“What is it?” he demanded as he stumbled out into the dark hallway. “What’s happening?”
No one answered; he hurried to the door of his son’s bedroom and found it standing open. He stepped inside warily-he didn’t want to intrude. Aken and Sanda were sensitive about their privacy.
Aken was nowhere to be seen; instead, Sanda was standing at the open casement, leaning out and calling, “Come back! Bring him back!”
“What’s happening?” Kennan asked again.
Sanda turned, and even in the dim light from the open window Kennan could see the tears gleaming on her cheeks. “He’s gone,” she said. “They took him!”
“Who’sgone?” Kennan asked, confused.
“Aken,” Sanda said. “I was downstairs, closing the shutters, and I heard him shouting, so I ran up to see what was wrong, and I got here and the window was open-look at the latch!”
Kennan looked. The iron latch had been twisted into an unrecognizable lump.
Kennan still didn’t understand. He didn’t understand where Aken was or what had happened to the latch. It looked as if someone very, very strong had crushed it in his fist.
Aken was a strong young man, but he wasn’tthat strong.
“Where is he?” Kennan asked.
“Gone!” Sanda shrieked, pointing out the window. “I saw him flying away! Theytook him!”
“Whotook him?” Kennan was beginning to comprehend, though he didn’t want to. “What do you mean, flying?”
“Flying!Through the air! By magic! The magicians took him!”
“Sanda, that’s crazy-why would magicians take Aken? What magicians?”
“Those magicians, out in the street,” she said, pointing. “They’re flying around smashing things. And they took your son, I saw it.”
Kennan, not really wanting to look, tiptoed across the room and looked past Sanda, out the window.
It was as she had said-there were people flying through the streets and up above the rooftops, most of them heading north, toward the docks, and there were things flying with some of them-clothes and jewels and furniture. It was all madness.
And there was no sign of Aken.
Like so many others, Zarek the Homeless awoke from a nightmare, screaming-and was astonished to hear perhaps a dozen other scattered voices screaming as well. He sat up, still wrapped in his moth-eaten blanket, and looked out at his surroundings.
He lay in the middle of the Hundred-Foot Field, not far from where Sway Street met Wall Street, in the Westwark district of Ethshar of the Spices. Around him were the blankets, tents, and crude huts of scores of the city’s other destitute-and several of them were screaming, though the number of voices seemed to be declining rapidly. A lantern flared up nearby, and voices chattered excitedly inside little Pelirrin’s tent.
“Shut up and let me sleep!” someone called as the last two or three voices continued to scream.
One voice dropped to a low moan; another fell silent. Finally only one woman’s voice still screamed, a thin, breathy wailing that sounded almost like a night wind-but the air was still.
“Blasted magicians,” someone said.
“Is that what it was?” another voice asked.
“What else could it be? People waking up screaming all at once-if that’s not magic, I’m Azrad the Great.”
Zarek could hardly argue with that; he wondered idly whatkind of magic it was, and why it had affected him. It clearly hadn’t struck everyone, or there would have beenhundreds screaming, rather than a dozen or so, but it had struckhim, all right. His throat was sore from screaming-though his throat was often sore anyway, from bad water and worse food or the various contagions found in the Field.
He tried to rememberwhy he had been screaming, and could only remember a feeling of suffocation and entrapment.
He mused about the significance of this. It might be important, he supposed.
In the morning he would go make a few inquiries-talk to the guards at Westgate, maybe, or see if anyone in the Wizards’ Quarter would answer a few questions. Perhaps there was some way he could capitalize on being included in this misdirected magic-he thought he might get a decent meal out of it, anyway. Maybe some curious wizard would pay him for a report on what had happened.
In fact, he thought, maybe he shouldn’t wait until morning. That woman was still screaming, and he wasn’t going to get back to sleep right away, and if he waited someone else might collect whatever payment the magicians might be willing to make. He kicked aside his blanket and got to his feet.
A moment later the woman finally stopped screaming, but Zarek had already headed eastward into the city streets.
Throughout the city, dozens of others tried to figure out what had happened, or rolled over and went back to sleep, or panicked and ran or flew out into the streets. Hundreds walked or ran or flew northward.
And in Ethshar of the Sands, forty leagues to the west, the same scenes were repeated, on the same scale.
In Ethshar of the Rocks, far to the northwest, again the same events played out, though fewer people were affected there than in the more southerly cities.
In farms and villages beyond the walls of the cities, throughout the Hegemony of the Three Ethshars, people awoke choking or screaming, and a few of those who had been awake all along felt the touch of a strange new power. In the Baronies of Sardiron, in the war-tornlandof Tintallion, in the many tiny nations of the Small Kingdoms, magic flashed across the World and drove unsuspecting people from their beds.
Everywhere, those touched by the magic and those who saw them wondered what had happened, what this unfamiliar magic was, what would happen next.
And nowhere were there immediate answers to any of these questions.
Chapter Five
Lord Hanner ducked down in the doorway of a potter’s shop, hands over his head, as a nightgowned woman flew past shrieking at the top of her lungs, surrounded by a cloud of kitchen knives, broken glass, and miscellaneous debris. When she had passed he straightened up and looked after her.
Despite her screams, he could see no sign that she was injured or in pain; presumably she had simply panicked when... when whatever it was that happened had happened. She appeared unhurt and seemed to be controlling her magically propelled movements and the movements of her accompanying objects.
Anyone who wasn’t quick enough getting out of her way was likely to be hurt, though.
As the wind of her passage died away Hanner wondered what he should do. He was a lord, one of the overlord’s servants, responsible for keeping order in Ethshar, and whatever wild magic had broken loose moments earlier, it was definitely not orderly. That flying woman hadn’t been the first manifestation of out-of-control magic he had encountered in the quarter hour since the screaming and other commotion started-nor the second, nor the fifth. Something magical was definitely loose in the city, and definitely causing trouble.
So far he had been unable to make sense of it; the people he had encountered who were caught up in the magic, whatever it was, had shown no interest in talking to him. They didn’t seem to want any help, either, not even the ones who were still screaming. Instead they tended to fly about wildly, and some of them seemed willing to smash anything that got in their way.
“Is she gone?” a voice behind him asked. Hanner started.
“I think so,” he said, turning to find that a plain woman of uncertain age had opened the door of the shop. She peered about cautiously, then stepped out beside Hanner.
“Why was she screaming?”
“I don’t know,” Hanner said.
“Is she a wizard? She was flying, wasn’t she?” “She was flying,” Hanner agreed, “but I don’t think she’s a wizard. There’s some kind of magic causing trouble. She might be hurt-maybe we should follow her, see if we can
