Desset looked at the broken marble, at the fallen wizard, at the shattered window, and announced, “I’m going home.” She turned, trembling, and walked quickly back out of the room.
“The guards!” another warlock called after her. “What about the guards?”
“Whatabout them?” Desset called back. “They couldn’t stop me on the way in, and they can’t stop me now.”
“She’s right,” someone else said. “We can go. They can’t stop us.” “Why would theywant to?”
There was a general mutter of agreement, and the entire group of warlocks began leaving.
Hanner watched them go, but felt no urge to join them. He stood where he was.
Thiswas his home, after all. He was back in the Palace where he belonged, and no one here knew he was a warlock. Under the circumstances, he doubted the overlord would demand he leave again.
And he thought his sister Nerra would need someone to look after her, at least until the shock of Uncle Faran’s death had passed.
He turned and hurried to Nerra’s side. He put a comforting arm around her, but did not say anything.
Lord Clurim, kneeling beside the wizard’s corpse, looked up to see the warlocks flee, glanced at Hanner and Nerra, then told no one in particular, “I don’t know who this is-I never saw him before.”
Hanner looked up. “He was from the Wizards’ Guild, he said. He didn’t give a name.”
“I know,” Clurim said. “But he’s dead, and the Wizards’ Guild doesn’t like it when wizards die unexpectedly.”
Hanner hesitated. He didn’t like to lie outright, so he didn’t want to say that Faran had killed the wizard and had already paid for it, but he certainly wasn’t about to admit thathe had stopped the wizard’s heart.
“I’d better go tell Azrad,” Clurim said, getting to his feet. He hurried out one of the small side doors.
And Hanner and Nerra were alone in the great audience chamber. Still holding his sister, Manner looked around the vast space.
The doors were twisted into scrap, a dozen chairs broken. The statue that was all that was left of Lord Faran was shattered into a hundred pieces, the largest consisting only of the chest and one upper arm; the robed corpse lay across a few of the smaller fragments. The gaping hole in the central window was letting in warm, damp air that smelled of the sea.
So much, Hanner thought, for the benefits of open confrontation.
“Come on,” Hanner said, getting to his feet and taking Nerra’s arm. “Let’s go upstairs, away from all this. I’ll send someone for Alris later.”
“He’s really dead,” Nerra said-the first intelligible words Hanner had heard from her in days.
“He’s really dead,” Hanner confirmed.
“Lord Clurim wanted me to tell him what Uncle Faran was planning,” Nerra said as she stood up, still somewhat unsteady. “When I couldn’t do that he wanted me to try to talk him into accepting exile. We were waiting here to meet Lord Azrad to discuss it.”
“It wouldn’t have worked,” Hanner said.
“I know. I could never talk him into anything he didn’t want to do.” She glanced at the dead wizard. “At least he took his killer with him.”
“I wonder if anyone’s ever done that before,” Hanner murmured.
Of course, Faran hadn’t really done it, but it would make a good story.
And the Guild had executed him not for warlockry, but for all his years of accumulating magical paraphernalia when he was Azrad’s chief advisor. The wizard had said so.
That presumably meant that the Wizards’ Guild still had not yet decided to wipe out the warlocks-at least, not officially. Otherwise, why bother explaining the reasoning in killing Uncle Faran?
Someone should talk to them, Hanner thought. Someone should convince them that warlocks meant no one any harm. At least, the surviving warlocks; obviously, Uncle Faran had been dangerous, but he was gone.
Someonehad to talk to them.
It was the Guild, after all, that was the real threat to the warlocks; Lord Azrad and the city guard were not a serious problem. Faran had demonstrated that much before he died. So long as the warlocks worked together, ordinary people could not harm them— only magic.
But magic could probably slaughter them all. Not just wizardry; Hanner had no idea how warlocks would fare against a horde of demons, or the ancient Northern weapons the sorcerers used.
And it appeared that their own magic would defeat them, in time, as it had Rudhira and Varrin.
That, at least, was slow, and could be anticipated and countered. If a warlock took the nightmares as a sign to stop using his magic, Hanner thought that he might live out the rest of a normal life in relative peace. Hanner certainly intended to try.
Of course, that was assuming there were no more surprises in the nature of warlockry, and Hanner didn’t know whether that was the case.Nobody did.
The Calling put a real limit on what a warlock could do. Lord Azrad had feared that a warlock might take over the city, declare himself ruler in the overlord’s place-and in fact, Faran might have intended to do just that.
But doing that, Hanner saw, would be slow suicide. In order to hold power claimed by magic the warlock would need to use his magic regularly, to prove it was still potent, to fight off competing claimants-and if he did that, then the Calling would take him that much sooner.
If someone would justexplain that to Azrad... and, more importantly, to the Wizards’ Guild.
But it wasn’t Hanner’s problem. He had done enough. He had fought against the chaos on the Night of Madness, and been banned from his home for his efforts; he had helped the warlocks band together, and seen his uncle murdered in response. And talking to anyone wasn’t his strong point; he always said the wrong thing.
He had done enough, and he had had enough. “Come on,” he told Nerra, turning away from the wreckage. “Let’s go upstairs.”
Chapter Thirty-seven
Manrin looked out a third-floor window at High Street. It had taken a quarter hour for the watchers to trickle back after Lord Faran had led his party off toward the Palace, but they had returned, and once again were flinging bricks and stones at the house.
None of these missiles ever struck the building; the warlocks remaining downstairs deflected them all. It seemed a rather pointless exercise, really, but that didn’t stop the attackers.
No one would ever dare throw rocks at wizards that way, Manrin thought. Wizards hadrespect. Warlocks, at least so far, clearly did not.
Lord Faran would have to change that.
Manrin considered that for a moment-what would it take to change it? What did wizards have that warlocks didn’t?
Well, they had been around longer, of course. They often wore distinctive robes. And they had the Wizards’ Guild, with its clear-cut rules. They were a familiar part of the World, while warlocks were still new and strange. Warlocks looked like ordinary people, but they weren’t, and that scared people. They didn’t know who the warlockswere.
That was something Lord Faran should fix, once he had taken over the city from Lord Azrad-as Manrin was sure he would do.
He should give the warlocks some sort of uniform and devise a set of rules, Manrin thought, and then send someone out to explain the rules to everyone. Make them consistent and familiar, that’s what would help them fit in.
And convince those people out front that no, the warlocks hadnot stolen their family and friends.
Lord Faran hadn’t done any of that yet. He had gathered all the warlocks together, which was good, since there was strength in numbers, and he had given them some leadership and a little basic organization, sorting out who could do what, but he had left them a motley, ill-assorted bunch and kept them hidden away in this mansion, and he hadn’t set out solid rules. He hadn’t eventried to talk to the rock-throwers about their missing loved ones.
