The Unwelcome Warlock

“Then swear you won’t try to harm me or deceive me.”

Ithinia decided it was time to calm her foe. She put a hand on the hilt of her athame. “I swear by my life and my blade that I will not attempt to harm you, and that I will not again use magic to deceive you, nor advise others to do so.”

Vond glared at her for a moment, then nodded. “That will do. I’m tempted to demand that you swear loyalty to me, but I suppose that would conflict with some Guild oath you’ve taken.”

“Yes, it would,” Ithinia answered. It might even be true, she thought.

“Then I’ll do without it.” He turned to go. “You might want to warn the other magicians not to get in my way,” he called back over his shoulder.

“Your Majesty?” Ithinia said.

He paused. “What?”

“May I ask what your plans are? What is it you intend to do with your power?”

Vond seemed puzzled by the question. “Whatever I please,” he said.

“Yes, but what pleases you?”

Again, he seemed confused. “Good food. Beautiful women. Sunny days. A comfortable home. The same things that please anyone.”

“So you have no plans to usurp the overlord’s position?”

Vond waved a hand dismissively. “I can’t be bothered to run a government. I tried that in Semma — it’s tiresome. I will happily let others deal with the necessity of keeping order, so long as they do so in a way that pleases me and does not interfere with my own actions.”

“You have no schemes for expanding your existing empire to include Ethshar?”

He snorted. “Wizard, the entire World is already mine — it’s just that some people don’t realize it yet.” He turned again.

This time Ithinia let him go. She did not send Obdur to see him out; she did not want to risk Vond killing her servant simply because he was there.

She waited for the sound of the front door closing, but it didn’t come. After a moment she went to look, and found that Vond had left the door standing open, allowing the cold air of a winter’s night to pour in.

“Inconsiderate fool,” Ithinia muttered, as she shut the door. A moment later, though, she opened it again and stepped out.

The street was empty, but she heard voices. She looked around. Her gargoyles were fluttering clumsily about the neighbors’ rooftops, calling to one another, and she realized they were guiding people out through the courtyards and alleys between Lower and High Street, out from under the hovering palace. She could hear human voices in the distance, as well, shouting instructions.

And the air above the houses was full of flying carpets, and those newfangled flying carriages that had come into fashion a few years ago, and levitating wizards, fetching people and papers down from the palace. Clearly, several people had not waited for her to take the lead in dealing with the situation.

That was good. It was a relief to see people showing some initiative — but at the same time, she fervently hoped they were being careful about it. Vond could be irrationally touchy; he might take almost anything as a personal affront.

She had sworn not to harm him, so she would not, but she certainly wasn’t going to stop anyone else from harming him. She wondered whether the Cult of Demerchan had decided yet whether they would kill him.

If they did kill him, someone had better be ready to bring that palace down safely, and she only knew one spell she would trust to do the job — the structure was too big for the usual restoratives and stasis spells. She glanced around, looking for the orange glow of the greater moon — Varrin’s Greater Propulsion could only be completed when both moons were full, and while the lesser moon ran through its cycle in less than a day, the greater moon would only be in the correct phase once a month. She hoped that Demerchan would not be hasty, as she thought the necessary occasion was still a sixnight or so away.

She would also need seven pure white stones, iron that had fallen from the sky, a peacock plume, a thick black candle, a blue glass bottle, a dagger carved from rock crystal and sharpened with a feather, and of course several pounds of seawater-scented incense, with a silver censer to burn it in. Her set of stones was in her workshop drawer, and there was a suitable bottle holding a few flowers in the southwest guest room, but she was not sure exactly where the other components were; she might need to buy or borrow some of them. She had a vague recollection of selling her crystal knife to one of her former apprentices a century or so back.

She wondered whether the overlord might want to keep his palace airborne for awhile once this was all over. Flying castles, never common, had been considered quite prestigious during the Great War. That assumed, of course, that it would someday be all over, and that Lord Azrad, or at least one of his heirs, would survive that long.

At least Vond wasn’t actively malevolent, just greedy and stupid — and at that, she didn’t think he was as stupid as that silly thief Tabaea, who had declared herself an empress in Ethshar of the Sands a decade back.

Ithinia grimaced at the memory of how badly Telurinon and the others had handled the problems Tabaea created. She liked to think she would have done far better. But then she looked up at the overlord’s palace, hanging in the air three hundred feet above her head, and decided she had nothing to brag about, either.

Chapter Thirty-One

Hanner tried to be modest, but he really thought he had been rather clever in telling the former warlocks who chose to leave Warlock House, rather than serve Vond, that they should claim to have fled homes on Lower Street, or in the surrounding neighborhood. The overlord had ordered the city guard to find space for all such refugees in the city’s defenses — in the towers by the various gates, in the barracks in Camptown, or in the wall itself. There was no way for the guards to know who really lived in the threatened houses, and who had spent the last twenty years frozen in Aldagmor, so Hanner had passed the word among the Called to go to the guards and claim to have been displaced from the houses beneath the palace.

Of course, that only applied to the Called who had been using the guest rooms; the ones who had vanished into the tapestry had stayed where they were. That other-worldly village was probably the safest place anyone could be, as far as any threat Vond might pose was concerned; his magic could not reach it at all, and Vond himself, Hanner assumed, would never dare set foot there.

Or at least so Hanner thought, as he wearily climbed the stairs. Vond could be unpredictable.

Hanner had finally done everything useful he could think of, and he was exhausted, eager to get some sleep. He had worked the night through, directing the evacuation of Lower Street, helping get people and possessions safely down from the palace, and making sure that all his guests in Warlock House understood the situation and knew they were volunteering themselves for Vond’s service if they stayed.

About three-fourths of them had left, but a dozen or so seemed to like the idea of becoming underlings to the apparent ruler of the World. Hanner had told them he didn’t think Vond would ever carry through on making anyone else back into a warlock, but some of them didn’t believe him, and others didn’t seem to care — they preferred the security of Vond’s service to the uncertainty of the streets.

Hanner was almost to the second floor, lifting a foot toward the landing, when the door of Vond’s chamber opened and the warlock drifted out.

“Oh, there you are!” he said. “I’ve been waiting.”

Hanner lowered his foot and blinked stupidly at Vond from the top step. “What?”

“You were going to show me that tapestry,” Vond said impatiently. “You should have been back here hours ago!”

Hanner glanced back down the stairs, and along the corridor, hoping to find someone else who might distract the emperor, but no one else was in sight. “My apologies, your Majesty,” he said. “I’m afraid I was so distracted by your...your demonstration that I completely forgot.”

“Demonstration? Oh, you mean the overlord’s palace?” Vond grinned happily. “Isn’t it magnificent? I’m holding it up right now, and it’s no more trouble than wearing a hat.”