The Unwelcome Warlock

by Lawrence Watt-Evans

  Or would they celebrate? Yes, Vond had created the empire, overthrown the old kings and removed the worst of the old aristocracy, built the palace, built the roads, and brought peace to the region, but he had also killed anyone who got in his way, gathered a harem, and generally treated the empire as his personal playground. Sterren had not been able to get a good feel, as yet, for how Vond’s return was received.

  And how would the Wizards’ Guild look at Sterren? As regent he had agreed to keep warlocks out, but he had welcomed Vond back; the wizards might not appreciate that.

  Sterren looked up to the east again, then blinked. At first he thought he might be imagining it, but no — that black shape in the distance was Vond, approaching quickly. He let out his breath.

  “There he is,” he told Kalira, pointing.

  “What?” She turned, startled. “Oh, yes!”

  “Are you going to ask him to choose someone else?”

  Kalira hesitated, then shook her head. “No,” she said. “Maybe after I see how it goes.” She squared her shoulders and stood up straight, awaiting her emperor.

  A moment later Vond swooped down to hang a foot or so above the plaza, facing Sterren. He was smiling cheerfully as he approached, but once he stopped, his expression turned serious. “Are you ready?” he demanded.

  Sterren gestured at his baggage — two large bundles and a trunk. “I am, your Majesty.”

  “Good! Then let us…” Vond began. Then he stopped.

  Sterren had felt himself tugged upward, but he used his own feeble magic to resist, to pull himself back down, keeping his toes, if not his entire feet, on the ground. He had no doubt at all that Vond could easily overcome his opposition, but this would at least get the emperor’s attention.

  “Was there something else?” Vond asked.

  “Two things, your Majesty,” Sterren replied. “First, would you please confirm Lady Kalira as the new regent, if such is your pleasure?”

  Vond glanced at the woman in question, then turned his gaze back to Sterren. “And the second?”

  “Second, some of the people you brought from Aldagmor would like to accompany us to Ethshar.” He gestured at the waiting Called. “I understand they do not feel comfortable here.”

  “Ah,” Vond said, looking over the former warlocks thoughtfully. They were a worried and tired-looking group, about evenly split between male and female, all watching Sterren and the emperor nervously. “Headaches, ringing in the ear, perhaps? That sort of thing?”

  “Exactly, your Majesty.”

  “Then by all means, they should come with us! Well done, Sterren, thinking of that.”

  “And the regency?” Sterren prodded gently.

  “Yes!” Vond rose a foot or so and amplified his voice, so that the entire square echoed with his words. “Lady Kalira, I hereby name you regent, and appoint you to administer the empire in my absence! Rule wisely until I return!”

  Lady Kalira curtsied deeply in response, and by the time she rose once more to her feet, Sterren and the former warlocks — Sterren counted nineteen, nine men and ten women — were rising upward into the air.

  Some of them were muttering or calling questions, which Vond totally ignored. He had his attention focused to the northwest, toward Ethshar of the Spices.

  Sterren watched the plaza fall away, then turned to the south to see Semma Castle receding as he was pulled upward and northward. Within a few seconds of Vond’s final word, Sterren and the others were passing over the red tile roof of the imperial palace, leaving behind the marble walls and tile roofs of New Semma, and the half-timber and thatch of Old Town.

  Once they were well clear of the buildings, Sterren glanced back and down, and saw that his luggage was following them.

  The former warlocks, of course, had no luggage; they still had only what they had brought with them when they were Called. They did not look very happy, which struck Sterren as slightly odd — they were being given a free ride back to Ethshar, after all. Shouldn’t they be pleased?

  Vond, unlike the others, seemed quite cheerful. He was smiling, and his movements were calm and easy.

  Wind whipped at Sterren’s hair and whistled in his ears, so he had to shout to be heard. “You seem to be in a good mood,” he said to Vond. “Are you so pleased to see the last of the town you built?”

  Vond turned his smile on Sterren. “I had a pleasant night,” he said. “And I’m looking forward to seeing Ethshar again — it’s been almost a year!” Then he blinked, and said, “Or fifteen years, from your point of view.”

  Sterren nodded, and did not try speaking again; it wasn’t worth the effort to be heard over the wind.

  By now they were sailing over mile upon mile of small farms and scattered villages; the fields were mostly brown, the harvest in. The names of the months were not even remotely accurate this far south, but even so, by this late in Newfrost most of the crops had been brought in.

  Sterren felt a certain pride at the landscape below. Sixteen years ago, when he first came to Semma, this land had been far less productive, the population far smaller. The roads Vond had built had something to do with that, but as regent Sterren had made sure that the roads were maintained and extended, irrigation canals built, and the peasants allowed to work the land as they chose, undisturbed by wars or the sometimes ruinous whims of the nobility.

  There was no way to tell when they left the province of Semma and entered Ksinallion; the once-fortified border was gone without a trace. Again, when they passed from Ksinallion into Thanoria, Sterren was only aware of the distinction from years of studying the empire’s maps and learning the relevant landmarks.

  But then the roads and canals stopped, and the farms grew smaller, less even, and less prosperous, and Sterren knew they had left the empire and passed into Lumeth of the Towers.

  He shivered at the realization. They were now breaking the treaty with the Wizards’ Guild, defying the Guild’s edict. Long ago, Ithinia of the Isle had calmly told him that if he ever set foot in Lumeth, he would be killed. She had also told him that wards had been set all along the border to alert the Guild if the empire tried to invade any of its neighbors, or vice versa.

  He hoped that those wards did not extend this far up, and that flying over Lumeth, not under his own power, would not have the same result as setting his feet on the ground; all the same, he knew he would feel much safer once they were beyond Lumeth, and beyond Eknissamor — Eknissamor was the most northerly of the kingdoms where warlockry was forbidden. Once they had passed that point, they would no longer be in violation of the Guild’s rules.

  He glanced back at the emperor’s “honor guard,” and suddenly realized that most of them were in pain — several were clutching at their temples, and at least one had started screaming; Sterren had not recognized the sound as anything but more wind at first.

  He silently cursed his own stupidity in not foreseeing this. “Your Majesty!” he shouted. “Your Majesty! Vond!”

  “Hm?” The warlock turned to see Sterren pointing at their suffering companions.

  Abruptly, their forward motion stopped, and the entire party hung motionless in mid-air, a at least hundred yards up.

  “What’s happening?” Vond asked.

  Sterren pointed north and made a gesture that he hoped indicated a tower.

  “Oh?” Vond said. “Oh!”

  Suddenly they were moving again, but to the southwest, rather than northwest, and descending. A moment later they began landing in an empty field that Sterren judged to be just inside the empire’s border. Most of the former warlocks stumbled, and about half of them fell, upon touching ground; Vond had not been particularly gentle about bringing them down, and while they had all flown before they were accustomed to being in control of their own motion, not being dragged about by someone else’s magic.

  “Wait here,” Vond told them. Then he and Sterren shot upward.

  The sudden motion was frightening, and Sterren’s stomach did not take it well, but he
managed to keep his lunch down.

  “They’re feeling it, aren’t they?” Vond demanded, once he was sure he and Sterren were well out of earshot. “The hum. The power.”

  “I think so, yes,” Sterren said. “After all, they were all powerful enough to be Called, just as you were.”

  “I can’t take them any closer, then.”

  “They might adjust to it, as you did; then you wouldn’t be the only warlock.”

  Vond shook his head. “I don’t want that. I don’t know these people, not really. I don’t know whether I can trust them with this magic.”

  Sterren glanced down at the others, scattered on a farmer’s field. Several were still holding their heads and appeared to be moaning. “Then you mustn’t take them any further into Lumeth.”

  “But I wanted to see the towers!”

  “The Wizards’ Guild doesn’t want us anywhere near the towers.”

  “To Hell with the Wizards’ Guild! I’m going back to Ethshar, and that should be good enough for them. If I want to do a little sightseeing along the way, I don’t see how that hurts them, and I don’t care if it does!”

  “It hurts them, though,” Sterren said, pointing down at the nineteen Called warlocks.

  “Then maybe I’ll just leave them here.”

  “Strand them out here in the middle of nowhere?”

  Vond hesitated. “Blast it. It was your idea to bring them; why didn’t you realize this would happen?”

  “I didn’t know what route you were going to take!” Sterren protested. “You didn’t give us time to discuss it.”

  He knew, though, that he should have expected it; he had known that the warlocks could sense the energy Vond was using, and found it uncomfortable.

  Vond frowned. “Fine. I’ll take them to the nearest port and let them take a ship, and when that’s done, you and I will go take a look at the towers, and the Pillar of Flame, and then we’ll go to Ethshar.”

  “As your Majesty pleases.”

  Vond looked around. “Where is the nearest port?”

  Sterren looked out across the landscape, trying to match it to the maps of the empire, and finally said, “Akalla of the Diamond. That way.”

  “Good,” Vond said. He looked down, and the former warlocks were suddenly snatched upward, and a moment later the entire party was flying southwest at high speed — much too fast for further conversation.

  An hour later nineteen terrified, exhausted, miserable people were unceremoniously dumped on a pier in Akalla, and the emperor’s voice boomed from overhead.

  “Send them to Ethshar!” he said. “Put them on the next ship, at my expense!”

  Sterren watched for a moment as people scurried about, rushing to please the warlock emperor. Then he was swept away northward again, toward Lumeth of the Towers.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Hanner emerged from the magical staircase in the middle of Eastgate Market and looked around at a city that was simultaneously familiar and strange. He had not been in Eastgate Market in a year or more — or rather, for at least eighteen years. It had changed.

  Oh, the gate itself was still there, standing tall between the mismatched towers, and the city wall stretching away to either side was much the same. The Hundred-Foot Field, just inside the wall, was still an expanse of tents, improvised shelters, cook-fires, beggars, and garbage. The guards still wore the familiar red and gold uniforms, and lounged by the gate and under the red-and-gold pennants that separated the Field from the market. The market itself was hard-packed brown earth, and smelled of fish and the ocean. Dozens of merchants were still hawking clams, oysters, and crabs from stalls, tents, and tables; one or two displayed a few sorry boxes of dates, oranges, or other fruit.

  But none of them were merchants Hanner recognized, and the layout of the stalls was different. The old Eastgate Inn that had occupied the center of the north side of the market, just west of the Field, since the end of the Great War was gone, and the open-sided pavilion that stood in its place did not look new; its timbers were darkened from exposure to the weather, and the signboard proclaiming it to be the Eastgate Labor Exchange was faded. The ornamental gateway that had stood beside the inn at the entrance to East Wall Street was still there, but had been repainted with an entirely different color scheme — Hanner remembered it as blue and white, but now it was red, blue, and gold.

  The stonemason’s shop between the gate and Lighthouse Street was now an ironmonger’s shop, and its stone walls, which had always been unadorned, now boasted elaborate wrought-iron trim.

  The block of shops at the west end of the square looked much the same; Hanner thought one or two might have changed tenants, but that happened frequently. On the south side the tunnel-like entrance to a warren of small shops around an irregular courtyard was gone, replaced by a weaver’s workshop displaying a lovely array of bright fabrics.

  Rudhira had stopped dead a few feet ahead of him, and Hanner realized that the changes must be even greater and more shocking for her than they were for him — she had not been here for thirty-four years. She probably remembered the old brewery that had stood on the south side, and had the ornamental gate even been built yet that far back?

  Then he realized that she wasn’t staring at the buildings; she was staring at the ground. Puzzled, he took a step forward and peered over her shoulder.

  “Hanner,” she said, “what is that?”

  Hanner looked down at the green, big-eared, vaguely frog-like creature that was grinning up at them, the top of its head roughly even with Rudhira’s kneecaps.

  “I have no idea,” he said.

  “It’s a spriggan,” Rothiel said from behind them.

  “What’s a spriggan?” Hanner asked.

  “That is,” Rothiel unhelpfully explained. Then he continued, “A spell went wrong several years back, somewhere in the Small Kingdoms, and started producing these things. It took years before anyone managed to stop it, and there wasn’t any way to reverse it and dispose of the ones that had already gotten loose, so there are thousands of these things running around now. They won’t hurt you, but they do get into things and make a mess sometimes. They’re attracted by magic, so there are probably dozens of them around here right now, drawn by Hallin’s Fissure.”

  The green thing nodded vigorously. “Lots of spriggans!” it said, in a squeaky voice.

  “It talks!” Rudhira gasped.

  “Oh, yes. They talk,” Rothiel agreed. “I’m a little surprised you didn’t see any in Aldagmor.”

  “Pretty hair,” the spriggan said, staring up at Rudhira, still grinning idiotically.

  “They like bright colors, too,” Rothiel said. “But if you don’t mind, we need to get you to Ithinia. You can observe how the city’s changed later.” He turned, and called, “Move away from the fissure, please!”

  The spriggan’s attention suddenly shifted; it dashed between Rudhira’s legs, dodged around Hanner, and ran for the magical staircase. “Magic!” it squeaked.

  “Oh, blood,” the wizard said. “Grab it, someone!”

  Two people dived for the creature, whacking their heads together in the process; Hanner winced at the sound of impact. It was someone else entirely, a girl in a blue tunic, who actually managed to capture the spriggan and hold it up.

  Rothiel did not spare the time or effort to congratulate her on her feat; he was concentrating on the fissure, staring at it intently, both his hands raised in a sort of warding gesture.

  Then the ground began shaking; everyone in the market stepped back, and the spriggan squealed excitedly.

  Hanner watched with interest as the ground seemed to rise up and flow together, then sink back to its natural level, flattening out and leaving no trace of the stair that had been there a moment before. The trembling subsided, and the packed earth of the market was back to normal, with no sign it had ever been disturbed.

  Several of the watchers, mostly merchants who had sold their goods to the Called warlocks in Aldagmor, applauded. The s
priggan suddenly squirmed free from the girl’s grip and ran to dance on the empty place where the fissure had been. The two who had dived for it — a boy in his teens and a middle-aged man — sat up, rubbing their heads and glaring at one another.

  Rothiel let out a relieved sigh. “There,” he said, letting his hands fall. “Now, as I was saying, let’s get you to Ithinia.”

  Hanner did not argue, but followed as the wizard led them west on East Street. He glanced back over his shoulder at the spriggan — or rather, the spriggans; three of them were now chasing one another through the marketplace crowds.

  Rudhira followed the two men; Hanner considered saying something, suggesting she set about finding herself a place of her own rather than tagging along to a meeting that would probably be a waste of her time, but then decided her presence would do no harm, and it was none of his concern if she wanted to come.

  It was a little over two miles to Ithinia’s house on Lower Street; the route took them through the middle of the Eastgate district into southern Hempfield, to the tiny patch of open land called Old High Street Market. In the summer, as Hanner remembered it, flowers bloomed in the triangle of raised beds, surrounded by street musicians, jugglers, and hawkers selling candy and trinkets, but the flowers were done for the year, and either the weather now was cold enough to deter them, or things had changed during his absence — the place was deserted save for an old man huddled against a wall, and a brown-striped cat prowling the flowerbeds, looking for mice.

  Hanner had expected to stay on East Street, but Rothiel led them up the left-hand fork, onto Old High Street and into Allston.

  Old High Street merged into High Street at roughly the halfway point of their journey, and it occurred to Hanner that if he simply stayed on this road he would soon be home, at Warlock House, once Uncle Faran’s mansion.

  But Mavi and the children probably wouldn’t be there to welcome him. It was hard to believe it had really been seventeen years; to Hanner it had only been a couple of days since he left Mavi and the children at Warlock House while he went to see his new magical tapestry. He hoped she was all right; none of the wizards had yet told him anything about her circumstances.