Night of Madness

by Lawrence Watt-Evans

  "He won't be much use to you if he's half-asleep," Lord Clurim remarked.

  "I don't think he's much use in any case," Azrad the Younger muttered. His sister Imra slapped his arm at that.

  The overlord had gathered his entire available family together for this morning conference-his three brothers and both his children. His four surviving sisters had all long since been married off-Zarréa, the youngest, to Ederd IV, overlord of Ethshar of the Sands, and the other three to various kings and barons elsewhere- and of course his wife, Thera of Alorria, and his second eldest sister, Lura, had both been dead for years.

  Captain Vengar, present commander of the contingent of the city guard inside the Palace, was also present-and Azrad had wanted Lord Faran there as well.

  Most of his other advisors and the other important lords of Ethshar did not live in the Palace, but in their own mansions in the New City, so they could not attend the meeting-Azrad did not trust them not to bring in whatever contagion had spread madness and magic through the city. Lord Faran, though, was in the Palace, and had spoken to the overlord briefly during the night; it was very annoying that he was not here.

  Azrad decided he would have to make the best of it. He looked at his brothers.

  "Do any of you have the slightest idea what's going on out there?"

  Lord Karannin and Lord Ildirin exchanged glances.

  "No more than you do," Clurim said. "There's some sort of wild magic that got loose last night, and some people ran wild with it, and things have quieted down now, but the magic is still loose."

  "I know that," Azrad shouted. "Do you know anything more?"

  "I'm afraid not," Clurim said.

  "All we know is what we hear from the messengers," Karannin said.

  "Since you won't let anyone in," Ildirin added.

  "None of my regular magicians were in the Palace last night," Karannin said. "I'd let old Tarissa visit her granddaughter. I haven't been able to talk to any of them."

  "You sent messages, didn't you?" Azrad asked.

  "Yes, but I haven't gotten any useful answers yet. The only reply I've received so far was from Orodrin of the Scarred Hand, that demonologist you don't like. He said he doesn't know anything about it except that no demons were involved."

  Azrad snorted. He turned his attention to Ildirin.

  "I've sent messages to all the gates, and to Guildmaster Ithinia, as you asked," Ildirin said. "So far we have no word back from any of them."

  "Send word to the Guild again," Azrad said. "Tell them it's urgent I meet with their representatives."

  "Azrad, I don't even know whether Ithinia is in the city at present..."

  "Then send messages to all the Guildmasters, and any other important wizards you can think of!" Azrad demanded. "They claim to regulate magicians, don't they? Then they had better regulate those people, those .. . those ..."

  "Warlocks," Captain Vengar offered.

  The others all turned to stare at him.

  "That's what they're called," Vengar said, looking around uneasily at the inquiring faces. "Someone told the guards in the plaza last night. It's a witch name, apparently."

  "The witches know something about them?" Azrad asked.

  "I don't know, my lord," Vengar said.

  "Who told the guards about this?"

  "I'm not sure, my lord. I believe it was someone in Lord Han-ner's party, perhaps Lord Hanner himself."

  "Faran's nephew? That Lord Hanner?"

  "Yes, my lord."

  "I want to know everything you can tell me about that-where is Lord Hanner, and what is he doing? How did he know that name?"

  Vengar hesitated. "My lord, Lord Hanner came to the plaza last night, after you were asleep, in the company of several strangers, some of whom were warlocks. The party was stopped well before approaching the bridge. He asked permission to enter, but was refused, in accordance with your orders. Lord Faran sent Lady Alris out to talk to him and accompany him to someplace where they could spend the night safely. That's all I know."

  "Faran sent Alris out, in the middle of the night?"

  "Yes, my lord."

  Azrad stroked his short-trimmed beard. "That's odd. I wonder where they went?"

  No one answered.

  "Lord Manner had some of these warlocks with him?"

  "So I am told, my lord."

  "That's very odd. Do you think..." Azrad broke off, frowning, in midsentence. Then he turned to Clurim. "Did you find any more of these warlocks?"

  "No," Clurim said. "Just the one girl in the kitchen, Hinda the Orphan. We sent her out of the Palace, as you ordered. No one else in the Palace has admitted to having this new magic, as yet, and I haven't found any evidence that anyone is lying."

  "Just the girl," Azrad said. "No one among the nobility?"

  "No, Azrad. Not that we know of."

  "Are there any signs that it might have spread to anyone else in the kitchens?"

  "No. It doesn't appear to be contagious."

  "Well, thank the gods for that much, anyway!" Azrad said. "You checked everyone in the Palace?"

  "Yes. That's what you ordered, and that's what I did. It took me all night. I just finished half an hour ago, and then you came and ordered me to get this meeting together; I haven't been to bed yet. I'm at least as sleepy as Lord Faran, I would think."

  "If that's a hint that I should let you go, I'm sorry, Clurim, but you'll have to wait." He turned his attention to the others. "Captain Vengar, I know there are unhappy citizens out there in the plaza. Do you know the nature of their complaints? Arson, vandalism, rape?"

  "Arson, vandalism, theft, and murder, my lord," Vengar said. "We haven't had any reports of rape that I know of-but they may well be coming. Mostly, though, it's the disappearances that people are complaining about."

  Azrad blinked. "Disappearances?" he said. "I don't believe I've heard about this."

  "I told you I was sleepy," Clurim muttered. "Forgot to mention it."

  "My lord," Vengar said, "we have had numerous reports of people who vanished last night, at the same time that people began screaming and the magic first manifested itself. Some people simply walked away and never came back; others appear to have been snatched out through windows or even through holes torn in the roof. Captain Naral started keeping a count eventually; the last time I checked with him, we had reports of over three hundred missing people."

  "Three hundred}"

  "Yes, my lord."

  "The warlocks took them?"

  "That would appear to be the logical assumption, yes. Certainly it's what many of the complainants believe."

  "Three hundred people."

  "At least."

  Azrad sat back on his throne and stared silently at Vengar for a moment, then said, "I want reports. I want written reports from Captain Naral, and whoever spoke to Lord Hanner, and anyone who knows anything about these disappearances. I will not stand for this in my city! If these warlocks are responsible, I want them all removed."

  "Yes, my lord," Vengar said.

  "Go and get on with it!" the overlord said, waving a hand in dismissal. Vengar turned.

  As he did, Azrad pointed at Clurim.

  "You," he said. "Go get me Lord Faran. I don't care if he's asleep; I want to talk to him now. Get him down here-and then get some sleep yourself."

  "Yes, Azrad," Clurim said.

  He left the room scarcely a step behind Captain Vengar.

  "Send those messages to the wizards," Azrad ordered Ildirin.

  Then he looked at the others-Karannin, Imra, and Azrad the Younger.

  "And you three," he said, "find something useful to do. Elsewhere."

  A moment later the room was empty save for Azrad, sprawled unhappily in his throne, contemplating hours, perhaps days, of activity before he would be rid of all this and able to return to his usual comfortable indolence.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Lord Hanner had not yet reached any useful conclusions regarding what he should do about th
e warlocks by the time Alris returned.

  He had been wandering about the house-or at any rate the first two floors-marveling at the place and trying to think of whether he ought to be doing anything more.

  He had first checked on the prisoners and made sure they had food and clean water; they seemed resigned to their fate and willing to face the magistrates. Kirsha, the teenaged girl they had caught amid a cloud of stolen jewelry and fabric, asked whether there was any way to send a message to her family, and was told that it would have to wait a little longer.

  When that was done Hanner went back downstairs and explored further. He discovered that the big doors at the back of the dining hall led to a vast ballroom, which in turn opened on the garden, and he noticed that the inlays in the ballroom floor included a mystic circle, suitable for ritual dancing; that was more of Uncle Faran's obsession with magic, he supposed. He wondered at first whether it had ever actually been used; then he found the traces of old chalk markings, imperfectly erased, and concluded that it had.

  He wondered whether ritual dance was included in the Wizards' Guild's prohibition on government use of magic-but he had no idea who the dancers had been or what the dance had been intended for, which made it hard to guess whether it might have violated Guild rules.

  The small doors on the east side of the dining hall led to a warren of kitchens and pantries, where Bern spent much of his time. Here, too, there were signs of an interest in magic-or perhaps just in ostentation-in the form of animated crockery and a never-empty water jug.

  The west side of the house, beyond the big front parlor, held an assortment of salons, studies, and libraries.

  When the front door lock rattled Hanner was two rooms away, admiring a collection of glassware that was either from Shan on the Desert or an extremely good imitation-and Hanner doubted Faran would own any imitations. He was holding a delicate little purple cruet made in the shape of an orchid, studying the way the color faded from almost indigo at the base to almost red at the top, when he heard the key turn. He looked up-and the cruet slipped from his hands.

  He started to grab for it, then realized he might crush it and hesitated, and it was too late, it was out of his grasp. He reached for it anyway, desperately willing it not to fall...

  And it didn't. Instead it sank slowly through the air as if it were sinking in oil, and Hanner was easily able to catch it before it hit the hard parquet floor.

  He plucked it from the air and set it carefully back on its shelf, then stared at it.

  It was obvious what he had done, of course. He, too, was a warlock.

  He was a warlock after all; he merely hadn't realized it before.

  This concept demanded some thought. How was he a warlock? Why was he a warlock?

  Was everyone a warlock, then, and most people just hadn't noticed it yet? Or was it spreading, like an infection, and he had caught it from the warlocks he had gathered?

  At first Hanner couldn't begin to answer any of these questions. He hadn't felt any change in himself-but he remembered he had staggered the night before, at the instant before the screaming began.

  It had probably happened then, and he just hadn't known it until now.

  How many other people, he wondered, were in the same situation?

  Bern and Alris were speaking in the entryway, and Alris's voice interrupted his thoughts.

  "Hanner? Are you here?"

  He tore his attention away from the glassware and his newly discovered abilities and called back, "I'll be right there." He gave the cruet one final glance, then turned and left the room.

  He met his sister in the front parlor, and saw immediately that she was both excited and worried-which worried him, since Alris's usual mood was irritated boredom.

  "Did you speak to Uncle Faran?" Hanner asked.

  "No," Alris said. "He was too busy to come to the door, and I wasn't allowed inside."

  Hanner blinked in surprise. "Inside? You mean you weren't allowed inside the Palace?"

  "That's right," Alris said. "They still aren't letting anyone in, for any reason. The overlord hasn't rescinded the order, and it doesn't look as if he intends to. And Uncle Faran hasn't done anything about it, either-the guard said he thought Faran agreed with the overlord!"

  "He does sometimes," Hanner said dryly. "So who did you talk to?"

  "The guards, mostly," Alris said. "Hanner, it's bad, really bad."

  "What is?"

  "Everything. The whole city. What happened last night."

  Hanner sank into a nearby armchair and gestured for his sister to take another. "Tell me about it," he said. "What happened last night? Was there something besides the looting and fighting?" Alris nodded.

  "People disappeared," she said. "Hundreds of them!" Hanner frowned. "Disappeared how?" he asked. "Just vanished? Was there a flash or a bang or smoke or anything? I didn't see or hear anything like that."

  "Not vanished vanished," Alris said. "Or at least, not necessarily. Maybe some of them disappeared that way, but most of them are just gone. They weren't there in the morning when their families or neighbors went to find them. And there are stories about seeing dozens of them flying away, and the guards who were on duty at Westgate supposedly reported dozens of people marching out the gate in the middle of the night without saying anything, without any baggage-some of them weren't even dressed!"

  Hanner felt a cold knot forming in his stomach. He remembered seeing the flying figures overhead the night before, and wondered how many of them had never returned. "Magic," he said. "A compulsion, maybe." Alris nodded. "Probably," she said. "That's what most of the people think, anyway. There's a big crowd of their friends and relatives in the square, waiting for the overlord to do something, and they just about all think it was magic-after all, what else could make people just leave in the middle of the night and not come back?"

  Hanner made a wordless noise of agreement. "What nobody agrees on is what kind of magic," Alris said. "Most of them think it was the warlocks who did it."

  "That's silly," Hanner said. "There weren't any warlocks until last night; the warlocks didn't have time to plan anything like that!"

  Alris turned up a palm. "Well, just about everyone thinks there's some connection. Some people think it was the Wizards' Guild behind it all, for some secret reason of their own, and some think it was a coven of demonologists paying for some huge spell, and I heard someone saying it was Northern sorcerers left over from the Great War, out for revenge."

  "I don't think sorcery could do that," Hanner said. "But Northern sorcery ..."

  "... is a lost art, yes. Partly. It's not as lost as some people would like to think, though-most of our sorcerers are using Northern relics. Anyway, where would these Northerners have hidden all this time? It's been two hundred years since the war ended!"

  "Somewhere in the northern wilderness, I suppose," Alris said. "Tazmor or Srigmor, maybe."

  "It seems pretty unlikely."

  "I thought so, too-but a lot of the people who disappeared were last seen going north."

  "That doesn't mean there are any Northerners involved," Han-ner pointed out. "It could just as easily be some wizard somewhere in Sardiron. Maybe someone's spell went wrong-I know that happens sometimes."

  "I guess you're right," Alris said. "So maybe it was the Wizards' Guild or the demonologists. But whatever it is, something big happened!"

  "Obviously," Hanner agreed dryly.

  "Anyway, Uncle Faran and old Azrad have been conferring all morning, listening to reports and everything, trying to figure it out. And anyone in the Palace who can do this warlock stuff is ordered out-they threw little Hinda from the kitchens out on the street, and you know she doesn't have any family. She's just sitting in the square, crying. One of the guards gave her some bread, so at least she won't starve right away, but if something doesn't happen she might have to go to the Hundred-Foot Field tonight, and who knows what will happen to her there?"

  Hanner felt his shoulders tense, and his ski
n suddenly felt cold despite the summer warmth.

  He had seen the cruet slow to a stop in midair because he wanted it to, and knew that he, too, was a warlock. Did that mean he could never go home to the Palace?

  But surely the overlord would rescind his decree eventually and let Hanner and Hinda back in. When Uncle Faran learned that his only nephew was a warlock...

  Well, how would Faran react? Hanner had to admit he didn't know. Despite years of living in his uncle's apartments, Hanner still couldn't always predict Faran's actions-especially where magic was concerned. Warlockry was unquestionably a kind of magic, and Faran's attitude toward magic was a complicated stew of jealousy, desire, and distrust.

  "If you see Hinda again, tell her she can come here," Hanner said. "Were there any other warlocks in the Palace?"

  "Not that I've heard of," Alris said.

  "There might be some who had the sense not to tell anyone," Hanner said.

  Alris shivered. "I suppose so," she said, glancing across toward the dining hall. The significance was unmistakable-she was remembering all the warlocks who had been here earlier, and who were now scattered across the city.

  "They're just people," Hanner said. "Some of them got a little carried away at first, that's all."

  "I don't know," Alris said. "All those missing people-what if it was the warlocks who took them all, or killed them?"

  "Why would they do that? How could they plan it? Besides, if a lot of the people who disappeared flew away, weren't they warlocks themselves? I'd guess that some of them just flew off somewhere and got lost, and they'll be back as soon as they find their way home."

  "You think so?"

  Hanner nodded. "And you know, I'd wager there are people out there who are warlocks and don't even know it yet. After all, they don't have to use the magic."

  Alris shuddered more visibly. "That's creepy," she said. "I know I'm not a warlock!"

  "How do you know?" Hanner asked.

  Startled, she looked him in the eye, then turned away. "Shut up, Hanner," she said. "You're scaring me."