The Unwelcome Warlock

a huge platter stacked high with honey cakes. Business was put aside as the tea was poured and a few of the cakes distributed.

When Obdur had retreated, and Hanner had downed three cups of tea and four of the little cakes, Ithinia said, “There’s something else I wanted to tell you.”

Hanner looked up from licking crumbs off his fingers. “Oh?”

“Yes,” Ithinia said. “We found your wife.”

Hanner jumped up, scattering crumbs and crockery in all directions. “Where is she? Is she all right?”

“She’s fine,” Ithinia said. “She’s fine, and all three of your children are fine.”

“Where are they?”

“I can give you her address. She’s living on Mustard Street, in Spicetown.” Ithinia looked at Hanner sadly and finished, “With her husband.”

Chapter Sixteen

Except for their size, the towers did not look like much. Vond and Sterren flew three circles around them, and Sterren really did not see anything very interesting. They were just towers, tall, unadorned cylinders, made of some unfamiliar gray substance that appeared to be midway between stone and metal. One of them was broken off on a rough diagonal about two-thirds of the way up, and the exposed surface revealed an incomprehensible jumble of mysterious stuff — crystal shards that glittered gold in the light of the setting sun, curving yellowish-white things that might have been bones, pipes made of a dozen different substances, colored cables, and so on, some of it partially melted. Other than that, the towers were featureless.

Going by what the break exposed, they were almost solid, with no stairs, ladders, or other way to ascend the interior; certainly they had no windows, and the tops of the two intact ones were rounded and smooth, not intended for anyone to stand on.

They made Sterren nervous.

“Can you feel it?” Vond asked, his voice amplified to a thunderous roar. “Feel the power!”

That, Sterren realized, was what was making him nervous — he could feel the power, and he had spent the last fifteen years suppressing any hint of magical ability he might have. Vond had altered Sterren’s brain so that he could draw energy from these towers, just as Vond himself did, but Sterren had deliberately refused to do so. He did not want to be a warlock. Oh, he had wanted to, a long time ago, when as a boy of twelve he had tried to apprentice himself to a warlock, but he had long since decided that he had been very fortunate to have failed that apprenticeship by showing no talent for warlockry. He had not wanted to ever be Called. And once the Wizards’ Guild banned warlocks from the region, he had not wanted to anger the Guild. Before that he had sometimes allowed himself just enough magic to win at dice more than was natural, but after Ithinia delivered the Guild’s ultimatum he had forsworn even that.

But here, flying maybe fifty feet from the towers that gave Lumeth of the Towers its name, he could feel power in the air around him. He could feel it flowing through his body, and his head almost seemed to be vibrating with it.

Vond clearly enjoyed this, but Sterren emphatically did not. “Can we go now?” he asked.

Vond gave him an angry glare, then took another long look at the towers. He swept up close and reached out one hand to touch the sleek gray side of the nearest one.

There was a sudden crack, like the sound of a tree limb snapping, and a green flash, and Sterren felt himself falling. He flailed wildly, reaching out, trying to find something to catch, to hold himself up.

Then he stopped in mid-air; Vond had caught him. He had fallen perhaps sixty feet — and so had Vond, Sterren realized.

Or no, Vond had fallen perhaps fifty. Where before the two men had been flying at the same altitude, Sterren was now several feet below his companion, and Sterren’s luggage hung unsupported still lower.

“It would seem there are protective spells on them,” Vond said. “Probably wizardry, from the feel of it.”

“Oh,” Sterren said, looking down at the hundred-foot drop beneath him.

“It’s a good thing we’re warlocks,” Vond continued. “That blast would have killed most people. My magic protected us.”

“Oh,” Sterren said again.

Vond frowned. “That was quite a powerful spell,” he said.

“Are you sure it was a spell, and not the towers themselves?” Sterren called up.

“No,” Vond admitted. “There’s something...something very strange about these towers. They’re magical, and of course we already assumed that, but it’s very strange magic. And the stuff they’re made of — it isn’t anything I’ve ever seen before. It’s got magic all through it, but I can’t tell what kind of magic.”

“Your Majesty,” Sterren called, “as your chief advisor, I suggest we stay well away from these things.”

“But this is where my power comes from!”

“They cause headaches in normal warlocks, one of them just tried to kill us, and the wizards claim to have put a variety of wards and safeguards around them.”

“Did they?” Vond glanced down at him, then up at the towers. “That might explain the green flash.”

“Yes, your Majesty, it might.”

Vond stared at the towers a moment longer, considering, then turned up an empty palm. “We can always come back later,” he said.

Then the two of them were swooping off to the northwest, Sterren’s baggage trailing behind, moving so quickly that for a moment Sterren had trouble breathing.

He glanced back at the towers, standing tall and straight, their west sides bright and the east sides black with shadow. Whatever they were, he was glad to be moving away. Being close to those towers was inexplicably disturbing.

He was also very glad Vond had not landed. He did not want his feet to touch Lumethan soil.

The sun was on the horizon and sinking fast; the detour to deliver the Called to Akalla had delayed their flight. Sterren wondered how far Vond intended to go tonight. As a warlock he was tireless, of course, and could generate his own light if necessary, so they might travel the entire distance to Ethshar, but he rather hoped they would not; Vond might not tire, but he did. He was not exerting himself in any way to stay airborne, but the journey was tiring nonetheless; the constant wind was wearing, the cold air sucked the warmth from his flesh, and he could not keep from tensing. He knew, intellectually, that he was securely supported by Vond’s magic, but some deep animal part of his brain did not accept that. It was convinced he was falling, and kept bracing for the inevitable impact, which became exhausting after a time.

Sterren was fairly certain that the towers were near Lumeth’s northern border; they were certainly a league or so northwest of the capital. He would be glad to be out of the forbidden area, and he thought Vond probably intended to fly at least that far before going to ground.

Indeed, the sun was still a red sliver on the western horizon when they came in sight of a castle perched atop a mountain, somewhat to the west of their route. Until now they had been passing over larger and larger hills, and this peak ahead and to the left was the first that was definitely, inarguably, a mountain, rather than a hill.

The first, but by no means the last; as they neared it Sterren could see a line of mountains extending northward, growing ever higher. He knew enough geography to know that this castle was Calimor, at the southern tip of the Southern Mountains, the range that ran down the center of the Small Kingdoms from Sevmor to — well, to here, to Calimor.

They were traveling below the height of the peaks and on the eastern side of the ridge, so that the mountains appeared as great dark shapes with the sun’s fading glow outlining them in red and gold. Calimor Castle was likewise a silhouette, one that passed and fell quickly behind as Vond flew steadily north-northwest.

They flew over a deep valley walled with rocky cliffs, a valley running east and west and separating the