The Unwilling Warlord (18 page)

Chapter Twenty-Three

Eventually, of course, Vond landed again. Sterren was stubborn enough to wait for him.

He was not stubborn enough to wait out in the rain, though. He ducked into the little farmhouse and tried in vain to dry off, glancing out the windows every so often to see if Vond had tired of playing with the storm.

The clouds were rained away completely somewhat before sunset, but the warlock stayed aloft, whipping the winds back and forth, sending sprays of sand and rock hither and yon. The besieging armies were long since gone, leaving behind scattered bits of equipment and trash, strewn across a sea of mud.

Sterren saw no bodies, but he suspected a few might be out there. He noticed that much of the village surrounding Semma Castle had been flattened, not just the sappers’ ramshackle structures or the lightly-built shops, but the solid original houses as well.

The sun was down, and the last light fading, when the warlock finally settled to earth.

“Hai,” Sterren called from his shelter, “congratulations!”

Vond turned, spotted him in the window, and bowed. “Thank you, my lord,” he said. He smiled. “Gods, that felt good! To be able to let myself go, use all the power I wanted, without worrying about those damned nightmares — it was wonderful!”

Sterren did not bother going around to the door. He hoisted himself up into the window, and was about to drop down on the outside when he felt an invisible grasp close about him and pull him gently free of the frame.

He floated gently over, and found himself hanging in the air in front of the warlock.

This was disconcerting, but not particularly uncomfortable. Sterren flexed a little, and found he could move freely, but that no matter how he moved he remained floating in the same spot, a couple of yards from the warlock’s face.

“Hello, there,” he said.

“Hello,” Vond replied, grinning broadly.

Sterren shifted, getting a bit more comfortable in his unnatural elevation. He considered carefully exactly what he ought to say, and finally just asked, “What happened?”

“Well,” Vond said thoughtfully, “I’m not sure of all the details. Somehow, though, I tapped into the buzz, and then I had all the power I wanted, all at once.” He waved at the desolation on all sides, displaying his handiwork.

Sterren nodded, contemplating the wasteland. “And you aren’t worried about nightmares?” he asked. “What if this new source is just like the one in Aldagmor, in the long run?” While the warlock had been reveling in his new power, Sterren had spent much of the storm considering the various possibilities, and he felt that it would be unfair to not point the many possible dangers out to Vond.

Vond shook his head. “It isn’t. It can’t be. I’d know.”

Sterren didn’t reply, but the warlock read his doubting expression.

“You think I’m being reckless, don’t you? Don’t worry, Sterren, I’m not. I tell you, I know this new source isn’t like the old. Whatever the Source in Aldagmor is, it’s conscious, or at least run by a conscious entity — I’ve known that since I was an apprentice. We warlocks always have a vague feeling of contact, of communication, when we use our magic, and besides, surely the nightmares and the Calling to go to Aldagmor are sent by something.”

Sterren nodded. He had to admit that much.

“Well,” Vond said, “this power source does not seem to be conscious — it’s just raw power. When I used the Aldagmor source, as I told you, it was like listening to a whisper, hearing it but not catching the words. Using this new source like listening to the hum of a bee — there are no words, just sound.”

“But if that’s so, then why aren’t there any warlocks here already, drawing on this source?” Sterren asked. “They don’t even have a word for warlock in Semmat!”

“I can only guess,” Vond said.

“Guess, then,” Sterren said.

Vond waved dramatically. “Warlockry, my dear Sterren, first appeared on the Night of Madness, back in 5202 — you know that. That was when the Source first appeared in Aldagmor. It created warlockry, all at once; warlocks ap­peared spontaneously, hundreds of them. It was . . . well, it was as if the thing let out one shout, to get people listening, and then its voice died away to that whisper I keep talking about.”

Sterren nodded.

“Well,” Vond continued, “this new source never shouted. There’s no telling what it is, or how long it’s been there, but it could mean a whole new existence for warlocks, because if it’s not conscious, then it won’t cause any nightmares or compulsions, now, will it?”

“I don’t know,” Sterren said, “and neither do you. Maybe it’s just sleeping. Maybe the one in Aldagmor was just sleeping there, all along, until it woke up in 5202, and this one could wake up tomorrow.”

“Or it could sleep for another thousand years, if you’re right,” Vond said, “but you aren’t. I can feel it, I tell you; this new source is dead, not just sleeping. It was never alive and never will be. It’s totally mindless.”

“You’re the one taking the risks,” Sterren said, “so it’s none of my business, really, but Vond, I wouldn’t put that much faith in it if I were you. How do you know it isn’t sleeping? You can’t know. Your feelings could be wrong.”

Vond shook his head. “No, you don’t understand what it’s like. I can use the power itself to tell me whether it’s conscious, sleeping, alive, dead, whatever. It’s mindless, empty — like a . . . a running stream, or a millwheel grinding.”

Sterren was still uneasy, but saw no point in further argument on that particular subject. Vond was clearly not eager to consider any negative aspects to his situation just now, and after all, anything Sterren could say would be mere guesswork. “I hope you’re right,” he said.

“I know I’m right,” Vond replied.

“If you are,” Sterren said, nettled by Vond’s certainty, “then why hasn’t anybody found this thing before? Even if it never made its own warlocks, the way the Aldagmor source did, there have been warlocks for twenty years, and you can’t be the first one to ever come south.”

“I may be the first one to ever come this far south,” Vond replied.

Sterren conceded the point, but said, “Even so . . .”

Vond cut him off. “Maybe,” he said, “I’m somehow different. Perhaps I’m unique, the only warlock who can use this new source — it is a bit different, after all, and I might never have . . . have listened to it, if you hadn’t suggested it.”

“Did you ever think you weren’t like other warlocks before this happened?”

“No, not really. I was getting very powerful, of course. The power increases with use as one becomes attuned to it, better able to listen in to the Source, as it were, and I’d been listening very closely for quite some time. Lord Azrad hired me to dredge the harbor last year, you know, and I did it single-handed, and . . . well, after that, the whisper was more of a mutter, and then . . . well.”

“The nightmares,” Sterren said.

“Eventually, yes. And then you came along, and here we are.”

Sterren decided to stop looking for flaws. For one thing, he had not even mentioned what he saw as the most likely long-term problem, but seeing how easily Vond had hauled him out the window, he had a certain uneasiness about the warlock’s new power, and he thought he might someday want Vond to have problems.

Not that he had any intention of telling the warlock that. “And so here you are with this new source of magic,” he said, smiling. “Congratulations!”

“Yes, isn’t it wonderful? I was straining hard, trying to listen to the old Source, to draw enough power to crack that beam, and I was ignoring the buzz, and then I thought about what you said and tried to listen to the buzz, too, and then it wasn’t a buzz anymore, it was something entirely different, something that I could draw power from, and it was close and strong and I was more powerful than I ever was back in Ethshar!”

“It’s close?” Sterren asked. He had somehow assumed that the buzz came from somewhere beyond the edge of the World, and was a good distance away.

“I think so — in that direction.” He pointed off vaguely northwest — but then, Sterren thought, almost the entire World lay to the northwest of Semma. This new source was not beyond the edge of the World, but that didn’t really narrow it down much.

The two men looked at each other, glanced around at the storm-blasted plain, and then simultaneously started to speak. They stopped, and Sterren gestured for Vond to speak first.

“I’d say the war is won,” the warlock said. “Now what do we do?”

“I’d say,” Sterren replied, “that we go to the castle and collect our rewards.”

Vond nodded. “Sounds good to me,” he said.

“We’ll want to get the others,” Sterren pointed out.

“That’s no problem,” Vond said, “I’ll bring them.” With that, he rose again into the air and began soaring toward Semma Castle.

Sterren, quite without any action on his part, sailed along close behind, and he glanced back to see other figures being swept up and carried along in similar fashion — he spotted Annara by her distinctive purple robe, and Lady Kalira by her red gown, and Alder and Dogal by their size and armament. The other five were just black dots at first.

A moment later they were all standing at the castle gate, ranged in two neat rows, Sterren and Vond in the front row center. An unearthly glow of Vond’s making played across them all and lit the area a pale gold.

A sentry peered timidly over the ramparts above.

“Hai,” Sterren shouted, remembering at the last minute to use Semmat, “it’s I, Sterren, Ninth Warlord, and my comrades! Open the gate!”

The soldier hesitated. “But, my lord,” he said, “the invaders . . .”

“The invaders are gone,” Sterren replied. “The war is over!”

The sentry glanced uneasily out across the ruins of the village, where Vond’s storm had indeed ripped away every trace of the sappers’ shelters and most of the other buildings as well. “They’re really gone?” he asked.

“All of them,” Sterren assured him. “The war is over. We won.”

“Sterren,” Vond said, speaking Ethsharitic, “I can open the gates.”

“I know,” Sterren replied in the same tongue, “but let’s be polite about it. Give them another five minutes.”

“Five minutes, then.”

Sterren switched back to Semmat and said, “The magician who made the storm is becoming impatient. He says in five minutes, if the gate is still closed, he’ll smash it to pieces.”

The sentry immediately said, “Yes, my lord. I’ll have it open in a moment.”

It took about a minute and a half before the gate swung wide, and Sterren thought he saw disappointment on Vond’s face as the whole party marched in.

Part Three: Warlock

Chapter Twenty-Four

Sterren was uneasy even before he led his victorious little squad into the throne room. They had been kept waiting in the antechamber considerably longer than he had expected. Most of the party had taken it well — after all, the Sem­mans were used to their king’s foibles, and the others had not known what to expect — but Vond seemed noticeably impatient.

Sterren found that he really did not like the idea of being around someone as powerful as Vond when he got impatient.

He marched into the throne room neither meekly nor belligerently, but with the best approximation of calm assurance that he could manage, and found Vond on his right hand, sweeping forward a few inches off the floor, while the others straggled along behind rather haphazardly.

As he marched in, while he kept his face turned straight forward, toward the king, as protocol demanded, his eyes were flicking back and forth, taking in as much as he could of the people gathered there.

The soldiers who stood in ragged lines on either side mostly looked either bewildered or bored; Sterren suspected that not a one of them really knew what was going on. Behind them, he could see a significant percentage of the castle’s noble population, and he tried to read their expressions without letting his own interest show.

He saw a wide variety of emotions — puzzlement, delight, anger — but the dominant reaction to the arrival of Semma’s warlord and his party appeared to be poorly-suppressed fear.

That did not bode well.

Remembering the violence of the warlock’s storm, however, Sterren could not say it was an unreasonable reaction.

He spotted the king’s children huddled to the left of the throne; The faces of Lura and Dereth were alight with excitement. Nissitha’s mouth was drawn up in her usual expression of polite distaste.

Shirrin’s expression was unmistakably wide-eyed adoration.

Sterren stopped at the appropriate distance from the throne and bowed.

Vond stopped beside him, and condescended to dip his head slightly. Sterren saw this from the corner of his eye, and was relieved; it was not a bow, but at least it was something. He had worried that Vond would go out of his way to antagonize Phenvel, with Sterren caught in the middle. Given how frightened most of the Semmans looked, and how easily fear might turn to anger, he very much wanted to avoid any open antagonism.

“So you’re finally back!” the king said, and Sterren’s hope for peace and amity faded.

“We returned as quickly as we could, your Majesty,” he said, his tone as ingratiating as he could manage — which was quite ingratiating indeed, as he had had years of practice with creditors and innkeepers. “The wind was not in our favor.”

“You had magicians with you, didn’t you?” King Phen­vel demanded.

“Only on the way back, your Majesty, and none of them could . . . could turn the wind,” Sterren explained.

The king stared at him, then snapped, “Are you trying to tell me that little breeze we had today was natural?”

Sterren blinked. “Oh, no, your Majesty,” he said. “That was the . . . the work of Vond the Warlock.” Sterren gestured at the warlock. “However, it’s a spell he . . . it’s new, a spell he had not . . . um, not learned yet during our journey.” He wished he knew Semmat better. Even what he did know was somewhat rusty, since he had mostly been using Ethsharitic for the last few sixnights, talking far more to the magicians than to Lady Kalira and the three soldiers.

Furthermore, the obvious hostility was making him nervous, so that he was forgetting some of what he did know.

Vond recognized his name and bowed slightly in ac­knowledgment.

“Ah,” the king said. “So he found some way to study the arcane arts while hiding from the invaders, rather than fighting?”

Sterren was shocked at this snide question, with its implications of cowardice and incompetence. “Your Majesty,” he replied, “Vond defeated the armies of Ophkar and Ksinallion, almost by himself.”

“And took his own sweet time doing it, too! I suppose he thinks he’ll be getting more money out of me by making it look hard, but he won’t, and neither will any of these other sorry specimens you’ve dragged back here. One storm, and the enemy ran! The gold and gems I gave you are too generous for such a sorry performance!”

Sterren could think of no reply to this. He did, however, find himself sympathizing with the rulers of Ophkar and Ksinallion who had ordered the invasion.

“Besides,” the king continued, “the war is hardly over merely because we won a battle. I’ll need to send ambassadors to arrange a peace and settle terms, won’t I? If you’d gotten a surrender, instead of a rout, I could have given terms to the warlords and saved some time.”

This hardly struck Sterren as a major problem, but he managed to avoid saying anything disrespectful by saying nothing.

“And furthermore,” the king said, “what about the mess you people left? Half the village is ruined, there’s mud everywhere, and all that wind blew tiles off half the roofs and took the banners right off the flagpoles. I went up to the tower and looked, and it looks awful! And I don’t suppose any of your magicians would dirty their hands with cleaning it up! No, don’t say anything, warlord, I won’t ask them to; I’ll have my people see to it. You can pay your magicians and send them home now; we won’t be needing them around here any more.”

He waved a dismissal, but Sterren found, to his own astonishment, that he was not willing to be dismissed yet. “Your Majesty,” he said, trying hard not to clench his teeth disrespectfully, “I did not start this stupid war. I ended it, as quickly as I could. I had . . . had hoped that you would . . . would show more . . .” His Semmat failed him completely.

“Gratitude?” Phenvel practically sneered. “Gratitude, for doing the job you were born to? Warlord, if you had fought the enemy properly, with sword and shield, I might be more respectful, but to bring in wizards and witches is hardly a courageous act. It’s the doing of a merchant, not a warlord, and what I expect from someone three-quarters Ethsharitic, not a true Semman at all!”

“Not for me!” Sterren said, outraged, “I don’t want anything for me! For them, the magicians! They left home to come here and fight for you!”

“I didn’t ask for them,” King Phenvel retorted. “And they’ve been paid. And who the hell are they all, anyway? A ragged-looking bunch, I must say!”

Sterren stared at the king’s slippered feet and forced himself to calm down. When he was once again in control of himself, he said, “If I might present them, your Majesty?”

“Go ahead,” the king said, with a nonchalant wave.

Sterren gestured to his right. “Vond the Warlock, late of Ethshar of the Spices.” He switched to Ethsharitic, and said, “Vond, this is his Majesty, Phenvel, Third of that Name, King of Semma.”

Vond bowed, mockingly.

Sterren ignored the mockery and turned.

“Annara of Crookwall, journeyman wizard,” he said.

Annara curtseyed deeply. The king nodded politely.

“Shenna of Chatna, witch.”

Shenna, too, curtseyed, moving more briskly than gracefully. Her skirt was so thoroughly soaked that this sent a spatter of mud onto courtiers at one side of the hall.

“Chatna,” said the king, “where is that?”

“In the Small Kingdoms, my lord,” Shenna said, in slurred Semmat. “Just inland of Morria, near the Gulf of the East.”

Sterren was startled, both by this information and by Shenna’s use of Semmat. He had assumed Chatna to be an Ethsharitic village somewhere, and had not realized that Shenna had bothered to pick up any of the local language during her stay in Semma.

Not that she knew it well, since she had used entirely the wrong title.

He gathered his wits quickly, and continued with the introductions, hoping that Phenvel would not criticize the error in protocol.

“Ederd of Eastwark, witch. Emner of Lamum, wizard. Hamder Hamder’s son, witch.”

Each bowed in turn.

“Lamum?” Phenvel asked.

“A kingdom on the Eastern Highway, your Majesty,” Sterren replied, before Emner could react. “Just across the border from the Hegemony of the Three Ethshars.” He was pleased that he had remembered that bit of trivia.

“Sterren,” Vond said, during the momentary lull while the king absorbed the introductions, “what the hell is going on?”

Sterren ignored him long enough to ask, “Your Majesty, may I translate your words to the magicians? Most of them speak no Semmat.”

Phenvel waved a hand. “Go ahead,” he said.

Sterren turned to Vond and said quickly, “He’s been making an ass of himself, complaining that we took too long to get back here and too long to break the siege and that the storm damaged the castle and he’ll have to have his people clean up the mess it left. I don’t know why he’s in such a foul mood; he’s been gratuitously insulting to all of us, particularly you and me. I think it might be because he’s scared to death of you.”

He noticed that Annara and Emner were listening closely, and added, “He’s probably scared of all of you. Magic is scarce around here.”

“I suppose that means no more pay and no big celebration,” Emner said.

“I’m afraid not,” Sterren agreed.

“Ah,” Vond said, “I’m not really surprised. That’s rather what it sounded like. Has he said what he expects us to do now?”

“He expects you to take your pay and go home. I haven’t yet mentioned that you may not want to.”

The warlock shrugged. “You don’t need to tell him; he’ll see for himself soon enough. Do you think you could arrange us some rooms for the night, though? It’s getting late.”

“I was planning on it; dinner, too.”

“Good.” The wizards nodded agreement, and Sterren turned back to the throne.

“Your Majesty,” he said, “I ask a favor of you. These six magicians have fought for you. Please, give them food and shelter here for a few days, to rest, after their efforts. We ask no more than that.”

Relief flashed quickly across the king’s face, then vanished. “Granted,” he said. “We have dined, but I’m sure the kitchens can provide for you, and my chamberlain will find accommodations. You may go.”

Sterren bowed, and started to back out.

“Wait a minute,” the king said, holding up a hand, “Lady Kalira, didn’t you take six soldiers with you?”

“Yes, your Majesty,” Lady Kalira replied.

“I see only three now, and I had asked to see your full party; what happened to the others? Wounded? Killed?”

“Deserted, your Majesty, while we were in Ethshar.”

“Deserted?” King Phenvel said, aghast.

Lady Kalira nodded. Sterren, hearing the king’s tone, wished she had lied a little.

“Warlord, I am not pleased at all. Three desertions!”

Actually, he sounded as if he were quite pleased. Sterren guessed that he was happy to have something with which to rebuke his warlord, should the occasion arise.

Sterren started to phrase a reply, and then thought better of it. Pointing out that desertion spoke worse of Semma in general than of his performance as warlord would only make trouble. “Yes, your Majesty,” he said. He looked up and met Phenvel’s eyes. He was not ashamed of any part of what he had done. After all, he had won the war, or at least the battle, whatever Phenvel might say.

The king met his gaze for a moment, then turned angrily away. “All right, then, you may go!”

Sterren bowed, and he and the magicians went, bound for the kitchens and dinner.