The Unwilling Warlord (12 page)

The wizard smiled wryly and turned away.

“I might be,” the man in black answered.

“Are you a magician, sir?” Sterren asked.

The man in black raised a hand, and a thick swirl of dust rose up from the hard-packed ground of the market, spiralling upward before him, ignoring the wind that should have scattered it across the marketplace. The dust gathered into a ball the size of a fist, hung there in the air for an instant, and then burst apart and vanished, whipped away on the breeze.

“I’m a warlock,” said the man in black.

Chapter Fifteen

After an hour’s harangue, Sterren gave up. His throat was sore, his voice giving out, and he had lost the crowd’s interest completely.

The warlock had stood by, waiting patiently the whole time. He had neither committed himself to the venture nor turned it down, had not demanded to know more, but had simply waited.

A black-haired woman with a runny nose, about Sterren’s own age and wearing a purple gown with stains that resembled those one might acquire sleeping in the Hundred-Foot Field, had also turned up, claiming to be a wizard, and she had actually volunteered. She had been more concerned with Sterren’s guarantee that she would be fed for as long as she was in Semma’s employ than in the particulars of the job, or the payment offered.

The sun was low above the rooftops on the western side of the square. “Time for dinner,” Sterren said in Semmat, turning to Lady Kalira. “Don’t you think so?”

“I suppose,” she said.

She had spent much of the hour wandering about the market, looking at the goods offered for sale, but she had not bought anything. Sterren suspected that she had been too embarrassed by her poor command of Ethsharitic — if you could call her dozen or so phrases “command” — to try to haggle in that language, and the local merchants, while likely to speak several tongues, would not be likely to know anything so obscure as Semmat.

Of course, Lady Kalira spoke Trader’s Tongue, Sterren remembered, and most of the merchants could probably handle that, but perhaps she didn’t realize it. Or maybe language had nothing to do with it, and her funds were running low. That might be inconvenient, since he had hoped that her purse would be there to fall back on in an emergency.

Whatever the reason, Lady Kalira had returned, empty-handed, a few minutes before.

Dogal and Alder had stayed close at hand throughout Sterren’s pitch; even while speaking he had watched for a chance to slip away from them, but had not seen one.

The same could not be said of Alar, Zander, and Bern, all of whom had wandered off. Zander and Bern had returned; Alar, as yet, had not, nor was there any sign of Kendrik.

Sterren switched back to Ethsharitic and asked the warlock, “Would you care to join my companions and myself for dinner, and perhaps discuss the job further?”

The warlock nodded casually.

“Is there somewhere around here where we can get a decent meal,” Sterren asked, “or should we head down to Westgate?”

“This is not my part of the city,” the warlock replied.

Sterren hesitated, and thought better of asking him any further questions, such as which part of the city was his, and why wasn’t he in it. Instead, he turned to the wizard, a questioning look on his face.

Before he could speak, without a word, she pointed to a tavern on the north corner of Flood Street, where a faded signboard depicted a golden dragon.

“Good enough,” he said, as he led the way.

“Wait a minute,” Lady Kalira objected. “What about Kendrik and Alar?”

Sterren stopped. “My lady,” he said, “Kendrik deserted before we even reached the market; I last saw him among the . . . the . . .” He paused, and then resorted to using the Ethsharitic word. “. . . the brothels on . . .” He paused again, sighed, and said, “East Wharf Street,” in Ethsharitic. Switching back to Semmat, he continued, “Alar wandered off some time ago, and I have no idea where he has gone, and I don’t want to either search for him, or wait for his return.”

“But you can’t allow desertion!”

“I can’t allow myself to starve, either, or perish of thirst.”

A look at Lady Kalira’s face let him know that that was not going to be sufficient. “All right,” he said, capitulating, “Zander, you and Bern go find Kendrik and Alar. Then meet us at that inn, there.” He pointed to the Golden Dragon. “If we aren’t there, go back to the ship. It’s at the . . .” He stopped. He wished he knew the word for “wharf” in Semmat, but he didn’t, and besides, if these two asked for directions in Semmat, nobody would know what they were saying. “Tea Wharves,” he said in Ethsharitic, then asked in Semmat, “Can you say that?”

“Why should we say it?” Zander asked.

“In case you get lost,” Sterren explained.

The concept of “getting lost” was not one Zander, born and raised on an open plain, thought of the same way a city boy like Sterren did, but looking at the maze of streets Zander saw the sense in it. He said, “Oh.”

“Tea Wharves,” Sterren repeated. “Try it.”

Zander struggled to wrap his tongue around the unfamiliar syllables. The resulting mess was not recognizable.

“Bern?” Sterren asked.

“Tea Wharves,” Bern said, in accented but perfectly intelligible Ethsharitic. Sterren peered at him suspiciously.

“You don’t speak Ethsharitic, do you?”

“No, my lord,” Bern replied.

“Zander, try it again. Tea Wharves.”

Zander managed to produce something almost adequate this time.

“Good enough, I suppose. Work on it while you’re hunting for your comrades.”

Zander nodded; Bern didn’t bother. Together, they turned and marched back into the market crowd.

Sterren watched them go, neither knowing nor caring whether he would ever see either of them again.

He had gotten rid of four of his seven unwanted companions, he thought; he was more than halfway to freedom!

* * * *

“This way,” he said, leading the way to the Golden Dragon.

The tavern was less than half full, and they found a table readily, not far from the door. Sterren, after some consideration, decided that neither facing the door nor sitting with his back to it would be best for slipping away; he sat with his right side toward the door, his back to the open room.

Lady Kalira sat opposite him, against a wall; Alder took the chair to his right, back to the door, and Dogal to his left, facing the door. The warlock sat between Alder and Lady Kalira, the wizard between Dogal and Lady Kalira.

Sterren took the opportunity for a look at his two recruits.

Both were thin, but the wizard’s slenderness appeared to be due to borderline malnutrition, while the warlock was simply built that way. The wizard wore her hair in long black ringlets that trailed halfway down her back, and even in her present tattered and dirty condition they were still showed signs of having been combed not too long ago. Her face was rather drawn, her eyes brown and anxious; if she were clean, smiling, and better-fed, Sterren thought, she would be attractive, possibly even beautiful.

She sniffled, and dabbed at her nose with a stained cuff.

The warlock was clean and looked as if he was as well-fed as he cared to be, but he was definitely not smiling. His lined, narrow face was fixed and expressionless, his mouth a thin line, his pale green eyes unreadable. His hair, black with the first traces of grey, was cut short, barely covering his ears. Sterren guessed him to be over forty; how much over he had no idea. He might have been handsome once, but now, Sterren thought, he was merely striking.

As soon as they were seated, even before the serving maid could reach them, the warlock said, “I notice that in an hour’s speech, you never once specified the nature of the employment you offered.”

Caught off-guard, Sterren agreed, “I suppose I didn’t.”

The wizard was staring hungrily at the approaching tavern girl, and Sterren used that as an excuse to change the subject. “My lady,” he said in Semmat, “what shall we have, and at whose expense?”

“You brought us here,” Lady Kalira said, “you pay for it. You wanted dinner, we’ll have dinner. What was the man in black saying?”

“He asked a question about our offer. Wine with your meal?”

Lady Kalira nodded.

Sterren glanced at each of the remaining soldiers in turn, and each nodded. “Wine would be welcome,” Alder said.

Sterren nodded back, then switched to Ethsharitic and asked the wizard, “Would you like wine with dinner?”

The serving maid had reached the table, heard this final question, and saw the wizard’s nod.

“We have several fine vintages,” she said. Her tone made it a question.

Sterren said, in Ethsharitic, “The three barbarians wouldn’t appreciate it, and I can’t afford it, so I do hope my two guests will forgive me if we have the regular house wine, and whatever you have for the house dinner tonight, rather than anything special. That’s for all six of us, un­less . . . ?”

He looked questioningly at the warlock, who made a small gesture of acquiescence with one hand. The wizard said, “That would be fine.”

The tavern girl departed.

“The nature of this proposed employment?” the warlock said.

Sterren had carefully avoided being specific in his marketplace spiel, for fear of frightening off prospects, but he realized that the time for prevarication was past.

He sighed. “I’m the hereditary warlord of one of the Small Kingdoms, a little place in the far south called Sem­ma. I didn’t want the job, but I’m stuck with it. Semma is on the verge of war with two larger neighbors, and we’re doomed. The army is absolutely pitiful and badly outnumbered. We don’t stand a chance unless we cheat. In the Small Kingdoms, at least in Semma’s neighborhood, they don’t use magic in their wars; it’s considered dishonorable or something — it’s cheating. Well, I’m ready to cheat, because otherwise I’ll be killed for losing. So I’m here looking for magicians who can help us win this war. It shouldn’t take much, since there’s so little magic there and the soldiers will never have fought against magicians be­fore.” He looked at the warlock, hoping that he wouldn’t dismiss the idea out of hand.

“A war?” The warlock’s tone was calm and considering.

Sterren nodded, encouraged that the warlock had not rejected the idea out of hand. He glanced at the wizard.

She had hardly listened; her attention was on the door to the kitchen. It was an interesting door, with the skull of a small dragon mounted so as to form the top of the frame and the dragon’s lower jaw serving as a door-handle, but Sterren suspected the poor young woman was far more interested in what would be coming through that door than in the decor that gave the tavern its name.

The wizard caught his eye, and turned back to him.

“I don’t care what the job is,” she said, sniffing and brushing a stray ringlet back over her shoulder. “If it won’t get me killed outright and you pay in gold, I’ll take it.” She hesitated, then wiped her nose and asked, “It won’t get me killed outright, will it?”

“I certainly hope not,” Sterren said. “If we win, it won’t, but if we lose, you’ll probably have to flee for your lives.” He shrugged. “Fleeing shouldn’t be difficult; it’s wide-open country, and the kingdoms are so small it should be easy to get safely across a border before they can catch you.”

The warlock nodded. “You say Semma is far to the south?”

Sterren nodded again. “About as far to the southeast as you can get, really; from the castle’s highest tower you can see the edge of the World, on a clear day. I’ve seen it myself.” He stared at the warlock, a suspicion growing in the back of his mind.

He had not really had time to consider his two prospective employees, but now he did.

Warlockry was virtually unknown in Semma. He had no way of knowing for certain whether it would work there at all, and he was quite sure it would be far less effective than it was in Ethshar. A warlock, therefore, would not be his preferred sort of magician.

On the other hand, this particular warlock seemed very interested in going south.

Sterren could guess what that meant. This particular warlock probably wanted to get as far away from Aldagmor and the Power’s Source as he could. He might have already had the first warning nightmares that meant he had pushed his warlockry to dangerous levels.

Warlockry, as Sterren knew from his aborted apprenticeship, drew its power from a mysterious Source located somewhere in the Aldagmor region, a mountainous area far to the north of Ethshar, on the edge of the Baronies of Sardiron. A warlock’s power varied as the inverse square of the distance from this thing. A warlock’s power also in­creased with use; every spell a warlock cast made the next one a shade easier. Most magic worked that way, of course; most skills of any kind did. The effect was rather ex­treme with warlockry, however, because warlockry, unlike all other magic, also directly counteracted fatigue; magic not only didn’t tire a warlock, it revivified him, without limit.

Except that there was a limit. When a warlock’s power reached a certain level, he began to have nightmares. From then on, every further use of warlockry caused more and worse nightmares, which could make life virtually unbearable.

Eventually an afflicted warlock wouldn’t even need to be asleep to suffer these hideous visions, and in the end, every warlock ever known to have reached this point had died or vanished. Those who did not commit suicide were often seen wandering north, toward Aldagmor, usually flying — but then were never seen again.

This was known as the Calling, because that was what the nightmares seemed to be — a horrible, supernatural summons of some kind that would draw a warlock either to Aldagmor or death — or both.

What most warlocks did is, when the first nightmare hits, to move south or west, further from Aldagmor, and give up warlockry for good. The smarter ones would have been charging exorbitant fees in anticipation of this, and could to retire in comfort.

Sterren guessed that this warlock had pushed his luck, and had had considerably more than one nightmare, so that he was now desperate to get as far from Aldagmor as possible, as quickly as possible.

Whatever his reasons, the warlock might be either a great stroke of luck or utterly worthless, depending on just what power did remain to him in Semma, so very far from Aldagmor.

Bringing him along would be a gamble, but after all, Sterren had always been a gambler.

If any warlock could be of help in Semma, one already touched by nightmare, on the verge of the Calling, would surely be most likely. The Calling only came when warlocks reached the height of their power. In fact, one theory was that the Calling was something the gods used to remove warlocks who were becoming too powerful, who might damage the gods’ plan for the World.