The spriggan, wide awake now, whimpered. She petted it once, quickly, then turned her attention back to the fallen man.
Witchlight was tiring, and she was already very tired indeed, but she managed a small, pale glow from one palm, enough to find an old tree limb; setting it afire at one end also used up more energy than she could really afford, but was not as taxing as maintaining a witchlight would have been.
Once the wood was burning steadily she picked it up and began to pick her way through the forest underbrush by the light of this impromptu torch.
At first she almost walked right past the man because she was expecting to see an orange cloak. Without the magical glow, though, his cloak was black, and she took it for a shadow until the torch's illumination failed to dispel it.
He was lying face-down atop a pile of dead leaves and broken branches, and she was unsure whether he was alive or dead until she heard his breath rustling the leaves. She stooped and pushed at his shoulder, as the spriggan clung precariously.
There was no response; he was at least dazed, more likely unconscious.
In fact, he was unconscious, she realized; had she not been so weary she would have seen it immediately. His aura was dim but steady, and she could not sense any thought at all.
He was hurt, as well; she worked a quick diagnostic spell and discovered that the fall had broken two of his ribs and cracked the bone in his left wrist.
It was a very good thing, she thought, that he was unconscious, because if she had looked as a witch upon anyone that badly injured while the person was awake, both of them would probably have passed out from the pain. This man was seriously damaged.
He needed attention, and slow healing, and she was in no condition to provide it here in the middle of the forest, alone in the dark.
Just a quarter of a mile away, however, was an inn. The fallen man was tall and broad, but he had clearly not eaten well lately, and his skin was stretched tight on his bones, with little muscle left—she could move him.
Carrying him a quarter-mile, though, through the woods in the dark, without even the trail for much of the way...
Well, did she really have any choice? She couldn't leave him here!
She plucked the spriggan from her shoulder and placed it gently on the ground; the little creature started to protest, but she hushed it. Then she bent down and picked the unconscious magician up, using a levitation spell to help when her grip was not strong enough or the man's body started to flop in the wrong direction, and got him hoisted up across her shoulders.
She got a look at his face as she lifted him; he was in his thirties, she judged, but his features were lined and troubled, even in his unconscious state.
When he was secure, she started walking—or rather, staggering—toward the inn, the spriggan following in her footsteps, making unhappy little worried noises.
As she walked, she used little pushes of witchcraft to steady her, and a lifting spell whenever her burden started to shift or slide, but she fought the temptation to just levitate him entirely. That was too risky. She could kill herself that way—or so Sella had always warned her.
“Levitation drains just as much from you as lifting with your hands and legs,” Sella had insisted. “It's just that when you use your muscles, they'll protest when they're overworked, they'll tell you when you're tired, when you're doing too much. They'll ache and twinge and not hold. It's your body's natural warning system. But witchcraft isn't natural, and your body isn't made for it—there are no warnings. In trance, you can keep up a spell until your body has no life left in it at all, hasn't got the energy remaining to keep your heart pumping. A witch can keel over and die, just like that, if she tries to do too much.”
Teneria had taken Sella's word for it; she had seen how she could feel fine and alert during a spell, and exhausted the moment she released her concentration, and had never cared to test the theory any further.
But now, after a long and strenuous day, instead of eating her supper and getting a good night's rest she had worked a whole series of little spells, and in addition she was carrying a weight of at least a hundred and fifty pounds. She could hardly have much of an energy reserve left; if she tried any more spells she might keel over and die.
She stumbled at the very thought, and almost went headlong, catching herself at the last instant.
When she saw the lights of the inn through the trees she let out her breath in a great sigh of relief—but she wasn't there yet, and she didn't have the energy to shout. She staggered on.
After what seemed like days she dropped her torch, lowered the inert man to the ground, fell heavily against the door of the inn, and managed a weak pounding with one fist.
Someone answered her knock, and she actually got herself inside and into a chair before, amid mutters and exclamations in Sardironese, she passed out.
Chapter Twenty
Teneria came to with a spluttering; someone was holding a glass of oushka to her mouth, and she felt as if the fiery liquor were burning her lips, its fumes scouring out her nose.
She sneezed, and went into a fit of coughing, then gasped for breath, and when she was finally able to pay attention to something other than her own distress she realized that a woman was talking to her, in a language that she was not quite able to make out—probably Sardironese.
“What?” she said, in Ethsharitic. She didn't have the energy to use an interpretive spell.
“She was asking,” another woman's voice said, in Ethsharitic, “whether you are a warlock.”
“No,” Teneria said, puzzled. “I'm a witch.” She wondered why anyone would ask such a question. It seemed an odd thing to ask, under the circumstances. She blinked at the two women, both wearing aprons over simple dresses, who were looking worriedly at one another and muttering in Sardironese.
The one who spoke Ethsharitic turned back to Teneria and asked, “Then the man you brought—is he a warlock?”
“I don't know,” Teneria answered. “He might be.”
“Where did you find him?”
“He fell out of the sky near me, in the forest. He was screaming, and glowing orange.” She remembered something else, and added, “He has two broken ribs and a cracked wrist; handle him carefully!”
The women looked at one another.
“Listen,” the one who spoke Ethsharitic said, “he is a warlock, from what you describe. We have seen this before. We will handle him very carefully—but we will not let him under this roof. He must stay outside.”
Teneria's head was swimming with fatigue, and she had very little idea of what was going on, but she asked, baffled, “Why?”
“Because he is a warlock.”
The Sardironese women seemed to think this was a completely adequate explanation, and Teneria was too tired to argue. She let her head fall back against the back of the tall chair she sat in.
Her stomach growled.
The two women glanced at each other, and one studied the purse on Teneria's belt for a moment. It looked reasonably plump.
“Would you like some food?” the older woman asked.
Teneria managed a nod.
A moment later a thick slab of fresh bread, smeared with yellow butter, was in her hand; a moment after that it was in her mouth.
And not long after that she began to feel considerably better. All she had needed was food and rest, to replenish her depleted reserves; she knew that, and had known it all along—or would have if she had had the energy to think about it. She sat up straighter and looked around.
The two women were going about the inn's business; there were half a dozen customers—rather unsavory-looking, all of them, Teneria thought—and a fire, so there were trays and mugs to be carried, logs to be shifted and ashes to be poked. The young witch watched for a few minutes, but when one of the serving-women glanced her way she caught her eye, and gestured.
The woman put down the poker she had been wielding and came over to where Teneria sat.
This was the
older of the two, the one who spoke Ethsharitic. “Can I help you?” she asked.
Teneria had any number of questions she wanted to ask, but before she could think of any of them she heard herself saying, “More food, please. Meat, and fruit, and wine. I can pay.”
“Yes, lady.”
While the servant was fetching food, Teneria considered, and decided questions could wait until after she had eaten.
It was half an hour later and the other customers had all drifted away when Teneria asked the older serving woman, whose name she had learned was Shenda, “Why won't you let warlocks inside?”
“We will sometimes,” Shenda replied. “It depends on the circumstances. But they seem to be prone to a sort of madness, and when we have any doubts about whether the madness is upon them, we keep them out. If we don't, they're likely to damage the place.”
“Damage it?” Teneria looked about. The inn did not appear damaged.
Shenda nodded. “The madness,” she said, “it ... well, there's a compulsion involved, a geas or something. They all want to go that way.” She pointed to the southeast. “And they don't care what's in the way. And with their magic, if the madness is on them, they can go right through the wall, or the roof—or if they aren't that far gone, they may still smash furniture and set fires on the way out.” She made an uncomfortable little gesture. “That one you brought—from your description, flying and glowing, the madness was probably very strong in him. He may have been fighting it—that would be why he fell. But when he wakes up, he may not be ready, and the madness may carry him away.” She grimaced. “The south wall has been rebuilt twice in the past twenty years; I don't want to make it three times. And the roof went once.”
“They go ... warlocks go right through the wall?” Teneria stared at the plastered stone and timber in disbelief.
Shenda shrugged. “Magic. You're a witch, you said?”
Teneria nodded.
“Couldn't a witch's magic take you through a wall like that?” Shenda asked.
“I don't know,” Teneria admitted. “I suppose I could—yes, I think I could break through a wall. But it might kill me, and I certainly wouldn't be going anywhere right afterward.”
Shenda had no answer to that.
“Different magicks,” Teneria said with a shrug. “There's no connection between witchcraft and warlockry. We have no madness that comes on us.” Her eyes narrowed. “In fact, I hadn't heard that warlocks did, either. I wonder about wizards, and sorcerers, and the others?”
Shenda shook her head. “Not around here, anyway. We never see anyone but warlocks. But there are a lot of warlocks around here. I've heard that they're more common in Aldagmor than anywhere else, that it's easier to become one here than elsewhere.”
“I wouldn't know,” Teneria said.
She was considering what to say next when the screaming started outside.
She leapt to her feet without thinking, and was surprised to find Shenda grabbing her arm, trying to hold her back.
“I've got to go,” she said, trying to shake the older woman off.
“No, you don't,” Shenda said. “It's dangerous.”
“Maybe I can help,” Teneria insisted. “I'm a witch, I can heal and calm.”
Shenda hesitated, but did not let go; Teneria used a subtle spell, loosening the other's finger muscles and making her own sleeve smoother and more slippery, and pulled free. She hurried to the door.
It slammed open before she could reach it, and brilliant golden light poured in, blinding her momentarily. Artificially speeding the contraction of her pupils, Teneria shaded her eyes and peered out.
The warlock was hanging in the air above the crossroads, eight or nine feet up, spinning like a top and shrieking in agony, light pouring from him as if he were a living flame or a piece of the sun itself. A whirlwind surrounded him, carrying twigs and rotting leaves in circles about him; it was the wind that had flung open the door. The inn's signboard was flapping wildly.
As Teneria watched, the warlock began to drift southward.
Wanting to help, or at least to understand, Teneria reached out with her witchcraft and touched his mind, as delicately as she could, and found a roiling mass of terror and confusion. Something was compelling him, something irresistible that whispered obscenely and unintelligibly directly into his mind; it was dragging him south, pulling at him, and he was fighting against it, hopelessly.
Part of him didn't even want to resist, and that part was growing stronger—and he knew it.
That was why he was screaming. It wasn't pain; it was terror and despair.
Teneria stepped forward and reached up with her own thoughts, calming him, pushing his fear back, trying to block off that overpowering lure, whatever it was.
It wasn't easy. In fact, it wasn't possible to close it off completely.
She was able to muffle it slightly, though, and the warlock's own resistance strengthened. His spinning slowed, and he began to look down.
He spotted her, his eyes locked with hers, and then his head snapped away as he continued to rotate.
His gaze met hers again on the next rotation, though, and held for half a second.
His spin slowed further, and three turns later he had stopped.
He sank slowly to the ground, staring fixedly at her, trying to think of nothing else, trying not to think of the thing that had been calling him, had been drawing him to it. He tried to think only of this mysterious girl who was somehow helping him fight back. Teneria sensed all this through her telepathic spells, though communication was made difficult by the fact that the warlock was doing all his thinking in his native Sardironese.
She could get the basics, though, and in fact was absorbing the language quickly.
As the warlock's attention became unfocused from his internal conflicts, he became aware of the pain from his ribs and his wrist. Without really thinking about it he repaired the damage to the bones, reshaping the material with his magic as easily and casually as a potter works clay.
Teneria gasped, and her hold on the compulsion slipped for an instant; terror swept across the warlock's face and through his mind, but then she recovered herself.
She had not known that warlocks could heal, and certainly not that they could do so nearly instantaneously. The bone-knitting he had done in seconds would have taken her three or four hours of careful concentration.
The warlock was as surprised at the situation as she was, but for an entirely different reason.
“I didn't think the Calling could be fought,” he said, in Sardironese. “My master never taught me that. How do you do it?”
Teneria struggled with the unfamiliar words for a moment, then replied in the same language, “Witchcraft.” She concentrated for a moment, trying to find the right words in the unfamiliar tongue, and then asked, “How did you heal your wrist?”
He glanced down at his hand, startled. “Warlockry,” he said. He looked up again. “Aren't you a warlock?”
“No,” Teneria said. “I'm a witch.”
The two of them stared at each other for a long moment.
“I'm afraid I don't know very much about warlocks,” Teneria said at last.
“And I don't know much about witches,” the warlock replied. “I don't think any warlock does. We keep to ourselves, and avoid the other magicians—ever since the Night of Madness, I'm told.”
Teneria cocked her head to one side. “I'd heard that,” she said. “I wonder whether it might be a mistake, this avoidance?”
“If you can help us fight the Calling,” the warlock said, “then I think it is a mistake.”
Teneria nodded. “And if you can heal like that, I'd say we have a lot to talk about.”
The warlock nodded. “I think you're right,” he said. He looked around.
He was standing at the crossroads, Teneria on the threshold of the inn; behind her, Shenda and the other serving woman were watching cautiously.
“May I come inside to talk?” the warlock aske
d.
“No!” Shenda shouted, immediately.
Startled, the warlock started to say something, but Teneria held up a hand. “I'll come out,” she said. “These people have had bad experiences with warlocks.”
The other serving woman called, “There are benches in the garden, out back.”
“Thank you,” Teneria replied. She looked around for the spriggan, but didn't see it anywhere—the noise must have frightened it away, she decided.
That was just as well. She held a hand out to the warlock. “Shall we head for the garden, then?”
The warlock nodded, and his tortured face managed a weak smile as he took her hand in his.
Chapter Twenty-One
The first crossroads had almost fooled him; one branch was so small, nothing more than a trail, really, that at first Dumery thought there were only three roads at the intersection.
The man had been quite definite about the order, though—fork, fork, crossroads, crossroads, fork, fork.
There was an inn at the second crossroads, but Dumery didn't stop; it was hardly past midday.
He also ignored various markers along the way; they were all written in Sardironese, which used similar runes to Ethsharitic, but which Dumery could not otherwise read. He recognized the name “Aldagmor” on most of them, now that the tavern girl had alerted him to where he was, but the rest was just gibberish as far as he was concerned.
He passed houses, as well, but didn't stop to investigate any of them.
Since leaving the inn where he had breakfasted the road he followed had run more or less parallel to the ridges, rather than across them; that made traveling significantly easier.
The slopes were getting steeper, though—much steeper.
And the weather was growing steadily colder, which seemed almost unnatural. It was spring, after all—the weather was supposed to be warming up.
The hills undoubtedly had something to do with it, as well as the fact that he was well north of Ethshar.
At sunset he still hadn't found the last two forks, nor an inn. His generous breakfast was long past, and his gnawing hunger had returned. All the same, he had little choice but to curl up by the roadside and try to sleep.
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