The Vondish Ambassador loe-10

by Lawrence Watt-Evans

  “People mind their own business,” Emmis said. “It all works out.”

  “Yes, exactly! People mind their own business, so Annis thought you wouldn’t care about me. I’m not one of your countrymen.”

  “But you’re my business,” Emmis said. “You pay me. You live here.”

  “But I have no family here, no connections. You haven’t sworn fealty to me, we don’t serve the same king.”

  Emmis stared at him, baffled. “So what?”

  “You see? We think differently in the Small Kingdoms!”

  “But you said she thought I wouldn’t mind because I’m Ethsharitic!”

  “Yes. She doesn’t understand Ethshar. She sees that you people here don’t have the family ties and hereditary positions and binding oaths that connect people in the Small Kingdoms, so she thinks you don’t have any connections. I know better — you have your neighbors and your friends and your family and the people you do business with, masters and journeymen and apprentices are all linked, there are the guilds and districts, and when all is said and done you’re all Ethsharites together. You have far more connections than we do; they just aren’t as strong or as obvious, but they’re strong enough. That guardsman we brought here last night — he came with us just because you asked. You aren’t a nobleman, or any of his kin, or a member of the guard yourself, you’re just an Ethsharite, and that was enough.”

  “Well, yes, of course,” Emmis said. “That’s their job, to guard the city and keep the peace.”

  “In Ashthasa, where Annis is from, a soldier’s job is to do as he’s told by the prince and his officers,” Lar explained. “Helping out an ordinary citizen isn’t something he does without orders.”

  “Barbarians,” Emmis muttered under his breath.

  Lar heard him, and smiled.

  “They think you are barbarians, with your messy, disorganized way of doing things and your lack of a proper hereditary hierarchy.”

  “’They’? Not ’we’?”

  “Oh, I know better than that. I might have never set foot in Ethshar a sixnight ago, but I’m not stupid. I’ve talked to Lord Sterren, and other travelers, and I know no place could be as big and rich and powerful as the Hegemony if it was really disorganized and barbaric.”

  “But this isn’t obvious to everyone?”

  “No, it isn’t. You’d be surprised.”

  “Barbarians,” Emmis said again.

  “Different,” Lar said. “And you should go back to the inn and see whether anyone can tell you anything about Annis. Maybe you can find out whether there are any more assassins on their way, or where she found the two you met last night.”

  “Why does it matter where she found them?”

  “It’s a useful thing to know where one can hire assassins.”

  Emmis didn’t like that; the clear implication was that Lar might want to hire a few himself. “Who were you thinking of assassinating?” he asked.

  “No one,” Lar replied cheerfully. “I just like to know what’s possible.”

  “I don’t work for people who hire assassins.”

  “I’m pleased to hear that.”

  Emmis glared at his employer. Lar finished his tea.

  “I’ll order furniture,” Emmis said.

  Lar shook his head. “Visit the inn. Seriously. You might learn something useful. And if your belongings are still there, you’ll save yourself a great deal of effort and money.”

  “Would they still be there in the Small Kingdoms?”

  “They might be, they might not. It would depend on the inn. Try to be back by early afternoon, to take my papers to the Palace.”

  “I can do that,” Emmis acknowledged. He started to rise.

  “And while you’re doing that, I can go back to the Wizards’ Quarter and try to find a good theurgist.”

  “About the door shrine?”

  “That, too.”

  “About your mysterious hum.”

  “Yes.”

  “Someday I’d like to know what that’s about.”

  “So would I — but I know what you mean. Eventually I may tell you.”

  “But not today? Not now?”

  Lar studied him thoughtfully for a moment, then said, “All right.”

  Emmis sat down again. “You will?”

  “I will. It may help you know what to ask at the inn.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “You understand that if you tell anyone, I will have you killed? And I won’t waste time with street thugs; I’ll hire a demonologist.”

  Emmis hesitated. “You will?”

  “Yes. If a warlock, any warlock, finds out what the Empire is worried about, there will be deaths, and yours will be one of them.”

  Emmis considered that.

  It wasn’t fair, really — making it clear just how important and dangerous this was made it irresistible. His curiosity was going to drive him mad if he didn’t ask.

  He would just need to be very, very good about keeping his own mouth shut.

  “Go on,” he said.

  Lar sighed, and began.

  “Four years ago,” he said, “Sterren, Ninth Warlord of Semma, came to Ethshar and hired some magicians to help defend Semma against her neighbors, Ophkar and Ksinallion. King Phenvel of Semma was an idiot, and had managed to antagonize both his bigger, more powerful neighbors at a time when Semma’s own army was in terrible shape, and Sterren thought the only way he could survive the coming war was by breaking the tradition against using magic.”

  “All right,” Emmis said. So far this didn’t sound like any great secret.

  “Well, as you might guess, most of Ethshar’s magicians weren’t interested in going to fight a war at the far end of the Small Kingdoms, but he found a few, and one of them was a warlock named Vond, who had started to hear the Calling and was desperate to get farther away from Aldagmor.”

  Emmis nodded.

  “Semma was so far from Aldagmor that at first Vond wasn’t much use. In fact, he was stricken with headaches. He said they were caused by a buzz, or hum, that he heard constantly, that never went away.”

  That seemed mildly odd, but not like any great dangerous secret. “So you want to find out why he had headaches?”

  “No, no, no!” Lar waved that absurd notion aside. “You know something about warlocks, yes?”

  “A little.”

  “You know that their power comes from a sort of voice they hear in their heads?”

  Emmis frowned. “Well, not exactly a voice...”

  “No, not exactly a voice. Vond called it a whisper, and said that the Calling began when you started to understand what it was saying.”

  “Really? I hadn’t heard it that way.”

  “That’s what Lord Sterren told me,” Lar said, turning up a palm. “That there was this sort of whispering, muttering voice, or collection of voices, that warlocks drew their power from, and when they drew too much power, the whisper began to gain power over them.”

  “It could be,” Emmis admitted. “But it isn’t really a voice. There are images, aren’t there?”

  “I’m no warlock, but I think so, yes. Still, it’s like a voice, sort of.”

  “Magic,” Emmis said, with a wave. “It doesn’t have to make sense. So it’s a whispering voice that makes images, and that they draw power from. All right.”

  “And in Semma, Vond got headaches because of a horrible buzzing in his head that never stopped. Can’t you guess what happened?”

  “No.” Emmis had an uneasy suspicion where this was going, but he wanted it spelled out.

  “Vond discovered he could draw power from the hum, instead of from the whisper. And he thought he could use all the power he wanted without worrying about the Calling, because the buzz didn’t have any words or images in it, it was just this constant flow of energy he could tap into.”

  A second source of magic that warlocks could use — that was a secret worth worrying about, Emmis had to admit. But it still didn’t seem
all that terrible. “But he got Called eventually, didn’t he?”

  Lar nodded. “Yes. Eventually he used so much magic, and grew so powerful, that the whisper could get at him right through the buzz. But the buzz, or hum, or whatever it is, never tried to affect him.”

  That would make it more appealing for a warlock, certainly. “Was this hum coming from Aldagmor, too?”

  Lar shook his head. “No,” he said. “We think it comes from Lumeth of the Towers.”

  This was beginning to fit together. “So you really do want to conquer Lumeth, to control this power source?”

  “Gods and demons, no!” Lar said. “Didn’t you hear me tell you that we don’t want any warlocks in the Empire? We don’t want to control this second Source.”

  “We want to destroy it.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Emmis ambled along High Street, mulling over what Lar had told him.

  It all made sense, really. Vond the Great Warlock had been as much a menace to his own people as to anyone else, and the Imperial Council really didn’t want anyone taking his place. They liked being in power, with no emperor to answer to — apparently Lord Sterren, the Regent, was an easy master to deal with.

  So they didn’t want any warlocks in the Empire, and most particularly they didn’t want any warlocks who might be able to hear the Lumeth Source, as well as the Aldagmor one. That explained why Lar had gone to see Ishta, why he had asked what kept warlocks out of Vond.

  They wanted to know exactly what and where the second Source was, so they could destroy it. And they didn’t want any warlocks to know anything about it, because they assumed, with reason, that warlocks would want access to this second source.

  The Source in Aldagmor was obviously more immediately dangerous; everyone near it had simply vanished on the Night of Madness. Apparently they had all heard the Calling, man, woman, and child. A little farther away there had been survivors initially, but they had all become warlocks, and were either murdered by frightened neighbors, or Called not long after. Even now, anyone venturing too deeply into that area would be Called, even if he or she had not been a warlock. The southeastern half of Aldagmor was now uninhabited, as a result.

  Lumeth wasn’t depopulated. There were no warlocks there. There were no areas where people vanished, or where people acquired magical powers. It wasn’t obvious exactly where the second Source was, or how Vond had been able to “hear” it when no one else had.

  So Lar had asked Kolar where Vond’s “hum” originated — and Kolar hadn’t been able to tell him.

  Lar was interested in where one might hire thugs and murderers because the Empire might want to hire a few and send them into Lumeth to smash that mysterious source, wherever and whatever it actually was.

  He was also worried that the Lumethans might have found out that they had an immensely powerful source of magic in their country, and might be looking for ways to use it against the Empire. The Empire was just as worried that Lumeth might invade them as the Lumethans were worried that the Empire might invade them. That the Empire had at least a dozen times the population really wouldn’t matter if the Lumethans learned how to use that magical power.

  That was one reason Lar had insisted Emmis return to the Crooked Candle — to find out anything he could that might tell them what the Lumethans knew, or didn’t know.

  That was pretty much all that Lar had actually told him, but Emmis thought he had picked up hints that there was another element at work. He remembered that Lar had said there had been two warlocks in Semma since the Night of Madness, and there had been vague implications that Lord Sterren took a personal interest in this whole situation.

  Emmis could see two ways this might work. Lord Sterren might be the second warlock, and hiding it, or he might know who the second warlock was and be afraid of what he or she might do. The second warlock might be a family member, or a close friend, or a sworn enemy — or perhaps the princess Sterren was reportedly planning to marry.

  If it was Sterren himself who was a warlock, would he really want the Lumeth power source destroyed?

  He might; after all, Vond had come to a bad end.

  But if he had the same sort of unchecked magical power Vond had had, why didn’t he use it? Why keep it concealed? Was he that afraid of the Calling?

  Or was he, perhaps, that frightened of the Wizards’ Guild, which had forbidden magicians to hold high office?

  That made sense. And if the Lumeth source was destroyed, well, Vond was so far from Aldagmor that he’d hardly be a warlock at all, would he?

  It could be any of those; Lar hadn’t said, and Emmis didn’t know. Lar might not know either, for that matter. Emmis did believe, though, that Lar intended to track down the Lumeth source and see that it was destroyed.

  Emmis thought that was probably a good idea. He was no geographer, but if there was a previously-unknown and unused source of warlockry in Lumeth of the Towers, its range presumably extended in all directions, just as the one in Aldagmor did. Lumeth of the Towers was northwest of Semma and the Empire of Vond.

  And Ethshar of the Spices was northwest of Lumeth. Emmis was not at all sure of the distances involved, but he thought it was possible that the Lumeth source might be entirely too close for comfort if warlocks all learned how to use it.

  Better for all concerned if no warlocks ever heard about it.

  He turned from High Street onto Commerce Street, and noticed a few interesting shops — the house in Allston really did need more furniture, and kitchen supplies, as well as ordinary things like candles, lamps, and oil.

  Perhaps he would go back by way of Bargain Street, rather than High, and see what he could find. Then at least this entire trip wouldn’t be wasted.

  The truth was that he did not expect to find anything useful in Shiphaven. He was sure his belongings must have been stolen; if they hadn’t been he would almost be disappointed, as it would mean the thieves of Ethshar were not living up to their reputation. And surely, the foreigners must have all fled by now, and there would be nothing worth learning at the Crooked Candle.

  But Lar had sent him to check, so he would check. He was being paid to do what he was told.

  He pushed quickly through Canal Square without stopping to look at any of the merchandise on display. This was not much of a market; the better goods wound up in Shiphaven Market or the shops of the Old Merchants’ Quarter, and Canal Square got the leftovers, the bits of this and that that had been discarded by the successful merchants and salvaged by scavengers, the items pilfered from cabins and cargo holds by sailors, the things that thieves had been unable to fence elsewhere.

  It occurred to Emmis when he was three blocks down Twixt Street that perhaps he would have found some of his own former possessions offered for sale there — most of what he had had was not likely to bring any real money, which meant it was just the sort of merchandise that someone might try to sell for a few bits in Canal Square.

  Well, it wasn’t worth turning back at this point. He strode on, across Shiphaven Market, past the farmers, fishmongers, and recruiters, into Commission Street.

  And there he stopped, twenty yards from the Crooked Candle.

  There were guards at the inn door, two of them, trying to look casual, as if they just happened to be lounging there.

  Emmis didn’t believe that for an instant. Guards did not lounge on Commission Street. It wasn’t on the way from any of their usual posts to anywhere they would need to go. If guards were needed on the Shiphaven docks or at the shipyards they would be sent from Westgate and would come down Shipwright or Captain Street, not Commission. If there had been a disturbance in Shiphaven Market, as sometimes happened, they would lounge in the market itself, not on Commission Street. If it were evening, and the guards were planning to get a drink when they went off-duty, it might have just barely been possible, but in the morning?

  So they were watching the Crooked Candle.

  Which meant there was no chance at all that Annis or the Lumet
hans or the assassins would be there. The foreigners weren’t that stupid.

  Why were the guards being that stupid? Wouldn’t it make more sense to have a few men out of uniform inside the inn, ready to pounce if one of the foreigners or assassins came in?

  Well, that wasn’t Emmis’s problem. He already knew coming here was pointless, but Lar had told him to go to the inn, so he would go to the inn. He marched forward.

  At the door of the inn he paused; the two guards were watching him closely, but neither of them had said anything or reached for a weapon. These two, he noticed, were wearing swords, as well as bearing truncheons, which meant they were definitely not simply ordinary guards varying their patrol.

  “Is there something going on?” Emmis asked, pointing to one guard’s sword.

  “Nothing that concerns you,” the soldier replied.

  “It’s all right if I go inside?”

  “We won’t stop you, but mind your own business.”

  Emmis nodded, and stepped through the door into the inn’s common room.

  A third guard looked up at his entrance, and Emmis was startled to realize that he recognized this one. This was one of the two who had come up from the Palace last night to investigate the attempted assassination.

  A white-haired old man was seated at a table just behind the guardsman, speaking intently with someone Emmis recognized as the innkeeper, who was sitting on the opposite side of the table. The innkeeper’s face was toward Emmis, and he looked worried; the old man was facing away.

  A few customers were scattered about — very few; Emmis counted four. Gita was serving one of them a mug of beer. No one was else was in sight.

  The familiar guard looked at Emmis, then tapped the old man on the shoulder. “My lord?” he said quietly.

  The old man cut off whatever he was saying to the innkeeper in mid-sentence and looked up. “Yes?”

  “My lord, Emmis of Shiphaven just came in.”

  So much, Emmis thought, for any hope that he might be able to get a quiet beer and slip away unnoticed.