a temple somewhere?”
“No robes or temples. Unless you want them. And your guards will stay out of sight and let you go wherever you want.”
“But I’ll have guards?”
“I told you, we want to protect you.”
“From what?”
“From the Wizards’ Guild.”
Sterren blinked. “What?”
“Hadn’t you figured that out? The Guild doesn’t want anyone using the magic of the towers, for anything. They’re afraid it might interfere with the towers’ actual purpose.”
That did indeed fit with what Sterren knew of the Guild’s edicts and actions, but he asked, “What purpose?”
“Perhaps I’ll explain that later. For now, though, I’ll just point out that you, my lord, are the only person in the World who can use the magic of the towers. The Cult of Demerchan believes that sooner or later, the Guild will decide to remove that potential problem, and the secret will be lost forever. We want to ensure that doesn’t happen. We preserve secrets, we don’t allow them to be destroyed. Which is why I’m here, offering you a position as a ward of the cult. We’ll conceal you — and your family, of course — from the Guild. We’re very good at that; we’ve been hiding things from them for centuries.”
Sterren looked at Kelder, then back over his shoulder at the crowded streets of Shiphaven, then up at the palace hanging in mid-air — a palace no longer supported by Vond’s warlockry, but by a wizard’s spell.
“Anywhere in the Small Kingdoms?”
“Almost.”
“My family will accompany me?”
“If you choose, of course.”
“Will you tell them who you are?”
“A convenient fiction can be arranged, if you would prefer not to acknowledge accepting a position among assassins.”
“Is this a paying position?”
“Of course, my lord! And in addition to a generous allowance, when you complete your acolyte’s training you will have access to the cult’s magic. All of it.”
That was a fascinating detail, and Sterren thought it very interesting that Kelder had left it until last. “I’ll want to discuss it with my wife,” he said, “but I think we have a deal.”
Kelder smiled, and held out a hand. Sterren hesitated only briefly before shaking it.
Two months later, when certain wizards decided that the World would be better off without any functioning warlocks, no matter how feeble those warlocks might be, they could find no trace of Lord Sterren, former Regent of the Vondish Empire. Divinations failed to locate him, or determine what had become of him. It was eventually concluded that Vond must have killed him at some point before the emperor’s own death; several witnesses attested to Vond’s anger at his missing aide.
And that, so far as the Wizards’ Guild was concerned, was the end of warlockry, once and for all.
Epilogue
In the end, it proved surprisingly easy for the Hegemony of the Three Ethshars, the Baronies of Sardiron, and the Small Kingdoms to absorb tens of thousands of former warlocks. Many of the Called returned to trades and positions they had held before the Night of Madness; others became farmers, or joined the overlords’ guards, or found other employment that did not require formal apprenticeship. The significant financial assets of the Council of Warlocks in all the various cities were devoted to assisting former warlocks, Called or not, in establishing new businesses; many became locksmiths, tinkers, or artisans of one sort or another, applying the knowledge of materials and structures that they had acquired as warlocks.
Sensella of Morningside returned to her family safely, and became a seamstress. She was not particularly successful at it, but managed to get by.
Edara of Silk Street did not accomplish anything useful for Hanner in her hurried trip to the Wizards’ Quarter, but that began a series of curious events that culminated in her employment as a procurer of wizards’ ingredients.
Zallin of the Mismatched Eyes, Leth of Pawnbroker Lane, and Feregris of Crookwall became partners in a confectionery shop on Sugar Lane in the New Merchants’ Quarter.
Kolar the Large was called upon to testify before assorted magistrates and officials in various hearings, and presented himself well enough to wind up as the personal bodyguard to Lord Augris, the treasurer of Ethshar of the Spices.
Gerath Gror’s son decided he was no longer welcome in Ethshar of the Spices, and hired on as a sailor on a Tintallionese trading vessel; his subsequent misadventures eventually led him to become a pirate captain operating out of Shan on the Sea.
Hanner the Generous and his second wife, Rudhira of the Refuge, became the landlords and proprietors of Hanner’s Refuge, providing lodging for some three hundred tenants and exporting lumber, seafood, and exotic nuts.
And to Lord Azrad’s regret, his palace was safely restored to its original position and never flew again.
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Document version: 1
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v1.0 — create fb2 from amazon ebook, update description, format text, fix punctuation — refaim (06.05.2012)
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