“I don’t know,” he said. “I can’t burn the frames, nor break them outright, not in my present condition, but I might be able to break some of the ropes, or do some other damage. I don’t have the straight lifting power these witches have here, but I believe I can do subtler things, crackings and frayings and twistings, that they cannot.”
“Crackings?” Emner looked thoughtful, and said, “If you could crack the main crosspiece, the lever, while they were preparing to fire, the whole machine would probably come apart under the strain.”
“That would be perfect,” Sterren said.
The warlock shrugged. “I can try,” he said.
“Good,” Sterren replied. “And you will.”
CHAPTER 22
“Will this do?” Sterren asked, pointing. The warlock crept up beside him and peered over the ridgepole. “I think so,” he said. “I can see the structure from here, anyway.”
Sterren nodded. “Good,” he said, “Because we can’t find anywhere better that’s half this safe.”
The warlock glanced at him. “Why did you come with me, then, if it’s dangerous?” he asked.
Sterren was not really sure himself. He shrugged and said, “I get tired of just hearing reports. I wanted to see some of the action for myself.” He did not really want to think about that any more; it only reminded him just how dangerous his situation actually was, perched on a rooftop a hundred yards from an enemy camp. He changed the subject.
“How’s your head today?”
“Better, or at least different,” the warlock said.
“Different? How is it different?”
The warlock hesitated, then said, “Maybe I’m just getting used to it.”
It seemed to Sterren that his mysterious black-clad companion was being unusually talkative today, and he decided to try to take advantage of that to get a few answers to mysteries that had been bothering him.
“You know,” he said, “I never heard of warlocks having headaches like yours. That’s not what the stories say happens when you move south.”
“I never heard of it, either,” the warlock said. “I don’t understand it.”
“It is somehow related to your magic, isn’t it?” Sterren asked.
“Oh, I would say so.” He hesitated, then continued, “You’re a warlock yourself, aren’t you? I thought I could see that, before we got so far south and I lost my finer perceptions.”
“Not really,” Sterren admitted, “I failed my apprenticeship.”
“Ah, that would explain it entirely! It took me a long time, you know, to decide that you were one, you didn’t act like one, but you seemed to know the art, and I could feel something in your mind. I thought you were just keeping it secret for some reason.”
“No,” Sterren said, “I might have a trace of the Power, but I’m not really a warlock. I won more than I should at dice, back in Ethshar, but that’s all.”
The warlock nodded. “Then you wouldn’t know,” he said.
“Know what?”
“What it feels like to use the Power.”
“No,” Sterren agreed, “I don’t know. What is it like?”
“Well, it’s hard to explain. It’s as if something, not someone, because it clearly isn’t human, but something, perhaps a god or a demon or something we don’t have a name for, is whispering in your mind, and you can’t understand anything it’s saying, you can’t be sure it’s words at all, but you can pull strength from it all the same. You can take the sound of the whisper and reshape it and use it to feel and shape and change the world around you. Do you understand?”
Sterren almost thought he did. He nodded, but said nothing.
“And after you’ve used warlockry a lot, the whisper is always there, always, whether you’re listening or not, using the Power or not, awake or asleep. It’s a constant background and it gets a little louder each time you draw on it. And it’s trying to tell you something, but you don’t know what.” He paused, then said, “You know about the night-” It was not a question, but Sterren nodded again.
“The nightmares are when the whisper begins to make sense. You still can’t make out the words, still can’t tell what it’s trying to tell you, or what’s whispering, but you catch bits of it, little bits and pieces of images. And you can’t shut them out; the whisper is always there, it won’t go away, and those images seep into your mind little by little.” He shivered. “And when you came south?” Sterren prompted. “When I came south,” the warlock said, “the whispering faded away. It was wonderful at first; I could forget the little glimmers of meaning I’d been catching, and the nightmares stopped. I couldn’t hear the whisper at all. But then, when we headed inland, I started to hear buzzing.”
Startled, Sterren stared at him. “Buzzing?” he said.
“Humming, buzzing, something like that. It’s not really a sound, it’s a source, a mental sensation, like the whisper, but this one isn’t a voice, isn’t an intelligence at all, it’s a mindless drone, like a beehive or a millstone. And... well, have you ever lived somewhere where you hear some unpleasant noise constantly, a loud one? It gives you a headache.” He sighed. “But after a while, you get used to it and, in time, you don’t even notice it any more. I expect that eventually I won’t notice this any more. At present, I’m still constantly aware of it, but my head doesn’t hurt.”
Sterren nodded.
He thought he understood the analogy the warlock made and had an idea what it must feel like, but he had no idea what could be causing the buzzing the warlock described.
But then, nobody knew what the Aldagmor Source was, either. Presumably there was another, different one somewhere near Semma, one that had never created its own magicians the way the Aldagmor Source had back in 5202, but which warlocks could perceive.
“If it’s like the Source,” he asked, “can you draw Power from it?”
The warlock looked at him, startled. “I have no idea,” he said. “I haven’t been able to so far; it doesn’t offer Power the way the Source does. But it... I don’t know.”
He chopped his words off short and stopped speaking.
Sterren decided not to push the matter. He peered over the farmhouse ridgepole and said, “I think they’re getting ready to load. It looks like pitch. A ball of pitch. I suppose they’ll light it right before they release.”
The warlock stared. “Yes,” he said.
“Can you crack the beam?”
The warlock didn’t answer; Sterren glanced over and saw his jaw clenched with strain, his eyes narrowed.
Sterren shaded his eyes with a hand and stared at the trebuchet. Was the beam starting to bend a little more than it should, perhaps?
He shifted, squinted, and stared harder.
The catapult exploded. One moment it was there, the crosspiece bending only slightly; and the next instant the entire superstructure was gone, lost in a spreading cloud of red-hot debris. The great wooden bucket of stones that served as the counterweight crashed to the ground and shattered, the ball of pitch burst into flame and rolled back onto the crew that had just loaded it, and the framework simply vanished in the burst of glowing fragments. The earth shook, and a tremendous rolling roar reached the two men on the rooftop.
Sterren gaped and clung desperately to the thatch as the building swayed beneath him.
A long moment later, burning splinters began to rain down about him, spattering onto the thatch. The scent of burning reached his nose, and he began sliding quickly backward down the slope.
He stopped at the edge and looked back up the slope.
The warlock was still lying there on the roof, but nothing touched him; fragments that might have struck him instead swerved aside as they approached.
“Gods,” Sterren said, “What happened?”
The warlock turned and grinned down at him, by far the broadest smile Sterren had ever seen on that dour face. “Can’t you guess?” he said. “It was your idea, you know.”
Sterren shook his head.
The warlock looked up at the sound, and, without warning, a bolt of lightning flashed down and incinerated the remaining fragments of the catapult.
The lightning was not the natural blue-white; it was a fiery orange-red. Warlock lightning. Sterren had heard of it, but never seen it.
Another bolt struck off to the left, destroying another catapult; then a third, and a fourth, and a fifth, and the enemy’s long-range arsenal was gone.
The wind was rising, and Sterren decided that a roof was not a good place to be. He was unsure how completely the warlock was actually controlling this sudden storm and did not care to risk a miscalculation, or even a deliberate attack, since after all, he hardly knew the warlock. He slid down until his feet caught on the ladder they had used to climb up, then descended quickly.
Thunder boomed again, and this time even the thunder was clearly unnatural, it was great rolling laughter.
It was recognizably the warlock’s voice.
He hurried around the corner of the house and was in time to see the wind sweeping soldiers off their feet, knocking them flat to the ground.
The wind stopped, and the braver Ksinallionese — Sterren had learned the different uniforms and could see no Ophkarites on this side of the castle — got to their feet again.
The thunder-voice spoke again, in words this time.
“Go home!” it roared, “This land is under the protection of Vond the Warlock! To stay here is to die!”
Then, again, laughter rolled across the plain.
Sterren saw the enemy milling in confusion at first; then a mounted officer panicked and spurred his horse to a gallop, bound north toward Ksinallion.
Panic spread like a wave through the besiegers, rippling out from that fleeing lieutenant, and in minutes the entire army was in full flight, pursued by howling unnatural winds.
Their morale had been deteriorating for days, men dying mysteriously, explosive booby traps scattered about, strange figures flying overhead invulnerable to arrows. This supernatural storm and voice like an angry god was more than these frightened soldiers could take. Individually or in groups, they broke and ran, bound for their homes.
Sterren did not blame them in the least for running. He stood and watched, smiling happily, as the storm swept on around the castle, driving the besieging army away from every side.
He had won the war. He and his six magicians had defeated fifty times their number. He was safe from execution by either side. In fact, he would be a hero to the Semmans.
He looked up at the warlock, hanging in mid-air, his black robe transformed into immense black wings that gave him the appearance of a hovering hawk, and waved triumphantly.
Vond, as the warlock had called himself, returned the wave. Thunder rumbled about him, and clouds gathered thickly overhead, ready to burst.
Sterren looked at the distant castle. The inhabitants had a celebration coming. They were saved.
At least, Sterren corrected himself, they were saved from Ophkar and Ksinallion. He supposed they would now have to deal with Vond, he would presumably want to stay here permanently, away from the whispering of Aldagmor. Having so powerful a warlock around the place might well change a few things. He might not be satisfied with the handful of gold and gems he had been promised. At the very least, Agor would probably be displaced as royal magician in short order.
But, Sterren thought, his grin returning, that wasn’t his problem. He remembered the peasants whose only interest in the siege was knowing when it would be over, so they could go home, regardless of who won. They probably wouldn’t care about anything Vond did, either. It wasn’t their problem.
King Phenvel might have a problem. Agor might have a problem. Any number of other people might have problems.
Right now, Sterren felt as if he had none at all. Vond probably felt the same way, Sterren thought, and a tiny little thought poked its way into his mind, like a pin working into a quilt.
If the warlock thought his problems were gone, he was wrong; he definitely had a very real problem. Sterren looked up, wondering if Vond knew. The storm broke suddenly, and sparkling blue rain spilled heavily down, soaking him instantly. He looked up, blinking, and saw Vond hanging in the sky, cloak spread, head thrown back, laughing wildly as the sheets of rain parted before him, leaving him untouched and dry.
CHAPTER 23
Eventually, of course, Vond landed again. Sterren was stubborn enough to wait for him.
He was not stubborn enough to wait out in the rain, though. He ducked into the little farmhouse and tried in vain to dry off, glancing out the windows every so often to see if Vond had tired of playing with the storm.
The clouds were rained away completely somewhat before sunset, but the warlock stayed aloft, whipping the winds back and forth, sending sprays of sand and rock hither and yon. The besieging armies were long since gone, leaving behind scattered bits of equipment and trash, strewn across a sea of mud.
Sterren saw no bodies, but he suspected a few might be out there. He noticed that much of the village surrounding Semma Castle had been flattened, not just the sappers’ ramshackle structures or the lightly built shops, but the solid original houses as well.
The sun was down, and the last light fading, when the warlock finally settled to earth.
“Hai,” Sterren called from his shelter. “Congratulations!”
Vond turned, spotted him in the window, and bowed. “Thank you, my lord,” he said. He smiled. “Gods, that felt good! To be able to let myself go, use all the power I wanted, without worrying about those damned nightmares, it was wonderful!”
Sterren did not bother going around to the door. He hoisted himself up into the window and was about to drop down on the outside when he felt an invisible grasp close about him and pull him free of the frame.
He floated smoothly over and found himself hanging in the air in front of the warlock.
This was disconcerting, but not particularly uncomfortable. Sterren flexed a little and found he could move freely, but that no matter how he moved he remained floating in the same spot, a couple of yards from the warlock’s face.
“Hello, there,” he said.
“Hello,” Vond replied, grinning broadly.
Sterren shifted, getting a bit more comfortable in his unnatural elevation. He considered carefully exactly what he ought to say and finally just asked, “What happened?”
“Well,” Vond said thoughtfully, “I’m not sure of all the details. Somehow, though, I tapped into the buzz, and then I had all the power I wanted, all at once.” He waved at the desolation on all sides, displaying his handiwork.
Sterren nodded, contemplating the wasteland. “And you aren’t worried about nightmares?” he asked. “What if this new source is just like the one in Aldagmor, in the long run?” While the warlock had been reveling in his new power, Sterren had spent much of the storm considering the various possibilities and he felt that it would be unfair to not point the many possible dangers out to Vond.
Vond shook his head. “It isn’t. It can’t be. I’d know.”
Sterren didn’t reply, but the warlock read his doubting expression.
“You think I’m being reckless, don’t you? Don’t worry, Sterren, I’m not. I tell you, I know this new source isn’t like the old. Whatever the Source in Aldagmor is, it’s conscious, or at least run by a conscious entity, I’ve known that since I was an apprentice. We warlocks always have a vague feeling of contact, of communication, when we use our magic, and besides, surely the nightmares and the Calling to go to Aldagmor
are sent by something.”
Sterren nodded. He had to admit that much.
“Well,” Vond said, “This power source does not seem to be conscious, it’s just raw power. When I used the Aldagmor Source, as I told you, it was like listening to a whisper, hearing it but not catching the words. Using this new source is like listening to the hum of a bee, there are no words, just sound.”
“But if that’s so, then why aren’t there any warlocks here already, drawing on this source?” Sterren asked. “They don’t even have a word for warlock in Semmat!”
“I can only guess,” Vond said.
“Guess, then,” Sterren said.
Vond waved dramatically. “Warlockry, my dear Sterren, first appeared on the Night of Madness, back in 5202, you know that. That was when the Source first appeared in Aldagmor. It created warlockry, all at once; warlocks appeared spontaneously, hundreds of them. It was... well, it was as if the thing let out one shout, to get people listening, and then its voice died away to that whisper I keep talking about.”
Sterren nodded.
“Well,” Vond continued, “this new source never shouted. There’s no telling what it is, or how long it’s been there, but it could mean a whole new existence for warlocks, because if it’s not conscious, then it won’t cause any nightmares or compulsions, now, will it?”
“I don’t know,” Sterren said, “and neither do you. Maybe it’s just sleeping. Maybe the one in Aldagmor was just sleeping there, all along, until it woke up in 5202, and this one could wake up tomorrow.”
“Or it could sleep for another thousand years, if you’re right,” Vond said, “But you aren’t. I can feel it, I tell you; this new source is dead, not just sleeping. It was never alive and never will be. It’s totally mindless.”
“You’re the one taking the risks,” Sterren said, “so it’s none of my business, really, but Vond, I wouldn’t put that much faith in it if I were you. How do you know it isn’t sleeping? You can’t know. Your feelings could be wrong.”
Vond shook his head. “No, you don’t understand what it’s like. I can use the power itself to tell me whether it’s conscious, sleeping, alive, dead, whatever. It’s mindless, empty, like a... a running stream, or a millwheel grinding.”
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