The Vondish Ambassador

Chapter Seven

The Arena was unlit; the next show was not scheduled until the first of Newfrost, more than a sixnight away. Even so, Lar was visibly impressed by the vast dark shape that loomed above them as they passed.

The notice boards on the corners were lit, though, with two lanterns hung above each of them. They stood out all the better against the blackness behind them.

“What’s that?” Lar asked.

Emmis explained. “Didn’t you see the one in Shiphaven Market?” he asked.

“I didn’t,” Lar admitted. “There was so much happening there!”

“Don’t they have notice boards in Vond?”

Lar shook his head. “Most people in the Small Kingdoms can’t read.” He looked at the tangle of messages and advertising tacked to the rough boards. “Do you think there might be anything there about warlocks?”

Emmis turned up a palm. “Openings for apprentices, perhaps.” He glanced over his shoulder at Hagai, who was hanging back, trying to blend with the other pedestrians and not doing a very good job of it. “Stopping to look would be awkward for our friend.”

Lar grimaced. “I wouldn’t want to be rude. Perhaps another time.” They strolled on past without stopping.

The incident got Emmis thinking as they walked, though. If Hagai was a witch, he ought to be able to do a better job of not being noticed. Witches could usually sense what other people were going to do before they did it; the good ones could allegedly actually hear people’s thoughts. If Hagai was a witch then he surely knew he had been spotted, but he was still pretending to be just another passerby.

So he probably wasn’t a witch.

He might be some other sort of magician, though.

Emmis wondered whether he should say any of this to Lar. The ambassador had said witches were fairly common back where he came from, though, so he ought to be able to figure it out for himself.

Or perhaps not. Just because witches were common didn’t mean Lar knew anything about them.

He had not reached a conclusion by the time they crossed Games Street five long blocks later.

“This is the Wizards’ Quarter,” he said. “The next cross-street is Wizard Street. Warlock Street is a little further on.”

“I see,” the Vondishman said, looking around with interest.

In most respects this stretch of Arena Street was much the same as the rest — a broad avenue of hard-packed dirt lined with three- and four-story buildings, most of them stone for one or two floors and half-timbered above, with tiled roofs and assorted gables and overhangs. Balconies were common but not universal. Large torches were mounted in brackets at every corner, providing light; Emmis knew the city guard replaced those daily, as they usually burned away to nothing somewhere between midnight and dawn. Many of the ground-floor doors had signboards or lanterns or both above them; many of the windows were big, many-paned things holding displays of one sort or another. Some were lit, while others were not — not every magician stayed open for business this late.

North of Games Street the window displays had generally been of fabrics, or furniture, or kitchenware, or other commonplace goods. Here, though, they were a little less ordinary. One window held strangely-shaped bottles of multi-colored liquids, while another displayed only a dusty stuffed dragon — a mere baby, perhaps seven feet from the tip of its nose to the tip of its tail, and a wingspan Emmis judged to be no more than ten feet, though it was hard to be sure, since the wings weren’t extended. A third held nothing but a dinner plate that was inexplicably sending up an endless shower of sparks, a spray reaching perhaps a foot high, and that changed color every few seconds.

One did display kitchenware, in the form of a teapot and half a dozen cups, but the teapot was ambling about on stubby little china feet.

Several windows had no displays at all, just velvet curtains.

And some held cards listing spells offered for sale, often in runes so ornate they were hard to read. A few of these glowed without need of any visible light source. Lar stopped to read one of these cards, and Emmis stopped beside him.

It was a fairly modest list — Fendel’s Rune of Privacy, the Spell of the Spinning Coin, the Greater and Lesser Spells of Invaded Dreams, Eknerwal’s Preserving Spell, Fendel’s Infatuous Love Spell — concluding with, “and Many Diverse Others.”

“That’s a wizard’s shop?” Lar asked.

“Yes,” Emmis replied, even before looking up at the signboard over the door that announced, “Edarth of Ethshar, Master Wizard.”

“What about that?” The Vondishman pointed at a shop window illuminated by a glowing sphere about a foot in diameter. The globe was surrounded by a dozen gleaming constructions of crystal and metal ranging from a thumb-sized amulet to an open-work contraption the size of a large dog, none of them with any recognizable purpose.

“I think that’s a sorcerer,” Emmis said.

Lar stared for a moment, then turned away shaking his head. “We don’t have anything like that in Vond!”

The two of them continued down the street, with Emmis occasionally looking over his shoulder to be sure Hagai was still there, and soon reached the corner of Warlock Street.

“There it is,” Emmis said, gesturing.

Lar frowned. “It’s dark,” he said.

Emmis had to admit that he had a point; where about half the shops on Arena were lit, almost none on Warlock Street were. “I suppose they don’t want to work as late,” he said. “You know the proverb — working on Festival means good money but it’s bad advertising.”

“Bad what?”

“Advertising.” Emmis sighed. “I don’t know the word in any other languages. Signs, notices, things like that.”

Lar looked confused. “I don’t think that’s a proverb back in the empire,” he said. “At least, I can’t place it.”

“Maybe not.”

“And it isn’t Festival for months, so I don’t...”

“Never mind,” Emmis interrupted. “Just forget it. All I meant is, warlocks don’t seem to work late. I suppose they don’t need to; they don’t need to pay for any ingredients, or buy herbs, or appease any demons.”

“They still need to buy food and pay taxes, don’t they?”

Emmis grimaced. “Honestly, I’m not sure. There’s a rumor that warlocks can live on their magic, like someone with a wizard’s bloodstone, and if I were a tax collector I don’t think I’d press a reluctant warlock very hard.”

Lar’s expression changed. “And... well, they try not to use more magic than they must.”

“Yes. The more magic they use, the sooner they’re Called.”

Lar walked along Warlock Street and looked over the unlit signboards and darkened windows, with Emmis tagging close behind, while Hagai hung back, apparently still unaware that he had been spotted.

There were no stuffed dragons or crystal structures here; most of the windows held nothing but shutters or black curtains, though Emmis supposed that might be different by daylight. The signboards mostly simply gave the proprietor’s name. Some appended the word “warlock,” but none claimed any further title; no one here called himself a master.

“Not very informative,” Emmis remarked. “Perhaps we should come back tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow I am to meet with the overlord, am I not?”

“I don’t know,” Emmis said. “Tomorrow I talk to my contact at the Palace, and find out whether he’s arranged anything.”

“Ah.” Lar stopped in front of one of the handful of illuminated shops, where a card stood in the window. “ISHTA OF FRESHWATER,” proclaimed the large runes at the top. Beneath, smaller, elaborately-curled runes added, “Healing a Specialty — man, woman, child, or beast. Antiquities Restored. Porcelain amp; Other Valuables Repaired.”

“It would seem at least one warlock works late,” he said.

Emmis made a noncommital noise.

Lar marched up and tried the door; it opened with a light push, and he stepped inside. Emmis reluctantly followed.

They found themselves in a good-sized, well-lit room where half a dozen people were clustered around a table at one end.

“...told you, there’s a piece missing,” a woman was saying. “See, right there?”

“No,” another voice said, a male one.

“It’s tiny,” replied a third, one that sounded like a child.

“Yes, it is,” the first agreed, “but it’s definitely missing, and if I replace it out of thin air I can’t guarantee it’ll match perfectly.”

“But we’ll never find something that small!” a fourth voice said — another woman, Emmis thought. “Someone’s probably stepped on it and crushed it, or the cat might have eaten it!”

“I can make a replacement,” the first woman said. Emmis was fairly certain the voice was coming from a black-clad figure, presumably Ishta of Freshwater. “I just want you to understand that it may not be exactly as it was before. Without the original piece I can’t just rebuild it, I need to make a new piece, and since I never saw the missing bit, it may not match exactly.”

“You can’t use your magic to make it match?” the man demanded.

“No. I’m a warlock, not a wizard. I can move and shape things, down to the very tiniest particles, and I can see and feel things you cannot, but I can’t simply make the damage unhappen. A wizard probably could, with the right spell, but it would almost certainly cost you more than my fee.” She glanced over her shoulder at Lar and Emmis, then turned back to her customers. “Why don’t you discuss it, and I’ll be right back?” Without waiting for an answer she turned and left the table, striding briskly toward the two men just inside her door.

She was short and a little thinner than average, with a pointed chin and dark, piercing eyes, and she wore her waist-length hair loose. She stopped a few feet away and looked up at the new arrivals. “Yes?”

“Hello,” Lar said, as Emmis inched back to make it plain that he was not in charge. “I had a few questions I was hoping you could answer.”

“Then ask them,” the woman said.

“You’re Ishta the Warlock?”

“Yes.”

“I have a grandson of an age to be apprenticed,” Lar said. “We were thinking of sending him to Ethshar to learn warlockry.”

Ishta held up a hand and glanced back at her customers, who were whispering amongst themselves. “That’s a subject that deserves my full attention. Let me finish with these people, and then we can discuss it.”

“As you please.”

“You can’t even see where it’s missing!” one of the other women shouted, before Ishta could say anything more; the warlock turned and glided back to the table.

Emmis bit his lip; Ishta had glided back, her feet an inch or two off the floor, rather than walking. Any doubt about whether she was a real warlock had just vanished; only a warlock could fly so casually.

And any thought of asking Lar whether he really had a grandson vanished, as well — warlocks were more sensitive in certain ways than ordinary people. That didn’t necessarily mean Ishta could hear a whisper from across the room, but it might.

“Just fix it,” the man said. “If it isn’t perfect, we’ll worry about it then.”

“Very good,” Ishta said. “I’ll have it for you by midday tomorrow.”

“You can’t do it tonight?” the child’s voice whined.

“Tomorrow,” Ishta said firmly. “Now, if you will excuse me...” She began herding the entire party toward the door.

Lar and Emmis stepped hastily aside as a middle-aged man, a middle-aged woman, a young woman, a youth, and a boy of perhaps ten were marched out onto Warlock Street. Ishta closed the door behind them, then turned to the ambassador.

“Would you care to sit?” she asked, gesturing toward chairs near the table.

“Thank you,” Lar said, with a partial bow.

A moment later the three of them were seated, Ishta and Lar facing each other, while Emmis was slightly to one side, next to the table. Emmis took the opportunity to study the object on the table, obviously the item Ishta had promised to repair.

It was an elaborate ceramic sculpture of a tree, about two feet tall, with a girl seated in the branches and a young man standing below and looking up at her, all delicately painted in colors a little brighter than nature. The level of detail was astonishing; the tree’s leaves were individually modeled, veins painted on each, and tiny ripe fruit hung from the branches here and there. The girl’s hand, clutching at the realistically-textured tree bark, had every fingernail clearly depicted; one of her sandals hung loose, while the other was secure. The man’s clothing was so carefully done that Emmis thought he could count the coins in the purse on his belt.

“Their cat knocked it off the shelf,” Ishta said, following his gaze. “I’ve put it back together, but if you look, there’s a bit missing just here.” She pointed at the girl’s right ear. Sure enough, half the earlobe was gone, and a curl of hair behind the ear was snapped off short. “I’ll have to conjure that out of dust in the air. It’s not all that difficult to find the right material, but blending it in smoothly and getting it just the right shape will be tricky.”

“Oh,” Emmis said.

She smiled at him, then turned to Lar. “Now, you said your grandson was looking for an apprenticeship?”

“Yes,” Lar said. “He says he wants to be a warlock. I don’t know where he got the idea, since there aren’t any warlocks in Semma, but he’s very sure.”

“You’re from Semma?” She glanced at Emmis.

“I am,” Lar said. “Emmis isn’t. He’s my wife’s cousin’s son; they live in Shiphaven. Emmis is my guide.”

“Where is Semma?”

“In the Small Kingdoms, far to the south, near the edge of the World,” Lar replied.

“And your grandson is there?”

“Yes.”

“But he would come to Ethshar?”

“For his apprenticeship, yes. But we thought he would come back when he’s a journeyman.”

Ishta nodded. “I haven’t trained any apprentices,” she said, “but I’m ready to try.”

“You’re a master warlock?”

“We don’t...” Ishta hesitated. “We don’t have formal ranks like wizards or smiths, but I’m qualified to train an apprentice.”

Lar looked uncertain — though Emmis recognized the expression as feigned, and hoped that the warlock didn’t. “Is there a Guild? We don’t — we have no warlocks in Semma, we don’t know how it is. I heard about a council...” His voice trailed off.

“The Council of Warlocks isn’t really a guild. It doesn’t set standards for taking apprentices.”

“Ah.”

Emmis pretended to study the tree again as he listened.

This was educational, he thought. He hadn’t known whether the Council set standards or not.

“We do have several questions,” Lar said, after a moment of awkward silence.

“Of course,” Ishta said. “Feel free to ask. There will be an initiation fee, but no other charges. If the boy proves completely unsuitable the fee will be refunded, but that’s quite rare; perhaps one applicant in a hundred, if that, is unable to become a warlock. If our personalities prove incompatible after initiation, I will arrange for another warlock to take him on in my stead — he can’t be sent home or put to another trade, as the process of becoming a warlock is irreversible.* You understand that?”

“I do now,” Lar said.

“You may have heard that among wizards, apprentices who are found unfit by the Wizards’ Guild are killed. I don’t know whether that’s true for wizards, or for any of the other magicians, but rest assured, warlocks don’t do that. Warlockry has its dangers, certainly, but we don’t intentionally kill even the most incompetent apprentice.”

“How... how reasonable,” Lar said, clearly dismayed by the turn the conversation had taken. Emmis didn’t think he was faking this time.

“You said you had questions?”

“Yes! We live in Semma, as I said, and there are no warlocks there...”

“You said that.”

“Yes. Well, that’s my question — why are there no warlocks in Semma?”

Ishta blinked at him.

“I mean, is there a reason there are no warlocks there? Would Kelder not be able to come home?”

“I don’t see why not,” Ishta said. “That is, I don’t know what your local laws are, but there’s no reason I know that a warlock couldn’t live there.”

“But then why aren’t there any?”

“I don’t know for certain,” Ishta admitted. “You must understand, I was only six on the Night of Madness, and only became a warlock when I was twelve, years afterward, but I’ve heard stories. I don’t know whether they’re true.”

“What sort of stories?”

“What I heard was that after the Night of Madness, before things settled down again, all the warlocks in the Small Kingdom were killed or exiled. The kings and lords thought they were too dangerous, too unpredictable, so they killed any they could catch and drove the rest away.”

“Some places, yes,” Lar said. “I remember some of that. I don’t think it happened in Semma.”

Ishta turned up an empty palm. “If Semma is far enough to the south, perhaps there were simply no warlocks there to begin with.”

“But wouldn’t some have moved there?”

Ishta frowned. “Why?”

Lar was visibly discomfited. “The thing — the Calling. I have heard about that, and isn’t it worse farther north?”

Ishta sighed. “You know about the Calling?”

“Yes. I’ve heard that it draws warlocks to the north, and is weaker the farther south one goes.”

She shook her head. “It’s not north or south,” she said. “It depends entirely on how far you are from a certain spot in Aldagmor. You’re right that it would be weaker in the southern Small Kingdoms, but the stories haven’t made us feel welcome there. When warlocks flee the Calling we usually go west to Ethshar of the Rocks, or Tintallion of the Isle, not south. And most of us don’t flee. There is no safe place anywhere in the World, and most of us prefer to stay in our homes and fight it there, with our friends around, not go running off into the wild somewhere to live among strangers.”

“The Calling can be fought?”

“To a point.” The warlock appeared uncomfortable saying this. “I’m told it can help to have other warlocks around, which is another reason not to flee to your Semma. You understand, though, this isn’t something we discuss freely with outsiders.”

“Of course, but if my grandson is going to hear this Calling someday, I want to know about it.”

“He may never hear it, if he’s careful. I have been a warlock for sixteen years, and haven’t heard it at all yet. I use my magic to do delicate, small-scale work precisely because it’s sheer magical power that attracts the Calling; the things I do require intense concentration, but very little raw energy. You won’t see me flying about the streets, flinging magic around.”

Emmis remembered how she had glided across the room without touching the floor, but said nothing, and tried to let his face show nothing. She might not even know she had done it, and he had no idea how she would react if he mentioned it.

She was not yet thirty, and she was using magic without realizing it. She might not have heard the Calling yet, but Emmis would not have wagered a copper bit on her chances of reaching sixty.

“I see,” Lar said, with a quick glance at Emmis. “Let us suppose, though, that we were to apprentice him to a less cautious warlock; what would happen if his master was Called before he turned fifteen?”

“Oh, another warlock would take him on to complete his training. It’s happened, I won’t deny it. But I’m safe enough.”

“And if he made journeyman, and then came home to Semma, he would be less... I don’t know the Ethsharitic. The danger would be less?”

“A little, yes. And his magic would be weaker, as well, though it would strengthen with use.”

“Would it?”

“Oh, yes. The more magic a warlock uses, the more power he has available. It’s very tempting — but yielding to temptation means the Calling, so we resist.”

“Your magic — what does it do, exactly?”

“Oh, at the most basic level, warlockry is just the ability to move things without touching them. But it can be used in thousands of ways, because we also have the additional senses to let us perceive what things really are. Everything around us is made up of smaller things, of tiny particles, and we warlocks can sense where they all are, and we can see how to move some of those particles and not others. We can create heat by moving anything, even the air, against itself; we can make light by... by pushing the air inward; we don’t really have the words to explain it. I can heal wounds by making the edges flow and grow back together; I can repair broken things by making the space between the pieces go away. I can cure some diseases by killing the tiny little creatures in the blood that cause them, or by drawing out poisons. But really, it’s all just seeing what’s there and moving it into the places and shapes I want it in.”

“You can teach my grandson how to do this?”

“I can change something in his head so that he will be able to do it, yes. That only takes a moment, and then, once he can hear the power and draw upon it, I will train him to use it safely and effectively. That training will last the three years of his apprenticeship.”

“And after that, he can come home to Semma?”

“Or he can stay here in Ethshar, as he pleases, yes.”

“There’s no reason he couldn’t come home? The Council of Warlocks wouldn’t object?”

“They wouldn’t object. Why should they?”

“I don’t know. It just seems odd that there are no warlocks in Semma.”

Ishta turned up an empty palm. “It just happened that way.”

“I see.” Lar pushed his chair back and rose; Emmis hastily followed suit. “Thank you,” Lar said, bowing.

“You’re quite welcome. Will your grandson be coming to see me, then?”

“We’ll need to discuss it amongst the family.”

“Of course.” Ishta got to her feet as well.

“Thank you again. We’ll be going.”

“Of course,” she repeated.

A moment later Lar and Emmis were out on the street, marching back toward Arena Street. Emmis looked around, but Hagai was nowhere to be seen.

He probably got bored, Emmis thought. He had no way of knowing how long they might be in the warlock’s shop.

“I think I’d like to talk to a wizard next,” Lar said.

“I thought we’d be going home,” Emmis said.

“Wizard first,” Lar said.

Emmis looked back to see Ishta’s door close, and a moment later her window went dark.

He sighed. “Wizard Street is that way,” he said, pointing.