The Unwelcome Warlock

She turned up an empty palm. “Ethshar managed well enough before the Night of Madness. I’m sure we can manage again now that the madness is gone.”

“Warlockry isn’t madness!”

She sighed. “No,” she admitted, “it wasn’t. But it’s gone, and it’s not coming back.”

“Can’t you find some other source, then?” he pleaded. “Is there no great wizardry you might perform that would restore our power?”

“Zallin, a sixnight ago you would have claimed that warlockry deserved to be considered the equal of any other school of magic; do you really think one wizard can restore it?”

“I don’t know!” he wailed. “I don’t understand wizardry, but you people have always claimed to be able to perform miracles, to create entire worlds with some of your spells — how do I know you can’t provide a new power source for us?”

She met his gaze and said, “I cannot create a new source of power for warlocks.” She did not say she could not provide one; she was all too aware that one already existed, in Lumeth of the Towers. “Zallin, have you noticed that I have not called you chairman?”

“I...no. I don’t understand.”

“There are no more warlocks in Ethshar, Zallin. There is no more Council of Warlocks for you to chair. Accept it.”

He straightened and threw back his shoulders. “I do not accept that, Guildmaster! I will never accept it!”

“You should. But even if you refuse to acknowledge that the Council is no more, it is unclear whether you are still its chairman.”

“What?” He looked shocked.

“Zallin, the departure of the Source did not merely put an end to warlockry; before it left, it released all the warlocks it had Called. All of them, back to the Night of Madness, magically preserved just as they were when they reached Aldagmor. It’s estimated to be at least fifteen thousand people, and most of them are on their way here right now.”

“What? I don’t understand.”

“All the Called warlocks are coming back, Zallin. And that includes Hanner, the original Chairman of the Council of Warlocks. If I were to recognize anyone as chairman, it would be Hanner, not you.”

“But he’s... They aren’t dead?”

“They aren’t dead. Oh, a few were killed in the confusion, but most of them are alive and well.”

“But that...but...”

Ithinia could almost see him trying to grasp that, and trying to decide whether it was good or bad. Obviously, he knew he should think it was a good thing that thousands of his elders had not died, as he had always assumed, but at the same time, he liked being the city’s senior warlock, and did not want to be shoved aside.

And if she remembered correctly, he and Hanner had never much liked each other.

After a moment, he reached a conclusion.

“You can’t restore my magic?”

“I cannot.”

“Can any wizard?”

“Not that I know of, but we’re a secretive lot. I can’t say for certain that there is no spell that would serve your purpose, only that if there is, I never heard of it.”

“Then I am sorry to have troubled you, Guildmaster.” He bowed. “I will be going.”

“As you please,” she said with a nod. She stepped aside, and heard Obdur opening the front door as she did. She watched as Zallin marched out, clearly trying to look haughty, but only managing petulant.

Obdur closed the door behind him, and Ithinia stared at it for a moment.

There was a man who would be very happy indeed if Vond did start training warlocks to use the power of the Lumeth towers. She would have to make sure that he would never have the opportunity to ask Vond’s assistance.

“Obdur,” she said, “go fetch the gargoyles; I have messages to send.”

Chapter Eleven

Someone had been killed and partially eaten during the night. Several people insisted it must have been a dragon, probably one of Aldagon’s spawn, but after looking at the remains, Hanner didn’t believe it.

“Look at the tracks,” he said, trying to ignore the fact that he could see his own breath and could barely keep from shivering. He didn’t want to think about the cold and what it might do. “Those don’t look like dragon’s claws to me. There are no scorch marks, and no one saw any light or heard anything; wouldn’t a dragon use fire?”

“They don’t all breathe fire,” someone said.

If true, that was news to Hanner, but he wasn’t about to admit it. “But the tracks! No dragon would leave tracks like that.”

No one could argue with that; the tracks were like nothing any of them had ever seen before, diagonal grooves very closely spaced that looked nothing at all like the talon-marks a dragon would leave.

The dead man — no one seemed to know him — had been sleeping well away from his nearest neighbors; he had probably just wanted a little peace and quiet, away from the noise and smell of so many people. That had apparently been his undoing. His isolation meant, though, that the ground where he had died had not been trampled by a hundred feet; the marks in the soft ground were unusually clear.

Clear, but very strange indeed.

“It’s probably a mizagar,” someone murmured, not far from Hanner’s right shoulder. He turned to see a woman a little older than himself staring down at the muddy mess.

“A what?”

“A mizagar,” the woman repeated. Hanner didn’t recognize her, and her attire suggested that she had been Called on the Night of Madness — she wore a green flannel nightgown that was unfashionable even when Hanner was a boy.

“What’s a mizagar?” he asked.

The woman looked around nervously. “They’re...an old story,” she said. She spoke Ethsharitic with a strong Sardironese accent. “My grandfather told me about them when I was a little girl. They’re supposed to be leftovers from the Great War, creatures that the Northerners turned loose in areas where they didn’t want to bother putting soldiers or magicians. They’re as big as a horse in the body, but with short, thick legs and much larger heads. Their hide is leathery and hairless and completely black, so black they’re practically invisible at night, and they move low to the ground, to make them even harder to spot and so they can move more silently. They’re very, very fast. Humans are their preferred food, but they can live on other things for as long as necessary. They don’t breed, but they don’t age, either — if there’s one around here, it’s more than two hundred years old. They won’t go near houses, because the Northerners didn’t want them to attack outposts, but no one in Aldagmor would ever sleep out in the fields or woods for fear of them.”

“You’re from Aldagmor?”

She nodded.

“I know her,” Rayel Roggit’s son volunteered. “This is Fanria the Clever; she lived a mile east of us.”

Hanner said, “Fanria?” He had never heard the name Fanria before, but he supposed Ethshar and Sardiron might have different naming customs.

“Yes,” she said. “I’m Fanria.”

“You think these things might be around here?”

“We’re out in the wilderness here,” she said. “Even before that thing fell out of the sky, no one lived here. It’s just the sort of place the old stories say they live.”