The Unwelcome Warlock

Chapter Four

Kelder of Radish Street had gone to bed early after a long day moving furniture, but he had been asleep for less than an hour when he was awakened by a loud thump. His head jerked up and his eyes sprang open.

The room was dark; he rolled out of bed, found the shutters by feel, and opened them, letting in what little light the surrounding city and the greater moon provided. So far as he could see in that dim glow, nothing looked out of place; he was alone in his attic room, just as he should be, and the furnishings seemed undisturbed.

Then he heard a scraping, and what he thought might have been a moan, and realized that the sound came from above. Someone, or something, was on the roof.

He turned to the window, pushed the shutters back, and opened the casement. He leaned out and looked up, but the eaves extended out too far for him to see anything above. Cautiously, he climbed up on the windowsill, hooked his left arm around the window frame, and leaned out further, craning his neck to see over the eaves.

“Help,” someone said weakly, and the sound guided his eyes.

A woman was lying on the roof; she was wearing black, and her long, black hair hung over much of her face, rendering her almost invisible in the darkness.

“What’s going on?” Kelder called.

“I don’t know,” the woman answered, her voice thin and unsteady. “I fell.”

Kelder glanced around, confirming what he already knew – old Tarissa’s boarding house was the tallest structure on the block. There wasn’t anywhere this person could have fallen from other than the sky.

That meant magic was involved. The black clothes probably meant she was either a warlock or a demonologist, but witches or wizards sometimes wore dark colors, too.

“Are you hurt?” Kelder asked.

“I think so,” the woman answered.

“Can you move?”

There was another scraping, and she inhaled sharply. “It hurts when I try,” she said. “I think something’s broken.”

Then she wasn’t a warlock; even if for some reason her magic had not protected her from the fall, a warlock could mend broken bones. For that matter, Kelder had heard that witches could block pain and do some healing, so she probably wasn’t a witch, either. He didn’t see a flying carpet or any other devices, but if she was a wizard, a failing levitation spell might explain her presence. Still, it didn’t seem the most likely possibility. “Are you a demonologist?” he called, looking around for anything that might be flying near. “Did a demon drop you here?” He did not want to climb out there and find some horror from the Nethervoid waiting.

“No. I’m a warlock,” she said.

“But…” Kelder was confused. “But then how… Why can’t you move? Why can’t you heal yourself?”

“I don’t know!” she said miserably. “I was flying, and then I wasn’t – it was as if my magic just disappeared.”

Kelder had never heard of anything like that. Magic didn’t just disappear unless a magician wanted it to. Oh, there were stories about places where wizardry didn’t work – there were rumors that the overlord’s palace in Ethshar of the Sands was such a place, ever since that madwoman Tabaea, the self-proclaimed empress, had died there – but warlockry wasn’t like that. The only places it might not work were out at the edges of the World, too far from the source in Aldagmor. Here in Ethshar of the Spices, it worked just fine.

He looked at the injured woman, lying helpless on the roof tiles, and then looked down at the street four stories below. There was no way to get her in through his window safely, not if she was really hurt, and there was no door or trap opening onto the roof.

“I’ll go get help,” he said. “Is there some other warlock I should ask to come get you?”

“Maybe. Where am I?”

“You’re on the roof of a boarding house on Old Market Street, in Hempfield.”

“Hempfield? I don’t know anyone in Hempfield.”

“That’s unfortunate. Let me see if I can find someone. I’ll be back as quickly as I can.”

She made a noise that he didn’t think was intended to be words, and he carefully lowered himself back into his room. Then he paused to think.

The obvious solution would be to find a ladder and get a couple of people up there to carry her down, but Kelder didn’t know anyone with a ladder long enough. No, they needed a magician.

Hempfield was not exactly the Wizards’ Quarter. There were three herbalists in the neighborhood, if one defined “neighborhood” broadly, and a few blocks to the north lived a witch of dubious reputation by the name of Kyrina of Newmarket, but the nearest warlock Kelder knew of was a journeyman calling himself Berakon the Black, who had a place on Locksmith Alley in Allston. Kelder was not at all sure Berakon could even fly – he had located his shop in Locksmith Alley because he earned most of his living working with locks and other small hardware – but he was a warlock and only about a dozen blocks away.

Kelder pulled on his tunic and boots, grabbed a jacket, and headed out the door.

He called a brief explanation to the landlady on his way, but did not take the time for more. The sooner he found help for that poor woman, the better.

Ten minutes later he was at Berakon’s tiny shop – or really, his stall; it was a single room, barely wider than its double doors and perhaps ten feet deep. Kelder had wandered past it several times and looked it over, so he was familiar with its appearance. He knew he had the right place.

But it was closed. The doors were shut and secured by a large brass padlock.

Kelder frowned. Locksmiths usually worked late, since people found themselves locked out at all hours, but Berakon’s stall was definitely closed. He hurried to the much larger but non-magical locksmith’s shop next door.

A bell jingled as he opened the door, and the proprietor looked up from a disassembled mechanism.

“Where’s the warlock?” Kelder asked. “There’s an emergency.”

“He closed up a few minutes ago,” the locksmith said. “Said he wasn’t feeling well. He asked if I knew a good healer witch.”

Kelder blinked. That didn’t make sense. “A warlock not feeling well?”

The locksmith grimaced. “I know, but that’s what he said.”

Kelder shook his head. “What did you tell him?”

“I sent him to Alasha of the Long Nose, up on Superstition Street.”

Superstition Street was another four long blocks to the south, toward the Arena. Kelder was not eager to range that far from home.

“Thank you,” he said. “Do you know of any other warlocks around here?”

“Around here?” The locksmith shook his head. “No.” He hesitated, then asked, “What’s going on? Why do you need a warlock?”

“One fell out of the sky and is stuck on my roof,” Kelder said. “She says her magic stopped working. I thought another warlock could get her down and maybe figure out what was wrong.”

The shopkeeper studied him for a moment, then said, “Berakon borrowed a padlock.”

Kelder had been trying to decide whether to head for Superstition Street, or back to the boarding house, or maybe to Warlock Street in the Wizards’ Quarter, so he had not really been listening.

“What?” he said.

“Berakon borrowed a padlock,” the locksmith repeated.

“I’m sorry, I don’t see…” Kelder let the question trail off.

“He never needed a padlock before,” the locksmith explained. “If he went out, he used his magic to weld the doors shut, and then undid it when he got back. I didn’t think he really needed to lock it at all, because who would be stupid enough to steal from a warlock? But he did it anyway, every time. Until tonight, when he asked me if I knew where he could find a witch, and then borrowed that lock from me.”

Kelder stared at him.

“You think they both lost their magic,” he said. He tried to think how that could happen. Might there be some contagious disease that stole a warlock’s magic? He had never heard of such a thing, but that didn’t mean it couldn’t happen.

“Maybe,” the locksmith said. “Maybe they did. And maybe it’s not just the two of them. I mean, warlockry just appeared out of nowhere on the Night of Madness, didn’t it? That’s what my mother told me. I was just a baby, so I don’t remember it myself.”

“I wasn’t even born,” Kelder said, “but yes, that’s what I always heard.”

“Well, maybe tonight it just stopped, as suddenly as it started.”

Kelder started to protest, then hesitated.

Why not? Maybe it had just stopped.

If so, then there wasn’t any point in looking for other warlocks. He needed some other way to get that poor woman off the roof. What other magic might work?

Well, wizards had various ways to fly or otherwise reach inaccessible places, but wizardry was expensive. A demonologist could probably get her down, but they were dangerous. Kelder wasn’t about to hire a demonologist without a much better reason than this. He had no idea whether a theurgist, or a witch, or a sorcerer, or some other sort of magician could do anything to help.

Maybe he had been hasty in deciding magic was called for in the first place. He had never seen a ladder tall enough to reach that high from the ground, but couldn’t it be set on the roof next door?

“Thank you,” he said. He dropped a copper bit on the counter, then turned to go.

Rander the house-carpenter had some good ladders. Maybe he could help.

Lador the Black was leaning over the girl’s sickbed, systematically sweeping the poisons from her blood, when suddenly he could no longer sense anything beneath her skin at all. He could still see her face, her brow slick with perspiration, and the soft green blanket tucked up to her chin. He could hear her labored breathing, smell the foul odor of illness, but everything below the surface had vanished.

His head felt strange, almost empty. All the things he normally perceived that ordinary people could not were gone – including that nasty, insistent murmuring that he knew would someday have drawn him away to Aldagmor. His hand, which he had been holding over her chest for dramatic effect, was no longer glowing; the only light came from the oil lamp on the shelf over the bed.

He blinked and straightened up, confused.

“Something’s wrong,” he said.

“What?” the girl’s mother asked. “What is it?”

“I don’t know,” Lador said.

“Is she worsening?”

Lador shook his head. “No,” he said. “No, something’s wrong with me.” He looked down at the girl, who seemed to be breathing a little easier. “She’s no worse. I think I helped her a bit. But…something is wrong. I can’t do any more. I’m sorry; you’ll need to find someone else.”

“But you said you could cure her!”

“I thought I could,” Lador said. “I’ve seen this kind of fever before, and I’ve cured it, but this time…” He frowned. “I’ll return your fee, of course.”

“But what about Larsi?”

“You’ll need to find another magician,” he said. “Perhaps a witch would do better.”

As he spoke, he had been trying several little experiments – trying to extinguish the lamp, trying to move the blanket, trying to lift himself off the floor, trying to warm his hand.

None of them had worked. His magic was gone. All of it. It had simply ceased to exist.

He was no longer a warlock.

That raised a thousand questions – was his magic gone forever? Would it return in a few minutes, a few hours, a few years? Were other warlocks affected? Did this mean he would never be Called?

That last question brought another – if there was a way to get his magic back, did he want to?

Thira the Warlock had been sitting in her kitchen, trying to decide whether wine made the nagging in her head better or worse, and wondering whether oushka might make it stop, or might overcome her resistance entirely. She had been dreading the night ahead; if she slept she knew she would have nightmares, and she knew she might wake up in mid-air on her way to Aldagmor, but if she didn’t sleep, she would weaken as she grew wearier, and might doze off and find herself as badly off as if she had just gone to bed. Maybe worse.

She had been toying with a carving knife, wondering whether suicide might be preferable to the Calling, and wondering whether suicide was even possible for a warlock, when the Call stopped.

It was like a physical blow; she rocked back in her chair, her eyes wide, and the knife fell from her hand and clattered on the floor. She fell half an inch onto her chair as the magic that she had been unconsciously using vanished.

The kitchen was suddenly all there was. The whispering, the barely-glimpsed images in her head, the awareness of the composition of everything around her, had all disappeared. Only the real, solid, everyday world remained. The hard seat of her chair, the lingering scent of garlic left from supper, the lamplight reflecting from the brightly-glazed bowls on the shelf, were all newly intense because everything she had sensed through her magic was no longer distracting her.

“Oh,” she gasped.

She sat for several minutes simply taking in the silence, the clarity. Then she finally allowed herself to think about what it might mean.

It meant she was no longer a warlock; she found that out quickly enough. Everything she attempted failed. Her magic was completely, utterly gone.

That assumed, of course, that this was real. For the last sixnight, she had often been unsure what was real and what was not, as the voices and images in her head crowded out her natural senses. Could this be some new, different illusion? Perhaps this was all just her imagination, and she was actually flying to Aldagmor even now, only thinking she was still safe in her own kitchen. After all, she had never heard of a warlock who had gone past the nightmare threshold to the very brink of being Called suddenly recovering like this.

She rapped her knuckles on the table. It certainly felt real, and the sound was clear and distinct.

But if it was real, why?

This was beyond her understanding. She wanted to talk to someone, someone who might be able to explain this.

The only place she could think of where she thought she might find answers was Warlock House, on High Street in the New City. She had only been there once, when she completed her apprenticeship and formally joined the Council, but of course she remembered where it was.

She stood up and found herself slightly unsteady on her feet without magic to support her; she caught herself on the table, regained her balance, and smiled.

“It must be real,” she murmured. “Why would I imagine that?”

She wondered what the people at Warlock House would have to say about this. Had it ever happened before? Might there be dozens of ex-warlocks living in secret in the city?

Moving slowly and carefully, she turned and headed for the door.

Little Sammel focused all his attention on the coin, as he had a dozen times that day, but something felt wrong. He could not sense it – he could see it, but could not feel it, and the coin refused to move. The power seemed to have failed him.

“Something’s wrong, Master,” he said.

His master did not reply immediately, and the apprentice turned to see whether the elder warlock was angry, or merely distracted.

He did not appear to be either one; he looked frightened.

But that was silly; what could frighten a powerful warlock like Dabran the Pale?

“Master?” Sammel asked, uncertainly.

“Sammel,” Dabran said, his own voice unsteady. “Do you feel it?”

“Feel what, Master?”

“The…the quiet.”

“I don’t feel anything, Master. I can’t…my magic seems to be gone.”

A crooked smile appeared on Dabran’s face.

“Mine is, too, apprentice,” he said. “Mine is, too.”

Over and over, in shops and homes, streets and skies, all through the Hegemony of the Three Ethshars and in a dozen other lands, similar scenes played out. A few warlocks died when their magic failed; so did a few of their customers, and a handful of bystanders. A few more people were injured. Some former warlocks bemoaned their loss of power; others delighted in knowing they were free of the Call. Some thought they were alone and tried to conceal their vulnerability; others gathered to compare notes on what might have happened.

In the Baronies of Sardiron warlocks were almost unknown; that realm was too close to Aldagmor for comfort, the Calling too strong. In the more northerly Small Kingdoms, warlocks were scarce because they were not welcome; in the southernmost Small Kingdoms, warlocks were nonexistent, by edict of the Wizards’ Guild, which had banned them from the area in 5224. Word was therefore slow to spread in those regions.

In most of the towns and cities of the World, though, it was well known by morning that there were no more warlocks, and no more Call.

What was not yet widely known was why.