The Unwelcome Warlock

anywhere near Lumeth of the Towers. They wouldn’t all find places for themselves right away, but the ones who had homes to return to could do so, and the rest would be so scattered they would be no real threat to peace and order.

That was all the Wizards’ Guild really cared about, of course — keeping peace and order. Helping out a bunch of people was a pleasant side-effect, and any gratitude they might feel toward wizards would be welcome, but the main thing was to not leave an army of desperate people sitting out there in the cold and mud, ready to cause trouble.

Removing their potential leaders probably hadn’t been necessary, but Ithinia was just as glad to have people like Vond and Hanner and Rudhira away from the main group.

Rudhira probably wasn’t any threat without her magic, in any case, but Ithinia still remembered the little redhead pulling an entire mountain of water up toward the sky to test her ability. Anyone who had ever tasted that sort of power wanted watching. Most warlocks didn’t reach that level before being Called.

Hanner was the natural leader of the group, but even after seventeen years as chairman he didn’t seem to realize it. He had always taken his position to be a fluke, never acknowledging how much like his uncle Faran he was. Lord Faran had been the effective ruler of the city for much of the reign of Azrad the Sedentary, and while Hanner hadn’t inherited any of the ambition that had made that possible, and he certainly hadn’t had Faran’s looks or his way with women, he had the same knack for seeing what needed to be done and making sure it was done.

Fortunately, what he thought needed to be done usually suited the Guild’s own needs nicely. Making him an ally, at least provisionally, was easy.

Vond, though — Vond might be a problem. He was still a warlock because he had learned to use the magic of the Lumeth Towers, as well as the magic radiated by the Warlock Stone, and he did have ambition. Unchecked power, ambition — and not, from what Ithinia knew of him, any excess of intelligence. That made him very dangerous indeed. But he had violated the Guild’s ban on warlocks in the vicinity of Lumeth, so the Guild had a perfectly legitimate excuse for killing him, and it wouldn’t even count as meddling in politics.

Ithinia still hadn’t decided whether to kill him directly, or turn the job over to the cult of Demerchan. Either approach could be slanted to make the Guild look good. Demerchan never explained how they decided who to kill, so the Guild could dodge the responsibility entirely, perhaps even blame the assassination on the family of one of the kings Vond had deposed in assembling his empire.

If the Guild killed him directly, they could play the stern-but-fair role. It wasn’t as if Vond was particularly loved by his people; he’d been gone for fifteen years, and hadn’t yet had time to properly reestablish himself.

She had also decided that if she had to kill him herself, or choose the spell for someone else, she would use a transformation of some sort. She knew that warlocks could be petrified, or turned into animals, and that for some reason it was much, much easier to get such a spell past a warlock’s defenses than any more direct sort of attack. Statues or beasts couldn’t use warlockry, so once Vond was transformed, he could be killed easily. Also, if a transformation spell failed, it would be less obvious than if Vond survived being struck by a meteor or blasted with supernatural flame.

The trick was choosing exactly the right transformation to make the right impression on any witnesses. Some of the best transformations wouldn’t be possible, because so far as Ithinia had been able to determine, nobody knew Vond’s true name. It almost certainly wasn’t Vond. No one Ithinia had asked admitted to having ever heard of a warlock named Vond prior to his appearance in Semma.

Of course, she might not have asked the right people.

Ordinarily she would have used a divination of some sort to learn his true name, but divinations didn’t work on warlocks. That was profoundly annoying.

Eliminating spells that required a true name left about half a dozen possibilities. Haldane’s Instantaneous Transformation wasn’t practical, though, as that required physically touching the target with the skin of whatever animal he was to become. Llarimuir’s Mass Transmogrification was intended for multiple targets, rather than a single individual, but it would work — if Ithinia could find anyone willing to attempt a twelfth-order spell. She didn’t care to attempt it herself.

Fendel’s Greater Transformation would probably work, but since that normally left the victim with human abilities, such as being able to speak, in addition to the abilities natural to whatever animal or plant he became, Ithinia wasn’t completely convinced it would stop Vond from using warlockry.

The Greater Spell of Transmutation would do, as would either Bazil’s Irreversible Petrifaction or Fendel’s Superior Petrifaction. One of those was probably the best choice. The big drawback with all of them was that they required the victim be within sight of the wizard casting the spell. It didn’t need to be a direct line of sight, though; a reflected image would do, or the image in a scrying glass or other visual divination. That would be easy to arrange with an ordinary man, but warlocks were naturally resistant to wizardry — it wasn’t just finding Vond’s true name that was difficult, but any sort of divination involving him. Getting a clear enough image in a scrying glass might be difficult.

She hoped that all the Called warlocks he had taken with him to Semma could be removed before any of them managed to adapt to the energy of the towers the way Vond had. She knew many had already regretted their decision to accompany him and fled toward the coast, and she was optimistic about getting the rest out of the area once Vond had been dealt with.

Well, now that the main body of the Called had been dissipated harmlessly, she could turn her full attention to the dear little Emperor. She turned away from the divinely-created gate and the steady stream of former warlocks.

“Guildmaster Ithinia?”

Startled, she looked around, and found Rothiel standing a few feet away, waving to be seen above the crowd. “Yes?” she said.

“I have news I think you’ll want to hear.”

Ithinia felt fairly certain that his news was actually something she needed to hear, but did not want to, but she did not bother to argue semantics. “This way,” she said, beckoning.

She hadn’t bothered to bring any privacy spells, but she reached in the pouch on her belt to see if there was anything that might help. She had the pearl and candle necessary for Fendel’s Rune of Privacy, but that would hardly be practical out here in the street, where any casual passerby might disrupt the sphere of silence. No other quick and suitable spells came to mind, and she did not really want to invite Rothiel into her home, where protections were already in place. They would just need to speak cautiously.

The two wizards made their way out of the plaza and up Merchant Street, then onto West Avenue; by the time they reached the corner of West Avenue and Lower Street they were clear of the throngs of warlocks and spectators, who were expanding in other directions than this.

“What is it, Rothiel?” Ithinia demanded, once she thought they would probably not be overheard. She kept walking, in the direction of her own house.

“It’s Vond,” he said, walking beside her.

Ithinia had feared as much. “What’s he done? Has he attacked Lumeth?”

Rothiel waved a hand in denial. “No, no. Nothing like that.”

“He isn’t invading somewhere? He’s still in Semma?”

“Well — no. He’s not.”

Ithinia frowned. “Not Semma or Lumeth? Then where is he?”

“Here. In Ethshar.”

“What?” She turned to glare at the other wizard.

“In Ethshar. On High Street. At Warlock House. He arrived early this morning.”

“What’s he doing there?”

Rothiel turned up an empty palm. “Right now, I believe he’s out for a walk, accompanied by Zallin of the Mismatched Eyes.”

“Oh, blood,” Ithinia growled. Of all the people who might be associating with Vond, Zallin would have been very nearly her last choice. She just hoped Zallin couldn’t nag Vond into tinkering with his brain so that he, too, could use the power of Lumeth’s towers.

She wished she could be sure whether or not Vond wanted other warlocks