Night of Madness loe-7

by Lawrence Watt-Evans

  Thinking that, he became consciously aware for the first time that he could perceive things he hadn’t before, that he could use his magic to sense things-it wasn’t seeing, and it wasn’t feeling, but it was almost both. He realized this must be what Sheila had meant when she talked about studying Thellesh’s injuries with something that wasn’t witch sight.

  He could feel/see the bricks that made up the wall, the mortar that held them together, the grainy texture of the mortar, the smooth glaze on the bricks...

  But it was dark, and he wasn’t touching the wall; his hands were at his sides.

  He blinked, and the perception faded slightly.

  He didn’t need to know how the wall was put together, he just needed to get over it. He still couldn’t sense any toeholds, even with this new ability.

  He turned his attention to himself, to see whether he could figure out how to fly. It should be easy-just lift himself off the ground. He had experimented with his magic a little in secret, earlier in the day, and he could move small objects around, but he hadn’t tried lifting himself.

  It wasn’t as easy.

  It wasn’t so much the weight, although he had never tried lifting anything even close to his own size; instead, he realized, it was because he couldn’t sense a relationship between himself and the object he was trying to move.

  That was how a warlock moved things. He had done it without understanding it before, without being aware of how he was doing it, but now he saw it clearly. His new sense showed him the relationship in space between himself and the object he wanted to affect, and then he manipulated that relationship-warlockry was all a matter of using this new sense to find the magical connections between himself and the rest of the World, and then forcing them to change. He had caught that cruet by blocking its connection to the floor.

  But finding the magical connections between himself and himself didn’t seem to work.

  Rudhira and the others had done it, though. There had to be a way. He studied himself with his newly recognized warlock sight, and finally figured out what he would have to do. In order to fly, Hanner saw, a warlock didn’t move himself; he moved the rest of the World.

  Hanner reached out and tried to do that, to move the street and wall away-and caught himself just before he fell over backward.

  He straightened up, frowned, looked down at his feet, and tried again, concentrating on pressing the ground away from the soles of his sandals.

  He rose unsteadily for an inch or two, then wobbled and started to fall backward. Again, he used his warlockry to catch himself.

  He couldcatch himself easily enough, he thought. It was annoying; it was as if his magic worked better when he didn’t think about it.

  But if he didn’t think about it, he couldn’t fly!

  He heard footsteps and turned to see a patrolling guardsman marching toward him. Quickly he tugged up his tunic and untied his breeches, to provide the obvious excuse for why someone was standing inches from a blank wall at night.

  “Hai!” the soldier called. “Go find somewhere better!”

  “Sorry!” Hanner called, retying his breeches. “Drank too much ale at supper.”

  “Well, get rid of it somewhere else.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  He hesitated, then took a step toward Merchant Avenue. The guardsman marched on.

  Hanner turned back to the wall, studying it with his warlock sense, wondering whether he could somehow brace against it to stay upright while he lifted himself over it. Bricks and mortar, bricks and...

  “Oh,” he said.

  The service entrance was right there, a few yards to his right, a wooden gate with an iron latch. How had he missed it?

  He hurried to it, reached out-and realized he couldn’t see any gate. The brick was solid and unbroken...

  To normal eyes. To a warlock, there was a gate.

  At last Hanner figured it out. Uncle Faran had had his gate enchanted, had a protective illusion put on it. He reached out and felt the “wall.”

  Sure enough, it was wood, not brick. The illusion wasn’t so complete it fooled his fingers. He found the latch by feel, and tried to open it. It was locked. He could sense the mechanism, a bolt that could be worked from the inside. There was a slot below it; presumably Bern carried a tool that could reach through the slot and work the bolt from the outside.

  Hanner had no such tool-but he was a warlock.

  The bolt slid back, and the gate opened, and he was inside. He closed the gate carefully, hoping he hadn’t disrupted the undoubtedly costly illusion, and headed for a door from the garden into the house.

  A moment later he was inside, making his way along the central hallway. He could hear voices ahead.

  He found half a dozen people in the candlelit front parlor; they turned to look at him as he entered.

  “Lord Hanner!” Rudhira said from a chair by one of the front windows where she had been watching the crowd in the street outside. “I’m glad you got back inside safely.”

  “I’m not sure how safe it really is,” Hanner replied as he looked around. Besides Rudhira and himself, the room held Alla-dia, Othisen, and three other warlocks whose names he didn’t recall immediately. “Where’s Uncle Faran?” he asked.

  “Upstairs with the wizards,” Rudhira said. “He has us on guard duty for now, making sure those people outside don’t do any harm.” She pointed at the top of the window by her chair. “Someone caught us off guard and threw a brick through there about an hour ago, but we fixed it. You can hardly tell the glass was ever broken.”

  “You fixed it?” Hanner stared at the panes, which appeared completely intact. “How?”

  One of the others giggled, and Othisen said gently, “We’re warlocks, remember?”

  “Yes, but... I know you can move things, but I didn’t know you could fix them.”

  “We can do a lot of things,” Rudhira said. “Move things, break things, unbreak them. We can make light, as you’ve seen.” She held up an orange-glowing hand to demonstrate. “We’ve been teaching each other. We can open locks and heal wounds and heat things up or cool them down. We can harden things, or dissolve them, or set them on fire. We can see things too small to be seen without magic, see the insides of things, and feel things without touching them. It’swonderful, my lord! I thought it was good enough just being able to throw things around and fly, but there’s so much more!”

  “That’s... that’s wonderful,” Hanner said, hoping he sounded more convinced than he felt.

  He didn’t know how to do all that-but presumably, if everyone else had learned these things, he could learn them. All he had to do was admit he was a warlock, throw in his lot with the others-and put himself at risk of exile or death, not to mention being something that Mavi found repulsive.

  It was tempting, all the same-he could feel the magic in him calling out to be used, to be trained and built up.

  But he wasn’t going to do it.

  At least, not yet. “That girl, Sheila, who was apprenticed to a witch,” Othisen said, “she said we could make more warlocks, and sort of showed us how, but we didn’t have anyone to experiment on.”

  “Lady Alris wouldn’t volunteer,” Rudhira said. “And you weren’t here.”

  “And I’m not volunteering now,” Hanner said, heading off any such suggestion and hoping none of these people were as attuned to warlockry’s presence as Sheila had been. “But what about those people out there?” he asked with a wave at the windows. “Maybe you could change one ofthem. That might convince them warlocks aren’t monsters.”

  “Them?” Rudhira glanced toward the window, and the drapes flapped aside, though there was no wind in the closed room. The glow from her hand vanished. “I wouldn’t do them the favor!” she said angrily.

  “Besides,” Othisen said, “you need to be very close to do it. Touching, if possible.”

  “Still, it’s interesting that it’s possible,” Hanner said. “And you can learn different... different spells from
each other.” He didn’t really think “spells” was the right word, but he couldn’t think of a better one. “That means that if this stays around, warlocks could take on apprentices and train them, just like other magicians.”

  “Yes!” Rudhira said.

  “I suppose that’s true,” Alladia said slowly.

  “I’m so glad you found me in the Wizards’ Quarter, my lord,” Rudhira said. “Without you I wouldn’t have come here, and I wouldn’t have met Lord Faran, and I might never have learned all these things.”

  “I’m happy you’re pleased,” Hanner said, a bit taken aback by this enthusiasm. After all, there was an angry mob just outside, ready to throw more bricks at a moment’s notice; it hardly struck Hanner as an enviable situation. It felt as if they were besieged— and that was without even mentioning the sentence of exile hanging over their heads, and the possibility that Lord Azrad or the Wizards’ Guild might decide even exile wasn’t enough and demand their deaths.

  This was certainly not his idea of a decent way to live, trapped here, awaiting an uncertain fate, and it was no improvement at all over his previous existence-but then, he’d never been a Camp-town streetwalker.

  “Lord Faran’s quite a man,” Alladia said.

  “He’s saved us all,” Rudhira said. “Without him I’d never have had the nerve to fight back. I’d be an exile outside the walls by now, begging travelers for crusts of bread.”

  Hanner somehow found that unlikely; he couldn’t imagine Rudhira giving up without a fight, and her warlockry was the most powerful he had yet seen. If she had accepted exile, he still thought she would probably have done something a little less passive than begging to earn her keep.

  “He’s had experience,” Hanner said.

  “Yes, of course!” Alladia said. “It’s obvious when he speaks.”

  “He’s a natural leader,” Rudhira said. “You’re a lucky young man to be his nephew.” “I’m sure I am,” Hanner said. He did not add anything more, though he was tempted.

  He had had experience himself-not at leading, but at being the Great Man’s nephew. He was used to living in his uncle’s shadow, and knew that anything he might say other than vague agreement could easily be misinterpreted. A disparaging word about Uncle Faran would mark him as a disloyal and jealous in-grate, while an injudicious, overly positive one would brand him a sycophant with no self-respect. If he were to point out that he, not Faran, had first thought of gathering warlocks together as a force for order and mutual defense, he’d be seen as a braggart.

  He had a knack for saying the wrong thing, but right now he really didn’twant to say the wrong thing. So he said nothing more on the subject.

  “I think I’ll go upstairs,” he said instead. “To talk to my uncle.”

  “Tell him we’re still guarding the house,” Othisen said. “No one’s getting past Rudhira and me!”

  “I’ll tell him,” Hanner said, turning away.

  He didn’t mention thathe had gotten in while they were on watch.

  As he headed for the stairs he glanced back and saw the six warlocks gazing out the windows at the angry crowd outside. This couldn’t go on indefinitely, Hanner knew. Something would have to be done.

  Outside, Kennan stared in through the window at the people in the parlor. The redheaded whore was there, and the tall old woman, and the farmboy.

  And the fat nobleman, Lord Hanner, had spoken to them, but he was gone now.

  Those people had taken his son, he was certain of it, and somehow he was going to see them pay.

  Chapter Thirty

  Lord Faran had reclaimed his own bed, naturally, so Hanner awoke on the morning of the seventh day of Summer-heat in one of the guest rooms, where he had shared a bed with Othisen. The farmboy had snored gently, but never moved once he was asleep; Hanner had on occasion shared beds with worse, when visiting.

  He arose without disturbing his roommate and made his way downstairs, to see whether the house was still besieged, and whether Bern was serving breakfast.

  Four weary warlocks were in the parlor when Hanner walked past-Yorn, Hinda, one he didn’t recognize...

  And Kirsha, the girl who had gotten five lashes for theft and vandalism. Hanner stopped dead in his tracks and said, “What are you doing here?”

  “Standing guard,” Hinda said proudly.

  Kirsha looked up. “Didn’t you know, my lord?”

  “How...?” Hanner began, but then stopped; he knew perfectly well what they were guarding against. He had been asking why Kirsha was there.

  Yorn glanced at Hanner and called, “Three bricks, a stone, and a flung torch so far this morning, my lord. All safely deflected.”

  Hanner asked, “Did you chase away the people who threw them?”

  Yorn shook his head. “No,” he said. “We four aren’t all that strong; all the strong ones are asleep. And I thought it might just make them mad.”

  “Good thought,” Hanner said. He hesitated, then asked, “What’s Kirsha doing here?”

  Yorn looked at Hanner, then at the girl, then back at Hanner. “She arrived last night,” he said. “Along with Ilvin, here.”

  Ilvin, the warlock Hanner hadn’t recognized, bowed slightly in acknowledgment. Hanner nodded in response, then returned to Kirsha. “But she... on the Night of Madness...”

  “I went a little mad,” Kirsha said. “Yes, I did. And you people caught me, and brought me to the magistrate, and he had me flogged and sent me home-and when the neighbors found out I was back, and that I was a warlock, I had to leave again unless I wanted to kill somebody, or let them kill me. I didn’t want either one, so I came here.” She patted Ilvin on the shoulder. “Ilvin’s my cousin. He only realized he was a warlock yesterday.”

  “He’s welcome, of course,” Hanner said. “But you...”

  “She’s a warlock,” Yorn said before Kirsha could speak. “She’s one of us now. She made a mistake and she paid for it, but now she’s come here for refuge, like the rest of us.”

  “You don’t hold a grudge?” Hanner asked her.

  Kirsha turned up a palm. “You did what you knew was right. I’d have been happier if you had let me go, or let me join your group, but you weren’t unfair.” “We healed her,” Hinda said.

  “Well, Desset and Sheila did most of it,” Yorn said. “They were on guard when Kirsha got here, but the rest of us were here and did what we could to help. It was a chance for us all to learn how.”

  Hanner remembered Desset well, since he had seen her just hours earlier, when she had awakened screaming from another of those peculiar nightmares. She was a plump, dark-eyed woman who had been in the party that had captured Kirsha in the first place. She was one of the three who had learned to fly right away, along with Rudhira and Varrin the Weaver.

  She had seen the damage Kirsha did, the smashed shop windows and stolen jewelry; if she had helped heal the scars left by the whip, it wasn’t out of ignorance.

  Criminals weren’t supposed to be magically healed after a flogging-the long-lasting discomfort was intended to be a reminder of crime’s consequences, and healing it theoretically lessened the effectiveness of the penalty. Wealthy lawbreakers, those who were willing to pay enough, could generally find some magician who could be “fooled” about the nature of the injury, of course.

  But that wasn’t what had happened here. The warlocks had healed one of their own, simply because she was one of them. They were uniting, leaving their old lives behind and forming a new community.

  And Hanner somehow suspected they would not appreciate it if he, who did not admit to being one of them, objected.

  Besides, Kirshahad gone a little mad when that first... whatever-it-was had struck and filled her with magic. She had thought she was dreaming, and had not meant anyone any harm. That was clearly an extenuating circumstance.

  And she had been cast out by her neighbors, presumably by her own family. Hanner coulddefinitely sympathize with that— after another night here he really missed his own
bed in the Palace.

  “Good,” he said. “We’re glad to have you. Guard well!” Then he waved and went on into breakfast.

  He had missed Kirsha’s arrival and healing, but even so, Hanner had had a long, busy night. The people in the street out front had been throwing things every so often, shouting, and occasionally charging the gate ever since Hanner’s return; one old man, that persistent fellow who seemed to have been there longer than anyone else, had appeared to be leading them. The watch in the parlor to ward off these attacks was now permanent, with all the sufficiently capable warlocks in the house taking turns at it.

  Manrin and Ulpen had attempted to put up magical wards around the rest of the house during the night, using what wizardry they could still make work, and the front gate, which was ordinarily left unlocked, was now sealed with three separate runes— though they were not certain how effective these would be, given their lessened wizardly abilities.

  Hanner had not been involved in any of that; he had mostly stayed upstairs and out of the way, but he had been aware it was being done.

  They truly were under siege here, trapped in the house until the situation improved-but at least now, with the wards and runes and the guards standing vigilant in the parlor, they were safe for the moment. Apparently safe, anyway. For the moment everything appeared peaceful, but by Yorn’s account it hadn’t been for long.

  And not everything upstairs had been peaceful during the night, either. A few of the warlocks were awakened by nightmares-not just Desset. The worst was Rudhira, who woke up screaming three separate times.

  The first time she was merely confused when she awoke, insisting someone at the back of the house was calling her and she screamed to make it stop.

  The second time she awakened in midair, bumping against the north wall of her room, saying she had to get out; her roommate Alris dragged her back to bed, displaying what Hanner thought was impressive courage.

  The third time Rudhira smashed through her door and flew screaming down the hallway before smacking into a protective spell of some kind that Lord Faran had had placed on the door of his room. The noise roused the entire household, of course, and there were several theories about mysterious forces trying to use Rudhira against Lord Faran, or Lord Faran’s magic somehow attracting Rudhira in her crazed and sleeping state.