anything more difficult than a third-order incantation, and shehated that. She had become a wizard because she loved magic, and she wasgood at it, which was how she’d become a Guildmaster, and she considered it completely unfair that her duties as senior Guildmaster for the World’s largest city so often meant she had no time to spend in her workshop, animating bric-a-brac or talking to ghosts she had trapped, or otherwise enjoying the miraculous abilities she had spent her life acquiring. She thought now that she should have used some sort of time-distortion spell to find a few extra hours she could use to catch up on her sleep, but she hadn’t done it — at least, not yet, and she still wasn’t sure when she would have a chance.
So her mood was already quite sour enough when she arrived home, transported magically into her downstairs solarium, to hear a loud, unnatural buzzing in the garden behind her house.
It was not a pleasant buzz. It was a harsh, insistent noise that Ithinia found intensely grating. She thrust a hand into the pouch on her belt, fumbled with a vial, and opened the garden door of the solarium with a pinch of brimstone in her ringers, ready to fling Thrindle’s Combustion at this annoyance, whatever it was, and burn it into silence.
She stepped out, looking for the source of the buzz, and spotted it almost immediately-a shiny black thing lying atop the garden wall, gleaming darkly in the bright warm light of the setting sun. It was roughly the size of a woman’s sandal, but with odd little wings on either side. Two of her magical guardians, stone carvings she had animated years ago, crouched at the foot of the wall, watching it.
The mysterious buzzing device was not anything she recognized, but she knew the general category of objects that had that peculiar slick finish. It was a sorcerous talisman of some kind.
She was tempted to go ahead and fry it-but Thrindle’s Combustion didn’t always work on talismans, and might well backfire. She dropped the bit of brimstone and wiped her hands on the skirt of her formal robe as she cautiously approached the still-buzzing object.
Poking it with her athame, the ritual dagger she wore on her belt, would probably silence it-sorcery and wizardry did notlike each other much, and an athame was virtually pure wizardry, able to ruin most sorcerous devices with a touch without taking any noticeable harm itself.
If she did that, though, she wouldn’t know who sent it, or why, and it might be important. Some sorcerer somewhere might know something about what had caused last night’s ferocious and mysterious magical outburst. She couldn’t afford to throw away that knowledge.
And she really doubted it was dangerous. No sorcerer would be stupid enough to try to harm her-attacking a Guildmaster was a good way to die. Even if an attack succeeded, which was unlikely given the protective spells she always wore, the rest of the Wizards’ Guild would retaliate, quickly and lethally.
She stopped several yards away. The two stone guardians turned to glance up at her, but then returned to watching the talisman.
“How long has that thing been here, making that noise?” she asked the nearest of the gargoyles that crouched on the various corners and protrusions of her house.
The gargoyle turned its head with a creak, looking at her. “About an hour, Mistress,” it said in its grating voice. It was difficult to distinguish the words over the constant noise, but Ithinia was accustomed to her creations’ peculiar speech.
The neighbors must have loved that, Ithinia thought. Most of them wouldn’t dare complain-one expected occasional annoyances when one lived near a wizard-but it would hardly have generated any goodwill.
“It’s been sitting there buzzing the whole time?” “No, Mistress. It descended from the sky and approached the house, and Old Rocky warned it away, as you instructed us to do when intruders enter the garden. It ignored the warning, so Rocky and Glitter climbed down to frighten it away. It retreated to where it is now, and began calling your name. When you did not answer, after a few minutes it stopped speaking and began buzzing.”
Old Rocky and Glitter were the two creatures still guarding it. Ithinia glanced at Old Rocky’s niche, on the southwest corner of the house.
“Did you see where it came from?”
“No, mistress. It came down out of the sun while we were meditating.”
“You were sleeping, not meditating,” Ithinia said. “I’ve told you not to try to fool me. Stoneshould sleep-it’s nothing to hide.”
“Yes, Mistress,” the gargoyle said, abashed.
“It called my name? Did it say anything else?”
“It said it needed to speak with you.”
Ithinia sighed. Another one.
“I might as well get it over with,” she said. She lifted her skirt slightly to keep it from getting dusty on the little-used bricks, then marched down the garden path to the wall.
Glitter and Old Rocky stepped aside at her approach, and she took a moment to pat Rocky on the smooth patch of granite behind its carved curving horns. “Good job,” she said. “You, too, Glitter. Go on back to your places now.”
Glitter’s mouth was so full of fangs and tongue that it couldn’t speak, but Rocky growled, “Thank you, Mistress,” before retreating up the walkway.
When they had left Ithinia said sharply, “All right, I’m here. Stop that infernal buzzing and tell me what you want.”
The buzzing continued.
“Stop it!” Ithinia shouted, her hand falling to the hilt of her athame.
The buzzing stopped abruptly. “Guildmaster?” a voice said from the black device.
“Yes,” Ithinia said angrily. The voice sounded familiar-it was definitely that of a native of the city, with the lilting quality affected by the wealthy and powerful. She couldn’t quite place it, and was in no mood to be subtle or even polite. “Who are you?”
“Your pardon, Guildmaster,” the voice said. “I am Lord Faran, formerly the overlord’s chief advisor.”
Ithinia closed her eyes and muttered, “Oh, blood and death.” She had already received word that Lord Azrad wished to consult the Wizards’ Guild on an urgent matter, which of course meant that the overlord wanted the Guild to do something about the warlocks. She had put that meeting off until at least tomorrow-it was always best, when dealing with Azrad the Sedentary, to delay the meeting for a time to give the man’s natural lethargy time to assert itself. Azrad was always less demanding when he had had time to cool down from whatever event had provoked him. An early morning meeting accentuated this, so Ithinia had been planning to arrive at the Palace perhaps an hour after dawn, either tomorrow or the day after.
Besides, that would give her a little more time to learn about the situation and think about what should be done.
This communication from Lord Faran, though, complicated the situation.“Formerly the overlord’s chief advisor” meant that there had been a serious falling out within the inner circles of the city’s government, and Ithinia suspected the Wizards’ Guild was about to be dragged into a factional squabble, whether they wanted to be or not.
One of the secondary reasons for the Guild’s rule against magicians meddling in government, or rulers fooling around with magic, was precisely so that the Guild wouldnot be dragged into factional squabbles, but it appeared that the participants in this one wanted the Guild involved.
Presumably it had something to do with the warlocks.
And then there was the fact that Lord Faran was using sorcery to speak to her. He knew perfectly well that the Guild wouldn’t approve of a nobleman in the overlord’s government using magic like this; he was obviously doing it on purpose, to make a point.
Whatpoint, she didn’t know. She had dealt with Lord Faran before; he had a twisty mind that she did not understand and didn’t particularly want to. He seemed constitutionally unable to accept a direct statement of the Guild’s intent at face value, no matter what the circumstances, which annoyed her, since she always made an effort to deal openly with the government of the Hegemony. She would have preferred to never speak with him again.
But she was obviously going to have to deal with him. Even if he was no longer the overlord’s right hand, he was still likely to remain a powerful man-and he clearly had sorcery at his disposal.
And he had decided to rub the Guild’s nose in his sorcery. Ithinia would have considered that utter folly for most people, but for Lord Faran she couldn’t be sure.
