Part 14 (1/2)

Then he looked at the others-Karannin, Imra, and Azrad the Younger.

”And you three,” he said, ”find something useful to do. Elsewhere.”

A moment later the room was empty save for Azrad, sprawled unhappily in his throne, contemplating hours, perhaps days, of activity before he would be rid of all this and able to return to his usual comfortable indolence.

Chapter Fifteen.

Lord Hanner had not yet reached any useful conclusions regarding what he should do about the warlocks by the time Alris returned.

He had been wandering about the house-or at any rate the first two floors-marveling at the place and trying to think of whether he ought to be doing anything more.

He had first checked on the prisoners and made sure they had food and clean water; they seemed resigned to their fate and willing to face the magistrates. Kirsha, the teenaged girl they had caught amid a cloud of stolen jewelry and fabric, asked whether there was any way to send a message to her family, and was told that it would have to wait a little longer. When that was done Hanner went back downstairs and explored further. He discovered that the big doors at the back of the dining hall led to a vast ballroom, which in turn opened on the garden, and he noticed that the inlays in the ballroom floor included a mystic circle, suitable for ritual dancing; that was more of Uncle Faran's obsession with magic, he supposed. He wondered at first whether it had ever actually been used; then he found the traces of old chalk markings, imperfectly erased, and concluded that it had.

He wondered whether ritual dance was included in the Wizards' Guild's prohibition on government use of magic-but he had no idea who the dancers had been or what the dance had been intended for, which made it hard to guess whether it might have violated Guild rules.

The small doors on the east side of the dining hall led to a warren of kitchens and pantries, whereBern spent much of his time. Here, too, there were signs of an interest in magic-or perhaps just in ostentation-in the form of animated crockery and a never-empty water jug.

The west side of the house, beyond the big front parlor, held an a.s.sortment of salons, studies, and libraries.

When the front door lock rattled Hanner was two rooms away, admiring a collection of gla.s.sware that was either from Shan on the Desert or an extremely good imitation-and Hanner doubted Faran would own any imitations. He was holding a delicate little purple cruet made in the shape of an orchid, studying the way the color faded from almost indigo at the base to almost red at the top, when he heard the key turn. He looked up-and the cruet slipped from his hands.

He started to grab for it, then realized he might crush it and hesitated, and it was too late, it was out of his grasp. He reached for it anyway, desperatelywilling it not to fall...

And it didn't. Instead it sank slowly through the air as if it were sinking in oil, and Hanner was easily able to catch it before it hit the hard parquet floor.

He plucked it from the air and set it carefully back on its shelf, then stared at it.

It was obvious what he had done, of course. He, too, was a warlock.

He was a warlock after all; he merely hadn't realized it before.

This concept demanded some thought. How was he a warlock? Why was he a warlock?

Waseveryone a warlock, then, and most people just hadn't noticed it yet? Or was it spreading, like an infection, and he had caught it from the warlocks he had gathered?

At first Hanner couldn't begin to answer any of these questions. He hadn't felt any change in himself-but he remembered he had staggered the night before, at the instant before the screaming began.

It had probably happened then, and he just hadn't known it until now.

How many other people, he wondered, were in the same situation?

Bernand Alris were speaking in the entryway, and Alris's voice interrupted his thoughts. ”Hanner? Are you here?”

He tore his attention away from the gla.s.sware and his newly discovered abilities and called back, ”I'll be right there.” He gave the cruet one final glance, then turned and left the room.

He met his sister in the front parlor, and saw immediately that she was both excited and worried-which worriedhim, since Alris's usual mood was irritated boredom.

”Did you speak to Uncle Faran?” Hanner asked.

”No,” Alris said. ”He was too busy to come to the door, and I wasn't allowed inside.”

Hanner blinked in surprise. ”Inside? You mean you weren't allowed inside the Palace?”

”That's right,” Alris said. ”They still aren't letting anyone in, for any reason. The overlord hasn't rescinded the order, and it doesn't look as if he intends to. And Uncle Faran hasn't done anything about it, either-the guard said he thought Faranagreed with the overlord!”

”He does sometimes,” Hanner said dryly. ”So who did you talk to?”

”The guards, mostly,” Alris said. ”Hanner, it's bad, really bad.”

”What is?”

”Everything. The whole city. What happened last night.”

Hanner sank into a nearby armchair and gestured for his sister to take another. ”Tell me about it,” he said. ”What happened last night? Was there something besides the looting and fighting?” Alris nodded.

”People disappeared,” she said.”Hundreds of them!” Hanner frowned. ”Disappeared how?” he asked.

”Just vanished? Was there a flash or a bang or smoke or anything? I didn't see or hear anything like that.”

”Notvanished vanished,” Alris said. ”Or at least, not necessarily. Maybe some of them disappeared that way, but most of them are just gone. They weren't there in the morning when their families or neighbors went to find them. And there are stories about seeing dozens of them flying away, and the guards who were on duty at Westgate supposedly reported dozens of people marching out the gate in the middle of the night without saying anything, without any baggage-some of them weren't even dressed!”

Hanner felt a cold knot forming in his stomach. He remembered seeing the flying figures overhead the night before, and wondered how many of them had never returned. ”Magic,” he said. ”A compulsion, maybe.” Alris nodded. ”Probably,” she said. ”That's what most of the people think, anyway. There's a big crowd of their friends and relatives in the square, waiting for the overlord to do something, and they just about all think it was magic-after all, whatelse could make people just leave in the middle of the night and not come back?”

Hanner made a wordless noise of agreement. ”What n.o.body agrees on is whatkind of magic,” Alris said.

”Most of them think it was the warlocks who did it.”

”That's silly,” Hanner said. ”There weren't any warlocks until last night; the warlocks didn't have time to plan anything like that!” Alris turned up a palm. ”Well, just about everyone thinks there'ssome connection. Some people think it was the Wizards' Guild behind it all, for some secret reason of their own, and some think it was a coven of demonologists paying for some huge spell, and I heard someone saying it was Northern sorcerers left over from the Great War, out for revenge.”

”I don't think sorcery could do that,” Hanner said. ”ButNorthern sorcery ...”

”... is a lost art, yes. Partly. It's not as lost as some people would like to think, though-most of our sorcerers are using Northern relics. Anyway, where would these Northerners have hidden all this time?

It's been two hundred years since the war ended!”

”Somewhere in the northern wilderness, I suppose,” Alris said. ”Tazmor or Srigmor, maybe.”

”It seems pretty unlikely.”

”I thought so, too-but a lot of the people who disappeared were last seen going north.”

”That doesn't mean there are any Northerners involved,” Han-ner pointed out. ”It could just as easily be some wizard somewhere in Sardiron. Maybe someone's spell went wrong-I know that happens sometimes.”

”I guess you're right,” Alris said. ”So maybe it was the Wizards' Guild or the demonologists. But whatever it is,something big happened!”

”Obviously,” Hanner agreed dryly.