The Unwelcome Warlock

But then the roads and canals stopped, and the farms grew smaller, less even, and less prosperous, and Sterren knew they had left the empire and passed into Lumeth of the Towers.

He shivered at the realization. They were now breaking the treaty with the Wizards’ Guild, defying the Guild’s edict. Long ago, Ithinia of the Isle had calmly told him that if he ever set foot in Lumeth, he would be killed. She had also told him that wards had been set all along the border to alert the Guild if the empire tried to invade any of its neighbors, or vice versa.

He hoped that those wards did not extend this far up, and that flying over Lumeth, not under his own power, would not have the same result as setting his feet on the ground; all the same, he knew he would feel much safer once they were beyond Lumeth, and beyond Eknissamor — Eknissamor was the most northerly of the kingdoms where warlockry was forbidden. Once they had passed that point, they would no longer be in violation of the Guild’s rules.

He glanced back at the emperor’s “honor guard,” and suddenly realized that most of them were in pain — several were clutching at their temples, and at least one had started screaming; Sterren had not recognized the sound as anything but more wind at first.

He silently cursed his own stupidity in not foreseeing this. “Your Majesty!” he shouted. “Your Majesty! Vond!”

“Hm?” The warlock turned to see Sterren pointing at their suffering companions.

Abruptly, their forward motion stopped, and the entire party hung motionless in mid-air, a at least hundred yards up.

“What’s happening?” Vond asked.

Sterren pointed north and made a gesture that he hoped indicated a tower.

“Oh?” Vond said. “Oh!”

Suddenly they were moving again, but to the southwest, rather than northwest, and descending. A moment later they began landing in an empty field that Sterren judged to be just inside the empire’s border. Most of the former warlocks stumbled, and about half of them fell, upon touching ground; Vond had not been particularly gentle about bringing them down, and while they had all flown before they were accustomed to being in control of their own motion, not being dragged about by someone else’s magic.

“Wait here,” Vond told them. Then he and Sterren shot upward.

The sudden motion was frightening, and Sterren’s stomach did not take it well, but he managed to keep his lunch down.

“They’re feeling it, aren’t they?” Vond demanded, once he was sure he and Sterren were well out of earshot. “The hum. The power.”

“I think so, yes,” Sterren said. “After all, they were all powerful enough to be Called, just as you were.”

“I can’t take them any closer, then.”

“They might adjust to it, as you did; then you wouldn’t be the only warlock.”

Vond shook his head. “I don’t want that. I don’t know these people, not really. I don’t know whether I can trust them with this magic.”

Sterren glanced down at the others, scattered on a farmer’s field. Several were still holding their heads and appeared to be moaning. “Then you mustn’t take them any further into Lumeth.”

“But I wanted to see the towers!”

“The Wizards’ Guild doesn’t want us anywhere near the towers.”

“To Hell with the Wizards’ Guild! I’m going back to Ethshar, and that should be good enough for them. If I want to do a little sightseeing along the way, I don’t see how that hurts them, and I don’t care if it does!”

“It hurts them, though,” Sterren said, pointing down at the nineteen Called warlocks.

“Then maybe I’ll just leave them here.”

“Strand them out here in the middle of nowhere?”

Vond hesitated. “Blast it. It was your idea to bring them; why didn’t you realize this would happen?”

“I didn’t know what route you were going to take!” Sterren protested. “You didn’t give us time to discuss it.”

He knew, though, that he should have expected it; he had known that the warlocks could sense the energy Vond was using, and found it uncomfortable.

Vond frowned. “Fine. I’ll take them to the nearest port and let them take a ship, and when that’s done, you and I will go take a look at the towers, and the Pillar of Flame, and then we’ll go to Ethshar.”

“As your Majesty pleases.”

Vond looked around. “Where is the nearest port?”

Sterren looked out across the landscape, trying to match it to the maps of the empire, and finally said, “Akalla of the Diamond. That way.”

“Good,” Vond said. He looked down, and the former warlocks were suddenly snatched upward, and a moment later the entire party was flying southwest at high speed — much too fast for further conversation.

An hour later nineteen terrified, exhausted, miserable people were unceremoniously dumped on a pier in Akalla, and the emperor’s voice boomed from overhead.

“Send them to Ethshar!” he said. “Put them on the next ship, at my expense!”

Sterren watched for a moment as people scurried about, rushing to please the warlock emperor. Then he was swept away northward again, toward Lumeth of the Towers.

Chapter Fifteen

Hanner emerged from the magical staircase in the middle of Eastgate Market and looked around at a city that was simultaneously familiar and strange. He had not been in Eastgate Market in a year or more — or rather, for at least eighteen years. It had changed.

Oh, the gate itself was still there, standing tall between the mismatched towers, and the city wall stretching away to either side was much the same. The Hundred-Foot Field, just inside the wall, was still an expanse of tents, improvised shelters, cook-fires, beggars, and garbage. The guards still wore the familiar red and gold uniforms, and lounged by the gate and under the red-and-gold pennants that separated the Field from the market. The market itself was hard-packed brown earth, and smelled of fish and the ocean. Dozens of merchants were still hawking clams, oysters, and crabs from stalls, tents, and tables; one or two displayed a few sorry boxes of dates, oranges, or other fruit.

But none of them were merchants Hanner recognized, and the layout of the stalls was different. The old Eastgate Inn that had occupied the center of the north side of the market, just west of the Field, since the end of the Great War was gone, and the open-sided pavilion that stood in its place did not look new; its timbers were darkened from exposure to the weather, and the signboard proclaiming it to be the Eastgate Labor Exchange was faded. The ornamental gateway that had stood beside the inn at the entrance to East Wall Street was still there, but had been repainted with an entirely different color scheme — Hanner remembered it as blue and white, but now it was red, blue, and gold.

The stonemason’s shop between the gate and Lighthouse Street was now an ironmonger’s shop, and its stone walls, which had always been unadorned, now boasted elaborate wrought-iron trim.

The block of shops at the west end of the square looked much the same; Hanner thought one or two might have changed tenants, but that happened frequently. On the south side the tunnel-like entrance to a warren of small shops around an irregular courtyard was gone, replaced by a weaver’s workshop displaying a lovely array of bright fabrics.

Rudhira had stopped dead a few feet ahead of him, and Hanner realized that the changes must be even greater and more shocking for her than they were for him — she had not been here for thirty-four years. She probably remembered the old brewery that had stood on the south side, and had the ornamental gate even been built yet that far back?