Night of Madness

Chapter Three

Lord Faran sat bolt upright in his bed, gasping for air, eyes wide and staring into the dark; he fought down an urge to scream, and instead found himself coughing uncontrollably.

The woman beside him rolled over and raised herself up on her elbows. “Fari?” she asked. “Are you all right?”

He tried to wave her away, but he was coughing too hard to complete the gesture; nonetheless she rolled away again, and in fact tumbled out of bed onto the floor.

The braided rug provided little cushioning, and the bedroom floor was stone. “Ow!” she exclaimed.

Faran had no time to worry about the woman’s clumsiness— he barely remembered her name. (Isia, a part of his mind reminded him, and she hadn’t been at all clumsy an hour or two ago.) He stared at the window, where the glow of the city, the stars, and the lesser moon filtered dimly through the lace curtains, and tried to calm himself.

The coughing tapered off.

The dream that had awakened him had beenimportant —he knew that, he hadfelt it, unmistakably. It had been not merely important, buturgent, as no natural dream could be. It must have been magic.

Faran had experienced magical dreams before, when wizards had used one version or another of the Spell of Invaded Dreams to send him messages, and he had always remembered the gist of them after awakening-it was, he had assumed, part of the spell, since they wouldn’t be much use as a means of communication otherwise. This time, though, his memory was vague and confused, as it might be after an ordinary nightmare.

He remembered that he had been falling, and something had been burning him, there had been fire and rushing air, and then all motion had stopped and he had been trapped somehow, and throughout there had been pain and terror... but it was all a jumble. The images he could recall were all distorted. He could not bring back any faces, nor even any totems-all he could remember seeing were flames and clouds and stone.

He knew that whoever had sent the dream wanted him, Lord Faran, todo something, to go somewhere and do something as soon as possible-but he had no idea where, or what he should do, or who had sent it.

If this was the Spell of Invaded Dreams, it had gone wrong somewhere.

He wondered whether perhaps this was some other sort of magic entirely, one of the less reliable sorts-witchcraft or sorcery, perhaps, or even herbalism or one of the really minor schools like science or spiritism or ritual dance. He couldn’t see how it could be theurgy-if a god sent him a dream, he was fairly certain he would know it. The gods might be whimsical and subtle, but this didn’t seem to be their style. Demonology, perhaps-could demons send dreams? If they could, they might well produce a tangled, ambiguous mess like this.

“That wasn’t very nice,” Isia said, climbing back into the bed.

“What wasn’t?” Faran asked, startled from his thoughts.

“Shoving me out of bed like that,” Isia replied. “You could have just waved me away, and I wouldn’t have bothered you.”

“Shoving you?” Faran looked at her, astonished but not allowing it to show on his face. “Did I shove you?”

“Oh, no, why, of course not! I just dove out of bed onto hard stone and bruised my shoulder on a whim.” She glared at him, then whirled and reached for the shift she had left draped on a nearby chair.

“My dear, my dear, Iam sorry,” he said-not that he was actually sorry, but a man in his position should not make enemies, no matter how trivial, unnecessarily. “I was caught up in the dream that awakened me.”

“A dream? What kind of dream?” She paused, the shift in her hand, eyeing him suspiciously, her mouth drawn into a tight line.

He allowed himself a puzzled smile. “Do you know, I can’t remember!” he said. “A nightmare, I think-I believe it was trying to scream that started me coughing. And I really didn’t mean to shove you, Isia-I hadn’t even realized I had done it.” In fact, he was quite sure he had not touched her-yet she was clearly convinced he had pushed her out of the bed. He watched for any sign of a softening in her anger, and when he saw her thinned lips relax slightly he leaned over and kissed her lightly on her bare shoulder-he couldn’t reach her cheek without stretching, and that would not have the properly casual air.

She accepted the kiss with a small sigh, and put down her shift, draping it on the side of the bed. Still sitting up naked in the bed, she turned and smiled at him. “I should go,” she said.

“Well, not to please me, certainly,” he said. “But is there some other reason?”

“My parents,” she said. “I shouldn’t stay the night; they’ll think we’re betrothed.”

“I wish we were,” Faran said, “but as I told you before, there are family considerations.” That was a lie-one he told all his women. His position was mostly his own achievement, and his bloodline, while technically noble, was not particularly notable; his surviving family, comprised of two nieces and a nephew, didn’t care who, if, or when he married.

“I know,” Isia said with another sigh. “You’ve been very sweet, Fari-except for pushing me out of bed just now.”

“And I’m very sorry about that. Blame whatever ghost or demon sent me that nightmare, and forgive me, please.”

She bent over and kissed him on the forehead. “Of course,” she said. Then she reached for her shift, and this time pulled it over her head. Faran took a moment to light a bedside lamp-he kept a sorcerous sparker handy, far easier than an ordinary tinderbox and quicker than calling a servant. The wick caught quickly, and he turned it up, filling the room with the yellow glow of burning oil. Then he turned back to Isia. He watched her dress, pretending his attention was entirely on her beauty and his affection for her.

Now, why did she think he had shoved her? He hadn’t touched her; he was quite sure of it. He had been leaning on one elbow, and his other hand at his throat, trying to control his coughing; he could not possibly have shoved her.

A kick would have been physically possible, but a look at the bedclothes convinced him that he had not unconsciously kicked her; his feet were still tucked neatly under the snug coverlet.

Isia was not clumsy, though-at least, he had never seen her do anything else clumsy in the four days he had known her, nor had she seemed inclined to fancies or delusions. On general principles he avoided bedding women whose grasp on reality seemed less than solid, and Isia had shown none of the warning signs he had learned to recognize.

So perhapssomething had shoved her out of bed. He had already concluded his rapidly fading nightmare had been magical in origin; might there have been other magic at work? A ghost, a demon, a sprite of some kind?

There had been no other manifestation, though.

Once Isia had her shift in place she crossed the room to the bench where she had draped her skirt.

Faran tried to remember exactly what had been happening when Isia found herself propelled from her place. She had been lying on her belly, propped up on her elbows; he had been on his back, on one elbow, his right hand at his throat. He had tried to wave her away with his left hand, as he had not wanted her touching him...

He remembered his desire to keep her away, and the helplessness of the coughing fit, and the strange images of the dream, and then he remembered something else.

He had done something, drawn something from the dream. He could recall the sensation, though he could not find words to describe it.

He looked at Isia as she tugged her skirt into place, and he tried to recapture that sensation while somehow reaching out for the hem of her skirt. He felt the space between them, perceiving it in a way he never had before, saw the nature of the skirt’s shape, and tried to alter it...

The silk suddenly hitched up over her left knee, exposing a shapely calf. She brushed it back down apparently without noticing anything out of the ordinary.

Faran tried again, this time lifting the back of the skirt slowly— from across the room, a good ten feet away. He let it drop before she noticed.

Was it something about Isia, then? He concentrated his attention on one of his own shoes, cast aside in a corner.

It slid out into the room, then rose into the air. He lifted it to a height of four feet or so, then slowly lowered it back to the floor. Isia, struggling into her satin tunic, didn’t see a thing.

A moment later Isia blew him a kiss and slipped out of the room, closing the door gently behind her.

Lord Faran lay in the bed, but did not put out the lamp or go back to sleep. Instead he mostly stared at the ceiling thinking, his thoughts interrupted only by brief experiments with his newfound ability.

He could lift or slide anything he could see, he discovered, though only up to roughly the size and weight of a grown man— the wardrobe against the far wall did not budge. He could see the shape of the space between himself and the wardrobe, but could not force it to change as he could with smaller objects. He could also, he found, control the size, brightness, and temperature of the lamp’s flame.

This was magic, beyond question.

But what kind of magic? And how had he acquired it?

It wasn’t anything he immediately recognized, and he had been studying magic for years. It bore a resemblance to witchcraft, in that witches could also move small objects without touching them, but it somehow didn’t feel like the witchcraft he had observed in the past.

The Wizards’ Guild forbade any use of wizardry by any nobleman and frowned upon the idea ofany sort of magic in the hands of nobles-or for that matter, any part of the city government of Ethshar of the Spices or any other government. No ruler or administrator or magistrate, hereditary or otherwise, was permitted to learn magic, and no one who had served an apprenticeship in magic was permitted to hold any governmental position of authority. Magicians hired as magicians were allowed, such as the wizards who purified the canals or the theurgists who made certain that witnesses told the truth in criminal proceedings, but not magicians who made decisions about the city’s workings. The Wizards’ Guild was quite unreasonably insistent on these rules. People who defied the edicts of the Wizards’ Guild had a tendency to die suddenly and horribly. Even if they acquiesced quickly, they suffered lesser, though still unpleasant, fates.

But what about this magic? Azrad VI, overlord of Ethshar of the Spices and triumvir of the Hegemony of Ethshar, had named Lord Faran as his senior counselor, and as such Faran was forbidden to work any magic himself, and instead hired magicians as he might need them in the course of his duties — but now Faran seemed to have come into possession of a mysterious magical power through no act of his own. How would the Wizards’ Guild react to that? Surely, they could not blame him for this accident!

It was so very appropriate that he had received this, after all the years of studying magic he was forbidden to use. He had looked for loopholes in the Guild’s rules, and now a loophole had foundhim. The Guild couldn’t blame him for that!

Then he frowned. No, they wouldn’t blame him. They would acknowledge he hadn’t done anything to cause it.

But they might well kill him anyway.

The Wizards’ Guild had never shown any great interest in fairness, after all-they wanted their edicts obeyed, and they really weren’t especially interested in equity or justice or motivation, just obedience. Faran knew that well. He had his own theories about what the Wizards’ Guilddid want, but he was quite certain it wasn’t justice. He would keep his abilities secret, then. That would make it more difficult to learn exactly what they were or where they came from...

Faran had gotten that far in his thoughts when the noises from beyond his window finally penetrated his consciousness-shouting, screaming, thumpings, and hangings.

It was the middle of the night, he thought; what was going on out there beyond the canal? Curious, he rose and crossed to the window, opened the curtains, and looked out.

“Gods and demons,” he muttered as he took in the scene.

His room was on the third floor of the overlord’s Palace, at the east end, with a view across the East Branch of the Grand Canal into the tangled streets of the Old City. Since most of the structures in that ancient warren were only one or two stories, and some were half-sunken into the mud, he could look out across the entire Old City into Fishertown.

Now, as he looked out at that panorama, he could see a dozen buildings ablaze, scattered across the city. He could see figures in the streets, standing, running-and flying, and the airborne figures were not wearing wizards’ robes, nor carrying any visible magical apparatus, not even the traditional wizard’s dagger.

Most of the flying shapes seemed to be moving northward, high and very fast, out across the Gulf of the East, but others were down near street level and were going in various directions about the city.

He could see other things floating or flying as well-wagons, silver plate, gold coins. Broken glass was strewn all over the streets of the Old City.

And he was fairly certain he saw at least one corpse lying in the street amid the glass.

This was unquestionably serious trouble. He would be needed soon in his official capacity; reports would be reaching the Palace. The city guards would want instructions; the overlord would probably be awakened and want an explanation. He had to get downstairs at once.

And why, he asked himself as he hurried to his dressing room, had he ever thoughtonly he had received this mysterious magical power?