The Unwelcome Warlock

Chapter Thirty

Vond’s arrival was not a surprise. Ithinia had been in her garden, watching the overlord’s palace move into position over her house, and when it stopped, she knew what was coming next. The warlock had made his announcement, and now he would want to deliver his terms. She did not hurry, but turned and went back inside.

She found Obdur waiting in the hallway and told him, “We’re expecting company. When the warlock arrives, I will see him in the parlor. Address him as befits an emperor – there’s no need to antagonize him over trifles.”

“Yes, mistress,” Obdur said with a bow. He turned and headed toward the front of the house.

Ithinia made her way to the parlor, picking up a few small items on the way. The other magicians who had attended her little gathering had all gone about their own business afterward, but she thought it was likely some of them might want to talk to her when they saw the flying palace, and she did not think Vond would look kindly on any interruptions, so she drew a quick rune of warning and invoked a simple protective spell of her own invention. She had never bothered to name it, since she had never shown it to anyone else; maybe, she thought, she should pass it on to one of her former apprentices. Call it Ithinia’s Distraction, perhaps – she did not yet have her name officially attached to any spells, but it might be time to forgo false modesty and change that. Whatever one called it, it would divert visitors, cause them to make wrong turns, or be unable to open doors, or find other things to do; only the most determined would be able to reach her while the spell was in effect.

Of course, the warlock was very determined indeed. Ithinia heard Vond shout, “Open up, wizard!” as she stepped into the parlor. She tried to remember the etiquette for addressing royalty – she had learned it long ago in Tintallion, but Ethshar did not bother with such formalities. She could not sit until he did, or until he invited her to, and she must never turn her back on him – was there anything else?”

She heard Obdur open the front door and invite Vond in, heard the warlock shove Obdur against the wall, and then he was there, floating into her home about six inches off the floor.

“Your Imperial Majesty,” she said with a bow.

“Wizard,” he said.

“May I ask what brings you here? You referred to a witch?”

“You sent a witch to invade my mind,” Vond said. “You sent her to shove her memories of the Calling into my head while I slept.”

Ithinia considered denying it, but decided against it for two reasons – first, both she and Vond knew the charge was true, so that acknowledging it would let them get down to business more quickly, and second, it might also throw Vond off balance a little – he would probably expect her to deny it.

“I suggested it, yes,” Ithinia said. “I take it poor Kirris failed to convince your Majesty that you still need to fear a Call?”

“I know better than that,” the warlock replied. “It disturbed my sleep, though, and that cost the witch her life. I hope you’re proud of that.”

Ithinia thought that if anyone deserved blame for Kirris’ death it was the man who killed her, but she knew better than to argue the point. “I very much regret you found it necessary to kill her, your Majesty.”

“I’m sure you do.” He did not quite sneer, but it was close.

“May I ask why you’re here?” Ithinia said. “Since we both now see that the idea of a fraudulent Calling was a mistake, I can assure you I won’t encourage any further such attempts.”

“I want to know why you encouraged that one! I haven’t done anything to you or the other wizards, Guildmaster; why are you persecuting me? You and Chairman Hanner made a truce between wizards and warlocks back in 5202; why are you breaking it?”

Ithinia marveled that he would think a pact between two entire schools of magic was relevant here. “I’m sure you will admit, your Majesty, that the situation is rather different now. Our agreement with Chairman Hanner was based on the understanding that warlocks would police themselves, and that any warlock who broke the law would be held accountable by his fellow warlocks. You have no fellow warlocks, your Majesty. You have no Calling to worry you. You have no check on your power at all. We merely hoped to create one, to discourage you from using your magic too freely and endangering innocents.”

Vond glared at her. “Didn’t work out very well, did it?”

“No, it didn’t. Still, your Majesty, had we truly meant you ill, we might have killed you in your sleep, rather than just sending an unpleasant dream.”

“You might have tried,” Vond retorted.

Ithinia sighed. “Really, your Majesty – do you think you’re completely indestructible? We have undetectable poisons, we have subtle potions, we have a thousand ways to get at you. There are spells that are quite effective against warlocks. We turned Chairman Hanner’s uncle to stone, after all. If we had really wanted you dead, you would be.”

If Vond was shaken by this, he did not show it. “So you didn’t try to kill me – yet. Maybe you thought you could turn me into your puppet, instead, and now that that hasn’t worked, maybe you would try to kill me – except that now you don’t dare. You’ve seen where the overlord’s palace is, haven’t you?”

“Yes,” Ithinia admitted.

“Well, I’m the only thing holding it up there. I can hold it there forever – regardless of which source we use, we Calling-level warlocks don’t tire. But if I die, ten thousand tons of stone will fall out of the sky onto this house. I don’t even need to die, really – if you turn me into a frog, down it comes. If you do anything that breaks my concentration badly enough, it falls. The overlord and his family will die, your neighbors will die – you might not, since I’m sure you have a dozen protective spells on this place, but I think the damage would be extensive enough to deter you.”

“You’re going to keep it up there? Indefinitely?”

“Unless you can convince me I don’t need to, yes.”

“But the overlord! The city’s government!”

He smiled crookedly. “They will need to deal with a few inconveniences, won’t they?” The smile vanished. “If you think you can find some way around this, some way to make it so it won’t matter if I drop the palace, I suggest you reconsider, because I can pick up something much larger than the palace if I need to. I can lift the entire city, and leave it hanging over the Gulf of the East – or I can lift a piece of the Gulf and hang it over the city, ready to crash down and drown you all.”

“That won’t be necessary, your Majesty.”

“You’re acknowledging my authority, then? You’ll accept me as the ruler of Ethshar?”

That caught Ithinia off guard, as few things had over the past century or two. “I don’t…I’m not in a position to decide that.”

“Aren’t you?”

“I cannot speak for Lord Azrad, your Majesty.”

“I didn’t ask about Lord Azrad. I asked whether you acknowledged my authority.”

Irritated, Ithinia said, “I acknowledge that you are in a position to dictate terms to me, your Majesty. Isn’t that enough?”

Vond smiled unpleasantly. “Why, yes, I think it is.”

“Then what do you want of me?”

“I want your oath that you will make no further attempt to harm me, to deceive me, or to interfere with my actions.”

“I certainly won’t try to hurt you while you’re the only thing keeping the palace from crashing down!”

Vond laughed. “Of course not.”

“Do you seriously intend to hold it up there forever?”

“Oh, probably not. It would get tiresome. I’m sure I’ll want to take a nap now and then, and I don’t know whether I can keep it steady in my sleep. That’s why I want your oath. And before you start thinking about whether or not killing me in my sleep might be worth forswearing yourself, consider this – you don’t really know that I’m the only warlock left, do you? I have dozens of other Called warlocks at my house on High Street, and can you be sure I haven’t given any of them the ability to use the magic I do?”

Ithinia knew better than to say anything about that. She was fairly certain that Vond was not the sort who would be willing to share his power; he liked being the only one of his kind, she was sure. Saying that, though, was exactly the kind of thing that might prompt him to actually carry out the implied threat.

“If you’re thinking you can handle one or two, remember there might be dozens, and they wouldn’t all sleep at once. They would avenge me – not because they love me so much, but so no one would do the same to them. You’ll never catch all of us asleep.”

“I understand,” Ithinia said. She understood that Vond was bluffing – which meant he knew he was vulnerable. It was, she thought, a very good thing that warlockry was a purely physical magic, and that Vond could not hear her thoughts as a witch might. He could probably sense the signs that would mean an ordinary person was lying, but Ithinia was not an ordinary person; a few centuries of practice had given her the ability to lie so well that even witches could not always detect it.

“Then swear you won’t try to harm me or deceive me.”

Ithinia decided it was time to calm her foe. She put a hand on the hilt of her athame. “I swear by my life and my blade that I will not attempt to harm you, and that I will not again use magic to deceive you, nor advise others to do so.”

Vond glared at her for a moment, then nodded. “That will do. I’m tempted to demand that you swear loyalty to me, but I suppose that would conflict with some Guild oath you’ve taken.”

“Yes, it would,” Ithinia answered. It might even be true, she thought.

“Then I’ll do without it.” He turned to go. “You might want to warn the other magicians not to get in my way,” he called back over his shoulder.

“Your Majesty?” Ithinia said.

He paused. “What?”

“May I ask what your plans are? What is it you intend to do with your power?”

Vond seemed puzzled by the question. “Whatever I please,” he said.

“Yes, but what pleases you?”

Again, he seemed confused. “Good food. Beautiful women. Sunny days. A comfortable home. The same things that please anyone.”

“So you have no plans to usurp the overlord’s position?”

Vond waved a hand dismissively. “I can’t be bothered to run a government. I tried that in Semma – it’s tiresome. I will happily let others deal with the necessity of keeping order, so long as they do so in a way that pleases me and does not interfere with my own actions.”

“You have no schemes for expanding your existing empire to include Ethshar?”

He snorted. “Wizard, the entire World is already mine – it’s just that some people don’t realize it yet.” He turned again.

This time Ithinia let him go. She did not send Obdur to see him out; she did not want to risk Vond killing her servant simply because he was there.

She waited for the sound of the front door closing, but it didn’t come. After a moment she went to look, and found that Vond had left the door standing open, allowing the cold air of a winter’s night to pour in.

“Inconsiderate fool,” Ithinia muttered, as she shut the door. A moment later, though, she opened it again and stepped out.

The street was empty, but she heard voices. She looked around. Her gargoyles were fluttering clumsily about the neighbors’ rooftops, calling to one another, and she realized they were guiding people out through the courtyards and alleys between Lower and High Street, out from under the hovering palace. She could hear human voices in the distance, as well, shouting instructions.

And the air above the houses was full of flying carpets, and those newfangled flying carriages that had come into fashion a few years ago, and levitating wizards, fetching people and papers down from the palace. Clearly, several people had not waited for her to take the lead in dealing with the situation.

That was good. It was a relief to see people showing some initiative – but at the same time, she fervently hoped they were being careful about it. Vond could be irrationally touchy; he might take almost anything as a personal affront.

She had sworn not to harm him, so she would not, but she certainly wasn’t going to stop anyone else from harming him. She wondered whether the Cult of Demerchan had decided yet whether they would kill him.

If they did kill him, someone had better be ready to bring that palace down safely, and she only knew one spell she would trust to do the job – the structure was too big for the usual restoratives and stasis spells. She glanced around, looking for the orange glow of the greater moon – Varrin’s Greater Propulsion could only be completed when both moons were full, and while the lesser moon ran through its cycle in less than a day, the greater moon would only be in the correct phase once a month. She hoped that Demerchan would not be hasty, as she thought the necessary occasion was still a sixnight or so away.

She would also need seven pure white stones, iron that had fallen from the sky, a peacock plume, a thick black candle, a blue glass bottle, a dagger carved from rock crystal and sharpened with a feather, and of course several pounds of seawater-scented incense, with a silver censer to burn it in. Her set of stones was in her workshop drawer, and there was a suitable bottle holding a few flowers in the southwest guest room, but she was not sure exactly where the other components were; she might need to buy or borrow some of them. She had a vague recollection of selling her crystal knife to one of her former apprentices a century or so back.

She wondered whether the overlord might want to keep his palace airborne for awhile once this was all over. Flying castles, never common, had been considered quite prestigious during the Great War. That assumed, of course, that it would someday be all over, and that Lord Azrad, or at least one of his heirs, would survive that long.

At least Vond wasn’t actively malevolent, just greedy and stupid – and at that, she didn’t think he was as stupid as that silly thief Tabaea, who had declared herself an empress in Ethshar of the Sands a decade back.

Ithinia grimaced at the memory of how badly Telurinon and the others had handled the problems Tabaea created. She liked to think she would have done far better. But then she looked up at the overlord’s palace, hanging in the air three hundred feet above her head, and decided she had nothing to brag about, either.