Night of Madness

by Lawrence Watt-Evans

  He squeaked in terror and scampered for shelter, running on all fours. He scurried into the shadowy corner beside someone's front steps, then paused, once he was out of sight of most of the street, to try to see what had happened to him.

  It was hard to think, but he struggled to hold on to himself to see what had become of him, to think of a way he might survive and undo whatever it was.

  He knew he had somehow been transformed-that wizard must have had a spell of some kind that did this. He looked down at his paws, curled his tail around . ..

  His tail was long and thin and bare, ending in a point. His paws had long, thin claws. He could see whiskers when he wiggled his nose. He measured his height against the steps, and concluded that he was now a rat. A large brown one.

  That was bad, that was very bad, but it could be worse. He was still alive. He remembered who he was. And .. . was he still a warlock?

  He found a pebble, and concentrated on it with all his might, trying to see it in that special way that let warlocks move things- and nothing happened. The pebble lay where it was.

  He heard voices, human voices, and ducked back into the corner, baring his teeth.

  The voices passed, but he waited several minutes, just to be sure.

  He could hear rustlings and thumpings and the other sounds of the city, of the neighborhood going about its ordinary business, but he had trouble, in his transformed condition, identifying them and locating them. He was also distracted by smells-rats, he discovered, had a far better sense of smell than humans did.

  At last, though, he decided the time had come to venture out. He was hungry and frightened, and wanted to get somewhere safer than a corner in the street. He could see no openings in the foundation of the house he crouched beside, nowhere he could take shelter.

  His own room was only a few blocks away. If he could get inside there, he would be safe. He couldn't unlock the door in his present condition, especially since the purse containing the key had vanished along with his clothes, but perhaps he could find a rat-sized entrance.

  And the spell might wear off.

  He crept out of the corner, then dashed forward, intending to make a run for the next street-and found himself confronted by a pair of suede slippers.

  He looked up and found a robed man staring down at him.

  "Shemder Parl's son," the man said. "This is very interesting- it seems the structure in your brain that makes you a warlock is still there in your new form, though greatly reduced in size, but it's completely inert."

  Shemder squeaked furiously and bared his teeth. A rat's vocabulary was, he found, rather limited.

  "Now," the wizard said, "what would happen if you were restored to human form? Would it remain inert?"

  Shemder squeaked again.

  "We'll have to try the experiment on someone, but I'm afraid that it won't be you," the wizard said. "You're too dangerous. I would never have thought you could kill a respectable wizard so quickly, despite a handful of protections and wards! I'm going to have a ghastly time explaining his death to his family, and to the Guild!"

  As he spoke he drew a dagger, and Shemder began backing away.

  He was just turning to flee when the wizard spoke a word, and flung the dagger.

  The blade impaled the rat that had been the man called Shemder Parl's son, pinning him to the earth; the rat twisted, trying to escape the blade, trying to see some way to remove it, but succeeding only in injuring himself further. He squirmed in agony, and in his extremity forgot who he was, forgot that he had ever been anything more than a rat. He writhed, and the world around him dimmed, and he knew it was not because the sun was down.

  And then the rat was dead, and Kaligir of the New Quarter stood looking down at it.

  It remained a rat; sometimes, when Asherel's Transformation was done quickly from a distance like this, death broke the spell. Kaligir had thought that the rat might turn back into Shemder.

  That it hadn't simplified matters; disposing of a dead rat was much easier than disposing of a dead person.

  Of course, Shemder had apparently had the morals of a rat all along. Kaligir had chosen him because Fendel's Divination had named him as the warlock who had killed more innocents than any other in the World. His death was no loss.

  The death of poor Lopin, on the other hand, was a tragedy. Kaligir frowned.

  There was no longer any question-the warlocks were dangerous. Shemder had reached through Lopin's protective spells as if they were hardly there.

  This was not reassuring news that he would be bringing back to the rest of the Guild.

  Kaligir kicked the dead rat into the gutter, then turned to go.

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  As Lord Manner trotted through the night, back along High Street through the New City, his heart was light and his features were brightened with a smile-until he neared the mansion now known as Warlock House.

  Although there had been some uneasy moments when he and Mavi left and walked past the waiting, watching people gathered out front, a few shouts of "We were just visiting! We aren't warlocks!" had gotten them safely to the corner. No one had followed them, and once they were out of sight of the house the city had seemed almost normal.

  Oh, there were still a few burned-out buildings, and more guardsmen on the streets than usual, but in general things were back to what they should be. He and Mavi had strolled to Newmarket without incident, where he had had a delightful supper with Mavi's family. Much of the time he had been able to forget all about warlocks and exile orders and all the other unpleasantness of the past few days. Even when Mavi's parents had asked about his uncle's collection of warlocks, and had spoken with horror of the depredations that befell their neighbors on the Night of Madness, he had been able to remain happily detached, as if none of it concerned him.

  The mob in front of his uncle's house, though, reminded him that it concerned him very much.

  There were more of them than before, and they had torches. Torches were hardly unreasonable, since full night had fallen, but there seemed to be more of them than any reasonable need for light would justify.

  And they were no longer standing out in the street, just watching; now they were pressed up against the fence, leaning through it, just a few feet from the front door and several windows.

  Hanner's smile vanished.

  "Where did you take them?" someone shouted.

  "Give me back my son!"

  Hanner stopped where he was, a block away, and decided that he was not going to walk in the front door. He would see if there was a rear gate-he didn't remember seeing one, but surely there was a servants' entrance somewhere. If he couldn't find one, he would climb the garden wall.

  Or, perhaps, fly over it, though he had yet to attempt to fly under his own power.

  Instead of continuing on High Street he turned right on West Second Street, then left on Lower Street and left again on Coronet, and walked up the block.

  There was no torch-bearing mob on this side of the house. Light spilled from the corner, burying the garden wall and the mansion's west face in shadow.

  He didn't see any doors or gates, any more than he had two nights before. The garden wall was solid brick. He looked up at the top, a foot or two over his head.

  He couldn't climb that. The brick was smooth and solidly mortared; he couldn't find toeholds or fingerholds in the dark. He could call for help and hope a warlock heard him and helped him over the wall before that mob out front heard him and came to investigate.

  Or maybe he could fly over it. He was a warlock, and the power was there inside him, eager to be used.

  Just thinking about it made it surge up, ready and waiting; he could feel it, could almost see it.

  But how did one fly? He had seen Rudhira and the others do it often enough, but he hadn't really observed it.

  Thinking that, he became consciously aware for the first time that he could perceive things he hadn't before, that he could use his magic to sense things-it wasn'
t seeing, and it wasn't feeling, but it was almost both. He realized this must be what Sheila had meant when she talked about studying Thellesh's injuries with something that wasn't witch sight.

  He could feel/see the bricks that made up the wall, the mortar that held them together, the grainy texture of the mortar, the smooth glaze on the bricks ...

  But it was dark, and he wasn't touching the wall; his hands were at his sides.

  He blinked, and the perception faded slightly.

  He didn't need to know how the wall was put together, he just needed to get over it. He still couldn't sense any toeholds, even with this new ability.

  He turned his attention to himself, to see whether he could figure out how to fly. It should be easy-just lift himself off the ground. He had experimented with his magic a little in secret, earlier in the day, and he could move small objects around, but he hadn't tried lifting himself.

  It wasn't as easy.

  It wasn't so much the weight, although he had never tried lifting anything even close to his own size; instead, he realized, it was because he couldn't sense a relationship between himself and the object he was trying to move.

  That was how a warlock moved things. He had done it without understanding it before, without being aware of how he was doing it, but now he saw it clearly. His new sense showed him the relationship in space between himself and the object he wanted to affect, and then he manipulated that relationship-warlockry was all a matter of using this new sense to find the magical connections between himself and the rest of the World, and then forcing them to change. He had caught that cruet by blocking its connection to the floor.

  But finding the magical connections between himself and himself didn't seem to work.

  Rudhira and the others had done it, though. There had to be a way.

  He studied himself with his newly recognized warlock sight, and finally figured out what he would have to do. In order to fly, Hanner saw, a warlock didn't move himself; he moved the rest of the World.

  Hanner reached out and tried to do that, to move the street and wall away-and caught himself just before he fell over backward.

  He straightened up, frowned, looked down at his feet, and tried again, concentrating on pressing the ground away from the soles of his sandals.

  He rose unsteadily for an inch or two, then wobbled and started to fall backward. Again, he used his warlockry to catch himself.

  He could catch himself easily enough, he thought. It was annoying; it was as if his magic worked better when he didn't think about it.

  But if he didn't think about it, he couldn't fly!

  He heard footsteps and turned to see a patrolling guardsman marching toward him. Quickly he tugged up his tunic and untied his breeches, to provide the obvious excuse for why someone was standing inches from a blank wall at night.

  "Hai!" the soldier called. "Go find somewhere better!"

  "Sorry!" Hanner called, retying his breeches. "Drank too much ale at supper."

  "Well, get rid of it somewhere else."

  "Yes, sir."

  He hesitated, then took a step toward Merchant Avenue. The guardsman marched on.

  Hanner turned back to the wall, studying it with his warlock sense, wondering whether he could somehow brace against it to stay upright while he lifted himself over it. Bricks and mortar, bricks and ...

  "Oh," he said.

  The service entrance was right there, a few yards to his right, a wooden gate with an iron latch. How had he missed it?

  He hurried to it, reached out-and realized he couldn't see any gate. The brick was solid and unbroken . ..

  To normal eyes. To a warlock, there was a gate.

  At last Hanner figured it out. Uncle Faran had had his gate enchanted, had a protective illusion put on it. He reached out and felt the "wall."

  Sure enough, it was wood, not brick. The illusion wasn't so complete it fooled his fingers. He found the latch by feel, and tried to open it.

  It was locked. He could sense the mechanism, a bolt that could be worked from the inside. There was a slot below it; presumably Bern carried a tool that could reach through the slot and work the bolt from the outside.

  Hanner had no such tool-but he was a warlock.

  The bolt slid back, and the gate opened, and he was inside. He closed the gate carefully, hoping he hadn't disrupted the undoubtedly costly illusion, and headed for a door from the garden into the house.

  A moment later he was inside, making his way along the central hallway. He could hear voices ahead.

  He found half a dozen people in the candlelit front parlor; they turned to look at him as he entered.

  "Lord Hanner!" Rudhira said from a chair by one of the front windows where she had been watching the crowd in the street outside. "I'm glad you got back inside safely."

  "I'm not sure how safe it really is," Hanner replied as he looked around. Besides Rudhira and himself, the room held Alla-dia, Othisen, and three other warlocks whose names he didn't recall immediately. "Where's Uncle Faran?" he asked.

  "Upstairs with the wizards," Rudhira said. "He has us on guard duty for now, making sure those people outside don't do any harm." She pointed at the top of the window by her chair. "Someone caught us off guard and threw a brick through there about an hour ago, but we fixed it. You can hardly tell the glass was ever broken."

  "You fixed it?" Hanner stared at the panes, which appeared completely intact. "How?"

  One of the others giggled, and Othisen said gently, "We're warlocks, remember?"

  "Yes, but... I know you can move things, but I didn't know you could fix them."

  "We can do a lot of things," Rudhira said. "Move things, break things, unbreak them. We can make light, as you've seen." She held up an orange-glowing hand to demonstrate. "We've been teaching each other. We can open locks and heal wounds and heat things up or cool them down. We can harden things, or dissolve them, or set them on fire. We can see things too small to be seen without magic, see the insides of things, and feel things without touching them. It's wonderful, my lord! I thought it was good enough just being able to throw things around and fly, but there's so much more!"

  "That's ... that's wonderful," Hanner said, hoping he sounded more convinced than he felt.

  He didn't know how to do all that-but presumably, if everyone else had learned these things, he could learn them. All he had to do was admit he was a warlock, throw in his lot with the others-and put himself at risk of exile or death, not to mention being something that Mavi found repulsive.

  It was tempting, all the same-he could feel the magic in him calling out to be used, to be trained and built up.

  But he wasn't going to do it.

  At least, not yet.

  "That girl, Sheila, who was apprenticed to a witch," Othisen said, "she said we could make more warlocks, and sort of showed us how, but we didn't have anyone to experiment on."

  "Lady Alris wouldn't volunteer," Rudhira said. "And you weren't here."

  "And I'm not volunteering now," Hanner said, heading off any such suggestion and hoping none of these people were as attuned to warlockry's presence as Sheila had been. "But what about those people out there?" he asked with a wave at the windows. "Maybe you could change one of them. That might convince them warlocks aren't monsters."

  "Them?" Rudhira glanced toward the window, and the drapes flapped aside, though there was no wind in the closed room. The glow from her hand vanished. "I wouldn't do them the favor!" she said angrily.

  "Besides," Othisen said, "you need to be very close to do it. Touching, if possible."

  "Still, it's interesting that it's possible," Hanner said. "And you can learn different... different spells from each other." He didn't really think "spells" was the right word, but he couldn't think of a better one. "That means that if this stays around, warlocks could take on apprentices and train them, just like other magicians."

  "Yes!" Rudhira said.

  "I suppose that's true," Alladia said slowly.

 
"I'm so glad you found me in the Wizards' Quarter, my lord," Rudhira said. "Without you I wouldn't have come here, and I wouldn't have met Lord Faran, and I might never have learned all these things."

  "I'm happy you're pleased," Hanner said, a bit taken aback by this enthusiasm. After all, there was an angry mob just outside, ready to throw more bricks at a moment's notice; it hardly struck Hanner as an enviable situation. It felt as if they were besieged- and that was without even mentioning the sentence of exile hanging over their heads, and the possibility that Lord Azrad or the Wizards' Guild might decide even exile wasn't enough and demand their deaths.

  This was certainly not his idea of a decent way to live, trapped here, awaiting an uncertain fate, and it was no improvement at all over his previous existence-but then, he'd never been a Camp-town streetwalker.

  "Lord Faran's quite a man," Alladia said.

  "He's saved us all," Rudhira said. "Without him I'd never have had the nerve to fight back. I'd be an exile outside the walls by now, begging travelers for crusts of bread."

  Hanner somehow found that unlikely; he couldn't imagine Rudhira giving up without a fight, and her warlockry was the most powerful he had yet seen. If she had accepted exile, he still thought she would probably have done something a little less passive than begging to earn her keep.

  "He's had experience," Hanner said.

  "Yes, of course!" Alladia said. "It's obvious when he speaks."

  "He's a natural leader," Rudhira said. "You're a lucky young man to be his nephew."

  "I'm sure I am," Hanner said. He did not add anything more, though he was tempted.

  He had had experience himself-not at leading, but at being the Great Man's nephew. He was used to living in his uncle's shadow, and knew that anything he might say other than vague agreement could easily be misinterpreted. A disparaging word about Uncle Faran would mark him as a disloyal and jealous in-grate, while an injudicious, overly positive one would brand him a sycophant with no self-respect. If he were to point out that he, not Faran, had first thought of gathering warlocks together as a force for order and mutual defense, he'd be seen as a braggart.