The Vondish Ambassador

Chapter Eight

“We’ve passed a dozen open shops,” Emmis said. “Was there something specific you’re looking for?”

“Yes,” Lar said. “I want a wizard who answers questions.”

“You mean a seer?”

“Something like that, yes.”

Emmis looked up at the signboards above the doors ahead. “TARISSA the FAIR,” read the nearest, “Love Spells amp; Potions, Aphrodisiacs.” The next announced, “KARDIG of SOUTHGATE, Curses Cast amp; Removed.” He had to admit neither of those sounded very promising.

They were walking east on Wizard Street. It was late enough now that most of the shops were dark, the signboards unlit. “Perhaps we should come back in the morning,” Emmis suggested.

Lar shook his head. “Tonight,” he said.

“Why? Why is it that important? You said you could take as long as you needed for whatever it is you’re doing.”

“Yes, but tomorrow someone may be following us again.”

Emmis blinked. “What?”

“That Lumethan is gone — hadn’t you noticed?”

“Well, yes,” Emmis admitted.

“You told them I was interested in warlocks, and I wasn’t talking about anything very secret with Ishta in any case, so I didn’t mind him following us there. He’s welcome to anything he can learn from her. What I want to ask a wizard is a little different, and I don’t want the Lumethans to know about it, so when we left Ishta’s shop and I saw that he was gone, I knew I want to talk to a wizard tonight, before the Lumethans come back. They won’t expect me to visit two different magicians about two different things in the same night — that’s why he didn’t stay, I’m sure. He probably went to tell the others that they should talk to Ishta tomorrow.”

“Why didn’t he stay to talk to her tonight, then?” Emmis asked. “I know she put out the lamp, but he left before that. He didn’t wait around to talk to her after we left.”

“Because he doesn’t speak Ethsharitic, remember?”

“Unless he does.”

“Even if he does, he probably wants to... I don’t know the Ethsharitic word. Shichak. He wants to talk to the others before he does anything.”

“Confer?”

“Probably. That sounds reasonable.”

“So you want to talk to a wizard while we aren’t being followed. Are you sure you want me here?”

Lar turned and looked Emmis in the eye, considering. Then he said, “I may ask you to leave. We will see. And you are not to tell the Ashthasan anything about this.”

Emmis nodded. “Fair enough,” he said. “But I don’t see many shops open here. Perhaps we should try a side-street. Or must it be a wizard? Witch Alley is just over that way.” He pointed to the north.

Lar frowned. “I think a wizard would be better.”

“As you please, then.” Emmis scanned the shops ahead. “Perhaps there?” He pointed.

“What does it say?” Lar said, peering into the gloom.

“I think the name is Kolar the Sage,” Emmis said. “The one with the big blue eye?”

“Ah.” Lar nodded.

A moment later Emmis tried the Sage’s door, only to find it locked. He hesitated, and looked up at the sign again, and then at the window.

A lantern hung on the bracket beside the sign, illuminating it, and the candle within the lantern still had an inch or two of wax remaining. Black velvet curtains were drawn behind the window, but a crystal ball stood on an iron tripod between the curtains and the glass, and glowed faintly blue.

“Maybe he just forgot to dowse the lantern,” Emmis said.

“The ball is still glowing,” Lar said.

“That may be permanent, not something he can turn on and off.”

“Wouldn’t he be careful about leaving the lantern lit, then?”

“Sir, while I understand you’re impatient and want to get on with your job, and that it would be better to do it while Hagai isn’t following us, it’s getting late, and if this Kolar were really a powerful seer he would have known we were coming and would be ready and waiting for us.”

Lar turned to stare at Emmis. “Are there really wizards who do that?”

“There are magicians who do it, certainly,” Emmis said. “My mother consulted a witch once, named Sella, who did that — the minute she stepped into the shop, before she could say a word, Sella was there with her answer ready.”

“Knock again,” Lar said.

With a sigh, Emmis obliged.

This time, though, someone answered; they heard a voice call faintly, “I’m coming!”

The two men waited, and a moment later the lock rattled, the latch lifted, and the door opened.

“Come in, come in!” said the young man inside, swinging the door wide and standing aside.

Cautiously, Lar and Emmis stepped in.

“Have a seat, please!” their host said, gesturing toward a maroon-upholstered couch.

“You’re Kolar the Sage?” Emmis asked.

The wizard looked down at himself, then smiled at them. “Yes, I am,” he said. “I hope you’ll pardon my appearance; I was just helping my wife put the twins to bed.”

Emmis supposed that did explain why he was wearing an ancient homespun tunic with an impressive collection of stains on it, rather than any sort of wizardly robe, as well as why his hair was a tangled mess, and why he had been slow to answer the door. It was perfectly reasonable, really. Still, Emmis would have had far more faith in the man’s ability if he had been waiting at the door, in a proper robe — or if he were a decade older; the man wasn’t much older than Emmis himself.

“Twins?” Lar asked.

“A boy and a girl,” Kolar said with obvious pride. “A year and a half old.”

Lar nodded, and settled onto the couch.

Emmis did not sit, but took up a position beside the couch, instead.

Kolar pulled a chair up and sat down facing them across a small, dark wooden table. “Now, what can I do for you?”

“I have a question I want answered,” Lar said. “Well, several, really, but we’ll start with one.”

“Yes?”

“Can you answer it?”

“Almost certainly,” Kolar said. “At a price, of course. The exact means used, and the exact price, will depend on the nature of the question.”

Lar hesitated, then said, “This is the question: What made the hum that Vond the Warlock heard when he came to Semma, and exactly where is it?”

Emmis glanced at Lar. He had no idea what that meant.

Kolar stroked his close-trimmed beard. “That may be two questions,” he said. “And the answers to both of them may be ambiguous. Where and what is Semma?”

Lar grimaced. “Semma was one of the southernmost of the Small Kingdoms, the one that Vond conquered and used as his base in creating the Empire of Vond. The empire’s capital is still there.”

That answered some questions Emmis had had. He had wondered why Lar had told Ishta he was from Semma, rather than Vond; presumably he was simply being more precise.

“Ah, I see,” Kolar said. “And that answers my next question, as well, about who Vond was. Now, about the hum...”

“I can’t tell you that,” Lar said, cutting him off.

“Nothing? Not even whether you know whether there was only one?”

“There was a hum that Vond heard in Semma that no one else heard, and he heard it for almost his entire stay there. That’s the hum I mean.”

“That only he heard? Interesting.”

“You would do better not to ask much more,” Lar said. “Can you answer the question?”

Kolar frowned. “Vond the Warlock, you said? Has he been Called?”

“Yes.”

“Then we can’t use necromancy; Called warlocks don’t leave ghosts. And we can’t ask him as if he were alive, so all the dream spells and compulsions are out of the question. I can’t quite see how the Spell of Omniscient Vision would help, either. That just leaves Fendel’s Divination — well, of the spells I know; there may be others I’m not aware of. Hmm.”

“Fendel’s Divination?” Emmis asked.

Kolar nodded, still stroking his beard. “I have the ingredients, and the spell itself only takes a little over an hour, but the exact wording of the question is crucial. I’ll want to work on it overnight. Can you both read?”

Lar and Emmis exchanged glances. “Yes,” Lar said.

“Forgive me, but — you read Ethsharitic? I can’t help noticing your accent.”

“Yes, I read Ethsharitic. Not very fast, but I can read it. It’s the official tongue of the Empire of Vond, you know, even if none of us grew up with it.”

“Good. Then you might want to be here for the spell itself — the answer will be written in smoke, in mid-air, and it’ll be easier for me if you read it yourself, and I don’t need to worry about writing it down before I forget.”

“You’re sure it will be written in Ethsharitic?” Emmis asked. “Lar, here, speaks Semmat as his milk tongue.”

Kolar blinked. “Well, it always has been before,” he said. “I believe it depends on what language I used in my book of spells, not what the client knows.”

“And you’re sure that it will work?” Lar asked. “It will answer the question?”

“If the spell works properly, and the question has an answer, and there’s nothing interfering, then it will answer the question.”

“And will the answer be useful?” Emmis asked.

“Oh, that I can’t say,” Kolar said, spreading his hands. “I have no idea what this is about. Your master here says Vond heard a hum, but I don’t know whether he really did, or whether it’s significant. If the spell says the hum came from an insect lodged in Vond’s left ear, will that be useful?”

“It would be an answer,” Lar said. “Better than nothing.”

“All right, then. For a round of gold, I will devise as foolproof a phrasing of your question as possible tonight, and perform Fendel’s Divination in your presence tomorrow to give you an answer.”

“A round of gold?” Lar stood up. “No.”

“Six bits.”

“Two rounds of silver.”

“Seven.”

“Four.”

“Six.”

“Five.”

“Done. Five rounds of silver. Three in advance, two on completion.”

“One in advance.”

Kolar sighed. “All right. One in advance.”

“It may not be both of us who come,” Lar said, as he reached for his purse. “One of us may have business elsewhere.”

“As you please.”

“You understand that I am not asking about the nature of the hum, but about its exact source, and I will not pay for information about its nature.”

Kolar nodded. “You want to know the nature and location of the source, not of the hum itself. Yes.” He hesitated. “Do you want to know about its duration? Might it still be going?”

Lar blinked. “Oh, it’s still going. We know that. We just want to know the source.”

“Ah. I see.”

“I hope not. It would be better to not ask more than necessary about this.”

With that, Lar and Emmis took their leave.

“That went well,” Lar said, as the wizard’s door closed behind them.

“I suppose,” Emmis said. “You did bargain him down by half.”

“I meant that we were fortunate to find someone who could perform the spell I need.”

“You’re assuming he actually can,” Emmis said.

“So is he,” Lar said, “or he wouldn’t have agreed so quickly to only one round in advance. He’s so sure it will work and he’ll get the whole payment that a day’s delay doesn’t matter.”

“Or he just wants us to think that.”

Lar looked annoyed.

“So some time tomorrow, if Hagai is following us again, we’ll split up?” Emmis asked. “And whoever he doesn’t follow will come back here for the spell.”

“Yes.”

“And if no one’s following us, we’ll both...”

“No,” Lar cut him off. “Then I’ll come alone. There are some other questions I may want to ask.”

“Oh.” Emmis nodded. “I need to talk to my contact at the Palace tomorrow, in any case.”

“You can do that first. We have all day.”

“Oh,” Emmis said again. “Are we going back to the house now?”

“Yes.”

“Good.”

It had been a very long, wearing day, and Emmis was looking forward to putting it behind him — not that tomorrow would be entirely free of problems, he was sure, what with the divination spell and talking to the guardsman. For the next several minutes he walked quietly beside his employer, pointing out the correct direction when they reached Arena Street.

The streets of the Wizards’ Quarter were mostly empty now; the few stragglers were hurrying along, most of them wrapped in their cloaks against the fresh breeze blowing from the northeast. Emmis had no cloak or coat, but the wind was not so very cold, really — just enough to keep them walking briskly, not dawdling. Emmis folded his arms across his chest for warmth, hugging his woolen tunic to himself.

Lar, of course, was wearing his red velvet coat and fancy hat; he was fine.

Several of the torches on the street corners were beginning to gutter and die; the shops were almost all dark, while many of the rooms upstairs showed lights. The lesser moon shone brightly pink among the stars overhead; the greater moon was not visible.

“Will you be able to find the right shop tomorrow, if Hagai follows me?” Emmis asked as the pair turned the corner onto Arena Street.

“I think so,” Lar replied. “Left from Arena onto Wizard Street, then it’s on the right. Kolar the Sage.”

Emmis nodded. “This hum Vond heard — it has something to do with his magic? Or with his empire?”

“Don’t ask,” Lar said.

Emmis frowned. “If it’s such a secret, why did you bring me along?”

“In case I needed advice. I’m a stranger here, remember?”

“Do you really have a grandson named Kelder?”

“Not that I know of, named Kelder or anything else.”

“You just wanted to know whether there was some reason warlocks don’t go to Vond?”

“Yes.”

“You’re lucky that warlocks can’t tell lies from truth the way witches can.”

“Yes, I am.”

“So do you think that’s all it is? That the Small Kingdoms killed their warlocks on the Night of Madness?”

Lar turned up an empty palm. “It might be. I don’t really remember any such killings in Semma, but I did hear about some in Ksinallion, and maybe elsewhere.”

“Semma never had any warlocks? No one was affected?”

“A few people disappeared on the Night of Madness, just as they did everywhere,” Lar said. “But I never heard of any warlocks after that, until Vond came.” He glanced at Emmis. “Do you remember the Night of Madness?”

Emmis snorted. “I was still in my mother’s womb. No, I don’t remember it.”

“Ah, you’re younger than I thought.”

“So you’re here to find out about this hum, and why warlocks haven’t been fleeing into your empire to escape the Calling — why did that need an ambassador, instead of a trader?”

“Because I’m also here to make an alliance with the overlords, if I can,” Lar said. “That’s not just for show.”

Emmis nodded.

“Is Ethsharitic really the empire’s official language?” he asked. If it was, he thought, it was odd how many holes there were in Lar’s vocabulary.

“Well, officially, yes. It was Vond’s native tongue, and he didn’t want to bother learning any others, and after all, we had seventeen or eighteen languages to deal with. In practice, Semmat and Ksinallionese and Trader’s Tongue are probably used more.”

“I see.” That did explain the matter. “That should make it easier to deal with the overlord, I suppose.”

“I suppose,” Lar said.

They walked on without further conversation. Emmis glanced up at the lesser moon as it sank behind the rooftops, then lowered his gaze and hunched his shoulders against the north wind.