why the goddess had thought so, and whether that was why Alladia couldn’t summon Unniel. The pact made at the end of the Great War said only humans could invoke the gods.
“And the dreams,” Mavi continued.“Why do they have those dreams? Do they mean something?”
“They don’tall have the dreams,” Hanner said.
“Butmost of them did. And they sound so terrible-fallingand burningand being buried alive. It’s just... I don’t know, excessive.”
“I suppose it is,” Hanner agreed, glancing at the closed door.
There was a sudden loud thump from the other room; Mavi started. Hanner glanced at the closed door of the dining hall, but otherwise didn’t move. What hewanted to do was reach out with his will and open the door, to see what was happening-but he refused to use his magic.
If it was his at all. No one knew what had caused the Night of Madness; all this warlockry might just be something some mad wizard had done.
“Do you think it’s permanent?” Mavi asked.
Startled, Hanner turned back to her. “Do I think what’s permanent?”
“This warlockry. Maybe it’s just temporary.”
“That would certainly simplify matters,” Hanner said.
“I stayed around today, hoping it would all juststop,” Mavi said, staring at the closed door. “I wanted to be here, to help when it ended-I thought some of them would be upset. And I thought I could take Pancha home. But it isn’t stopping.”
“No, it isn’t,” Hanner agreed. “At least, not yet.”
But it could, at any time. They couldn’t know. That was the thing about magic-it didn’t have to make sense. Sometimes itdid make sense, and it was predictable enough that magicians could use it, and the whole city could rely on it, but sometimes it was just bizarre. A wizard could make a living creature out of powdered bone and feathers, or put a man to sleep with a pinch of dust and a single word-where was the logic in that? More than a hundred years ago a simple fire-lighting spell went wrong in the Small Kingdoms, and the resulting tower of flame was reportedly still burning, without fuel-how could it be? Why would virgin’s tears work in certain spells, when the same woman’s tears shed after her wedding night would be as useless as well water?
Wizardry was the strangest, but where was the logic in sorcery, where certain devices would perform their functions flawlessly for centuries, and then simply stop? And other devices that appeared perfectly identical didn’t work at all, or did something different.
Or theurgy-why did the gods only grant certain requests? Why would they listen to some people and not others? Why did demons sometimes answer theurgical invocations?
Magic was not far from madness-and in the case of warlockry, the distinction had initially been invisible. The warlocks who went rampaging through the city that first night had certainly appeared mad.
So how could they know what warlockry would do? Uncle Faran was in there, trying to make sense of it-but what if there was no sense to be made? What if it were to simply vanish again, as abruptly as it had appeared? What if it changed form? What if there were another Night of Madness, but affecting an entirely different assortment of people?
But then, all of life was like that, really. Even when Hanner had been sleeping in his own bed in the Palace, as safe as anyone could be, at any moment some mad magician’s spell could have turned him to stone, or transformed him into a cat, or simply killed him.
Even without magic, his own heart could just stop, or he could catch a fever, as his mother had, and be dead in a sixnight. One just had to make the best of the situation, forge ahead as best one could, try to learn how things worked, and accept it when the rules changed and learn the new rules.
Warlockry wasn’t any different. It could vanish at any time, but while it was here, it would be useful to know how it worked and what it could do.
He should be in there with Uncle Faran, studying the situation, he thought-but then he looked at Mavi’s eyes, dark brown and shining.
Uncle Faran had chased him out, and now Uncle Faran would have to do without him for a while.
“Would you like me to walk you home?” he asked. “Get away from the warlocks?”
She smiled. “I’d like that very much,” she said.
Alris made a gagging noise. “You two,” she said. “What if I came along? That would ruin all your fun, wouldn’t it?”
“No, of course not!” Mavi said, turning and reaching out a welcoming arm. “We’d be happy to have you join us.”
Hanner didn’t say anything at first; he was too busy struggling not to glare at his sister.
Alris looked at him.
“We’d be glad of your company,” Hanner managed at last.
She snorted. “No, you wouldn’t. And I don’t want to walk all the way to Newmarket, anyway, and someone should be here in case more warlocks show up, or Uncle Faran wants to know where you’ve gone, or those wizards come back down here looking for help.”
“I’m sure Bern’s around somewhere,” Hanner said.
“No, you go ahead,” Alris said with a wave. “I’ll stay here.”
“As you please.” Hanner turned to Mavi. “Shall we?”
Chapter Twenty-eight
As Hanner and Mavi stepped out the door into the streets of Ethshar a score of wizards were gathered around a table, discussing the situation, in a place that was not part of Ethshar, nor even of the World.
“We still have no idea what caused it,” a white-haired wizard said. “I have had a dozen of my best people working every divination we can find for the past two days, approaching the question from every angle we can think of, and we haven’t learned a thing about its origins. That magical aura around the Source blocks everything.”
“We have consulted the dead, and with the aid of several theurgists we have consulted the gods,” a cadaverous figure with a shaven skull said. “They know nothing of it.”
“I’ve spoken with Irith the Flyer, and of course with Valder,” a beautiful woman who appeared to be only in her twenties said. “They don’t remember anything that might help. If anyone knows of any other immortals who aren’t wizards, please tell me. And I’ve sent a message to Fendel the Great, but as yet he hasn’t replied.”
“We have some thirty warlocks aiding us in our experiments,” another wizard reported. “Most volunteered; a few are prisoners taken on the Night of Madness who were, at our request, sentenced to serve us. So far, while we are learning a great deal about how warlockry operates, we don’t have any idea what itis, where it came from, or whether it will remain as it is, go away, or change into something else.”
The litany continued-although they had learned a great deal about the events surrounding its appearance, nothing the wizards had tried had revealed anything important about the nature of warlockry itself.
“I’ve gone through the histories and the forbidden lore. Nothing like this is recorded anywhere.”
“We spoke with half a dozen demonologists, and questioned a few demons ourselves, but learned nothing.”
“We have charted the paths of some two hundred of those who were summoned on the Night of Madness, and have found no subtle deviations, no hidden patterns-they all simply headed toward the Source by the most direct routes available to them.”
“We have studied the histories of a randomly chosen sample of known warlocks and have found no links, nothing to indicate why these people were chosen while others were not. We have noticed that there is a slight tendency for a family with a warlock in it to have more than one-that is, a warlock’s cousin or sibling is more likely to be a warlock than the average person is-but what trait in the blood might explain this we cannot determine. We have also found that magicians of every sort were afflicted.”
“Wizards, too?” someone asked.
“Wizards, too,” the speaker replied. “We are currently attempting to divine exactly who in the Guild has become a warlock.”
