Part 30 (2/2)

But a few days ago he hadn't known that his uncle had been illegally collecting magic for years; he hadn't been evicted from his home by the overlord; he hadn't seen the overlord order Uncle Faran and the rest out of the city for no crime but being what they *were.

A few days ago he hadn't been a warlock-and neither had anyone else. The Night of Madness had changed everything.

”Thank you, my lord,” Bern said.

”We'll need a list of everything you need or want,” Hanner said.

”Of course. I'll draw it up as soon as everyone's breakfasted.” ”Good,” Hanner said as he finally picked one of the sausages up from his plate. He took a healthy bite, smiled at the taste, and repeated, with a rather different emphasis, ”Good!”

Chapter Thirty-one.

The midday sun was hot as the people lined up in the garden; Lord Hanner held up a hand to shade his eyes.

Uncle Faran was sorting warlocks again. He had, he explained to Hanner, come to the conclusion that the ability to use warlockry really only had one variable: power. All the different things the magic could do, from healing to flying to warlock sight, could be learned, and once learned, the more powerful a warlock was, the better he could do any of them. A warlock couldn't be good at healing but a poor flyer, or a fast flyer unable to lift heavy weights; the magic simply didn't work that way.

Rudhira, the obvious example, was good ateverything, once she learned how it was done. None of the others could match her in any use of warlockry. She simply had more power at her command than anyone else.

Faran therefore decided to rank everyone according to this simple measurement: How much could they lift to the height of their own heads? He brought a set of weights down from the fourth floor, ranging from tiny polished bra.s.s cylinders to imm-mense blocks of lead, and tested each of the warlocks with the idea of working up a scale of abilities so that he would know who could be called on for any given task.

Kirsha's cousin Ilvin turned out to be the weakest of them all; with anything over a quarter of a pound he was limited to sliding or bouncing it, rather than levitating it properly. He was unable to heal so much as a scratch, though he could soothe it slightly, and his warlock perceptions were so vague, so weak, and so limited by distance that no one, including Ilvin, was entirely certain he wasn't just imagining them.

Hinda was next in the rankings; she could bring a pound and a half to eye level, and was very proud of this accomplishment.

”I've gotten better!” she said happily. ”When I started I could only lift a couple of spoons!”

Hanner smiled insincerely at her, and did not mention that she might have been better offnot growing stronger. He watched as the others made their attempts. Thirty-eight warlocks were tested on the -weights-Hanner was uncomfortably aware that he should have been the thirty-ninth. He surrept.i.tiously tried a few experiments with equipment that wasn't in use at the moment, and found he had no problem with a five-pound weight; he didn't get a chance to try anything heavier.

That meant he wasn't at the bottom, or even in the bottom five-he ranked at least sixth from last, ahead of Ilvin and four others.

Twenty-nine of the warlocks found their limits with the weights, though it took some doing-Othisen, the twenty-ninth, managed to lift the entire set of weights, a total of half a ton, to shoulder height before losing control and noisily dropping several.

Manrin placed slightly below the middle of the group, with a maximum of a hundred forty pounds. Lord Faran himself topped out around six hundred pounds.

Nine of the warlocks, however, hoisted the entire load. Ulpen, to everyone's surprise including his own, was one of them, as was Kirsha-and of course, Rudhira, Varrin, and Desset topped the list.

Now those nine were lined up in the garden while Lord Faran explained how he intended to test them further. Hanner had come along to watch.

”All of you can fly,” Faran said. ”Better than I can, in fact.”

That, Hanner thought, given Faran's own conclusions about warlockry being simple, hardly needed saying. All these nine were far more powerful than Faran.

”What I propose,” Faran said, ”is that we fly out over the harbor and see how much water we can lift.

That should tell us what our limits are-I think the entire Gulf of the East is too much forany of us.” He smiled significantly at Rudhira.

The warlocks smiled back and nodded-or rather eight of them did; the ninth, Rudhira, was looking uneasily toward the back of the garden as if expecting someone to appear there, apparently unaware that Lord Faran was addressing her.

She had been nervous all morning; Hanner wasn't sure whether it was just the nightmares or whether something else was affecting her. He talked to her briefly while the others were being tested, and she said that she felt as if there were always someone talking somewhere behind her, just far enough away that she couldn't make out any words. She told Hanner that she had the feeling that there was something she should be doing-specifically that there was somemagic she should be doing.

And she kept turning north.

It worried Hanner.

”So, follow me!” Faran said, lifting off the ground.

Desset and Kirsha and Varrin and the others rose as well, but Rudhira did not. As the other nine ascended Hanner hurried over to her and tapped her on the shoulder.

She blinked and turned to look at him. ”I have to go,” she said.

”With the others,” Hanner said. ”You have to go with Uncle Faran and the others, to test your magic.”

Her head was already starting to turn northward again, but she stopped herself. ”Lord Faran?” she said.

Then she looked up and gasped. ”Oh!” She stared up at the others for a second, then shot upward herself.

”Be careful!” Hanner called after her.

She stopped dead and hovered, perhaps twenty feet off the ground. ”Aren't you coming?” she called down to him.

”I can't fly,” he called back.

”Oh!”

Before Manner could say anything more he was s.n.a.t.c.hed off his feet, as he had been the other day in the palace square, and swept upward. A moment later he found himself flying upward and northward at Rudhira's side.

They caught up with the others before they had gone more than a block. Rudhira whisked up to fly alongside Lord Faran, dragging Hanner in her wake.

Hanner noticed that his uncle, while able to fly under his own power, was none too steady about it, and clearly couldn't zip along at Rudhira's usual speed. Instead he was leading them all at a fairly casual pace, slow enough that people in the streets below noticed the shadows pa.s.sing overhead and looked up.

To Manner's dismay, several of them shook fists or shouted curses.

They crossed Merchant Avenue into the corner of the Old Merchants' Quarter nearest the Palace, sailing gently over the rooftops of the shops, then pa.s.sed on into Spicetown, where Hanner looked down at the warehouses and alleys. Off to the right he could see the warm golden glow of the palace walls and sunlight blazing silver from the water of the Grand Ca.n.a.l.

Then they were beyond the Palace, and even here, seventy feet up and rising, Hanner could smell the perpetual tang of spices in the air-the warehouses below had been used to store all the spices brought across the Gulf of the East from the Small Kingdoms or down the Great River from the Baronies of Sardiron for the past two centuries, and even if they were abandoned tomorrow, Hanner suspected it would take another century before the odor faded completely.

The smell of salt mingled with the other scents; they were nearing the waterfront. Hanner could see the watery horizon ahead, beyond the buildings, spreading out before them. Sails dotted the waters of the Gulf.

The streets fell behind, the sea expanded, and then they pa.s.sed over the wharves, Lord Faran's feet barely seeming to clear the highest masts of the s.h.i.+ps tied up there. Hanner remembered his mother teaching him the names of the major docks-Thyme Wharf, Dill Wharf, Oregano, Balsam, Parsley, Mustard, then a stretch of open beach-he could see it now, just to his left-then the three diagonal wharves, Ginger, Nutmeg, and Cinnamon. Then there was the complex tangle of the Pepper Wharves,and the decaying row of the Tea Wharves, and just beyond that was the entrance to the New Ca.n.a.l that marked the western boundary of Spicetown. He wondered whether the names had ever really corresponded to what cargoes landed there; they certainly didn't now.

They were past the docks, past the line of half a dozen freighters standing off the coast awaiting a berth, and out over open water, and it suddenly occurred to Hanner to wonder whether he would be able to swim safely back to land if Rudhira were to drop him.

If warlockry were to cease to exist right now, as abruptly as it had begun, how many of the eleven of them would make it back to sh.o.r.e alive? The fall alone might kill them. They were at least eighty feet up.

Hanner took a breath, preparing to shout something, but just then Lord Faran slowed to almost a hover and called, ”This should do.”

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