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’svery 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 forthat much, anyway!” Azrad said. “You checkedeveryone 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 hadnumerous 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.”
“Threehundred}”
“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 notstand 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 himnow. 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 the 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, desperatelywilling 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?
Waseveryone 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.
