The Unwilling Warlord

by Lawrence Watt-Evans

  He noticed that Annara and Emner were listening closely, and added, “He’s probably scared of all of you. Magic is scarce around here.”

  “I suppose that means no more pay and no big celebration,” Emner said.

  “I’m afraid not,” Sterren agreed.

  “Ah,” Vond said, “I’m not really surprised. That’s rather what it sounded like. Has he said what he expects us to do now?”

  “He expects you to take your pay and go home. I haven’t yet mentioned that you may not want to.”

  The warlock shrugged. “You don’t need to tell him; he’ll see for himself soon enough. Do you think you could arrange us some rooms for the night, though? It’s getting late.”

  “I was planning on it; dinner, too.”

  “Good.” The wizards nodded agreement, and Sterren turned back to the throne.

  “Your Majesty,” he said, “I ask a favor of you. These six magicians have fought for you. Please, give them food and shelter here for a few days, to rest, after their efforts. We ask no more than that.”

  Relief flashed quickly across the king’s face, then vanished. “Granted,” he said. “We have dined, but I’m sure the kitchens can provide for you, and my chamberlain will find accommodations. You may go.”

  Sterren bowed, and started to back out.

  “Wait a minute,” the king said, holding up a hand. “Lady Kalira, didn’t you take six soldiers with you?”

  “Yes, your Majesty,” Lady Kalira replied.

  “I see only three now, and I had asked to see your full party; what happened to the others? Wounded? Killed?”

  “Deserted, your Majesty, while we were in Ethshar.”

  “Deserted?” King Phenvel said, aghast.

  Lady Kalira nodded. Sterren, hearing the king’s tone, wished she had lied a little.

  “Warlord, I am not pleased at all. Three desertions!”

  Actually, he sounded as if he were quite pleased. Sterren guessed that he was happy to have something with which to rebuke his warlord, should the occasion arise.

  Sterren started to phrase a reply, and then thought better of it. Pointing out that desertion spoke worse of Semma in general than of his performance as warlord would only make trouble. “Yes, your Majesty,” he said. He looked up and met Phenvel’s eyes. He was not ashamed of any part of what he had done. After all, he had won the war, or at least the battle, whatever Phenvel might say.

  The king met his gaze for a moment, then turned angrily away. “All right, then, you may go!”

  Sterren bowed, and he and the magicians went, bound for the kitchens and dinner.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  The long climb to his chamber, after the long and bewildering day, was exhausting, and Sterren fell into his bed and lay staring at the canopy for only a moment before falling asleep.

  During that moment he thought about the conversation in the kitchens, held as the magicians ate the best meal they had had in sixnights.

  The kitchens, and for that matter the corridors and halls, were full of peasants who had taken shelter in the castle during the siege, but the magicians had had no difficulty in establishing their right to privacy. A wave of Vond’s hand had sent the refugees scurrying, leaving the new arrivals alone.

  They had discussed the division of their pay. Everyone conceded that Vond deserved the lion’s share, but the other magicians felt that they, too, had contributed something, that their demoralization of the enemy had made the warlock’s triumph easier.

  Vond had said almost nothing during this, but had nodded calm acceptance when Sterren proposed that each of the other five be paid one full gold piece, and that Vond receive the other five and all the gems.

  Sterren had gone on to apologize for the poor reception the king had given them, and all six had been wonderfully understanding. Shenna had made a few bitter remarks, but had carefully not directed them at Sterren.

  Vond had said nothing, then.

  The conversation had shifted to whether or not they should all head directly back to Ethshar. The wizards and witches discussed various ideas without reaching any conclusions.

  Vond had stated simply, “I’m staying here,” and said nothing more.

  The party had broken up not long after that, and servants had escorted the magicians to rooms in the south wing. Sterren had wearily ascended to his own room in the tower. His last sight of the warlock was not reassuring; Vond was clearly very much awake, unlike the rest of the party, and was looking about intently as he followed the footman down the crowded passage.

  Vond’s entire manner worried Sterren, but he was too tired to really think about it. He closed his eyes and slept.

  It seemed just a moment later that a distant rumble awoke him. He blinked, and saw sunlight pouring into his chamber, and realized it was mid-morning.

  The rumble sounded again, and he felt the bed shift slightly beneath him, and he realized that bright, unobstructed sunlight was pouring in. The rumble was not thunder.

  He sat up, startled.

  The rumble sounded again, and despite the trembling of the bed he thought it came from outside. He slid from the bed and crossed to the window.

  The view had changed since last he saw it. The castle roofs were spattered with broken tiles and shards of stone, wood, and tile. The outer houses of the village were gone. The rolling countryside was no longer a neat patchwork of farm and field, sprinkled with houses and barns, but a great expanse of mud and wreckage, strewn with all manner of debris.

  And directly before him, a half-mile or so away, a black-robed figure was hanging in mid-air, arms spread wide, cloak flapping like wings, and below him the earth itself was splitting open. The sandy mud had washed back to either side, forming a deep pit easily a hundred yards across—and not just the mud, but the clay beneath, down to the hard bedrock.

  Then the rumble came again, and as Sterren watched an immense block of that bedrock rose up into the air toward the hovering warlock.

  The block was rectangular, and by comparing it to Vond—for the flying man could hardly be anybody else—Sterren judged it to be about ten feet high, fifteen feet long, and five feet thick—give or take a foot or three in any dimension.

  The block hovered for a moment, then slid sideways through the air, and then dropped to the ground.

  The rumble sounded again, and again, and again, and another block lifted into the air, slid sideways, and landed on top of the first. The cutting and lifting went more quickly this time.

  A third and a fourth were added to the stack, and the cutting was just beginning on a fifth when someone pounded loudly on the door.

  “Lord Sterren?”

  Sterren started for the wardrobe, but then realized he had never undressed the night before. He still wore the same tattered and mud-stained garments he had worn through the storm and the audience with the king.

  This was not the time to worry about neatness, he decided. He changed direction and crossed to the door.

  “Yes?” he called.

  “My lord, the king wishes to see you immediately.”

  Sterren was not surprised. He opened the door, and found himself facing a very worried-looking messenger boy. “I’m here,” he said. “Come on.”

  A few minutes later he found himself facing a very worried Phenvel III in the royal family’s private sitting room, the king’s expression an odd contrast to the warm sunlight and bright, cheerful furnishings. The only other people present were the messenger boy and a worried valet. Another rumble ran through the castle as Sterren made his formal bow.

  “Warlord,” the king demanded, “what the hell is your magician doing out there?”

  “I don’t know, your Majesty.” Sterren would have been far more expressive in Ethsharitic; in Semmat he had to stick to the simple statement of fact.

  “Is this something to do with the war?” the king demanded peevishly. “Do you expect another attack? I thought you said the enemy was beaten!”

  “I don’t know, your
Majesty,” Sterren repeated.

  “Why not? He’s your damn wizard!”

  “He’s a warlock, your Majesty, not a wizard,” Sterren explained wearily. “I hired him for a job. I don’t own him. He does as he pleases.”

  “What in hell is a warlock?”

  “He is, your Majesty. A kind of magician unknown here in Semma. Until now.”

  “All right, he’s a warlock,” the king said, “What’s he doing?”

  “I don’t know, your Majesty,” Sterren admitted.

  “Well, damn it, go find out!” The note of fear in King Phenvel’s voice was obvious.

  Sterren bowed. “As your Majesty wishes,” he said.

  He departed quickly, before the king could change his mind or impose stupid conditions. He was curious himself.

  He did not bother with any sort of preparations or cleaning up; he marched directly from the royal apartments out of the castle, ignoring the peasants huddled asleep on the corridor floor, pausing only to ask the man at the gate, “Did the black-robed magician come through here?”

  “No, my lord,” came the reply. “He flew over the north wall.”

  Sterren nodded and marched on.

  The outside air was cool, but wonderfully fresh and clean. The ruined market at the castle gate, however, was not clean at all.

  Travelling by air, he quickly concluded, was a major advantage. As he picked his way through the wreckage of the village he wondered how he and his party had ever gotten to the castle gate without so much as tripping over a broken beam.

  Then he realized that Vond had been with them, more or less leading the way. He had undoubtedly cleared a path. Sterren had been following an old road, but now he stopped and looked around.

  Sure enough, a path had been cut directly through the village, straighter than any street there had ever been, from the gate out toward the farm where he and Vond had climbed the rooftop to spy on the Ksinallionese trebuchet. He clambered across a smashed pottery shop to reach it, and then followed it easily out into the open fields beyond.

  Once clear of the ruins of the village he turned north and headed toward Vond, who was still hanging in the sky, stacking up immense blocks of stone.

  A bird sang cheerily somewhere nearby, and a gentle breeze rumpled Sterren’s hair as he walked.

  He was perhaps halfway to the edge of Vond’s pit when the warlock stopped cutting slabs and turned to a low rise nearby—not that there were any real hills, other than the one covered by Semma Castle; this little bump in the ground was one of the higher elevations in the area. It also had the distinction of somehow having avoided being churned into mud by armies and storms; the top of it still bore a large patch of brown grass.

  With a deeper, louder rumble than any that had come before, the top of the hillock lifted up and flattened out. The rumble continued for several minutes, and the ground shook wildly; Sterren stumbled and fell to all fours. The birdsong stopped abruptly.

  He watched, and realized that Vond was filling in underneath the patch of grass, pulling soil and rock from all sides, building himself a rectagular mound of earth with the grassy area on top.

  It took several minutes; then, abruptly, the rumbling and shaking stopped. The rectangular mound stood like a giant block.

  Vond eyed the mound critically, and then made a few adjustments, hauling tons upon tons of rock and sand to prop this corner or that edge up a little farther.

  That done, he then levelled out the area around his raised rectangle until it was as smooth as a well-laid floor for at least fifty feet on all sides.

  Sterren watched this without moving.

  When the warlock was satisfied, the slabs of stone that he had quarried earlier began lifting from their piles and drifting over to the mound, settling in on all sides, walling it in with solid stone.

  Sterren stood and marched on as this proceeded.

  He got within shouting distance within another few minutes, but merely stopped and watched at first.

  The stone slabs were being set upright against the sides of the mound, then pressed in at the base until they stood exactly vertical. When one was in place, the next would fly over to join it. Sterren could not be sure—he was still a couple of hundred feet away—but it appeared that the seams between stones were somehow being welded shut, so that the rectangular mound was soon surrounded by what amounted to a single solid piece of rock.

  When that casing was done, more slabs were laid horizontally around the outside, their inner edges butted up flush against the base of the retaining wall.

  The operation was thunderously loud, of course; anything that slapped tons of stone about like building blocks had to be. During a lull, however, when the next slab was just beginning its flight toward the construction site, Sterren called, “Hai! Vond! Hello!”

  Vond glanced over, saw him, and waved.

  Sterren waved back.

  Vond held up a hand, signalling Sterren to wait. The slab continued along its path, fell in neatly next to its predecessor with a resounding crash, and then with much grinding and hissing was pushed tightly into place against the wall.

  That done, the warlock dropped from the sky until he hung a foot or so off the ground, five feet in front of Sterren.

  “Good morning,” Sterren said.

  Vond nodded a polite greeting.

  “Pardon me for asking so bluntly,” Sterren said, “but what are you doing?”

  “I’m building a palace,” Vond replied.

  Sterren looked at the stone construction. “A palace?” he asked.

  Vond turned and followed his gaze.

  “Well,” he admitted, “it doesn’t look like much yet, but I’ve just started. I want it on a hilltop, but there aren’t any around here, so I’m going to build my own. It seemed stupid to build a hill, and then dig half of it back out for the crypts, so I’m building the crypts now, and then I’ll put the hill up around them.”

  “Oh,” Sterren said. “Oh, I see; that piece in the middle, the rectangle with the grass on top, that’ll be a courtyard, right?”

  “Yes, exactly!” Vond smiled broadly.

  “And you’ll have cellars on all four sides, and then the palace on top of the cellars, and then you’ll pile up the dirt and put a hill around the whole thing?”

  “Yes, exactly!” Vond repeated. “What do you think?”

  “Seems like a lot of work,” Sterren said.

  “Oh, no,” Vond protested, “it’s fun! After all, I’m a warlock; the more magic I use, the better I feel. It’s not like other magicks that tire people out, or like ordinary work; it’s invigorating! And I’m pretty much all-powerful now, you know.”

  Sterren nodded. “Ah ... I don’t know if it’s any of my business,” he said after a moment’s hesitation, “but I don’t know how well this is going to go over with the local people around here. After all, you’re tearing up several small farms here, and I don’t suppose that the peasants who lived here are gone for good. Most of them probably just ran to the castle or to some relative’s house, and will be back as soon as they hear that the war’s over, and they’re likely to be pretty upset about this.”

  Vond shrugged. “Too bad,” he said. “What can they do about it?”

  Sterren blinked at this callousness, and said, “You’re still mortal, aren’t you? Somebody might put a knife in your back.”

  “Ha!” Vond said derisively. “Let them try! Don’t worry about me, Sterren. It’ll take more than any of these barbarians can do to kill me.”

  “You’re sure of that?” Sterren asked, genuinely curious.

  “Oh, yes,” the warlock replied confidently.

  Sterren looked over the beginnings of Vond’s palace and remarked, “I don’t suppose old King Phenvel is going to like this much, either.”

  “I don’t expect him to,” Vond retorted. “That’s why I’m doing it—well, one reason, anyway.”

  “What’s another?”

  Vond grinned. “For one thing, it’s fun! Hav
en’t you always wanted to live in a palace and have everything at your beck and call? I have—and now I can! Warlockry’s just about limitless, you know; nobody’s ever found anything it can’t do. It’s just that we’ve all always been so scared to use it, because of the nightmares and the whispering and the Calling. Well, here, I don’t have to worry about those! I have the power without the limits! Old King Phenvel can go bugger a goat, for all I care. I can do anything I want to here, and there isn’t a damn thing he can do about it.”

  “For your sake, I hope you’re right,” Sterren said. “I’d feel awful if you got killed because I brought you here and you misjudged the situation.”

  “I haven’t misjudged anything! It’s that old fool of a king who misjudged, telling me to take my lousy jewelry and go home. You know why I want a hill, Sterren? So it’ll be higher than his. I could have taken his castle away from him—and I might do it yet, if he goes on bothering me—but I thought it would be more fun to just outshine him completely, build a palace bigger and higher and more beautiful than his castle ever was. After all, his is something of a dump, really—sloppy and crowded and not much to look at.”

  Sterren nodded. “I can understand being annoyed at him,” he agreed, “but don’t you think you’re overreacting?”

  Vond considered this for a few seconds, and then said, “No. I mean, if it weren’t going to be fun, that would be different. It’s not as if I have anything better to do, or anywhere else to go. I’m stuck here, and I might as well make the best of it. Getting back at Phenvel for being such a fool is just a little extra, not the real reason.”

  “I can see that,” Sterren admitted. He hesitated, and then asked, “What do you plan to do when the palace is finished?”

  “Live in it, of course.”

  “I mean, do you have any long-range plans?”

  Vond shrugged. “I hadn’t decided. I expect to collect a few concubines, spend some time decorating the palace, collecting treasures to go in it, that sort of thing.”