The Unwilling Warlord (27 page)

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Even over the intervening distance, low rumblings occasionally reached the village. From his perch in the castle tower Sterren could see huge chunks of sand and rock shifting in the distance, but he could make out no details.

After dark the noise continued, and an eerie orange glow lit the southern skies. The glow seemed to wax and wane erratically, and occasional sparkles of red or pale blue light rippled across it.

Sterren was very glad he hadn’t used another of his ideas and suggested that Vond go fetch the lesser moon out of the sky; folding back the edge of the World was quite terrifying enough.

By noon on the eleventh of Harvest the job was complete; where once the edge of the World had been marked by a distant line of gold, now it was marked by a distant line of black that Sterren assumed to be stone, and a tiny black dot was approaching that could only be Vond, re­turning.

Sterren decided that the tower of Semma Castle was not where he wanted Vond to find him; he headed for the stairs.

He passed Shirrin in the sixth-floor hallway, and almost stopped to talk to her. She stared at him for a moment while he hesitated, then turned and ran, and he continued down the stairs.

When he got back to the Imperial Palace Vond was already there, sitting on air in the audience chamber with the great red doors opened wide.

Sterren paused in the entryway, unsure whether to speak to the warlock, or to slip upstairs unnoticed. Vond settled the matter by calling, “Oh, there you are, Sterren!”

Sterren strolled into the audience chamber, trying to look casual. “How did it go?” he asked.

“Oh, well enough,” Vond said, smiling. “The sand wouldn’t hold together, of course, so I pulled up a sheet of bedrock. It’s about fifty feet thick and fifty yards high, and only the gods know how long.” He stretched, and added, “It felt wonderful, using all that power!”

Sterren smiled back, hoping the warlock would not see how false the smile was. “I could see the difference from the tower,” he said.

Vond nodded. “It doesn’t look like much from this distance, though.”

“True enough, but it can be seen, and when people realize what it is, think how impressed they’ll be. Their emperor has turned up the edge of the World itself! The concept is more powerful than the appearance on this one.”

Vond nodded. “But I’ll want to do something flashy next time, something everybody will see. You think about what it might be, Sterren; I like your ideas.” He paused, and frowned. “Right now, though, I think I might take a nap. I didn’t sleep at all last night, while I was working, and my head is buzzing, as if the walls themselves were talking to me.” He waved an arm about vaguely.

Sterren nodded, and watched silently as Vond drifted off toward his private chamber.

Vond still did not realize what was happening, Sterren thought. He wondered how long it would take, and when Vond would catch on.

He strolled aimlessly out of the audience chamber into the entrance hall, where the rosewood door of the council chamber caught his eye. He crossed to it, hesitated, and then opened the door and peered in.

The chamber was empty. All sign of Ildirin’s sudden demise had been scrubbed away.

Sterren wondered how the other servants had received word of Ildirin’s death. Who had told them, and what had they been told? How many had decided to leave?

He closed the door, and thought for a moment.

The weather was beautiful, of course, as it always was in Vond’s empire — but that might not last. He decided to enjoy it while he could. The courtyard held a magnificent flower garden.

He was sitting on an iron bench, feeling the sunlight warm on his face and letting the scent of roses fill his nostrils, when Vond screamed.

The scream came not just from the warlock’s throat, but from the air around him, from the palace walls, and from the stone of the earth itself; everything vibrated in rhythm. The stones groaned, so deeply that the sound was more felt than heard, while the air shrieked and even the leaves of the garden whistled piercingly.

The scream had no words; it was shapeless terror given voice.

The echoes were still fading, the air still humming, when the window of Vond’s bedchamber exploded outward into the garden, spraying shattered glass in every direction; Sterren ducked and covered his head with his arms as shards rattled down on all sides.

When the last tinkling fragment had settled he looked up and saw Vond hanging in the air above him. The warlock wore only a white tunic, and his face was almost equally white. His eyes were wide and staring, his hands trembling.

“Sterren!” he called. “Sterren!”

Sterren said quietly, “I’m here.”

Vond heard him, and looked down. He plummeted from the sky, and landed roughly on the gravelled path, falling to his knees and only catching himself from falling flat on his face with one outstretched hand.

He looked up at Sterren, and said, “The nightmares, Sterren, they’re back!”

Sterren nodded. “I thought so,” he said.

Vond’s expression changed suddenly. Sterren’s calm cut through his fear and released anger and uncertainty. “You thought so?” the warlock demanded.

Sterren blinked and said nothing.

Vond rose to his feet, using warlockry rather than hands and legs. “Just what did you think? I had a nightmare — how would you know anything about that?”

Sterren hesitated, trying to phrase an answer, and Vond continued, “It was just a nightmare! It wasn’t . . . wasn’t that. It couldn’t have been. It was just a nightmare, my mind playing tricks on me.”

“No,” Sterren said, shaking his head and marvelling that even now, Vond could not accept what was happening.

“It was an ordinary nightmare,” Vond insisted. “It must have been! That thing in Aldagmor is still out of range. It has to be! I haven’t been using it! I’ve been getting power from Lumeth!”

“No,” Sterren repeated. He was horribly aware that Vond was on the verge of complete panic, and could lash out wildly at any time and strike him dead instantly. “No, it almost certainly does come from Aldagmor.”

“It can’t,” Vond insisted.

“Of course it can!” Sterren answered, annoyed at Vond’s stubborn refusal to understand.

“But how?” Vond insisted. “I’m out of range here!”

Sterren shook his head. “Nowhere is really out of range; you know that. When you first came here, before you learned to use the Lumeth source, you could still draw on Aldagmor. Not much, but a little. Don’t you remember? You couldn’t fly, but you could stop a man’s heart.”

“But that’s apprentice work! Apprentices don’t get the nightmares!”

“You’re no apprentice any more. Don’t you see? You’ve been drawing so much power from Lumeth, you’ve become so powerful, so receptive to warlockry, that the Aldagmor source can reach you. Receptivity isn’t that selective. After all, your receptivity to Aldagmor was what let you use Lumeth in the first place. They’re the same thing; the more sensitive you are to one, the more sensitive you are to both. The Lumeth source is closer, so you can draw far more power from it, but you still hear the Aldagmor source, too.”

“But I don’t!”

“You do. You told me so yourself. You couldn’t enter Lumeth of the Towers, and you’ve been complaining for days about whisperings and buzzings in your head; didn’t you realize what they were?”

Vond paused, his expression shocked.

“No,” he said at last, “I didn’t. But they . . . you’re right, I was hearing Aldagmor. I wasn’t listening, since I had Lumeth, but I was hearing it. Why listen for a whisper when you can use a shout?” He focused on Sterren again.

“You knew!” he said accusingly. “You knew this was coming!”

Sterren did not dare to reply.

“Why didn’t you warn me? I . . .” Realization dawned. “Gods, you encouraged me!” Vond exclaimed. “You — it was your idea to fold up the edge of the World!” Fury seethed in Vond’s eyes, and Sterren expected to die then.

He didn’t.

“Why didn’t you warn me?” Vond screamed.

“I was going to,” Sterren answered, truthfully. “Really, I was. But then you killed Ildirin, and hardly even noticed, and I . . . I thought you were becoming too dangerous. Besides . . .” He took a deep breath, and continued, “Be­sides, would you have believed me?”

Vond’s face, though still pale, was calm as he forced himself to consider this question. He sat down on the bench beside Sterren.

“No,” he admitted at last. “No, I wouldn’t have.”

“Besides,” Sterren said, “I had no idea how much longer you had, how much power you would have to use before . . . before this.”

Vond nodded. “No other warlock ever came close to the power I had,” he said wistfully. Sterren noted his use of the past tense. He had already resigned himself to the situation.

“So,” Vond said, “I’m back where I was when you found me in Shiphaven Market, back in Ethshar — I’ve had my first nightmare, passed the brink. I need to either get farther from Aldagmor, or to stop using my magic and live with the nightmares, or else I’ll hear the Calling and . . . and do whatever the Calling makes one do.”

Sterren nodded.

“I can’t get any farther away, can I?”

“We’re not at the edge of the World,” Sterren pointed out. “Not quite.”

“But from here to the corner there’s nothing but sand and grass and desert. It’s not worth it. I can’t even build anything to live in; it would use too much power.”

“You could use your hands,” Sterren suggested.

Vond snorted derisively. “I don’t know how,” he said.

“You could just stay here, go on as you have, and go out in a blaze of glory. After all, the Calling isn’t death, is it? It might not be so bad.”

“No,” Vond said flatly. “I don’t know what it is, but anything that sends those nightmares . . . No. I escaped it once, and that just makes it worse now.” He shook himself, and said with sudden resolution, “I’ll give up magic. I don’t need it now; I’m an emperor. I can live as I please without it!”

Sterren nodded. “Of course,” he said.

But he knew Vond could never do it. After using war­lockry in such prodigious amounts for months, using it for his whims for years, could Vond really give it up?

Sterren did not believe it for a minute.

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Vond walked into the audience chamber, climbed the dais, and settled uneasily onto the borrowed throne. He looked down at Sterren.

“How do I look?” he asked.

“Fine,” Sterren said reassuringly.

“It’s not very comfortable,” the warlock said, shifting slightly and looking down at the throne. “And it doesn’t really go with this room.”

“Phenvel’s bigger than you are, and he leaned back more,” Sterren pointed out. “As for the looks, maybe we can drape something over it later.”

Vond nodded. “What did the servants say when you told them to fetch it?”

“I used some of the slaves you bought from Akalla, and they didn’t say anything. It’s not their place to question direct orders.”

The warlock nodded again. “That’s good,” he said, in a distracted way.

After a moment of uncomfortable silence, during which Vond tried to find a more comfortable position and Sterren simply stood and waited, Vond asked, “What do you think they thought at the castle? Did anybody object?”

Sterren shook his head. “I sent half a dozen of my guards along. Nobody objected. They may be wondering about it, but they can’t do anything. You’re the warlock emperor, remember — you’re all-powerful. Nobody knows anything’s changed except the two of us.”

Vond smiled, a twisted and bitter expression. “They know. Half of Semma must have heard my scream.”

“They don’t know,” Sterren insisted. “They don’t know why you screamed. They don’t know anything about war­lockry. Nobody in the entire empire knows anything about warlockry except you, me, and maybe a few traders and expatriates from the north.”

“They’ll guess, when they see me sitting in this thing.”

“They won’t.”

Vond shook his head, but stopped arguing.

“Should I open the doors, now?” Sterren asked.

Vond waved a hand unhappily. “Go ahead,” he said.

Sterren marched down the length of the audience hall to the great red doors and rapped once on an enamelled panel.

The doors swung in, propelled by two palace servants apiece — another reminder of Vond’s unhappy condition, since he had always moved them magically before.

In the hallway beyond waited a dozen or so petitioners. These were the ones who had been sent on by the Imperial Council or various servants and officials as being outside the council’s purview, with valid reasons to see the Great Vond himself.

There was no bailiff, usher, or doorkeeper to manage the presentations; Vond had always taken care of that himself, using his magically-enhanced voice to direct people. As Sterren looked over the uneasy little knot of people he thought to himself that a great many things would have to change if the empire was to run smoothly.

“All right,” he said, “how many groups do we have here? Please, divide yourselves up, spread out, so I can see what the situation is.”

The petitioners milled about in confusion; clearly, several had not understood his Ethsharitic.

He repeated the instructions as best he could in Semmat, and waited while the group sorted itself out into smaller groups.

There were five petitions, it appeared — one group of four, a group of three, two pairs, and a single.

“Who speaks Ethsharitic?” Sterren asked.

One hand went up in each group; the single, unfortunately, just looked blank. Sterren asked him in Semmat, “Do you speak Semmat?”

He nodded. “Yes, sir,” he said.

That, Sterren thought, would have to do.

He decided to start with the largest group and work down; it seemed fairest to keep the fewest possible waiting.

“All right,” he said, pointing, “you four, come on in.”

The Ethsharitic-speaking spokesman for the foursome led his party into the audience chamber, down the rich red carpet as the doors swung shut behind them, to stand before the dais. Sterren watched them closely, to see if they seemed aware that anything was out of the ordinary.

They did not. Apparently, either nobody had told them that the Great Vond had no throne and always conducted business floating in the air, or they had dismissed such tales as exaggerations.

They went down on their knees before the emperor and bowed deeply.

“Rise,” Vond said.

His unenhanced voice seemed horribly weak to Sterren, a thin little sound that was almost lost in the great stone chamber.

The petitioners did not seem to notice anything odd. They rose.

Their spokesman took a cautious step forward and waited.

“Speak,” Vond said.

“Your Imperial Majesty,” the petitioner said, “we have come here as representatives for many, many of your subjects who grow peaches. This year, thanks to the fine weather you have given us, we have a very large, very fine crop — and it is all ripening at once, so fast that we do not have time to harvest it. We . . .” He hesitated, glanced at Sterren, who looked encouraging, and then continued, “We have seen you light the sky at night. Could you do this again? If you could light the sky above our trees, we could harvest by night as well as by day, and we would not leave fruit to ripen and rot on the tree before we can get to it. I . . . we understand that you have other concerns, but . . .”

“No,” Vond said flatly, interrupting the petitioner.

The spokesman blinked. “No?” he said. “But your Majesty . . .”

“No, I said!”

“May I ask why . . .”

“No!” Vond bellowed, rising from the throne — not by magic, but standing naturally upon his own feet. His voice echoed from the walls.

A breeze stirred the warlock’s robes, in a closed room where no natural breeze could reach. Vond felt it, and looked down at the swaying fabric of his sleeve in horror.

He turned to Sterren and said, “Get them out of here.”

Then he turned and ran from the room.

The petitioners stared after him in astonishment.

Sterren stepped forward and told them, “The Great Vond is ill. He had hoped that he would be able to hear ­petitions regardless, but it appears that the gods would have it otherwise.” He hesitated, and continued, “And I’m afraid that’s why he refused your petition; while his ­illness persists, his magic is somewhat limited, and to light the sky as you ask would be too great a strain upon his health.”

The petitioners looked at him uncertainly as he spoke, and he saw fear appear on the spokesman’s face. Sterren thought he understood that; after all, when the king is sick, the kingdom is in danger. That old proverb would hold true all the more for an emperor, and a young emperor of a young and still-unsteady empire at that.

Worst of all, Vond was an emperor without an heir.

“Don’t worry,” Sterren said soothingly. “It’s not that serious.”

He hoped the lie would not be obvious.

“What can we do?” the spokesman asked.

“Go home, harvest your peaches as best you can, and don’t worry unduly. If you know the names of any gods, you might pray to them on the emperor’s behalf, and I’m sure healing charms wouldn’t hurt.” He took the spokesman’s arm and led the party back down the hall to the door.

Once again, a single rap opened the doors, and Sterren escorted the little party out into the hall. There he raised his voice and called, “The Great Vond is ill, and all audiences for today are cancelled!” He repeated it in Semmat. “If you wish to, you may stay in the area and check with the guards daily, and present your petitions when the Great Vond has recovered, or you may put them in writing, and give them to any guard or servant with instructions that they be delivered to Chancellor Sterren, who will see that they are read by the Great Vond as soon as his health permits. If you cannot write, there are scribes for hire in the village.”

The little crowd milled about again, muttering uneasily.

“That is all!” Sterren announced firmly. He turned to the four servants at the doors and dismissed them.

That done, he turned and headed for the stairs. He kept his pace slow and dignified until he knew he was out of sight of the petitioners, and then broke into a trot, heading directly for Vond’s bedchamber.

As he had expected, he found Vond there, sitting in a chair and staring at the gaping hole, edged with bits of glass and leading, that had once been the window overlooking the courtyard gardens.

“I can’t even fix the window,” Vond said without preamble as Sterren entered.

“I’ll have the servants take care of it immediately,” Sterren said.

“Sterren,” Vond wailed, “I can’t even fix the damned window! I can’t do anything! I can’t afford to lose my temper; I was struggling as hard as I could to shut out the magic down there, but you heard my voice, you felt the wind. How can I live without magic?”

“I didn’t feel any wind,” Sterren said truthfully. “I saw your clothes move, so I knew what happened, but it didn’t reach me. You had it almost under control. It will take practice, that’s all. Most people live their whole lives without magic. You ask how you can live without it; ask how long you can live with it.”

Vond turned and glared at him. “You did this to me,” he said bitterly.

“You did it to yourself,” Sterren retorted. “And whoever did it, it’s done now, isn’t it?”

“Oh, gods!” Vond burst out, throwing himself from the chair to the bed. “And the nightmares have already begun!”

“You’ve only had one so far,” Sterren pointed out, “and that was right after working the mightiest magic any warlock has ever performed. Perhaps, if you use no more magic, you won’t have any more nightmares.”

“Oh, get out of here!” Vond shouted.

Sterren retreated to the door. “I’ll send the servants to fix the window,” he said as he left.