Part 29 (1/2)

But it was dark, and he wasn't touching the wall; his hands were at his sides.

He blinked, and the perception faded slightly.

He didn't need to know how the wall was put together, he just needed to get over it. He still couldn't sense any toeholds, even with this new ability.

He turned his attention to himself, to see whether he could figure out how to fly. It should be easy-just lift himself off the ground. He had experimented with his magic a little in secret, earlier in the day, and he could move small objects around, but he hadn't tried lifting himself.

It wasn't as easy.

It wasn't so much the weight, although he had never tried lifting anything even close to his own size; instead, he realized, it was because he couldn't sense a relations.h.i.+p between himself and the object he was trying to move.

That was how a warlock moved things. He had done it without understanding it before, without being aware of how he was doing it, but now he saw it clearly. His new sense showed him the relations.h.i.+p in s.p.a.ce between himself and the object he wanted to affect, and then he manipulated that relations.h.i.+p-warlockry was all a matter of using this new sense to find the magical connections between himself and the rest of the World, and then forcing them to change. He had caught that cruet by blocking its connection to the floor.

But finding the magical connections between himself and himself didn't seem to work.

Rudhira and the others had done it, though. There had to be a way. He studied himself with his newly recognized warlock sight, and finally figured out what he would have to do. In order to fly, Hanner saw, a warlock didn't move himself; he moved the rest of the World.

Hanner reached out and tried to do that, to move the street and wall away-and caught himself just before he fell over backward.

He straightened up, frowned, looked down at his feet, and tried again, concentrating on pressing the ground away from the soles of his sandals.

He rose unsteadily for an inch or two, then wobbled and started to fall backward. Again, he used his warlockry to catch himself.

He couldcatch himself easily enough, he thought. It was annoying; it was as if his magic worked better when he didn't think about it.

But if he didn't think about it, he couldn't fly!

He heard footsteps and turned to see a patrolling guardsman marching toward him. Quickly he tugged up his tunic and untied his breeches, to provide the obvious excuse for why someone was standing inches from a blank wall at night.

”Hai!”the soldier called. ”Go find somewhere better!”

”Sorry!” Hanner called, retying his breeches. ”Drank too much ale at supper.”

”Well, get rid of it somewhere else.”

”Yes, sir.”

He hesitated, then took a step toward Merchant Avenue. The guardsman marched on.

Hanner turned back to the wall, studying it with his warlock sense, wondering whether he could somehow brace against it to stay upright while he lifted himself over it. Bricks and mortar, bricks and ...

”Oh,” he said.

The service entrance was right there, a few yards to his right, a wooden gate with an iron latch. How had he missed it?

He hurried to it, reached out-and realized he couldn't see any gate. The brick was solid and unbroken .

To normal eyes. To a warlock, there was a gate.

At last Hanner figured it out. Uncle Faran had had his gate enchanted, had a protective illusion put on it.

He reached out and felt the ”wall.”

Sure enough, it was wood, not brick. The illusion wasn't so complete it fooled his fingers. He found the latch by feel, and tried to open it. It was locked. He could sense the mechanism, a bolt that could be worked from the inside. There was a slot below it; presumably Bern carried a tool that could reach through the slot and work the bolt from the outside.

Hanner had no such tool-but he was a warlock.

The bolt slid back, and the gate opened, and he was inside. He closed the gate carefully, hoping he hadn't disrupted the undoubtedly costly illusion, and headed for a door from the garden into the house.

A moment later he was inside, making his way along the central hallway. He could hear voices ahead.

He found half a dozen people in the candlelit front parlor; they turned to look at him as he entered.

”Lord Hanner!” Rudhira said from a chair by one of the front windows where she had been watching the crowd in the street outside. ”I'm glad you got back inside safely.”

”I'm not sure how safe it really is,” Hanner replied as he looked around. Besides Rudhira and himself, the room held Alla-dia, Othisen, and three other warlocks whose names he didn't recall immediately.

”Where's Uncle Faran?” he asked.

”Upstairs with the wizards,” Rudhira said. ”He has us on guard duty for now, making sure those people outside don't do any harm.” She pointed at the top of the window by her chair. ”Someone caught us off guard and threw a brick through there about an hour ago, but we fixed it. You can hardly tell the gla.s.s was ever broken.”

”You fixed it?” Hanner stared at the panes, which appeared completely intact. ”How?”

One of the others giggled, and Othisen said gently, ”We're warlocks, remember?”

”Yes, but... I know you can move things, but I didn't know you could fix them.”

”We can do a lot of things,” Rudhira said. ”Move things, break things, unbreak them. We can make light, as you've seen.” She held up an orange-glowing hand to demonstrate. ”We've been teaching each other.

We can open locks and heal wounds and heat things up or cool them down. We can harden things, or dissolve them, or set them on fire. We can see things too small to be seen without magic, see the insides of things, and feel things without touching them. It'swonderful, my lord! I thought it was good enough just being able to throw things around and fly, but there's so much more!”

”That's ... that's wonderful,” Hanner said, hoping he sounded more convinced than he felt.

He didn't know how to do all that-but presumably, if everyone else had learned these things, he could learn them. All he had to do was admit he was a warlock, throw in his lot with the others-and put himself at risk of exile or death, not to mention being something that Mavi found repulsive.

It was tempting, all the same-he could feel the magic in him calling out to be used, to be trained and built up.

But he wasn't going to do it.

At least, not yet. ”That girl, Sheila, who was apprenticed to a witch,” Othisen said, ”she said we could make more warlocks, and sort of showed us how, but we didn't have anyone to experiment on.”

”Lady Alris wouldn't volunteer,” Rudhira said. ”And you weren't here.”

”And I'm not volunteering now,” Hanner said, heading off any such suggestion and hoping none of these people were as attuned to warlockry's presence as Sheila had been. ”But what about those people out there?” he asked with a wave at the windows. ”Maybe you could change one ofthem. That might convince them warlocks aren't monsters.”

”Them?” Rudhira glanced toward the window, and the drapes flapped aside, though there was no wind in the closed room. The glow from her hand vanished. ”I wouldn't do them the favor!” she said angrily.