Tales of Ethshar

by Lawrence Watt-Evans

  He was too busy listening to the silence in his head.

  The Call was gone. The constant nagging, the murmuring voice in his head, the wordless muttering that he had somehow been able to draw magic from, was gone. There was nothing in his head but him.

  He hadn’t experienced such total mental freedom since the Night of Madness, more than ten years before. Even before he had consciously noticed it, he had lived with the whisper of magic constantly for so long that its absence was overwhelming. Now he simply stood, listening for it, for several minutes.

  At first he didn’t show any reaction; the change was too sudden, too complete, to comprehend. Then the rush of relief swept over him, and his knees gave way, and he tumbled onto the grass, trembling with the impact of his release from bondage—and trembling with terror, as well. His magic was gone, and it had been central to his existence for so long that he barely knew who he was without it.

  He lay on the grass for several minutes, and gradually began to notice his surroundings—the sun, the breeze, the grassy slope. He tried to stand up.

  It didn’t work.

  He took a moment to absorb that, and to realize that he had become so accustomed to levitating any time he stood up that trying to rise using only his own muscles was difficult, surprisingly difficult. He had forgotten how to do it.

  He had tried to spring directly to his feet—or really, since of late he had usually hung in the air with his feet an inch or so off the ground, “to his feet” wasn’t quite right. He had tried to fling himself upright, but without magic it hadn’t worked. Now he rolled onto his back and pushed himself up into a sitting position, then set his feet on the ground, one by one. Then he stood up, leaning forward and straightening his legs.

  That time it worked.

  He stood for a moment, taking in his surroundings and his situation.

  He had no magic. Wherever he was, he wasn’t a warlock here; probably nobody would be. All the little things he had done magically he either had to do with his own muscles, or not at all.

  He was dismayed to realize how many of them there were. He had been using warlockry to stand up, to walk—or rather, to fly; he realized now he hadn’t actually walked in months. He had been summoning things to his hand, rather than reaching out to take them. Magic had infiltrated every part of his life. Now that his head was clear he could remember any number of ways he had used magic—walking, lifting, cooking, cleaning, heating, cooling, playing with his children, even making love to his wife. He had done it all without thinking. Even when he had begun to feel the Call, when his dreams had become nightmares and the whisper in his head had become a constant nagging, and he had tried to stop using warlockry because it made him more susceptible, he had unconsciously continued doing all those little, everyday magics. The power wanted to be used, so he had used it.

  And only now that he couldn’t use it did he realize he had been doing so. He was standing here on a grassy hillside, and his legs were supporting his entire weight, his skin was unprotected from sun and wind, and it felt strange.

  He thought he could get used to it, though. After all, he hadn’t been born a warlock; he had grown to adulthood without any magic. Most people managed just fine without warlockry.

  He sniffed the air, and caught the scent of the sea, or something very like it. He walked cautiously down toward the cluster of buildings that he could not help thinking of as a village, though he had no idea whether that was really an accurate description.

  As he drew near he decided that they were indeed houses, and did indeed comprise a village. They were built of some hard, golden-brown material—stone or brick or dried mud, he couldn’t tell which. There were many small windows, and a few arched doorways. Arvagan had said that the builders might not be human, but the proportions looked right for humans; Hanner didn’t see anything particularly odd about the houses.

  Beyond the village the land continued to fall away, and he could see the ocean, or something very like it, spreading out in the distance. A tree-lined stream gurgled its way past the village, which accounted for the splashing he had heard, and the leaves rustled in the gentle breeze.

  It was very pleasant, really. Arvagan had said that he couldn’t guarantee anything about this place, that there might be hidden dangers, anything from insidious poisons to rampaging monsters to distorted time, but to Hanner it looked calm and inviting. The stream would presumably provide water, and the land looked fit for growing food; there might be fish in the sea, or even clams to be dug along the shore.

  Or if appearances were deceiving, and that somehow proved impossible, if the tapestries continued to work as promised he could still have food and even water brought in from Ethshar.

  Unless there were some nasty surprises awaiting him, he had his refuge—a place where warlocks could come to escape the Calling.

  He wandered around for what felt like an hour or so, exploring the houses. They were largely unfurnished, as if their intended inhabitants had never arrived, never brought their belongings.

  That was fine. That was perfect.

  The air was sweet, the sun was warm, and there was no Call. It was everything Hanner had wanted.

  And in one house, just as Arvagan had said, was the other tapestry, the one depicting the attic of Warlock House that had once belonged to Hanner’s uncle, Lord Faran. That bare, dim room looked dismal compared to the bright sunlit refuge, but Hanner did not hesitate; he knew his wife was waiting for him there. Mavi and the children had been worried about him; this refuge would be a relief for them all, even if none of the others ever set foot in it. Hanner walked up to the tapestry, and put a hand and a foot out to touch it, eager to tell Mavi the good news.

  He knew the Calling would return, but he assumed it would take a few seconds to reach its old force. He thought he was ready for it.

  Then he was in the attic, back home in Ethshar of the Spices, and he was wrong. There was no delay at all. The Call was instantaneously a deafening, irresistible screaming in his head, and he had had no time to prepare, no chance to brace himself; after an hour of freedom his resistance was gone, and he could not restore it quickly enough. There was one final instant of clarity, one glimpse of Mavi waiting, staring at him as he appeared out of thin air, and then there was no room in his mind for any thought but the desperate need to get to Aldagmor as fast as he could, by any method he could. Nothing could be permitted to stand in his way, and with a wave of his hand he shattered the sloping ceiling, splitting the rafters and tearing wood and tile to shreds as he soared out into the sky. He could not spare so much as a second to tell his wife goodbye before flying northward.

  He did not hear Mavi call his name, did not hear her burst into tears as he vanished. He did not see Arvagan’s apprentice rush up the attic stairs to her side, to catch her before she collapsed.

  By the time the apprentice brought Mavi to Arvagan’s shop, Hanner was thirty leagues from the city. By the time word went out to the Council of Warlocks, Hanner was in Aldagmor. He could not tell them what had happened. He could not tell them that the refuge was a success, and only failed because he had been caught off-guard by the sudden instantaneous return of a Calling he had only barely been able to resist before he stepped through the tapestry.

  All they knew was that Hanner, Chairman of the Council, had stepped through the Transporting Tapestry still able to fight the Call, and upon emerging had instantly flown off to Aldagmor.

  There were some who theorized that the Call was somehow stronger on the other side of the tapestry, some who thought the magic of the tapestry itself somehow added to the Call’s power, some who really didn’t care about the details, but the Council as a whole agreed: The Chairman’s attempt at creating a safe haven for high-level warlocks had failed. The tapestry was rolled up and stored securely away—after all, it was bought and paid for—and a new Chairman was elected.

  And the Calling, that inexplicable melange of nightmares and compulsions, continued to snatch away any warlock wh
o grew too powerful.

  About “The Frog Wizard”

  Okay, this one needs some explanation, as it’s never been published in this form before.

  Long ago I bought a blank book, wrote and illustrated a story in it, and gave it to my girlfriend for Valentine’s Day. Then later, when she had more or less forgotten about it, I stole it back and wrote and drew another story in it, and gave it to her for Valentine’s Day. I did this until the book was full—not every year, but most.

  They weren’t romantic stories; they were silly children’s stories. One of them was called “The Frog Wizard.”

  Many, many years later, after the book was long since full and she and I were long since married, I read some of the stories to our kids, and it occurred to me that a couple of them might be worth reworking and selling. I proceeded to rewrite “The Frog Wizard” in several versions—six in all. One of them was an Ethshar version. I actually sold one of the other versions, though; it was published in the January 1993 issue of Science Fiction Age. The Ethshar version was shelved and forgotten about—until I started assembling this book, when I realized that if I was going to be complete, it needed to be included. So here it is, a technically-never-before-published Ethshar story. And yes, it’s canon; the wizard’s spell is a variant form of Llarimuir’s Mass Transmogrification, and Mreghon is in the northwestern Small Kingdoms.

  The Frog Wizard

  Long ago, in the Small Kingdoms, in the most easterly corner of a land called Mreghon, there lived a wizard whose name is forgotten.

  He never used it much in any case, since a wizard’s true name gives power to other wizards who know it, and any name used often enough might become a true name. His neighbors were generally content to simply call him “the wizard,” and he was content to be called that.

  However, as it happens, he was not really very much of a wizard, despite his best efforts. No matter what he did, no matter how hard he tried, no matter how much he studied, he could work only one single piece of real, genuine magic.

  His neighbors were not aware of this shortcoming, because he was very good at sleight-of-hand and at all manner of stunts that looked like wizardry. He could convince anyone who dropped by that he knew all manner of fine spells, could make small objects appear and disappear, could transform handkerchiefs into pigeons, and so forth.

  Sleight-of-hand is all very well, of course, but it’s not quite the same thing as true wizardry, and the wizard knew it. True wizardry means miracle-working, not putting a pigeon up your sleeve, and this wizard only knew one genuine wizard’s spell, which he had learned as an apprentice—to the utter astonishment of his master, who had been trying to teach him an entirely different spell. The master could not manage anything of the sort himself, and did not understand how his apprentice had ever discovered it.

  When spells for flying or fire-lighting failed regularly, when his love-charms just gave people belly-aches, when a simple geas made a smelly mess all over his carpet without even making the intended victim feel guilty about it, this one feat came easily to the wizard. He could do it instantly, just with a wave of his hand.

  It wasn’t a simple, ordinary spell, either, like fire-lighting or levitation—he couldn’t light a candle by wizardry for all the gold in a dragon’s hoard, but somehow he had mastered, without meaning to, a truly spectacular piece of magic. Perhaps some perverse minor deity had been having a joke with him in allowing him the easy use of this major transformation.

  He could turn people into frogs.

  A simple gesture, and anyone he chose would shrink down, turn green and slimy, and hop away, eager to eat bugs, as much a frog as any frog that ever grew out of a tadpole. He could transform any number of people at a time, too, for that matter—turn whole nations into frogs, if he chose to.

  He didn’t choose to, however, and for a very good reason indeed. Unfortunately, he couldn’t turn the frogs back into people again, and after one or two unpleasant incidents that took place before he fully realized the situation, he swore never to use the spell again. He was too soft-hearted, in the ordinary course of events, to leave even his worst enemy stuck forever in the form of a frog.

  He practiced the gesture in secrecy, just in case he ever needed it, but he never used it.

  He still wanted everyone to know he was a wizard, though. There were a good many magicians living in Mreghon at the time, wizards and sorcerers and theurgists and a variety of others—the exact reasons for this are unclear, but indisputably, Mreghon had more than its share of practitioners of the arts arcane. These magicians were something of a privileged elite, highly respected by the rest of the population, and deferred to in several ways. A known magician could always count on a fair price at the village market, and no smith would ever miss the promised delivery date on a wizard’s or sorcerer’s order.

  After all, angering a wizard is dangerous. He might turn you into a frog. Everyone knew that, even though in truth, most wizards didn’t know that particular spell.

  That this one wizard did know it, and had mastered it so completely without ever learning any more useful or benign magic, was a source of constant private irritation, but really, the wizard had no choice but to live with it.

  And since he had mastered this spell, and really could, if he chose, turn people into frogs, he played the role of a wizard to the hilt. He wore a fancy hat and embroidered robe, with a silver dagger on his belt; he carried an ornately-carved staff with a cat’s skull on top, and lived in a well-furnished cave rather than an ordinary house to add to his mystique. He collected and studied various old books—partly in hopes of learning more magic, but mostly just to keep up his image. He kept strange pets, such as lizards and giant spiders—nothing supernatural, though, since he had no way of manufacturing, summoning, or controlling such creatures. He equipped himself with a full wizard’s laboratory, crammed with all the usual bizarre paraphernalia—skulls, stuffed bats, mysterious powders, all of that—even though he couldn’t use a single bit of it.

  In short, he did everything a powerful wizard did, except to perform any genuine wizardry.

  Reasonably enough, everyone in the vicinity assumed he was a great and powerful wizard.

  As a sort of private reference to his peculiar situation, he wore green robes instead of the more traditional red or blue or gold, and he had a silver frog emblazoned on his hat. Accordingly, when people needed to distinguish him from the other wizards in the area, they referred to him as “the frog wizard.”

  This was all very well, and in fact it was exactly what the frog wizard wanted. He led a quiet, comfortable life, and had the respect and affection of his neighbors. Really, he was quite content with the situation.

  Unfortunately, it didn’t last, because late one summer Mreghon was invaded.

  The first the frog wizard knew of this was when a messenger knocked on the door of his cave one fine morning, carrying a royal summons from King Kelder, the monarch of Mreghon.

  The wizard was sitting in the parlor with his feet up, sipping tea and reading a tome on the best substitutes for dragon’s blood in assorted fire spells, when he heard a loud, impatient rapping. He sighed, put the book aside, and got to his feet.

  The rapping sounded again, and he answered the door, expecting to see one of his neighbors come looking for a bit of advice, or maybe some villager asking after a philtre of some sort.

  Instead he found himself face to face with a royal herald, in the full ceremonial regalia of his office.

  The wizard blinked, startled, and before he had time to do any more than blink the herald had unrolled a scroll and begun reading. The wizard stood there, feeling rather foolish, and listened.

  The herald proclaimed in a deep, rolling voice, “Whereas, Our Realm has been attacked, without provocation, by certain Enemies, and…”

  The herald took a deep breath, and the wizard started to say something, but before he could get a single sound out the herald continued, “Whereas, Our normal methods of defense do not appear
to provide a complete assurance of Victory against this foul invader, and…”

  Again a deep breath, and a continuation.

  “Whereas, supernatural methods needs must be employed against this Desecration of Our Borders, and…”

  Another deep breath.

  “Whereas, Our enlightened rule has provided all alike, commoner and noble, mortal and magician, with great benefits and fair treatment…”

  The herald paused dramatically, one hand raised, and the wizard waited politely.

  “Therefore,” the herald announced, “We call upon all those with any skills in arcane practices, be they in wizardry, sorcery, theurgy, witchcraft, or other practices, to recognize their obligation to the Crown, and…”

  The wizard really wished that the herald would forget about the dramatic pauses and get on with it.

  “Therefore, all practitioners of Magic are hereby summoned forthwith to the Castle Royal, by Command of His Majesty Kelder, First of That Name, Heir to the Ancient Lords of the Holy Kingdom of Ethshar.”

  The herald nodded for emphasis, and began rolling up the scroll as he concluded, “Signed, and with Our Seal, this fourteenth day of the month of Harvest, in the Year of Human Speech Five Thousand and Sixty-Eight.”

  The wizard was very impressed by all this, which sounded quite majestic, and when the herald had finished reading the wizard asked him just exactly what it all meant.

  “It means that you’re to come with me to the castle, immediately,” the herald explained.

  The wizard considered that for a moment, and then asked, “Why?”

  “You’re a wizard, aren’t you?” the herald asked.

  The wizard promptly agreed that yes, he was indeed a wizard.

  “Well,” the herald explained, “all the magicians in Mreghon are being summoned to the castle to help fight off the invader.”

  The wizard was not at all sure he liked the sound of that, and he said so.