The Unwelcome Warlock

had once belonged to Hanner’s uncle Faran? Probably not; after all, she wasn’t a warlock. He had owned the house, and she was his heir, but the Council of Warlocks might not recognize that.

Perhaps the Council had acknowledged her ownership and paid her rent. Hanner hoped so. He had not left her wealthy; so much of his money had gone toward that ridiculous tapestry and its useless refuge that Mavi would have been far from rich after his departure. He hoped she had been all right. He had a sudden, horrible image of her and their children camping in the Hundred-Foot Field and shuddered.

But surely his sisters would have looked after her, if only for the sake of their nieces and nephew. Mavi might be living in the overlord’s palace, as a guest of Lady Alris, Hanner’s youngest sister. Mavi and the children should be all right.

But he wanted to get back to them and be sure. Sitting on the trampled grass was not getting him any closer to seeing them.

Finally, he looked at the sun, well above the horizon, and decided he had waited long enough. He got to his feet and was just about to call for attention when someone screamed behind him.

He turned, startled.

Then there were more screams, and fingers pointing at the western sky. Hanner heard the word that was being screamed, and his blood went cold even before he saw what those fingers were pointing at.

It was unmistakable, and he added his own bellow to the screams.

“Dragon!” he cried. “It’s a dragon!”

Chapter Six

Lord Sterren, Regent of the Vondish Empire, was taking a morning stroll on the battlements of Semma Castle, looking out toward the Imperial Palace, when a movement in the northern sky, far beyond the palace, caught his eye. He raised a hand to shade his eyes and peered into the distance.

There were several flying objects out there, dark shapes against the blue sky — more than several; scores, maybe hundreds. They were too far away to make out details, and the lack of a background made it impossible to judge their precise size or distance, but they did not move like birds and were not proportioned like birds.

There were too many to be dragons — or rather, if they were dragons, the whole World had gone mad. Which was not impossible, but it seemed unlikely, and they didn’t look like dragons.

They looked like people. In fact, they were coming rapidly nearer and looking more and more like people with every second.

Flying people meant magicians, and not just any sort of magician — herbalists and ritual dancers couldn’t fly, so far as Sterren had ever heard. Demonologists only flew when carried by demons, and besides, Sterren doubted there were that many demonologists in all the Small Kingdoms. There were a few other unlikely possibilities, but the odds were good that these were either wizards or warlocks. Or both.

Either one would be bad news. Both would be very bad news.

Warlocks were banned from the Vondish Empire. A delegation from the Wizards’ Guild had made that very clear twelve years ago. If these flying people were warlocks, their presence in the Empire amounted to a declaration of war between themselves and the Guild. Sterren really, really didn’t want to be anywhere near a war between a hundred warlocks and the Wizards’ Guild. He had seen a war fought with magic when he first came to Semma — in fact, he had been the one who brought the magicians into it. That had been a very small-scale affair, fought by some of the least-powerful magicians available, and it had still been frightening. He had then seen Vond build the empire, which had been awe-inspiring. Both of those conflicts had only had magic on one side, and they had been quite ugly enough. A war of warlocks against wizards would be very bad.

If these were not warlocks, but wizards, then the question was, why would they be coming here, to the southern edge of the World? Why would they be flying, and by themselves, rather than on carpets or the other aerial vehicles wizards generally favored? Why would there be so many of them? When that Guildmaster, Ithinia of the Isle, had delivered the Guild’s ultimatum, half a dozen wizards with their feet on the ground had been more than enough to cow the entire empire.

But then a thought struck him; flying people meant magic, yes, but they didn’t all have to be magicians. Many of them might just be passengers, carried along by the magicians. That might not be so bad, then. Perhaps these people had offended a wizard somewhere and were being sent into exile here in Vond.

Somehow, Sterren doubted the situation was that benign, but it might be. His luck had often been excellent. Really, with few exceptions, he had been fortunate ever since he tricked Vond himself into making himself susceptible to the Calling. Yes, the Imperial Council had insisted on naming him regent and had refused to let him leave and go back home to Ethshar, but he had long ago gotten used to his position. He was happily married, with five healthy children; the empire was doing well and had managed to avoid getting into any border wars for more than a decade.

He very much feared, though, that his good fortune was coming to an end. He turned to the stairs and shouted down to his guard, “Send word to convene the Council, and put the entire garrison on alert!” He looked back over his shoulder at that cloud of people and added, “And see what magicians are in the castle — I want to see whoever’s available in the throne room immediately!”

Then he trotted down the stairs, bound for the Imperial Palace, still trying to guess who these aerial travelers might be.

If it had been just one man, there would have been an obvious, if nightmarish, possibility. There was a reason Sterren’s title was regent, rather than emperor. There was a reason he didn’t live in the Imperial Palace. Officially, the Vondish Empire still belonged to the Great Vond, the warlock who had been Called to Aldagmor almost fifteen years ago; Sterren and the Council were just looking after it until he returned. That was generally considered a polite fiction — but maybe it wasn’t. No warlock had ever come back from Aldagmor, but Vond had done a good many things no one else had ever done. He had found a way to draw warlock- like magic from a source in Lumeth, as well as the one in Aldagmor, and had used the magic to build his empire. There had never been another warlock like him.

If one warlock had appeared in the sky, Sterren would have thought it might be Vond.

He shuddered at the very idea. Vond had never really intended to be cruel or destructive — indeed, he had for the most part been a beneficent tyrant and had significantly improved the lives of the common people of the eighteen kingdoms he conquered — but he had a temper. A bad temper. Sterren still remembered the sight of poor Ildirin’s mangled corpse — Ildirin, the butcher who Vond had brought from Ksinallion to be one of his palace servants, had spilled wine on his master, and the warlock had smashed the unfortunate man against a stone wall, then crushed his skull, all without touching him.

And worst of all, Vond had then carried on the discussion as if nothing untoward had happened.

Vond also had grandiose ambitions. He had built the Imperial Palace by magically reshaping the bedrock, deliberately making it larger and grander than Semma Castle, but that was the least of it; he had lit the night sky for miles around, he had turned up a chunk of the earth itself to make a barrier at the edge of the World, he had done any number of spectacular feats, merely to show that he could.

Only when he realized that he was still susceptible to the Calling, despite drawing his power from a different source, had he stopped looking for bigger and bigger ways to display his magnificence. Instead, he had huddled in his palace, trying to use no magic at all, until one night he had flown off to the north, never to be seen again.

Vond had known Sterren betrayed him, but had done nothing about it, because Sterren was the closest thing to a friend he had, and the only other person in the empire’s capital of Semma who understood anything about warlockry. He had needed Sterren. But if he came back...

But this wasn’t just one warlock; there were dozens of people flying.

The possibility that they were all warlocks who had somehow learned to use the