Night of Madness loe-7

by Lawrence Watt-Evans

“Not before.”

  “In that case, my lord, I think I had best set about finding others I can send on certain errands.”

  Perhaps the throat, rather than the heart. Perhaps if Azrad were to choke slightly, but recover...

  No. That wouldn’t change anything, except to make the overlord suspicious.

  “Be about it, then,” Azrad said with a wave of dismissal.

  “Yes, my lord.” Faran rose, bowed slightly, and turned to go.

  As he crossed the room his fingers were clenching and unclenching. He could feel the power in his mind, like rising dough, pressing outward, eager to be used. It took an effort to reach for the door handle with his hand, rather than with magic...

  And then the door swung open before he reached it, almost slamming into his nose, and his mind lashed out, shoving it closed again. He stepped back, startled.

  The door opened again, more slowly this time, and Captain Vengar stepped in, peering around the panel at Faran.

  “I’m sorry, my lord,” he said, “I didn’t know you were there. Lord Azrad signaled for me.”

  “You still should have knocked!” Lord Faran said angrily.

  “Captain,” the overlord called sharply, in a tone Lord Faran had never heard before in all his years in the Palace. Startled, Faran turned to see the overlord sitting bolt upright on the throne.

  “Yes, my lord?” Vengar said.

  “Captain, this man is a warlock,” Azrad said, speaking slowly and clearly and louder than his wont-and not entirely steadily. “When he closed that door on you just now he did not touch it. Remove him from the Palace at once and see that he is not readmitted without my specific permission.”

  “What?” Faran burst out. “Azrad, that’s absurd!”

  “I saw what I saw, my lord. Your hands were at your sides when that door slammed shut. Why you did not see fit to tell me of your altered circumstances I do not know, but it’s quite obvious I can’t trust you anymore. Go peacefully-and I might suggest that you consider leaving the city, as well as the Palace, for your own safety.”

  The overlord’s eyes were unnaturally wide and staring, Faran saw-and wet, as if he were on the verge of tears. “But it’s... you couldn’t, from across the room...”

  “Captain.”

  Vengar reached for Faran’s arm. “If you would come with me, my lord,” he said nervously.

  Faran looked at the soldier’s familiar worried face, then back at Azrad, sitting up straight, eyes wide, for the first time in years. He looked at the tapestried walls, the tessellated stone floor, that symbolized the wealth and power of the triumvirate that ruled the Hegemony of the Three Ethshars.

  It was too soon to fight openly. He was the only warlock in the Palace, and there were at least a hundred guards on hand, not counting the company out in the square and leaving the building’s other inhabitants out of consideration. He did not know just how strong his magic actually was-he had been telling himself there were no limits, but he had not had a chance to test the truth of that. Since the overlord’s immediate decree, the moment he heard of the troubles the night before, that no warlocks were to be permitted in the Palace, Faran had had to hide his abilities, and what with the crisis demanding his attention he had had no opportunities to experiment in private.

  “Lord Azrad,” he said, making one more try, “I am no threat...”

  “Out!” Azrad bellowed, rising to his feet and pointing. “Get out of my home, traitor!”

  Stung, Faran glared silently for a moment longer, then whirled back to the door.

  “Lead the way, Captain,” he said. “I will leave it to others to try to talk sense to the overlord.” He stalked out.

  A moment later he paused in the central hallway and asked, “Captain, may I send for my belongings later? I’ll provide a list of what I need, and my niece Nerra will attend to locating it all.”

  “I’ll have to check with the overlord, Lord Faran,” Vengar said. “I’m sure you understand.”

  “Of course,” Faran replied. “Of course. I’ll send a messenger to inquire when I’ve settled into my new quarters.”

  Vengar hesitated. “My lord,” he said, “are you really a warlock?”

  Faran gazed at the soldier, then smiled a crooked little smile.

  “Yes, I am,” he said. It was a relief to admit it openly and put an end to pretense.

  It was with an oddly light heart that he marched out the door onto the bridge, into the slanting sunlight of the afternoon.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Hanner had spotted a familiar face in the crowd, and after much shoving-with both hands and magic-he had finally reached her side.

  “What areyou doing here?” he asked.

  Mavi turned, startled. “Lord Hanner!” she said. “I didn’t expect to seeyou out here! I thought you’d be inside with the others.”

  Hanner grimaced. “Icould say that was your fault,” he said. “I didn’t make it back in time last night, after I saw you home, and I’ve been locked out by the overlord’s edict. Alris is locked out, too.”

  “That applies toyou} But youlive there!”

  “Lord Azrad makes no exceptions,” Hanner replied. “What about you, though-are you all right? Was anyone in your family hurt?”

  “Oh, we’re fine,” Mavi said quickly. “There was some disturbance, certainly, and I didn’t sleep at all well, due to the shouting and so on, but nobody troubled us. I heard all the neighbors talking, though, so I thought I’d come up here to see what was happening.”

  “Not very much, from what I can see,” Hanner said. Then someone bumped against him, and he turned to find that Rudhira had finally worked her way through the crowd, caught up with him, and shoved her way up to his side.

  “Who is this?” Rudhira asked.

  “Ah,” Hanner said. He spread his hands as best he could in the crowded circumstances. “Rudhira of Camptown, this is Mavi of Newmarket. She’s a friend-a friend of my sister Nerra, I mean.”

  “Pleased to meet you,” Rudhira said, though she did not look especially pleased. “Hanner, why are we here? They aren’t saying anything new.”

  “You don’t have to stay,” Hanner told her, a trifle resentfully. “You can go home or go back to Uncle Faran’s house.”

  “Uncle Faran’s house?” Mavi asked, puzzled. “But your uncle lives in the Palace.”

  “He has a house on High Street, as well,” Hanner explained. “That’s where Alris and I are staying until the guards let us back in.”

  “Oh, I assumed you’d found an inn.”

  “I didn’t need to...” “We wouldn’t all havefit at an inn!” Rudhira interrupted.

  “We?” Mavi asked, puzzled.

  “I collected a group of people to help out last night,” Hanner explained. “Rudhira was one of them.” Othisen was approaching as well; Hanner pointed him out and said, “And Othisen Okko’s son was another. Most of the rest have gone home now, but these two stayed.”

  “Icould have helped!” Mavi said. “You should have come to get me!”

  “Are you a warlock?” Rudhira demanded, before Hanner could reply. Hanner raised a hand to hush her.

  “No, of course not,” Mavi said.

  “Weare,” Rudhira said, gesturing at herself and Othisen. “Lord Hanner found us in the Wizards’ Quarter-we were trying to figure out what had happened to us, and he came and told us to help him stop thebad warlocks.”

  At that, a stranger in the crowd turned and stared. “What did you say?” she asked.

  “Did you say you’re a warlock?” another said.

  “A warlock? Here?”

  Hanner looked around worriedly and quickly threw a protective arm around Mavi. Several faces were turning toward them, and Rudhira was standing defiantly, hands on her hips, glaring back at them all.

  “We werehelping,” she said. “Lord Hanner invoked the overlord’s name and told us to help, and we did! We’ve just come from turning four of the warlocks who went smashing things over to a mag
istrate!”

  Mavi threw Hanner an uncertain glance.

  “I’ll explain later,” he said. “Right now, I think we should-”

  The end of his sentence was drowned out by a sudden roar from the crowd, followed by a hush. Hanner turned, startled, trying to see what had happened.

  The palace door had opened, and a figure had emerged onto the bridge, a figure dressed in a magnificent green velvet cloak that was probably swelteringly uncomfortable in the summer heat.

  Hanner recognized him immediately-as had several others in the crowd.

  “Lord Faran,” someone said.

  An expectant silence spread quickly as Faran strode across the bridge. The lines of soldiers parted at his approach, and he marched on into the square. Everyone waited for him to stop and begin speaking.

  He didn’t. He kept right on marching.

  The crowd stepped back, splitting down the middle to give him room, and then, much more slowly, filled back in behind him.

  Faran paid no heed to any of them; he strode onward as if the square were empty, directly across the center without looking to either side, and finally out of the square and onto Center Avenue, as if he intended to simply march straight on to Southmarket.

  The silence broke as people began to ask one another what the Lord Counselor was doing, and Hanner had to shout to be heard over the babble.

  “Come on!” he said, taking Mavi’s hand. “I think I know where he’s going, and we’d best meet him there.”

  Mavi didn’t try to answer over the noise, but followed as he led the way.

  Rudhira and Othisen followed as well, and the foursome fought their way quickly through the milling throng-not toward Center Avenue, as that was mobbed, but to Aristocrat Circle.

  Manner was sure that Faran was headed for the house on High Street, and there were other routes that would take one there more quickly than going straight up Center and then turning right onto High Street.

  Even as he hurried, he was aware of the feel of Mavi’s hand in his-cool and soft, her touch delicate but not weak.

  He also noticed that Rudhira was opening a path through the crowd by unnatural means; he considered protesting, but then decided against it. The mob was already stirred up by Faran’s silent appearance, and too busy to notice that they were being pushed not by hands, but by magic.

  In fact...

  “Rudhira,” Hanner called, “maybe you should fly.”

  Rudhira turned to look at him, and then smiled a broad, not entirely pleasant smile.

  “We all will,” she said.

  Before Hanner could protest he found himself snatched off his feet; the surrounding crowd fell away, the buildings around the square dropped away and shrank. His hand tightened-and so did Mavi’s. Hanner turned to find her wide-eyed with fright, staring down, but saying nothing.

  “It’s all right!” Hanner shouted. “Just stay calm!”

  She lifted her gaze to him, her expression making it plain that she thought he was completely insane to tell her this. “But we’re flying,” she said.

  “Yes, I know,” Hanner said. “But it’s safe.”

  She did not look convinced. “You’ve done this before?” she asked.

  “Well, no,” Hanner admitted, “but Rudhira has.”

  Honesty, he decided upon seeing her reaction, had not been the right choice. Below them voices were shouting angrily.

  “Which way?” Rudhira called to him.

  Startled, he stopped watching Mavi’s face and looked around.

  The four of them, he and Mavi and Rudhira and Othisen, were hanging in midair perhaps fifty or sixty feet up, well above most of the rooftops. Below them in the square people were churning about and shouting and pointing, and a few were throwing things at the hovering clump of people; fortunately, none were able to actually hit anything so far off the ground.

  To the north was the golden facade of the Palace and the dark water of the Grand Canal, and on all other sides the rooftops of the city stretched out, all brightly lit. There were no shadows up here, nothing to keep off the summer sun, and the expanse of red tile seemed vast and shimmering, pocked and split almost randomly by the dark separations between buildings. The Old City was a tangled patch of red tile, golden thatch, and black slate to the northeast.

  On the ground he knew half a dozen routes to the corner of High Street and Coronet, but from up here he didn’t recognize any of them. One tile rooftop looked much like another.

  He could work it out logically, he told himself. If the Palace was that way, they wanted to go the opposite, into the New City, up the slope past Short Street and Second Street and Lower Street...

  He tried to pick out the streets from the rooftops, but the alleys and gardens and courtyards confused matters, and he settled for pointing south and saying, “That way.”

  Immediately they were whisked away, swooping after Rudhira as if they were on strings.

  Once they were moving Hanner was able to spot a few details he had missed before. There was Lord Anduron’s estate with its eccentric assortment of turrets and wrought-iron spires, at the corner of Canal Avenue and Second Street...

  “Bear right,” he called.

  Rudhira obliged, and they cut diagonally across a block, over assorted gardens and courtyards. He recognized a facade on Central Avenue.

  “Farther right,” he said.

  That sufficed; they were then aimed as directly as he could ask toward Lord Faran’s house. A moment later they descended gracefully toward the packed dirt of High Street.

  “Wait,” Hanner said. He glanced to the left, toward Center Avenue, and could see people moving about-not the usual gentle movement of people going about their business, but pushing and running. He could hear shouting as well.

  Rudhira stopped, and the four hung in midair. All of them followed Manner’s gaze.

  “What should we do?” Rudhira asked. “Back up,” Hanner said. “We’ll land in the garden out back, and go in that way, where we can’t be seen.”

  “Good idea,” Othisen said.

  Rudhira nodded, and the foursome swooped upward again, over the roof and down into the garden.

  Mavi stumbled when they landed; she had tucked her legs up and did not straighten them quickly enough. Hanner caught her, then quickly released her.

  “Sorry,” he said.

  “Thank you,” she replied.

  “Now what?” Othisen asked.

  Hanner looked around at the neatly trimmed hedges and flowerbeds. They had traveled far faster by air than a man could on foot and had been able to cut across the roofs instead of following the streets, so they had undoubtedly gotten here before Lord Faran, but he would be arriving any minute.

  “We go inside, of course,” Hanner said. He led the way to one of the garden doors and knocked vigorously, hoping someone was within earshot.

  Bernanswered the door. He tried to say something, but Hanner was in no mood for polite greeting and pushed past him, leading his party quickly into the house and through the long gallery toward the front. As he passed, Hanner told Bern, “Uncle Faran’s coming.”

  Alris, sprawled on a divan in the front parlor, heard that. “He is?” she called, startled. “He’s not still in the Palace?”

  Hanner turned up an empty palm as he stood in the doorway to the parlor. “He’ll be here any minute,” he said.

  “Is Nerra with him?” Alris asked, rising.

  “No,” Hanner said. “He was alone.”

  “No guards to take charge of the prisoners?” Zarek asked from the parlor-he had been seated not far from Alris. “Does he know what you did with them?”

  “He’s alone,” Hanner said. “I don’t know any more than that I don’t know why he left the Palace or why he’s coming here or why he’s alone.”

  Bernarrived as Hanner finished this speech.

  “My lord,” he said, “I really think you should know,before your uncle arrives, that we have additional guests.”

  Startled,
Hanner turned to face him.

  “They’re upstairs, resting,” Alris said. “Two of those people you had here last night, who went home this morning. They came back. Their neighbors were shouting at them and throwing mud.”

  “What? Why?” Hanner asked.

  “Because they’re warlocks, of course,” Zarek said.

  There was a moment of awkward silence as the seven of them-Hanner, Mavi, Rudhira, Othisen, Alris, Zarek, and Bern— stood scattered about the parlor and hallway, looking at one another, seeking some clue as to what was happening and what they should do.

  And then the front door opened, and Lord Faran stepped in.

  “My lord,” Bern said with a bow. “May I take your...”

  He had not yet said the word “cloak” when Faran flung the garment at him.Bern caught it and began smoothing and dusting it as Faran looked around at the others. Hanner, from years of experience, saw that his uncle was regaining control of a lost temper; he suspected the others saw nothing but a man relaxing after the exertion of a brisk walk in the summer sun.

  “Hanner, my boy,” Faran said. “A pleasure to see you here. Would you introduce me to your friends?”

  “Of course, my lord uncle,” Hanner said, bowing. Formalities that he never bothered with if he could help it, that he almost never used when he was surrounded entirely by family or entirely by outsiders, seemed necessary and natural in this particular setting. “Lord Counselor Faran, may I present Rudhira of Camptown?”

  Rudhira had the wit to curtsy.

  “I believe you have already met Mavi of Newmarket, who I had the good fortune to meet in the square just now and invite to accompany us. This young man is Othisen Okko’s son, and that is Zarek, known at present as the Homeless.”

  Neither man managed a decent bow, but Zarek did make a belated and halfhearted attempt, while Othisen just gaped.

  “I understand you are the master of this house,” Rudhira said. “Our thanks for your hospitality, my lord.” She smiled warmly-a little too warmly, Hanner thought.

  Faran smiled in return, a smile that Hanner had seen many times before, and Hanner knew where that would lead. He cleared his throat.

  “It’s a pleasure to welcome guests such as you,” Faran said. He looked around. “And are there any others? My understanding was that my nephew had brought more than a dozen visitors here last night.”