Night of Madness loe-7

by Lawrence Watt-Evans

  Hanner didn’t say so, but he thought Rudhira headed for Faran’s room only because it was at the north end of the hall. He remembered that many of the people who vanished on the Night of Madness had headed north. He remembered how Roggit Rayel’s son told the magistrate at his trial that he intended to flee to Al-dagmor to escape the doom he thought was going to befall Ethshar, but couldn’t explain why he chose Aldagmor.

  Aldagmor was in the north. Hanner thought that was why Roggit chose it.

  And Hanner could feel something in that direction himself, something very faint, very alien, and both slightly repulsive and slightly alluring.

  But it wasvery faint. He could only sense it at all with his newfound warlock sight, and even with that it was like trying to hear the hum of a bee from a mile away.

  After the third nightmare Uncle Faran went up to the fourth floor and came back down with something for Rudhira to drink, to help her sleep more soundly; she swallowed it without hesitation, and barely made it back to her bed before collapsing into unconsciousness.

  The excitement over, everyone else retired again-except the handful on guard downstairs.

  It took some time before Hanner got back to sleep after that. He wondered why Rudhira was affected more strongly than anyone else; was it because her warlockry was the most powerful of them all?

  Was there a direct connection between the nightmares and the strength of a warlock’s magic? He thought back, trying to remember that first breakfast gathering. There had been four warlocks there who had had the dreams after the initial experience on the Night of Madness-Rudhira, of course, and Desset of Eastwark, who had helped heal Kirsha, and Varrin the Weaver, and Alar Agor’s son.

  And, Hanner realized, Rudhira and Desset and Varrin had all had nightmares again this time, as well-Varrin had awakened twice, once in midair. Alar Agor’s son was no longer in the house; he had left that first day, and had never come back. At least, not yet, though Hanner supposed he might yet turn up.

  Rudhira, Desset, and Varrin-those had been the three flyers in his party on the Night of Madness. When Uncle Faran had been sorting out who could fly and who couldn’t Hanner had left the room before the sorting was complete, but he knew that Rudhira and Desset and Varrin had all been at the “can fly” end of the room.

  There might well be a correlation between the nightmares and the power of a warlock’s magic, then. Flying generally seemed to be something the stronger warlocks could do and the weaker could not.

  That was interesting. Were the nightmares a sort of compensation, a disadvantage to balance out the advantages strong magic provided?

  There were a dozen people seated at the dining table, eating a breakfast of sausages and cakes; Bern was hurrying in and out the door at the far side that led to the kitchens. Hanner exchanged greetings with the others-particularly Alris, who clearly had not slept well. She had shared a room with Rudhira, of course, which Hanner knew had hardly been restful.

  Then Bern, returning with a tray of small beer, spotted Hanner.

  “Lord Hanner!” he said. “Could I have a word with you, please?”

  “Of course,” Hanner said. “Though if you could spare me a sausage to eat while we talk, I would appreciate it.”

  “Yes, of course, my lord.” Bern put down the tray, quickly distributed the mugs, and found a plate and a couple of fat sausages for Hanner. He handed Hanner the plate, then said, “Could you come with me, please, my lord?”

  “We can’t talk here?”

  “There’s something I need to show you. I had hoped to tell Lord Faran, but I haven’t seen him yet this morning, and he may well be busy upstairs all day. Could you please accompany me?”

  “Very well.” Hanner followed, plate in hand, as Bern led him down a slanting stone passageway to a windowless, lamplit storeroom.

  There they stopped. Bern simply stood for a moment, looking worried; Hanner glanced around, but could see nothing worrisome. It appeared to be a perfectly ordinary storeroom, though with more empty shelves than most.

  “What is it, Bern?” Hanner asked.

  “My lord,” Bern said, “I don’t dare disturb Lord Faran about this; he’s far too busy with all the magicians. But I need to point it out tosomeone.”

  “Point outwhat}”

  “Look, my lord,” Bern said, gesturing at the empty shelves. “This house is accustomed to lodging your uncle, sometimes one or two of his friends, and of course anywhere from one to six servants. But right now I believe we haveforty people here. I thought this could be managed if I made daily trips to Southmar-ket, and went to Fishertown Market or Westgate Market every so often, and picked up a few things at the shops in the Merchants’ Quarters or the Old City.”

  “That’s a great deal of walking,” Hanner remarked. South-market was roughly a mile away, Westgate considerably farther. “Especially carrying food for forty people.”

  “I had thought I would hire a wagon,” Bern said. “But, my lord, I can’t.”

  “Why not?” Hanner said, but before the words were out of his mouth he remembered the mob on High Street, and the various magical protections sealing off the other three sides of the estate. “Oh,” he said, before Bern could reply.

  “My household funds are depleted, in any case,” Bern said. “I’m not sure how good Lord Faran’s credit is now-a few days ago his name was good anywhere, but now?”

  “He probably has money,” Hanner said, trying to sound more convinced than he was. “Gold, most likely, or silver at the very least.”

  “I hope so,” Bern said, “but even if he does, how am I to get out to market, and safely back in?”

  Hanner looked at him thoughtfully. It was plainly time for the warlocks to start earning their keep here.

  “I think we can manage that,” he said. “We can fly to the markets. And I don’t think money will be a problem.” He was sure Uncle Faran must have funds stashed somewhere in the house, or if not, some of the furnishings could be sold.

  Or, being warlocks, they could simply demand credit. Hanner doubted any direct threats would be necessary. Inquiring about the possibility of credit while standing in front of a farmer’s wagon doing something like juggling a knife without using one’s hands... well, that would be sufficiently intimidating that most people would probably agree to reasonable terms.

  Mostpeople. Merchants who didn’t want to sell to warlocks at all, on credit or otherwise, would probably be more of a problem, but one that could be handled-by brute force, if necessary.

  He was, Hanner realized, calmly contemplating a career of crime, something that would have been almost unthinkable a few days ago.

  But a few days ago he hadn’t known that his uncle had been illegally collecting magic for years; he hadn’t been evicted from his home by the overlord; he hadn’t seen the overlord order Uncle Faran and the rest out of the city for no crime but being what they •were.

  A few days ago he hadn’t been a warlock-and neither had anyone else. The Night of Madness had changed everything.

  “Thank you, my lord,” Bern said.

  “We’ll need a list of everything you need or want,” Hanner said.

  “Of course. I’ll draw it up as soon as everyone’s breakfasted.” “Good,” Hanner said as he finally picked one of the sausages up from his plate. He took a healthy bite, smiled at the taste, and repeated, with a rather different emphasis, “Good!”

  Chapter Thirty-one

  The midday sun was hot as the people lined up in the garden; Lord Hanner held up a hand to shade his eyes.

  Uncle Faran was sorting warlocks again. He had, he explained to Hanner, come to the conclusion that the ability to use warlockry really only had one variable: power. All the different things the magic could do, from healing to flying to warlock sight, could be learned, and once learned, the more powerful a warlock was, the better he could do any of them. A warlock couldn’t be good at healing but a poor flyer, or a fast flyer unable to lift heavy weights; the magic simply didn’t w
ork that way.

  Rudhira, the obvious example, was good ateverything, once she learned how it was done. None of the others could match her in any use of warlockry. She simply had more power at her command than anyone else.

  Faran therefore decided to rank everyone according to this simple measurement: How much could they lift to the height of their own heads? He brought a set of weights down from the fourth floor, ranging from tiny polished brass cylinders to imm-mense blocks of lead, and tested each of the warlocks with the idea of working up a scale of abilities so that he would know who could be called on for any given task.

  Kirsha’s cousin Ilvin turned out to be the weakest of them all; with anything over a quarter of a pound he was limited to sliding or bouncing it, rather than levitating it properly. He was unable to heal so much as a scratch, though he could soothe it slightly, and his warlock perceptions were so vague, so weak, and so limited by distance that no one, including Ilvin, was entirely certain he wasn’t just imagining them.

  Hinda was next in the rankings; she could bring a pound and a half to eye level, and was very proud of this accomplishment.

  “I’ve gotten better!” she said happily. “When I started I could only lift a couple of spoons!”

  Hanner smiled insincerely at her, and did not mention that she might have been better offnot growing stronger. He watched as the others made their attempts. Thirty-eight warlocks were tested on the —weights-Hanner was uncomfortably aware that he should have been the thirty-ninth. He surreptitiously tried a few experiments with equipment that wasn’t in use at the moment, and found he had no problem with a five-pound weight; he didn’t get a chance to try anything heavier.

  That meant he wasn’t at the bottom, or even in the bottom five-he ranked at least sixth from last, ahead of Ilvin and four others.

  Twenty-nine of the warlocks found their limits with the weights, though it took some doing-Othisen, the twenty-ninth, managed to lift the entire set of weights, a total of half a ton, to shoulder height before losing control and noisily dropping several.

  Manrin placed slightly below the middle of the group, with a maximum of a hundred forty pounds. Lord Faran himself topped out around six hundred pounds.

  Nine of the warlocks, however, hoisted the entire load. Ulpen, to everyone’s surprise including his own, was one of them, as was Kirsha-and of course, Rudhira, Varrin, and Desset topped the list.

  Now those nine were lined up in the garden while Lord Faran explained how he intended to test them further. Hanner had come along to watch.

  “All of you can fly,” Faran said. “Better than I can, in fact.”

  That, Hanner thought, given Faran’s own conclusions about warlockry being simple, hardly needed saying. All these nine were far more powerful than Faran.

  “What I propose,” Faran said, “is that we fly out over the harbor and see how much water we can lift. That should tell us what our limits are-I think the entire Gulf of the East is too much forany of us.” He smiled significantly at Rudhira.

  The warlocks smiled back and nodded-or rather eight of them did; the ninth, Rudhira, was looking uneasily toward the back of the garden as if expecting someone to appear there, apparently unaware that Lord Faran was addressing her.

  She had been nervous all morning; Hanner wasn’t sure whether it was just the nightmares or whether something else was affecting her. He talked to her briefly while the others were being tested, and she said that she felt as if there were always someone talking somewhere behind her, just far enough away that she couldn’t make out any words. She told Hanner that she had the feeling that there was something she should be doing-specifically that there was somemagic she should be doing.

  And she kept turning north.

  It worried Hanner.

  “So, follow me!” Faran said, lifting off the ground.

  Desset and Kirsha and Varrin and the others rose as well, but Rudhira did not. As the other nine ascended Hanner hurried over to her and tapped her on the shoulder.

  She blinked and turned to look at him. “I have to go,” she said.

  “With the others,” Hanner said. “You have to go with Uncle Faran and the others, to test your magic.”

  Her head was already starting to turn northward again, but she stopped herself. “Lord Faran?” she said. Then she looked up and gasped. “Oh!” She stared up at the others for a second, then shot upward herself.

  “Be careful!” Hanner called after her.

  She stopped dead and hovered, perhaps twenty feet off the ground. “Aren’t you coming?” she called down to him.

  “I can’t fly,” he called back.

  “Oh!”

  Before Manner could say anything more he was snatched off his feet, as he had been the other day in the palace square, and swept upward. A moment later he found himself flying upward and northward at Rudhira’s side.

  They caught up with the others before they had gone more than a block. Rudhira whisked up to fly alongside Lord Faran, dragging Hanner in her wake.

  Hanner noticed that his uncle, while able to fly under his own power, was none too steady about it, and clearly couldn’t zip along at Rudhira’s usual speed. Instead he was leading them all at a fairly casual pace, slow enough that people in the streets below noticed the shadows passing overhead and looked up.

  To Manner’s dismay, several of them shook fists or shouted curses.

  They crossed Merchant Avenue into the corner of the Old Merchants’ Quarter nearest the Palace, sailing gently over the rooftops of the shops, then passed on into Spicetown, where Hanner looked down at the warehouses and alleys. Off to the right he could see the warm golden glow of the palace walls and sunlight blazing silver from the water of the Grand Canal.

  Then they were beyond the Palace, and even here, seventy feet up and rising, Hanner could smell the perpetual tang of spices in the air-the warehouses below had been used to store all the spices brought across the Gulf of the East from the Small Kingdoms or down the Great River from the Baronies of Sardiron for the past two centuries, and even if they were abandoned tomorrow, Hanner suspected it would take another century before the odor faded completely.

  The smell of salt mingled with the other scents; they were nearing the waterfront. Hanner could see the watery horizon ahead, beyond the buildings, spreading out before them. Sails dotted the waters of the Gulf.

  The streets fell behind, the sea expanded, and then they passed over the wharves, Lord Faran’s feet barely seeming to clear the highest masts of the ships tied up there. Hanner remembered his mother teaching him the names of the major docks-Thyme Wharf, Dill Wharf, Oregano, Balsam, Parsley, Mustard, then a stretch of open beach-he could see it now, just to his left-then the three diagonal wharves, Ginger, Nutmeg, and Cinnamon. Then there was the complex tangle of the Pepper Wharves, and the decaying row of the Tea Wharves, and just beyond that was the entrance to the New Canal that marked the western boundary of Spicetown. He wondered whether the names had ever really corresponded to what cargoes landed there; they certainly didn’t now.

  They were past the docks, past the line of half a dozen freighters standing off the coast awaiting a berth, and out over open water, and it suddenly occurred to Hanner to wonder whether he would be able to swim safely back to land if Rudhira were to drop him.

  If warlockry were to cease to exist right now, as abruptly as it had begun, how many of the eleven of them would make it back to shore alive? The fall alone might kill them. They were at least eighty feet up.

  Hanner took a breath, preparing to shout something, but just then Lord Faran slowed to almost a hover and called, “This should do.”

  The other warlocks slowed to a standstill in a cluster around Faran, but Rudhira continued on northward, Hanner in tow.

  “Hai!” Hanner bellowed at her, startled. “Stop! Rudhira, stop!”

  “Hm?” She turned, puzzled. “I have to go north,” she said. “Lord Faran said so.”

  “No, he said to stop!” Hanner called. “See? He’
s back there!”

  Rudhira blinked at him, but didn’t stop.

  Then Faran’s voice came, unnaturally loud.

  “Rudhira! Come back here!”

  Hanner’s eyes and mouth opened wide in shock; he hadnever heard his uncle shout so loudly. He had never heardanyone shout so loudly. He hadn’t known it was possible.

  Then he realized that it wasn’t, ordinarily-Faran had somehow used warlockry to make his voice louder. He had heard Rudhira do the same thing to a much lesser degree more than once, though at the time he had been unsure whether it was magic or just an illusion.

  It was definitely magic this time. And it had worked; Rudhira stopped and turned, as if waking from a dream.

  “I’m sorry,” she said to Hanner as she headed back to join the others. “I don’t know what I was thinking-it just seemed as if I should keep going.”

  Hanner waved away her concern. “That’s all right,” he said.

  But he was not sure it reallywas all right; Rudhira’s recent behavior worried him. She seemed to be more and more distracted.

  “Now we’re all here,” Lord Faran said as Rudhira and Hanner joined the hovering group, “I’d like to see just how powerful you are. Water is heavy, and should provide all the weight we need— I want each of you to try to pull up a column of water, as big around as your arms can reach, and see if you can raise it all the way up to this height.” He looked over the group, then pointed. “Kirsha, you go first.” Kirsha hesitated, then looked down. “While flying?” she asked. “Can we do that?”

  “Try,” Faran said.

  Kirsha stared down at the water below them-and so did Hanner and the others.

  And as they watched, a wave curled itself into a spiral and rose upward, straightening itself into a vertical column of water as it climbed. Hanner held his breath at the sight.