Part 24 (1/2)
”I hope you'll forgive the dust,” Faran said. ”I don't allow the servants to clean up here.”
Manrin made a polite wordless noise in reply. Hanner ran his hand along the left-hand banister, then sneezed-the dust was indeed plentiful. Ulpen didn't say or touch anything; he looked frightened. Hanner wondered whether Ulpen's discomfort came merely from being among warlocks or from something else entirely.
At the top of the stairs Faran led the way down a broad pa.s.sageway. The walls were painted white and a worn red and gold carpet ran the length of the corridor; the luxurious furnis.h.i.+ngs of the two lower floors were notably absent, and a long scorch mark on one wall had been left unrepaired. Hanner noticed that the burn was obviously not recent, as dust and cobwebs were just as thick there as elsewhere.
Faran opened a door and ushered the party into a good-sized but dim room. As the others stood around uncertainly Faran opened the heavy drapes on two big west-facing windows, letting in the late-afternoon sunlight; it cut through the room in bright shafts alive with dancing dust and illuminated several chairs and walls lined with chests of drawers.
It didn't look much like a study to Hanner, as there was no desk and the only books were a set ofledgers atop one of the chests. It didn't look particularly magical, either, and there was no obvious reason to have kept it so carefully locked, though Hanner supposed the drawers might contain almost anything.
But it was somewhere private to talk.
Faran gestured to the chairs and pulled one forward for himself. ”Now, Master,” he said as he seated himself, ”why have you come here?”
”I understand that you are gathering warlocks here, and that you have undertaken to defend them against overreaction regarding the disturbances on the Night of Madness,” Manrin said as he settled carefully onto a chair.
”That's more or less the situation,” Faran agreed. ”What of it?”
Manrin and Ulpen glanced nervously at each other.
”In that case,” Manrin said, ”we would like to join your group.”
Faran c.o.c.ked his head to one side. Hanner said, ”But you're wizards, aren't you?”
”We are,” Manrin agreed. ”However, we are also warlocks.” He looked around for a convenient demonstration, and one of the ledgers lifted itself from the chest of drawers. It hovered for a moment, then settled back into place.
Faran and Hanner watched this silently; then Faran turned back to the wizards and asked, ”Your apprentice, too?”
”He's notmy apprentice,” Manrin said. ”He's Abdaran's apprentice-Abdaran the White, a village wizard of no particular significance. But the boy's a warlock, as I am, so I brought him along.”
”Is that so?” Faran asked Ulpen.
”Yes, mas . . . yes, my lord,” Ulpen replied. ”Master Abdaran took me to the Guildmaster for a consultation, and Guildmaster Manrin took me to Guildmaster Perinan, and Guildmaster Perinan sent us to Guildmaster Ithinia, and then we came here.”
”So all these people know you're warlocks?” Faran frowned. ”Then why did you want to see mein private?”
”Theydon't know,” Manrin said quickly. ”Abdaran knows about Ulpen, but I don't believe any of the others know it's possible for a wizard to have been contaminated in this fas.h.i.+on. I claimed to be acting from disinterested motives in consulting the others, and had Perinan send us to Ithinia-or rather to Ethshar of the Spices. That was the fastest way to get here.”
”A Transporting Tapestry?” Faran asked.
”You know of them?” Manrin asked, startled.
”I've heard of them,” Faran said. ”I've never seen one in operation.”
”They're very handy; we stepped forty leagues in a heartbeat.” ”It was amazing!” Ulpen said, showing the first sign of enthusiasm-very nearly the first sign oflife -Hanner had seen from him. ”We justtouched it!”
”Yes, yes,” Manrin said. He turned his attention back to Faran. ”At any rate, we arrived in the city, stopped by Ithinia's home to maintain the fiction that we came to consult her, and then came here.” He hesitated. ”You understand why we came?”
”I'd prefer you to make it explicit,” Faran said.
Manrin sighed. ”It's simple enough. We want to live. And right now, it's not clear that we'll be permitted to. Ithinia says your overlord here, Lord Azrad, is determined to kill all the warlocks; our Lord Ederd isn't so certain, but was talking about exile.”
”Then haven't you just made your situation worse by coming here?” Hanner asked.
”We came to seek shelter, young man,” Manrin said.
”But if you stayed out of Ethshar of the Spices, you wouldn't necessarilyneed shelter...”
”I think we would, no matter what Ederd decides,” Manrin replied. ”The triumvirate isn't the only power in Ethshar. Don't forget-we are wizards. And wizards are forbidden by Guild rules to learn any other magic. And violations of Guild rules are punishable by death.”
”But you didn'task to be warlocks!” Hanner exclaimed.
”I'm afraid that the Guild often does not worry about intentions, but only results.”
”Then they're no better than Lord Azrad!”
Manrin blinked at him in surprise. ”Did anyone ever claim they were?”
”My nephew has something of an idealistic streak,” Faran said dryly. ”I've been telling him for years that the Wizards' Guild is not as benign as it would like to appear, but he was not inclined to believe me.”
”So I see,” Manrin said. ”Well, in any case, it seems to me that if we, as both warlocks and wizards, want to survive, we had best find some support. We can't keep our situation a secret forever-”
”Why not?” Hanner interrupted, startling everyone, including himself. He had just been thinking that in Manrin's position he would simply never have admitted to being a warlock.
After all,he hadn't told anyonehe was a warlock, and didn't intend to.
Manrin looked at him in surprise. ”Because warlockry wants to be used! Hasn't anyone told you that, out of all these warlocks? It's easy to use it quite unintentionally-we've both done it several times. One can even use it inadvertently in one's sleep. Sooner or later we would slip somewhere we could be seen-and that's quite aside from the fact that Ulpen's master Abdaran already knows that Ulpen is a warlock.”
Lord Faran was nodding, and Hanner remembered that his uncle had, in fact, given away his own warlock nature by accident. The possibility that Hanner would give away his own secret the way Manrindescribed worried him, but just now he didn't see much he could do about it.
Manrin frowned. ”And there's another factor, as well. It would seem that warlockry and wizardry do interfere with each other to some extent. Most of my spells have been going wrong for the past two days, and it may well get worse. I'm a Guildmaster-people expect me to use my magic every day. If I begin to refuse, or if my spells begin to fail regularly, questions will arise.”
”Oh,” Hanner said. He glanced at his uncle.
Faran was looking thoughtfully at the wizards.
”Your spells don't work?” he said. ”Then are you really still a wizard?”
Manrin sighed. ”I'm afraid so,” he said. ”I can still worksome spells, and besides, one can't stop being a wizard, not really. I know a good many Guild secrets, including some that it's death for a nonwizard to know. So if I'm still a wizard, then I must die for being a warlock; if I am no longer a wizard, then I must die for knowing Guild secrets. Unless, that is, I can find some way to convince the Guild to relent.”
”The Guildnever relents, does it?” Ulpen asked. ”Abdaran told me it didn't.”
”Not unless it's forced to,” Manrin agreed. ”And that's why we've come here. I'm not sure just what you intend with this group you're gathering, my lord, but whatever it is, we'd like to offer our services in exchange for whatever protection you can give us.”
”Your services,” Faran said. ”But you just said that your magic is damaged.”
”Mymind isn't,” Manrin snapped. ”And it's wizardry that's damaged; I'm still as much a warlock as any of those others downstairs. And I'm also still a Guildmaster, until they find out what's happened to me-I reallydo know secrets, and for now I am able to speak with Ithinia and Perinan about matters that an outsider would never dare broach.”