the magistrates about the warlocks, but it had been instantly clear that they already knew. The guards in front of the Palace, the shouting crowds, made it plain thateveryone knew about the warlocks.
No one was going to pay her for the information.
She wished she hadn’t taken a day to bury Elken, clean herself up, steal new clothes, and get up her nerve-if she had arrived yesterday she might still have gotten a couple of bits for her report.
Of course, she was doing fairly well at her customary trade, certainly taking more than a few copper bits. The crowd was large and angry, which meant it was also more careless than usual, and she had gotten half a dozen purses. Still, it was theprinciple of the thing-she had something thatought to be worth money, and she wasn’t able to collect.
Of course, she told herself, in a way it was paying off. Ordinarily she would never have comehere, right in front of the Palace, where any number of guards and magicians might be watching, and she would never have found this crowd of unsuspecting prospective victims.
Just then she was distracted as someone shouted,“Hai! My purse!”
Tanna turned to see who spoke, ready to flee if anyone pointed her out as the culprit. Perhaps these people hadn’t been quite so unsuspecting as she thought.
An elderly man was staring down at the severed cords dangling from his belt; then he raised his head and looked around at the crowd.
“Who did that?” he bellowed. “Did anyone see who took my purse?”
Suddenly inspired, Tanna called, “The warlocks!”
The elderly man’s head snapped around, and he stared directly at her.
“It vanished,” Tanna said. “I saw it! It just disappeared. It must be the warlocks!”
“The warlocks?” the old man said. “First they took my son, and now they take my purse?” He turned to look at the guards on the north side of the square. “Blast it, it’s time something wasdone about this!”
“You tell them, sir!” Tanna said as she slipped behind a tall man.
A moment later she had worked her way well away from the angry old man, who was arguing with the nearest soldier. It was time to go, she decided. She had tried to do her civic duty by reporting Elken’s attempt to take over the Hundred-Foot Field, and she had gathered a few fat purses for her efforts, and that was enough; it was time to go, before things got really ugly.
Ten minutes later she was trotting down Arena Street, trying to ignore the shouting behind her. Kennan was absolutely furious. The guards had referred him to their captain, who had stolidly listened to his story, then told him to go away.
“But they stole my purse!” he shouted.
“Sir, I doubt it was a warlock who stole your purse,” the captain said. “It looks to me like the work of an ordinary cutpurse.”
“But that girlsaw it!”
“More likely she was the one who took it.”
“Captain, I have been robbed of my child and my money by these people, and Idemand that you do something about it!”
“The overlord is consulting his advisors and magicians as to what action to take.”
“What action to take? Goget them, and demand they return what they’ve taken!” Kennan said. “They’re all right there in that big black stone house on High Street, at the corner of Coronet!”
“Sir, I doubt thatall the warlocks are there,” the captain said dryly.
“Well,some of them are!” Kennan raged. “Lord Faran went there, and that fat man, and that redheaded whore...”
“Sir, I have my orders,” the captain said. “I am to guard the plaza and the Palace. Unless you have real proof that those particular warlocks took your purse or your son, I am not going to arrest them. If you really do have a witness, I suggest you bring her here to testify.”
Kennan glowered at the soldier, then turned to look for the thin, long-haired girl in the brown tunic.
He couldn’t see her anywhere.
He fumed silently for a moment, then growled. “I’ve had enough of this,” he said. He stamped away from the captain.
“Excuse me,” someone said.
Kennan turned to see a stocky man in a tan tunic. “Yes?”
“Did I hear you say that you know where the warlocks live?”
“Yes,” Kennan said. “What of it?”
“They took my brother,” the stocky man said. “Can you show me where this place is?” Kennan scanned the crowd again, but could not see the girl anywhere.
It wasn’t as if he were accomplishing anything here, he told himself.
“Come on,” he said. “We’ll go there together. At the very least we can keep an eye on the place.”
Chapter Twenty-two
Manrin the Mage, Guildmaster of Ethshar of the Sands, charged with overseeing and representing all those wizards who dwelt outside the city walls but within two days’ travel, was not happy at all. He was even less happy than his colleague Ithinia in Ethshar of the Spices, forty leagues to the east, had been the afternoon before when she heard from Lord Faran.
The Night of Madness, as it was now referred to, had initially hit Ethshar of the Sands roughly as hard as it had hit Ethshar of the Spices; hundreds of people had vanished, dozens had been killed, shops and homes had been looted and burned. However, unlike the disturbances in its sister city, the rioting in Ethshar of the Sands had lasted until dawn. No party of well-intentioned warlocks had roamed the streets, suppressing their wilder compatriots; Ederd IV had not called out the guard to defend his palace as his brother-in-law Azrad VI had, but had instead dispersed them through the streets, which had in many cases only inflamed the situation.
That, however, was not the major reason why Manrin was even less cheerful than Ithinia.
Lord Ederd’s people were now ranging up and down Wizard Street, questioning every magician they could find, hoping to find an explanation for the outburst of magic. Ederd himself was in conference with several well- respected magicians of various sorts at the Palace, while Ederd’s wife, ZarrГ©a of the Spices, was roaming the city organizing rebuilding efforts, sometimes conscripting magicians into service.
Manrin had been questioned at considerable length in his home by Lord Kalthon, son of the Minister of Justice, which had not been pleasant. The general impression Manrin had received was that the people of the city did not trustany magicians right now.
That was not the major reason why Manrin was unhappy, either.
Manrin’s own daughter Ferris was among the missing; she had not been seen since the moment the screaming began. Even that, though, was not whatmost upset him, though it was a close second. Ferris was a grown woman, aging but still well able to take care of herself, and Manrin told himself that she was probably safely in hiding, waiting for things to return to normal. Even if she was truly among the vanished, nobody knew what had become of them; they might all be alive and well somewhere.
And Manrin’s other three children, their spouses, his dozen grandchildren, and his half-dozen great- grandchildren were all unharmed and safe in their homes. He was not concerned about any of them.
What worried Manrin most was his magic. He had tried to perform several different spells in the past day or so, and far too many of them had not worked. That the Spell of the Revealed Power had yielded nothing when applied to the debris in the street was not particularly alarming-that was a tricky ninth-order spell, and the debris might simply not have carried any traces that the spell recognized. That the Spell of Omniscient Vision had failed, though, meant something was wrong. That was an easy third-order incantation-he had learned that as anapprentice, almost a hundred years ago, and he hadn’t had any problem with it since he was a journeyman! He was a Guildmaster now; how could he have made a mess of something so trivial? The ingredients were basic. He knew the dagger and incense were exactly what they should be; could the stone have somehow been exposed to sunlight, destroying its virtue?
