“Was I in there?” The expression on his face worried Sensella; it seemed not so much the apprehension or revulsion she would have expected, but eager longing.
More people were tumbling down the sides of the mound, falling onto the grass; a few cried out in pain and surprise as they hit the ground. Then one of them, a woman Sensella thought looked about thirty, caught herself halfway down and flew to one side.
As if that reminded the others that they were warlocks, several people took to the air; suddenly curious, Sensella did the same, lifting herself up, leaving the confused man behind.
Her magic worked as well as ever — better, in fact. She shot upward with astonishing ease and had to catch herself before she slammed into the underside of the gigantic glowing object.
Once airborne, she had a clearer view of what was going on. A long, thin, grayish-white projection of some sort, vaguely tubular, was reaching down from the hovering thing and pushing down into the mound of people, pulling some of them out and heaving them aside, where they tumbled down to the ground — or if they reacted in time, caught themselves before they fell that far. Some of them, Sensella saw, then flung themselves back against the mound, trying to get back into it. She couldn’t tell whether any of them succeeded.
Most of them, though, were able to resist the Calling, as Sensella could, now that the Response had come. They were flying about the scene in a cloud of warlocks, like gnats around a lantern, looking at the mound and at the thing blotting out the sky.
“
“Listen to it,” someone else replied. “That’s what was being Called all along! Whatever’s down there didn’t want
“We just got caught up by accident?”
“But what
Dozens of people were talking at once now, in a dozen languages, and Sensella could no longer follow it all. She ignored the other warlocks and tried to understand what was happening.
The pile, she knew, was made up of warlocks who had answered the Call, and the only reason she had not plunged right into it and become part of it, trapped in whatever spell held it together, was that the Response, as she thought of it — the voiceless message of comfort that came from that gargantuan flying thing that had come down out of the sky — had drowned out the Calling and let her think again.
The Calling came from
But now the Response
It had been Calling warlocks for all those years; that was a
But it couldn’t be
“Aunt Kallia?”
Sensella turned to see a man she judged to be in his late thirties staring at a young woman. Both were flying above the mound, and their almost random flight had brought them near one another, and near Sensella as well.
The woman turned to look at the man. “Do I know you?” she asked.
“I’m Chanden! Your nephew Chanden! Luralla’s son!”
The woman blinked at him. “But Chanden’s just a boy!”
“I was on the Night of Madness, when you vanished, but that was more than twenty years ago.”
“Thirty-four,” Sensella interjected.
The young woman looked confused. “I don’t understand,” she said.
“Thirty-four?” Chanden turned to Sensella. “How do you know?”
“I wasn’t in there,” Sensella said, pointing down at the pile of humanity. “I was just arriving when...when
“So — so it’s 5236? I’m eight years in the future?”
“It’s 5236, yes. Were you in there for eight years?”
“I...I suppose I was.” He looked down. “It doesn’t
“If it was 5228 when you came, then it’s been eight years.”
“It didn’t even feel like eight
“Magic,” Sensella told him. “
He looked up. “Yes,” he said. “It must be.”
“Your aunt,” Sensella asked. “She disappeared on the Night of Madness?”
“Yes.”
“And that’s her? She’s out now?”
“Yes! It flung her out just now. I saw it, and I recognized her, but she doesn’t know me...”
“It’s dug down to the first warlocks, then?”
Chanden turned. “Oh. I guess it has, yes.”
Sensella was not sure why, but that troubled her. The Response, whatever it was, must be almost down to the source of the Call. She looked down and was suddenly aware that she was standing on nothing, perhaps a hundred feet up.
She had done that dozens, maybe hundreds of times since the Night of Madness. She had flown for miles without feeling any worry, but now it troubled her. She swooped down, eager to get back on solid ground. She landed perhaps fifty feet from the mound and turned — just as the next big change came.
The first had been when the flying thing had appeared out of nowhere and she had felt the Response; the second had been when it started burrowing down into the mound, flinging warlocks aside.
And the third was when the spell holding the immense mound of people together suddenly stopped.
The change was abrupt, completely unheralded — one instant the pile of people was motionless, undetectable to warlock senses, magically frozen in time, and the next instant they were awake and aware of their surroundings, aware of being trapped in a gigantic three-dimensional mob. They were writhing and screaming, spilling outward in all directions, trying to get out before they were smothered or crushed.
“It’s all right!” Sensella shouted, using her magic to snatch the nearest person out of the seething mass. “You’re safe! Just use your magic!” She pulled a second person free, and a third, dropping them unceremoniously on the grass a few yards away from the suddenly-expanding ball of screaming, crying warlocks.
The mound collapsed and vanished, and still people came spilling out, flying, running, walking, jumping, or crawling. The mound was gone, and in its place was a pit, and the pit was jammed full of people.
Sensella was not the only one helping; dozens of other warlocks were calling reassurances and pulling panicky people to safety. The crowd surrounding the pit extended for a hundred yards in every direction and was still expanding, and hundreds or even thousands of warlocks were flying above, as well.
Sensella looked up at the swarm of warlocks with an inexplicable sense of foreboding. She didn’t know why, but she was absolutely certain this was a bad time to be flying. “Get down!” she called. “It’s not safe up there!”
Still more people were clambering or flying out of the pit. Sensella could not see it through the crowd anymore, but she could sense it magically now, and she knew it was deep, very deep — the people at the bottom