Night of Madness loe-7

by Lawrence Watt-Evans

  “Ihope it’s not fatal,” Hanner said. “None of those people who disappeared has come back.”

  Faran was about to reply when someone shouted, “Lord Faran! Lord Faran!”

  “We’ll talk more later,” Faran said. Then he turned and called, “I’m here. What is it?”

  “Soldiers!”

  Faran smiled, an unpleasant expression that reminded Hanner of the one he had seen on Desset’s face half an hour before, over Spicetown.

  “It would seem Azrad is trying again,” he said.

  “And we still haven’t heard from the Wizards’ Guild,” Hanner said.

  Faran’s smile broadened. “You know, my boy,” he said, “after what I saw Rudhira do today, I’m no longer concerned about the Wizards’ Guild. I think we can handle Azrad and his men without their help.”

  Hanner opened his mouth, intending to say that he was not worried about the city guard but about the Guild itself, but Faran was already out of the room, striding briskly toward the front of the house. Hanner snapped his mouth shut and hurried to follow.

  “Rudhira! Desset! Varrin!” Faran called as he walked. “Everyone, come with me! I think it’s time we demonstrated to Lord Azrad that his authority does not extend to us!” He reached the front door and flung it open, the other warlocks gathering behind him. Rudhira stood by the door, looking slightly dazed-clearly, whatever was happening to her, whatever was calling her, had not stopped.

  Hanner hesitated. He wanted to see what would happen, but he didn’t want to get in the way-he wasn’t a known warlock, so he wouldn’t participate in whatever the warlocks did. And it might be dangerous.

  Besides, there was such a mob of warlocks in the hallway and at the parlor windows that he doubted he could get a decent view in any case.

  And there were questions he needed answered. Two of the warlocks were notable by their absence, and Hanner thought this might be a good time to talk to them.

  And there were windows upstairs; he might wind up with a better view that way.

  He turned and started up the stairs at a trot. His weight and general lack of conditioning caught up with him by the time he had reached the second flight, though, and he slowed to a walk.

  On the third floor he made his way down the central corridor, listening at each door; at the third one he heard voices and knocked.

  One voice stopped, and Hanner heard footsteps approaching. Ulpen opened the door and peered out at him.

  “I’d like to speak to you and Manrin,” Hanner said. “May I come in?”

  Ulpen swung the door open. “Don’t interrupt him,” he warned.

  Hanner knew enough about wizards to not need the warning. He looked around the room with interest, being careful not to touch anything.

  The room was lined with shelves and chests of drawers; several drawers stood open, displaying various powders and dried leaves. The shelves were jammed with jars, bags, boxes, and pots of various shapes and sizes. A table stood to one side, most of it covered with jars and boxes similar to the ones on the shelves; a large book lay open upon it next to an assortment of small tools. More tools were spread on the floor-two daggers, a wood-handled brush, a small iron tripod, a tinderbox, and three small metal implements Hanner couldn’t identify.

  Manrin was seated cross-legged on a silk carpet before a small brass pot. Something in the pot was smoking and smelled absolutely terrible; Manrin was weaving his fingers through the smoke while reciting an incantation.

  “...gattu sa brutin fara... fara... Oh, blast.” Manrin spread his hands wide and leaned back.

  “Didn’t work?” Ulpen asked.

  “Lost it completely,” Manrin said. “I could tell it was going.” He shook his head in dismay. “That spell was second nature to me a sixnight ago.” He looked up and noticed Hanner. “My lord,” he said. “What can I do for you?”

  “I came to inform you that Lord Azrad has apparently sent soldiers to enforce my uncle’s exile. More of them, this time. This may turn nasty.” He frowned. “I thought you should know. And I had some questions I hoped you could answer.”

  Manrin uncrossed his legs, brushed dust from his robe, and with a little help from Ulpen, got to his feet. He nodded politely at Hanner.

  “Let’s have a look at these soldiers,” he said. He led Ulpen and Hanner through two other rooms to a study with two windows overlooking High Street; there he swung open one casement and leaned out.

  Hanner and Ulpen, not wishing to crowd a respected elder, took the other window.

  Lord Faran stood in the dooryard below, wearing his magnificent green cloak, his hair newly brushed and tied; a soldier, a captain by his helmet, was standing in the gate, facing him. Hanner knew that gate had been locked, with runes supposedly sealing it, but now it stood open, and he doubted very much that Faran had unlocked it.

  Beyond the iron fence, filling the street, were soldiers-hundreds of them, all heavily armed. Lord Azrad had clearly decided not to waste any more time with half measures.

  There were no civilian observers in sight this time-the soldiers had crowded them out of High Street completely. On the other hand, Hanner could see half a dozen figures in the array of guards who were not wearing tunic, helmet, kilt, and breastplate, but the colorful robes of wizards. He thought he recognized one of them as Ezrem of Arena, who had performed various spells around the Palace over the years.

  Those wizards presumably explained how the wards and runes had been bypassed-assuming the wards and runes had really been there in the first place. It was also entirely possible that Ulpen and Manrin had botched the spells without even realizing it.

  However it had happened, the wards were gone and the gate stood open. The soldiers held their spears at the ready-and the wizards clearly had spells ready to cast, as well. Ezrem, if it was really him, was holding a gleaming dagger with a blue gem in the pommel, and the others also held assorted knives or staves or crystals.

  All eyes, though, were focused on Faran and the captain. The two men were speaking to each other, loudly enough to be heard over the muttering of the city, but Hanner didn’t bother trying to make out the words. He knew what the gist of it would be. The captain would be ordering Faran out of the city, and Faran would be replying that he wouldn’t go. Both would insist they wanted no trouble.

  “I don’t recognize anyone,” Manrin remarked. “No Guild-masters there.”

  Hanner and Ulpen both glanced at him.

  “You’re sure?” Hanner asked.

  “Unless Ithinia’s promoted someone in the past few days, yes,” Manrin said. “They don’t look like much. Even as damaged as I am, I’m probably a match for any of those wizards down there.”

  “That was one of the questions I wanted to ask,” Hanner said. “How damagedare you?”

  Manrin snorted. “As a man, I’m fit and strong for my age, as healthy as anyone who’s seen a century could ask. As a warlock, I seem to be adequate, if unimpressive-I believe Lord Faran ranked me twenty-first in the company here. But as a wizard, right now you’d probably do as well with a drunkard journeyman. It’s frustrating, my lord, very frustrating-I’ll be working a spell, some spell I know by heart and have performed a hundred times, I’ll feel the magic building up and falling into place, and then the wrong magic will arise, and I’ll be using warlock sight instead of wizard sight, or moving something by warlockry that I shouldn’t touch yet because my thoughts strayed a little, and the wizardry will just vanish, poof! Like the shadows of night when the sun comes up, it’s just gone and I can’t get it back. I can still doquick spells, because there isn’t time for them to go wrong, but anything that takes more than fifty heartbeats-well, I can’t count on it. And anything that takes more than twenty minutes is completely hopeless. Fendel’s Divination would beso useful right now, but I can’t do it.”

  “Then you haven’t been able to learn anything about the nature of warlockry?”

  Manrin snorted. “Fendel’s Divination is hardly theonly way to learn things, y
oung man! I’ve learned a little.”

  “Do you know what warlockryis, then?”

  “Well, no,” he admitted. “I know several things it’snot, though. With little Sheila’s help, we have established irrefutably that the name is a misnomer-we arenot war-locked witches, and warlockry is not witchcraft, though there are very definite similarities. And Alladia has helped us demonstrate conclusively that neither gods nor demons are responsible for its existence.”

  “Then... Rudhira and some of the others say there’s something to the north somewhere calling to them. It’s not a demon?”

  “Not a demon, not a god,” Manrin agreed. “But yes, there is something somewhere to the north of the city that we are all somehow linked to.”

  “A mad wizard, perhaps?”

  Manrin shook his head. “No. Not a wizard. Because whatever is there, its magic blocks wizardry in a way that... well, it’s not wizardry. When one wizard’s spell blocks another there are several ways it can work, but none of them are anything like this.”

  “Itdoes block wizardry?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  “Then those wizards out there can’t do anything to Uncle Faran?” he asked hopefully.

  “Oh, I didn’t saythat!” Manrin replied quickly, dashing Han-ner’s hopes. “It’s not like a wall. It’s more like drowning out a voice by shouting. Wizardry and warlockry interfere with each other, like... like fire and water, almost. That’s how I know it wasn’t wizardry that created warlocks. But a hot enough flame will boil water away, and a well-aimed squirt of water can pass right through a flame... the analogy isn’t exact, you understand.”

  “I understand,” Manner said. “I think. But about the thing calling to Rudhira-can you do anything about it?”

  Manrin frowned. “I don’t know,” he said. “If you could bring her up here, so we could talk, and I could have a look at her...”

  “I think she’s busy right now,” Hanner said. He pointed at the street below. “Then later, perhaps,” Manrin said.

  “Something’s happening,” Ulpen called. While the others spoke he had stayed at the window, leaning out the casement to watch the events below. Now Manrin and Hanner leaned out as well.

  Faran was striding out the gate into the street, and the soldiers were being swept back, as if a gigantic invisible bubble were expanding outward from the dooryard. They were colliding with one another as they were forced back, stumbling against each other, and some were falling to the ground as they lost their balance. The captain was pressed back flat against the iron fence, his helmet askew.

  The wizards were reacting to this assault; orange flame suddenly burst into being in the dooryard, only to be instantly smothered. A wizard gestured, and Lord Faran staggered briefly, then resumed his march.

  “The first one, Thrindle’s Combustion, was just silly,” Manrin remarked. “And the second one was Felshen’s First Hypnotic, which is a better choice but still not much of a spell. Even in my present condition I’m sure I could still do that one.”

  “Maybe we should get down there, Master,” Ulpen said worriedly.

  Manrin stroked his beard, considering, then nodded. “I think you’re right,” he said. “We could be useful. I’ll just grab a few things.”

  Hanner, leaning out the casement, saw Rudhira marching out into the street behind Faran, still in her white silk tunic and long green skirt, and Varrin appeared behind Rudhira. The empty circle around them was thirty feet across now, the full width of the street; the sea of soldiers had been parted. The guards to the east were tumbled atop one another, trying to get themselves upright and scramble back; the guards to the west, on Coronet Street, had managed to keep more order, and were all still standing.

  And Rudhira was looking back over her shoulder.

  Looking north.

  “I’ll meet you down there,” Hanner said, turning.

  He didn’t even take the time to close the casement before running for the stairs.

  Chapter Thirty-four

  At the foot of the stairs Hanner pushed his way through the little crowd of warlocks. At the door he looked out and saw that Lord Faran and at least a dozen others were marching eastward on High Street, away from the house, pushing the soldiers before them.

  “Where are they going?” he asked.

  “The Palace,” someone said. Hanner turned to see little Hinda standing beside him. “Lord Faran said that he was tired of inter... interm...”

  “Intermediaries,” Hanner suggested.

  “Yes, thank you, my lord. He said he was going to go talk to Lord Azrad face-to-face, to settle this once and for all.”

  Hanner looked out the door.

  Desset was standing in the street directly in front of the house, facing west, and Hanner realized that she was single-handedly blocking the street so that none of the soldiers on that side could approach.

  Off to the left the rest, with Faran, Rudhira, Varrin, Kirsha, and Yorn forming a line at the front, were marching slowly but steadily to the east, toward the Palace.

  Hanner estimated that about half the warlocks who had gathered at the house were in that party; the other half were gathered in the hallway and at the parlor windows, watching eagerly.

  This was, Hanner thought, monumentally stupid, or at the very least seriously overconfident. Faran and the others had no way of knowing what might be waiting for them there. There could be a trap. The wizards out here had apparently been nothing to worry about, but there might be far better wizards guarding the overlord. There could be witches, with their subtle spells, or sorcerers, with their mysterious talismans, or theurgists who could call the gods to their aid, or demonologists who could, of course, summon demons.

  Warlockry might be powerful magic, but it was hardly theonly magic.

  “I had better go with them,” Hanner said. “They may need someone else, someone who’s not...”

  He didn’t finish the sentence, because he could not honestly say he wasn’t on either side. He was his uncle’s nephew-and he was a warlock, even if no one knew it.

  If they were walking into a trap-well, he would try not to walk into it with them.

  The sensible, safe thing to do would be to stay where he was, of course-or better still, slip out the back and head to Mavi’s house, where he could wait out the coming confrontation. No one but Sheila knew he was a warlock, so far as he knew; certainly the overlord didn’t. He could just wait it out, and when everything was settled he could move back into the Palace, back where he belonged...

  But Uncle Faran wouldn’t be moving back into the family apartment with him. No matter what happened, he couldn’t imagine that. Faran would be dead, or exiled-or if this march turned out the way Hanner thought Faran expected, Faran would be the city’s new ruler, and would presumably be living in the overlord’s apartments. But, Hanner thought, he and Nerra and Alris could stay on at the Palace, surely.They hadn’t done anything.

  He wondered what was happening to Nerra, back in the Palace. Did she know what was happening out here? Was she frightened left alone there, her brother, sister, and uncle all locked out?

  She was probably fine, he told himself. Alris was fine. They were safely out of the way.

  But Uncle Faran was on his way to confront Lord Azrad the Sedentary, and Hanner couldn’t just stand by and watch. He pushed past the other warlocks and out the door.

  The air in the vacant stretch of street felt oddly still and lifeless-clearly, the warlocks were not just pushing the soldiers back, but had created barriers blockinganything from approaching Warlock House. Hanner began to sweat as he hurried through the dooryard and out the gate, then turned left and followed his uncle.

  Desset glanced at him as he passed, but said nothing and stayed at her post, holding back the soldiers in Coronet Street. Hanner noticed that some of those soldiers were slipping away to the north, presumably planning to return to the Palace by another route.

  He was also vaguely aware that a handful of the other warlocks were follow
ing him, belatedly joining their comrades, but he didn’t concern himself with them.

  Faran’s party of warlocks was marching relentlessly forward, side by side-not fast, but advancing steadily, pushing the soldiers back along High Street, regardless of whether those soldiers were standing or fallen. Most of the guards were retreating in disorder; some were standing their ground until actively dislodged by the advancing wall of magic, or were trying to help fallen comrades to their feet.

  Some soldiers were no longer resisting at all, but just lying in the dirt, allowing themselves to be shoved or rolled along.

  “Give me room!” someone shouted. The cry was strangely muffled, and Hanner realized it was coming from beyond the magical barrier the warlocks were pushing forward. He tried to see who had spoken.

  It was one of the wizards, a man about Hanner’s own age in a gold and white robe; soldiers were pushing and shoving to get out of his way, even more desperately then they were trying to avoid being knocked down by the warlock wall.

  And Hanner could see why. The wizard was holding aloft a dagger, and miniature lightning was playing around the blade in crackling blue-white arcs. Hanner ran forward, calling a warning.

  His cry was not necessary-Faran was already pointing the wizard out to his companions.

  The wizard pointed the dagger at the warlocks, launching a bolt, at the same instant that Rudhira raised a hand in a warding gesture. A blaze of blue-white fire leaped from the knife blade— and spattered harmlessly into a shower of sparks against the invisible barrier.

  The knife trembled in the wizard’s hand, but did not fall. Lord Faran looked questioningly at Rudhira.

  “It’s enchanted,” she said. “It’s so full of wizardry that I can’t affect it.” “Leave it, then. On to the Palace!”

  “The Palace!” Varrin and Kirsha cried-but Hanner, pushing through the group and panting up behind the five leaders, noticed that Yorn did not join in, but merely looked unhappy, while Ru-dhira’s cry trailed off in midword.

  She was looking northward-not toward the Palace, but beyond.