The Unwelcome Warlock

by Lawrence Watt-Evans

  “Aunt Kallia?”

  Sensella turned to see a man she judged to be in his late thirties staring at a young woman. Both were flying above the mound, and their almost random flight had brought them near one another, and near Sensella as well.

  The woman turned to look at the man. “Do I know you?” she asked.

  “I’m Chanden! Your nephew Chanden! Luralla’s son!”

  The woman blinked at him. “But Chanden’s just a boy!”

  “I was on the Night of Madness, when you vanished, but that was more than twenty years ago.”

  “Thirty-four,” Sensella interjected.

  The young woman looked confused. “I don’t understand,” she said.

  “Thirty-four?” Chanden turned to Sensella. “How do you know?”

  “I wasn’t in there,” Sensella said, pointing down at the pile of humanity. “I was just arriving when…when that appeared.” She pointed up.

  “So — so it’s 5236? I’m eight years in the future?”

  “It’s 5236, yes. Were you in there for eight years?”

  “I…I suppose I was.” He looked down. “It doesn’t feel like it. I was…I answered the Call, and I flew here, and I saw that, and I didn’t understand what it was, but I knew I had to get in there, so I flew down to it, and then — then I was thrown back out, and that thing was up there saying everything was all right now, and…” His voice trailed off.

  “If it was 5228 when you came, then it’s been eight years.”

  “It didn’t even feel like eight minutes.”

  “Magic,” Sensella told him. “Strong magic.”

  He looked up. “Yes,” he said. “It must be.”

  “Your aunt,” Sensella asked. “She disappeared on the Night of Madness?”

  “Yes.”

  “And that’s her? She’s out now?”

  “Yes! It flung her out just now. I saw it, and I recognized her, but she doesn’t know me…”

  “It’s dug down to the first warlocks, then?”

  Chanden turned. “Oh. I guess it has, yes.”

  Sensella was not sure why, but that troubled her. The Response, whatever it was, must be almost down to the source of the Call. She looked down and was suddenly aware that she was standing on nothing, perhaps a hundred feet up.

  She had done that dozens, maybe hundreds of times since the Night of Madness. She had flown for miles without feeling any worry, but now it troubled her. She swooped down, eager to get back on solid ground. She landed perhaps fifty feet from the mound and turned — just as the next big change came.

  The first had been when the flying thing had appeared out of nowhere and she had felt the Response; the second had been when it started burrowing down into the mound, flinging warlocks aside.

  And the third was when the spell holding the immense mound of people together suddenly stopped.

  The change was abrupt, completely unheralded — one instant the pile of people was motionless, undetectable to warlock senses, magically frozen in time, and the next instant they were awake and aware of their surroundings, aware of being trapped in a gigantic three-dimensional mob. They were writhing and screaming, spilling outward in all directions, trying to get out before they were smothered or crushed.

  “It’s all right!” Sensella shouted, using her magic to snatch the nearest person out of the seething mass. “You’re safe! Just use your magic!” She pulled a second person free, and a third, dropping them unceremoniously on the grass a few yards away from the suddenly-expanding ball of screaming, crying warlocks.

  The mound collapsed and vanished, and still people came spilling out, flying, running, walking, jumping, or crawling. The mound was gone, and in its place was a pit, and the pit was jammed full of people.

  Sensella was not the only one helping; dozens of other warlocks were calling reassurances and pulling panicky people to safety. The crowd surrounding the pit extended for a hundred yards in every direction and was still expanding, and hundreds or even thousands of warlocks were flying above, as well.

  Sensella looked up at the swarm of warlocks with an inexplicable sense of foreboding. She didn’t know why, but she was absolutely certain this was a bad time to be flying. “Get down!” she called. “It’s not safe up there!”

  Still more people were clambering or flying out of the pit. Sensella could not see it through the crowd anymore, but she could sense it magically now, and she knew it was deep, very deep — the people at the bottom needed their magic to get out.

  Thank the gods that only warlocks heard the Call; every one here had the magic they needed to escape.

  Some of them, though, might not know it — if they had been among the very first, drawn away on the Night of Madness, they might have no idea how to control their power, how to use their warlockry to do anything other than answer the Call. Sensella was no longer close enough to be heard, or to reach anyone in the pit with her own magic when there was so much other power seething in the air, but she could sense that others were helping. The pit was mostly empty now.

  Then the fourth change came.

  The Calling stopped. With staggering abruptness, the constant demand, the need to come to this place that had filled every head, was simply gone.

  And with that, the warlocks’ magic vanished.

  Chapter Three

  Hanner awoke suddenly to find himself trapped in a mass of humanity, pressed in on all sides by other people. Instinctively, he pushed out with his magic, trying to clear himself a little breathing room, only to find himself pushed in on every side by magic as strong as his own.

  He could still hear the Calling, summoning him forward, but the people ahead of him were packed too tightly to move. Maybe if he went around, he thought — around, or over. He tried to move himself upward, and was able burst free. He was still in the midst of a crowd, but no longer in danger of being crushed.

  The Call wanted him to come to it, but there was something else, something new, coming from somewhere overhead, something that let him know the Call was already answered. He tried to make sense of that.When he looked up, he could see only a swarm of flying warlocks against a glowing background, a background that he could not see properly even when there was no one in the way.

  What was going on?

  He was vaguely aware of screaming, of human voices calling on all sides.

  What was going on? He tried to remember how he had gotten here, wherever “here” was. He had been in Arvagan’s shop; he had looked over the tapestry he had ordered, and then he had stepped through it into the refuge, and the Calling had stopped. He had looked around, taken a leisurely stroll on legs he hadn’t used properly for years, and then he had stepped back out, into the attic of Warlock House —

  And the Calling had caught him off-guard, and he had flown away to Aldagmor. He had a vague memory of soaring over the city wall and out past the trade villages and farm markets, past farms and across the Great River, over more farms, and grassland, and forest, and hills, and then he had come swooping down, and there had been something ahead of him, but he didn’t bother to look, and…and here he was.

  What happened?

  In all the hours he had spent trying to imagine what the source of the Calling might be, he had never pictured being packed in a great mass of people, like seeds in a pod. Had the people somehow generated the magical summons? But that didn’t match the images everyone had seen on the Night of Madness, or in their dreams once they began to feel the Call.

  He needed to get clear, to see what was happening. Ordinarily he would have gone up, but that great glowing thing that filled the sky worried him. Instead, he veered sideways.

  That glowing thing — was that the source of the Calling, the source of warlockry?

  No, he could sense that it wasn’t. The Calling came from below; the answer to it came from the glowing thing. He flew sideways, slipping through narrow gaps in the tangle of limbs around him, looking for clear air.

  And then the Call stopped, and his m
agic disappeared, and he found himself falling. He stretched out his arms to catch himself, and collided with a woman, but she was falling, too; he bounced from her to someone else, and then to other people, but they were all falling, they had all lost their magic.

  He landed heavily on a pile of bodies, and someone else immediately landed on top of him, knocking the breath from his lungs. Hanner flung up his hands to shield his head.

  The Calling was gone, just as it had been in the refuge the wizards had made for him. Could something have transported them all into another world?

  People were still screaming, and he could feel the people around him writhing and struggling to get free of the immense heap of fallen bodies, but the volume of sound was less now — Hanner no longer heard or felt the thump of more people landing atop him.

  But then there was a new sound, and a vibration, a shaking, like nothing he had ever felt before. He tried to turn, to see what was happening, and someone slid aside just in time to give him a view of the sky, and of that huge glowing thing that hung above them all. Thus he saw the other thing as it rose up from below, pulled up out of the ground by its airborne companion.

  He recognized it. He had seen it in his dreams, and especially in his nightmares, for years, though he could never have described it or put a name to it. This was the thing that had fallen out of the sky on the Night of Madness, the thing that had plunged, fiery and screaming, down into the earth, blasting a great pit into the heart of Aldagmor. The pit had fallen in on it, the fire had damaged it, and it had been trapped there.

  It had called for help. It had sent out a magical shout that kept repeating endlessly. Hanner knew that — he had been Called, and now that the Calling had stopped and he could think clearly again, he understood what he had heard. It had never been clear so long as he was able to resist its pull, but once he had come here and heard it clearly, close up, he understood, even though the message had not been in words, nor even really in human concepts. He was able to interpret it, translate it into images and ideas he understood; they might not be exactly right, but they were close.

  The thing had called for help, and because it was not from the World, not from this entire universe, it had needed to call so very loudly that its call resonated in certain human minds. Some of those humans had immediately obeyed, their will overwhelmed by the demand that whoever heard the Call must come and help; others had been able to take the sheer power of the Call and shape it with their own will, using it to perform magic.

  But the more they had used that power, the more they had become attuned to it, until at last they received the message and had to obey.

  The message wasn’t meant for humans, though, and humans could do nothing to help the trapped thing. Instead, they ran into the defenses it had set up to protect itself while it waited. The thing had not wanted to stay awake down there, trapped, frightened, and alone, until rescue came; it had cast a protective spell, put itself into a timeless, dreamless sleep, and anything that came too close to it was trapped in the same spell, frozen into unconsciousness and immobility.

  Now help had finally come, the help it had been calling for all along. The protective spell was broken, and the signal the trapped creature had been sending had stopped.

  What’s more, it was no longer trapped; its rescuer had pulled it free, scattering the warlocks that had covered it in all directions. As Hanner watched, the thing that had been the source of all warlockry was pulled up to join its rescuer, and then both of them rose, ascending and accelerating, until they dwindled amid the stars.

  Behind them, strewn across this valley in southeastern Aldagmor, they left thousands of people who had once been warlocks.

  Hanner watched the two monstrous things vanish, then realized he was kneeling on somebody. His first instinctive response was to try to fly, to get off whoever it was, but of course he couldn’t — the Call had ended, and the source of warlockry was gone.

  The warlocks remained, though, and Hanner could hear them calling, groaning, and crying on all sides. He turned, and tried to see where he was, where the shortest route to the ground might be.

  “This way!” someone called — a woman, not a voice he recognized. “There’s room over here!”

  Hanner scrambled in the direction of the voice, mumbling, “Excuse me, I’m sorry, please, I’m sorry,” as he clambered over the bodies of his fallen comrades, many of whom were now trying to free themselves, as well.

  So far every body he had put a hand or foot or knee on had felt warm and alive, but Hanner was beginning to realize that some people must have died, must have dashed their brains out or broken their necks when they hit the ground, or been smothered or crushed by the people on top of them. There were hundreds of people here; he couldn’t tell how many, really, but from what he saw and heard it had to be at least hundreds.

  There might be more deaths to come, as well. As he moved out of the press of bodies he could feel the night air, and it was cold, cold enough, Hanner thought, for unprotected people to die of exposure.

  They were somewhere in Aldagmor, in a valley in the mountains of Sardiron; how cold did it get here? What time of year was it? He had been Called in early summer, and this was definitely not early summer. He looked up, but all he could tell from that was that it was night. The greater moon was a half-circle in the western sky, but other than providing a little light that didn’t help.

  He couldn’t really see much of anything in the dimness; his eyes had not yet adjusted after the glowing thing’s departure. He was crawling on all fours, finding his way by feel more than by sight, and his left hand finally came down not on cloth or flesh, but on cold, damp grass — not the soft grass of a lawn, but the rough, scratchy grass of the wilderness. He pulled himself onto it, then got to his feet and looked around.

  He was surrounded by shadowy forms — people were standing, or kneeling, or crawling on all sides. He wished he could hold up his hand and make light, as he had so often in the past, but his magic was gone. It had vanished with the Calling, and the source had flown away, gone forever. The World had once again changed suddenly, without warning, just as it had on the Night of Madness, when warlockry had first come into being, and just as it had then, the change had brought chaos.

  Someone needed to take charge here. If no one brought some order out of this chaos, more people would die needlessly.

  “Hai!” he shouted. “I am Hanner, Chairman of the Council of Warlocks! If you’re unhurt, please get to clear ground and stand up, and then help those who aren’t so fortunate!” He glanced around. “Does anyone have a tinderbox, by any chance, or some other way to make a light?”

  This was greeted by a chorus of questions. “Hanner?”

  “Who?”

  “Lord Hanner?”

  Hanner grimaced; at least some of them recognized his name.

  Someone behind him, a woman, shouted, “Listen to him! If you can give us light, do it! If you can’t, help spread everyone out — there are still people in danger of being crushed!” Hanner thought it was the same woman who had called out a few moments earlier directing people. He looked about, trying to spot her, and at the same time he tried to direct people away from the central pit, out to safer, more open areas.

  “This way!” he called.

  Then, at last, a light flared up. For an instant Hanner wondered why it had taken so long, but then he realized — these were warlocks. Powerful warlocks, strong enough to be Called. Up until a few minutes ago, they hadn’t needed flint and steel to make fire; they had magic that could set an entire house ablaze in an instant.

  That realization left him wondering why anyone did have a tinderbox; he peered toward the light.

  The man holding a torch was no one Hanner recognized; he was not dressed in traditional warlock black, but in the yellow tunic and red kilt of a guardsman. Hanner briefly wondered whether the Hegemony had sent guardsmen to Aldagmor, but then dismissed the idea — Aldagmor was one of the Baronies of Sardiron, outside the He
gemony entirely, and any guards sent here who got this close would have been Called.

  But there was one obvious explanation — this man must have been Called on the Night of Madness, seventeen years ago!

  But…was it seventeen years? Or was it more? Hanner knew that he had been Called in Longdays of 5219, but he didn’t know how long he had been trapped by that protective spell. Certainly, not all of these people had arrived in a few sixnights, and Hanner had not been on the outside of the great mass of trapped warlocks. He might have been there for a year or more!

  That soldier had probably been here since 5202. No other explanation made sense.

  “You!” Hanner called. “Bring that light over here!”

  The guardsman looked uncertain, but he came, holding the torch high. “What’s going on?” he demanded. “Who are you?”

  Calling himself Chairman of the Council probably wouldn’t mean anything to this man; if Hanner was right, he had been in Aldagmor since before the Council was created. Still, Hanner thought he knew a name the man would recognize and respect. “I’m Lord Faran’s nephew,” he said. “I’ll explain the rest later — I’m sure there are a lot of people here who don’t understand. For now, we just need to make sure everyone’s safe.”

  “Lord Faran? From Ethshar of the Spices?”

  That caught Hanner off-guard. “Yes, from Ethshar of the Spices,” he said. “Where are you from?”

  “Ethshar of the Rocks.”

  “Ah. Well, we’re in Aldagmor, in the Baronies of Sardiron, right now, so I don’t think it matters which of the three Ethshars we’re from. Here, see if you can get more torches lit without setting the grass on fire — it’s cold and dark, and some of these people may be in trouble. We need light, and we can probably use the heat, too.”

  “Yes, my lord,” the soldier said, raising a hand in acknowledgment. He turned toward the heart of the crowd.