The Unwelcome Warlock

Chapter Nine

The dream was completely unlike any Hanner had dreamt in years; there were no inhuman whispers, no images of flames, no sensation of falling, no desperate irrational urges. Instead he found himself standing in a wizard’s workshop, face to face with a stranger, and every detail was clear and comprehensible. Still, Hanner was fairly certain it was indeed a dream. While he supposed he might have been magically snatched away while he slept and brought here, something about it did not have quite the solidity and definition of real life, and he knew well that wizards could communicate in dreams.

“Chairman Hanner?” the stranger said, his tone deferential.

“Yes?” Hanner replied cautiously.

“I’m Rothiel of Wizard Street. Guildmaster Ithinia asked me to contact you.”

“Ithinia? Is she still…” He didn’t finish the question; he realized it was foolish. Ithinia had been the senior member of the Wizards’ Guild in Ethshar of the Spices from before the Night of Madness until Hanner was Called, and since she had already been a couple of centuries old then, there was no reason to think she wouldn’t remain the senior member for the rest of Hanner’s life. He had only been gone seventeen years; that was nothing to a wizard of her ability.

“The Guildmaster sends her greetings. She says she remembers you fondly.”

“I’m flattered.”

“I am speaking to you in your dreams by means of a spell -”

“The Greater Spell of Invaded Dreams,” Hanner interrupted. “I was a student of magic before I became a warlock. I was responsible for keeping an eye on the various magicians for Azrad VI.”

That was not entirely accurate; he had been sent to study and oversee the magicians of Ethshar by his uncle, Lord Faran, not by the overlord himself. Faran had nominally been working for Azrad, though, so it seemed close enough to the truth for now.

“Oh,” Rothiel said. “Then you understand -”

“I understand that if anything wakes me up, this conversation will end abruptly and may be difficult to restore, so please tell me whatever Ithinia wanted you to tell me.”

“Yes, of course.” Rothiel was visible flustered, but continued quickly. “Well, firstly, Dumery of the Dragon delivered news of your situation to several wizards in Ethshar of the Spices, and it was passed on to the Guildmaster. We will be sending assistance fairly soon.”

“Good!”

“However, matters here are somewhat chaotic. As you probably realize, warlockry vanished not just in Aldagmor, but throughout the World, last night, resulting in a great deal of confusion. Other magicians are being called upon to fill in everywhere that warlocks suddenly couldn’t. There were several injuries and even a few deaths when the warlocks’ magic failed.” He waved toward a window that hadn’t been there before, and Hanner looked out to see warlocks plummeting onto rooftops and fires bursting out here and there throughout the city. “We are still gathering information about the damage. Your party is not necessarily our highest priority. Can you give us any details about what you need?”

“Everything,” Hanner said. “Food, water, shelter, clothing, transportation.”

Rothiel nodded. “How many of you are there?”

“Our best estimate is somewhere between fifteen and twenty thousand, not counting the dead.”

Rothiel appeared to be momentarily stunned.

“Fifteen thousand?” he said at last.

“At least.”

“Dumery said there were thousands, but we didn’t…I mean, we…”

“Fifteen to twenty thousand,” Hanner repeated. “That’s the survivors. We counted four hundred and eighty-six dead, but we may have missed some. We couldn’t get an exact count on the living.”

“You…I understood your group to be warlocks who somehow survived the Calling.”

“That’s right,” Hanner said, starting to become annoyed. “We all survived the Calling. It turns out that the Calling itself was never fatal. The deaths here all occurred after it ended, when some of us were crushed, or fell out of the sky. Most of the dead were people who had been in Aldagmor on the Night of Madness – they were crushed to death, or smothered, as they were at the bottom of the pile when we woke up. We’ve dealt with the dead as best we could, and now we’re all trying to go home – at least, those of us who still have homes; it seems dragons have claimed eastern Aldagmor for themselves, so the survivors from that area are homeless.”

“But fifteen thousand -”

“Wizard,” Hanner said, trying not to lose his temper, “every single person who was ever Called, from the Night of Madness right up to the last few days, just woke up in the wilderness where the Warlock Stone used to be. Our theurgists managed to get us a three-day supply of food, but none of them can get us back to civilization – our best priestess, Alladia of Shiphaven, says that Asham the Gate-Keeper could do it, but she can’t remember how to invoke him, and none of the others were ever at her level. We’re getting water from the streams running down out of the mountains, but even that isn’t going to be enough for all of us. We are in desperate straits. Dumery and his dragon chased us out of the immediate area where we woke up, but there are so many of us that by the time we had laid out the dead for cremation, and made arrangements to transport the injured, we were scarcely able to cover two leagues before we had to stop for the night – and even that left most of us with aching feet; we aren’t accustomed to walking. We are bound for Ethshar of the Spices because it’s the closest of the great cities; we cannot head toward Sardiron because the dragons’ nesting ground is in the way. There are no roads out here. We have no one who knows the route with any certainty. We think there are wild beasts in the area – not just dragons, but other creatures that have taken advantage of Aldagmor’s depopulation. There may be other dangers, as well; we don’t know. Some of us are fairly sure we have homes and families waiting, while others have been gone for ten or twenty or thirty years and have no idea what the World is like now, or whether anyone remembers us. If the Wizards’ Guild can help us, we will be grateful for whatever aid you provide.”

“Of course.” Rothiel was recovering quickly from his surprise. “My apologies, Chairman; I admit we thought Dumery must have been exaggerating, but clearly he was not. We will see what can be done. We’ll put out the word that all Called warlocks are returning; some of you may indeed be hearing from friends and relatives soon.”

“Thank you!” Hanner said, greatly relieved.

“Is there anyone you would like us to speak to on your own behalf?”

“Oh,” Hanner said. The question had caught him off-guard.

“The current Chairman of the Council of Warlocks for Ethshar of the Spices is Zallin of the Mismatched Eyes; would you like us to inform him that you’re alive?”

Hanner started; he remembered Zallin of the Mismatched Eyes. That annoying youngster was now chairman? He had been only a year or two out of his apprenticeship, and very fond of stupid jokes, when Hanner last saw him; Hanner could almost still hear his irritating bray of a laugh.

“No, I don’t care about him,” Hanner said. “But if you could find my wife, Mavi of Newmarket – is she safe? Is she well?”

“I’ll see what I can find out.”

“And our children – we have three children. They must be grown by now.”

“I will make inquiries.”

Hanner had already made a few inquiries of his own, asking warlocks who had been Called after him, but no one seemed very sure what had become of his family. That worried him.

Most of the warlocks he had known who were Called before him had turned out to be alive and unhurt; he had found Rudhira of Camptown, and Varrin the Weaver, and Desset of Eastwark, and most of the others who he had gathered on the Night of Madness. He had found other warlocks he had known through his seventeen years as Chairman of the Council of Warlocks. He had talked to several warlocks who had been Called after him, from Goran the Tall, who appeared to have flown north just a few days after Hanner himself, to Sensella of Morningside, who never did quite reach the Source.

But he hadn’t found anyone who knew what had happened to Mavi, or to Faran, Arris, and Hala.

“Is there anything else, Chairman?”

“Ithinia might want to know this, if she doesn’t already – Emperor Vond is still alive and still able to work magic.”

“Emperor Vond?”

“Yes. He was after my time, but from what the others have told me, surely you’ve heard of him?”

“I don’t understand,” Rothiel said. “I know the name, but wasn’t the Great Vond a warlock who was Called fifteen years ago?”

“Yes, he was,” Hanner said. “Or so I am told; I never met him, so far as I recall, and as I said, he didn’t build his empire until after I was gone.”

“But warlocks can’t do magic any more, can they?”

“Most of us, no, or we wouldn’t be here, but apparently Vond can. I thought Ithinia should be told.”

“How is that possible?”

Hanner glared at the wizard. “How should I know? I can’t do magic anymore! You’re a wizard; you figure it out.”

“Is Vond with your group, then?”

“No. He flew off yesterday morning. He took eighty or ninety volunteers with him to reclaim his empire, which I’m told is somewhere in the Small Kingdoms.”

“Volunteers?” Rothiel’s expression was a mix of fear and bafflement. “Can they still do magic?”

“No. Or at least, they couldn’t when they left; for all I know, Vond may have taught them by now.”

“This is very disturbing news. Can any of the other warlocks with you use any magic?”

“We have about half a dozen theurgists, maybe a score of witches, and a few others, including a handful of wizards and former wizards, but if you mean can anyone else still use warlockry, none that I know of. Someone might be hiding it, I suppose, but I don’t know why anyone would.”

“Theurgists and witches?” The fear had passed, but Rothiel’s confusion was more obvious than ever. “I thought you were all warlocks.”

“We were,” Hanner said. “How old are you?”

“I don’t see -”

“How old are you?”

“I don’t see what it has to do with anything, but I’m thirty-one.”

“Thank you; that’s about what I would have guessed, but one can never be sure with wizards. Then you don’t remember the Night of Madness, but you must have heard about it.”

“Yes, of course.”

“Then you know that in that one night, thousands of people went off to Aldagmor, never to be seen again.”

“Well, yes, but -”

“And you must have heard that it seemed to strike almost at random.”

“Yes.”

“If you choose three or four thousand people at random from the population of the Hegemony of the Three Ethshars, how many of them do you think will be magicians?”

“Oh.” Understanding spread across Rothiel’s face.

“Now do you see? Most of our magicians were Called on the Night of Madness, snatched away in the middle of the night, without their supplies. A few who became warlocks that night without being Called immediately went on to give up their other magic and live for a time as warlocks, but now that they’ve lost their warlockry, their old magic has returned – though as you might guess, they’re badly out of practice.”

“I think I see.”

“We seem to have more witches than one might expect,” Hanner remarked, “but witchcraft and warlockry always seemed to have some similarities, so that’s probably why.”

“A large part of your group, then, is people who disappeared on the Night of Madness, almost thirty-five years ago?”

“Yes. I’m sure they were all thought to be long since dead. No one expects to just go home after all this time and pick up where they left off.”

“Haven’t many of them died of old age?”

“Oh, didn’t I explain that?” Hanner smiled. “No. The protective spells on the Warlock Stone preserved us all perfectly. We didn’t age a day, whether we were caught there for thirty-four minutes or thirty-four years.”

“The spell was strong enough to preserve all the warlocks who were ever Called?”

“This was the source of all warlockry, wizard. It had all the power it would ever need for anything it wanted to do.”

“Of course. I see. So there are fifteen thousand of you, and most of you disappeared years ago and are now returning unchanged to families that thought you long dead. You understand that this may be…complicated.”

Hanner glared. “I am not an idiot, Rothiel.”

“Yes, but this is… This is not what we expected.”

“It’s not what I expected when I was Called, either, but here we are.”

Rothiel nodded. “I will speak to Ithinia, and I hope we will be able to assist you soon.”

“Thank you.”

“Good night, Hanner, and good luck.”

With that, the wizard’s workshop suddenly crumbled away, leaving Hanner standing on trampled grass back in Aldagmor, surrounded by sleeping warlocks.

Then that, too, dissolved, and he was alone in lightless emptiness – clearly, the dream the wizard had sent had ended, but his sleeping mind was not yet ready to let go. He shouted, but there was no one to hear him, and his voice seemed small and faint in the void.

And then he woke up, his back stiff, a blade of grass tickling one ear. He was cold and damp, lying on cold, damp ground. He was looking at white fabric, though it seemed rather dim. He shivered, then rolled from his side to his back and looked up at a gray sky; clouds had rolled in during the night, and it was not much after dawn. He sat up.

Sleeping bodies stretched out in every direction, though less so to the south; he had been near the front of the throng. That white fabric was the back of Rudhira’s tunic; she was still wearing the white tunic and green skirt she had worn when she flew off to Aldagmor, all those years ago – clothes she had borrowed from the wardrobe Lord Faran had kept for his mistresses. She had left one green shoe behind on the streets of Ethshar, and somewhere she had lost the other, leaving her feet bare. Her long red hair trailed across the muddy grass.

Finding her among the crowd in Aldagmor had been a shock for Hanner; despite Sensella’s warnings and his conversation with Rayel, it had not been until he saw Rudhira that the effects of the time-stopping protective spells around the Warlock Stone really hit home. Rudhira was the same lovely young woman she had been when she flew away, just a few days after the Night of Madness; if anything, she was prettier than he had remembered.

She hadn’t recognized him. He had aged seventeen years, and she, not at all. She had been a few years older than he when they first met in Witch Alley; now she was at least a decade younger.

She had been a streetwalker before the Night of Madness; then, for a few days, she had been the most powerful warlock in Ethshar of the Spices.

What would she be now?

Rothiel had said their situation was complicated, and Hanner was well aware that he was right. Twenty thousand former warlocks were about to start arriving in the towns and villages and cities of the Hegemony of the Three Ethshars, and the Baronies of Sardiron, and the other realms of the World. Some of them might have friends and family eager to welcome them back, but most would not. Some would have other trades to pursue now that they could no longer be warlocks, but others would not; someone who had apprenticed to a warlock at age twelve, had studied and practiced nothing but magic, and had earned a living for his or her entire adult life with that magic, did not have a great many career choices open to him. The younger people could still learn new trades, but what was a man of forty or fifty supposed to do? A man of that age could not join the city guard, which was the last resort for a youth who never found an apprenticeship or other job.

Hanner very much feared that many of his companions here might wind up sleeping in the Hundred-Foot Field, begging for scraps.

It was possible, though unlikely, that he would wind up doing that. After all, he had never been apprenticed to a trade; before becoming a warlock he had worked for his Uncle Faran, who was long dead. He had inherited some money and property when Lord Faran died, but he had more of less turned the mansion over to the Council of Warlocks, and he might not be able to reclaim it – it was a long-established principle that Called warlocks were legally dead. His money was almost certainly long gone. Even before his Calling, he had spent most of his fortune on magic of one sort or another – especially those blasted Transporting Tapestries.

He knew now what had happened to him, how his experiment with the tapestries had gone wrong. He had simply been unprepared for the impact of the sudden return of the Calling after the mental silence in that refuge. His mind had had no time to adjust, no chance to restore the barriers he had built up and then let fall.

He did not know, though, what had become of the tapestry that led to the refuge. Sensella had never heard of it, nor had any of the four or five other people he had spoken to who had been Called from Ethshar of the Spices after his own departure. It ought to be worth something, he thought. Whoever possessed that tapestry controlled access to a miniature world; surely, that was valuable to someone.

Mavi might have it, he thought. Or Zallin, though it had been Hanner’s property, not the Council’s. Or maybe it had been lost, or destroyed.

And what would become of Warlock House? The Council no longer had any reason to exist, so perhaps Hanner could reclaim the house, since he had never formally relinquished ownership.

Besides, he had connections. Surely, Mavi was still alive, and his children, and there was no reason to think they would be poor. His two sisters and their families were wealthy and successful, and surely they would have seen to it that Mavi and Faran and Arris and Hala were safe and comfortable. They should be glad to see him return, as well. Oh, it was possible that ruin and doom had somehow befallen them all, but it was vanishingly unlikely. He had no reason to worry too much about his own future; he would be fine.

But what about all these other people? Hanner looked out at the crowd; some of them were beginning to stir, to sit or stand. What would become of them all? He pulled his black tunic tight across his chest, shivering.

He looked down at the sleeping Rudhira. What would become of her? Would she go back to Camptown, and a life of warming soldiers’ beds? What would happen when she got too old to interest them?

Hanner had never really thought about that before; what did happen to old whores? He had never had much contact with any – well, any other than Rudhira. He knew some of them wound up as beggars, sleeping in the Hundred-Foot Field, but surely not all of them. Maybe some of them married soldiers, or found other work.

But there were plenty of people here whose prospects weren’t even that good. Some of them might end up not just as beggars, but as slaves – there probably wasn’t enough room in the Hundred-Foot Field for all of them, and slavers were free to take any homeless person they found elsewhere in the city.

Maybe the people who had gone with Vond had been the smart ones; in fact, maybe they should all think about heading for the Small Kingdoms…

“Hanner,” someone said. He started, and turned to find Sensella standing a few yards away, looking at him.

“Yes?”

“Should we start waking them up?”

Hanner considered that, then spread his hands. “No,” he said. “Let them rest while they can. We’re going to have a long day.”

Sensella nodded. “Do you have any idea how far it is to Ethshar?”

“Fifty leagues, maybe? Sixty? But I hope we won’t be walking that far; I’ve heard from the wizards.”

“What?”

“I heard from the wizards. In a dream.”

Sensella looked confused and unconvinced.

“It’s called the Spell of Invaded Dreams,” Hanner explained. “They can appear to you while you sleep. Someone named Rothiel of Wizard Street spoke to me.”

“I never heard of him. Are you sure it wasn’t just an ordinary dream?”

Hanner hesitated.

Up until she asked, he had never doubted the dream’s authenticity, but now that he thought about it, he had no actual proof that it had been magical in origin. The proof would come when Guildmaster Ithinia sent the promised aid.

“Well,” he said, “we’ll just have to wait and see.”