The Unwilling Warlord (21 page)

Then the little sphere shattered on the stone at his feet.

He looked down, bent over, and picked up a sliver. It was ice; it melted away in his hand.

“I tried,” he said.

Vond was glaring at him in disgust. “I know you did. I felt it. And I guess you were right; you’re no warlock!”

“Where did you get the ice?” Sterren asked, looking at the water on his fingers.

“I pulled it out of the air; it’s easy, for a real warlock.”

“Oh,” Sterren said, oddly impressed. He had seen Vond cutting out huge slabs of bedrock without tools, but some­how pulling ice out of the air seemed even more unnatural. “Can you do it again?”

“Of course I can!” Vond said, clearly affronted.

“I only meant . . .” Sterren began.

“Oh, go away!” Vond snapped. “I’m tired of all your questions, and I’ve got a palace to build! You go tell those people in that castle that I’m in charge now, and when I finish the palace I’ll tell them what I want from them.”

Sterren started to say something, and thought better of it.

“Go!” Vond thundered — literally, as the air about him flashed crimson and the word sprang up from the ground.

Sterren went.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

“I wouldn’t worry too much,” Sterren said. Princess Shirrin blinked at him. She and her father were the only two Semmans present; the queen and Princess Lura had gone elsewhere, and at the moment the servants all happened to be out of the room.

“Oh, you wouldn’t, would you?” said King Phenvel.

“No, I wouldn’t,” Sterren repeated. “You can’t do anything about him. You’re just going to have to live with it. He’s not . . . not . . .” Sterren groped unsuccessfully for a Semmat word approximating “malicious,” and gave up. “If you don’t anger him,” he said, “he won’t hurt anybody.”

“But he’s a usurper, a traitor!” the king shouted.

Sterren shrugged. He didn’t consider it treason, since Vond was Ethsharitic, but he had to admit that the term “usurper” was accurate enough.

“All right, warlord,” King Phenvel said. “If you were king of Semma, how would you deal with him?”

“I’d surrender,” Sterren said immediately. He didn’t know the word for “abdicate.”

Shirrin let out a little squeak of dismay, which the two men ignored.

Sterren didn’t point out that if he were king of Semma, he would abdicate in any case, regardless of whether or not an all-powerful warlock were causing trouble. Being king did not look like an enjoyable occupation.

“Oh, go away,” Phenvel growled.

Sterren bowed, and retreated.

With his duty fulfilled for the moment, he headed directly for the kitchens; he had not yet broken his fast, and his stomach was beginning to cramp with hunger.

He was not particularly surprised to find the two wizards and three witches already there, seated along the benches around two sides of a low table. The presence of Princess Lura, perched atop a high stool, was somewhat less expected, but not a great shock.

He greeted them all politely, and then asked one of the cooks’ helpers to find him something. “. . . a stale bun, a lightly-chewed bone, whatever comes to hand.”

She laughed. “Don’t worry, my lord, we can always see what the dogs wouldn’t finish!”

“Oh, excellent! Do that, please!”

The servant hurried off, and Sterren settled onto a chair near a large chopping block that could serve him as a table, facing the others.

“Hello, Lord Sterren,” Princess Lura said. “What’s your crazy magician doing?”

“Oh, I don’t think he’s crazy,” Sterren replied.

“What is he doing?” Shenna asked, in Ethsharitic. “I woke early this morning, but he was already up and gone. I’m not sure he slept at all.”

“I’ve heard warlocks don’t need much sleep,” Emner remarked.

“Speak Semmat!” Lura demanded, in Semmat.

“I’ll translate anything important,” Shenna promised, in lightly-accented Semmat better than Sterren’s own. “And if I don’t, then Hamder or Ederd or Sterren will. But Annara and Emner here don’t know any Semmat.”

“Well, I don’t know any Ethsharitic, and this is my daddy’s castle!”

“But we’re not talking to your daddy; we’re talking to each other,” Shenna pointed out. “I promise, Lura, I’ll translate.”

“That’s your Highness Princess Lura, to you,” Lura corrected grumpily.

Sterren looked at Lura for a moment, trying to decide whether he should say anything, and decided he shouldn’t.

“Well?” Emner asked, using the Ethsharitic word.

“He’s building a palace,” Sterren said in his native tongue. “He’s appointed himself dictator of Semma and plans to build an empire run by warlocks.”

Shenna hesitated, and then translated this to Lura as, “The crazy magician is building a palace so he can be a king, too.”

“Why would he want to do that?” the princess de­manded.

Sterren answered in Semmat, “He thinks your father wasn’t very nice to him.”

Princess Lura looked baffled. “But Daddy is rotten to everybody!”

“I know that,” Sterren said, “but Vond isn’t used to it. His feelings were hurt.”

“That’s pretty silly,” Lura declared.

Sterren shrugged. “I guess so,” he said.

“What was that about?” Annara asked, in Ethsharitic.

Sterren sighed. He saw the kitchen maid approaching with a well-stocked platter — despite the threats, it was heavily loaded with dried fruit, slices of mutton left from breakfast, and assorted breads — and decided he didn’t want to deal with explanations just then. “Look,” he said in Ethsharitic, “I want to eat something, and I get confused dealing with two different languages. Could you people wait awhile?” He switched to Semmat, and said, “I want to eat now. Your Highness, could I come to your family quarters later and answer your questions then?”

The little princess looked at Sterren, and then around at the magicians. “Oh, all right,” she said. She slid from her perch and stalked off.

Sterren and the five magicians managed not to laugh at her retreating figure. The warlord made it a little easier for himself by stuffing a pastry in his mouth; he found it hard to laugh with a mouthful of flaky crust.

When Princess Lura was safely out of earshot and the edge had been taken off his hunger, Sterren leaned back in his chair and began talking, answering the magicians’ questions.

With a little prompting, he explained about warlockry; of the five, only Ederd knew anything about it at all. He described what was known of the Aldagmor source, and the Calling, and Vond’s discovery of a secondary source ten leagues to the northwest of Semma, and he reported what Vond had said of his intentions.

When he had finished, the five looked at one another.

“I think I’ll go home,” Shenna said. “It doesn’t look that safe around here.” Hamder nodded in agreement.

“I must admit that if warlocks are going to be running things around here, they won’t have much use for witches,” Ederd agreed, “but I think I’d like to stay for a little while and see what develops.”

Sterren nodded approvingly. His own attitude was very similar.

“Suit yourself,” Hamder said. “I’m going home.”

“Me, too,” said Shenna.

Emner and Annara were obviously uncertain of their plans. They were eyeing each other doubtfully.

“One of us should stay to keep an eye on things, I think,” Emner said at last, “and the other should go contact a Guildmaster.”

Annara nodded. “You better go,” she said. “I don’t know any Guildmasters.”

“I’m not sure I do, any more,” Emner said.

“Well, you go, anyway,” Annara insisted.

Emner nodded.

“What’s this about Guildmasters?” Sterren asked.

Annara and Emner exchanged quick glances.

Emner cleared his throat. “I suppose you’ve heard of the Wizards’ Guild,” he said.

Sterren nodded.

“Well,” Emner explained, “Guildmasters are the officers of the Wizards’ Guild. This is all more or less secret, you understand, but it’s not one of the big secrets; we won’t be punished for telling you.”

“You think your Guild will want to do something about this?” Sterren asked. He hoped for some facts to back up his earlier theorizing.

Emner spread his palms. “Who knows? They might, though, and if we didn’t tell them about it, and they found out later, it wouldn’t do our standing any good, that’s certain.”

“They probably won’t do anything,” Annara said. “They generally don’t like to interfere with non-wizards. But they like to know what’s going on. And sometimes they do intervene, eventually. Usually they wait a minimum of ten years, to see what’s going to happen. The Guild has been around a long, long time, and it’s a pretty patient organization.”

“How do you know all this?” Hamder asked.

“We’re members of the Guild, of course,” Emner said. “You can’t be a wizard if you don’t join. They kill anyone who tries, usually in some spectacularly horrible way.”

“How do you join?” Hamder persisted.

“When you sign on as an apprentice, you’re initiated into the Guild before you’re taught your first spell,” An­nara explained. “All through your apprenticeship, you’ll get lessons about the Guild, as well as about wizardry itself. Not that they really tell you much. How the Guild actually works is all secret. There are Guildmasters, and there are rumors of an Inner Circle within the Guildmasters, but we don’t . . . well, at least I don’t know whether there’s really an Inner Circle, or who gets chosen to be a Guildmaster, or anything else about how the Guild operates. I just know that if you break a Guild rule, you die, and I know what the Guild rules are, and what I can and can’t tell outsiders.”

Emner nodded. “It was the same for me,” he said, “even though my master’s old master was a Guildmaster himself, until he died.”

“So you intend to inform the Wizards’ Guild of Vond’s plans,” Sterren said. “Then what?”

Emner and Annara exchanged glances. “Then I go home,” Emner said, “if the Guild will let me. And I’ll buy a dream-spell or a messenger-spell and let Annara know what the Guild wants her to do, if anything, if they haven’t sent a message already.”

“And what does the Guild do?”

“I have no idea,” Emner said.

“Most likely,” Annara said, “they’ll argue for several months, maybe years, and give the problem time to either go away by itself or develop into something serious. My master always said that was how they worked.”

Emner nodded. “My master never said, but it sounds right.”

Sterren turned to Ederd. “Is there a Witches’ Guild?”

The three witches exchanged glances. “Not really,” Shenna said. “There are two rather loose organizations, the Brotherhood and the Sisterhood, but they’re nothing like what Annara described. At least, the Sisterhood isn’t. I never joined either one, but I was invited by the Sisterhood once. I turned it down; I didn’t like the rules. They swap spells and recipes, and talk shop a lot, and they have an emergency fund for when a member’s in trouble, but they’ve got a lot of regulations about not competing with each other and not keeping secrets from the group and a whole bunch of other stuff that I didn’t want to put up with.”

“The Brotherhood’s even looser,” Ederd said. “I was a member for a year, but I got tired of paying dues for nothing, and I quit.”

“I never even heard of it,” Hamder said.

Ederd looked at him curiously. “Your master never mentioned it?”

“No, she didn’t,” Hamder said, glaring back.

“Is there a Warlocks’ Guild?” Shenna asked. “You seem to know a lot about them, Sterren.”

“I failed an apprenticeship,” he said. “If there is a Guild, I didn’t get far enough to find out about it. I don’t think there is, though; warlocks tend to be pretty anti-social. And they don’t have the history wizards and witches do; they haven’t even lasted twenty years yet.”

“I wonder about the sorcerers?” Hamder said.

“And the theurgists?” Annara added.

“You could ask Agor about them,” Sterren said. “He’s a theurgist here in Semma, though he isn’t a very good one.”

“I’ll do that,” Annara said. “Where do I find him? I think I’d like to talk to him about all this, and see what he thinks we ought to do about Vond out there.”

Ederd nodded agreement. “Good idea.”

Sterren shrugged. “I can show you his room, but there’s no hurry.”

“Speak for yourself,” Hamder retorted. “I intend to get out of here today, in case somebody gets Vond mad and he decides to squash this whole castle.”

“Me, too,” Shenna said.

“I don’t think he’ll do anything like that,” Sterren said.

“All the same,” Emner said, getting to his feet, “the three of us who are going probably ought to go, without wasting any more time. If you don’t mind, Sterren, I’m going to go pack my things.” He turned to Annara. “I have that spell you wanted written out; I’ll trade it for the Explosive Seal any time it’s ready.”

“I don’t know how to put all of it in writing; I’d better come show you,” Annara said. She rose, and together the two wizards departed.

“Excuse me, my lord,” Hamder said, as he, too, stood up, “but I think the wizard’s right. I’ll go pack.”

Shenna just nodded without saying anything, as she and Hamder left.

That left just Sterren and Ederd.

“Well,” Ederd said, “I suppose I’ll go look around the castle, see if I can find a window with a good view of the warlock’s palace, and let you eat in peace.” He rose.

Sterren nodded. “If you like climbing stairs, my cham­ber in the tower has a great view. Tell the guards I said you could go in.”

Ederd bowed, and left.

Sterren ate.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

“Ten leagues to the northwest, you say?”

Sterren nodded. Queen Ashassa looked thoughtful.

“That would be Lumeth of the Towers,” she said. “Perhaps near the Towers themselves.”

“Maybe it is the Towers!” Princess Lura said.

The queen nodded. “Maybe it is,” she agreed. “Certainly, nobody knows what they’re for, and generating this magic you describe seems as likely an explanation as any.”

Sterren glanced at Nissitha and Shirrin, but as usual, they said nothing. Nissitha stared at him disdainfully, and Shirrin, whenever she saw him look in her direction, looked quickly away. The adoration he had seen so often in her face seemed to be gone, now, replaced by a ferocious disappointment.

Prince Dereth, age eleven, watched carefully, but said little beyond occasional expressions of wonder.

Nobody replied to the queen’s comment, and when the silence began to lengthen uncomfortably, Sterren asked, “Is there anything else, your Majesty?”

“Just this, Lord Sterren. You know this man Vond, and you know something of his magic. What would you advise us to do?”

Sterren frowned slightly. He could only give one answer, but he knew it was not one that the queen would like.

“Nothing,” he said. He would have liked to have said more, explaining his reasons, but the effort of making himself understood in Semmat was too much. He had been talking all morning, save when he was walking back and forth between the castle and Vond’s building site, and he was tired of it. He left his answer a single word.

“You think he could defeat our entire army, if you marched against him?”

“Yes, your Majesty — easily.” Sterren did not bother to point out that the warlock had already defeated the much larger armies of Ophkar and Ksinallion; the queen knew that.

Ashassa eyed him for a moment, then nodded slightly. “All right, Lord Sterren,” she said, “you may go.”

“Thank you, your Majesty.” He rose, bowed, and backed out of the room.

Once in the corridor he paused, unsure where to go.

The three departing magicians might well have already left, and he had no idea where to find Annara or Ederd — unless Annara had tracked down Agor, in which case she might not appreciate any interruptions. The climb back to his own room was too much to face immediately.

Well, there were always his duties as warlord; he had not seen anything of his troops since returning from Eth­shar save vague shapes moving on distant battlements, or guards at various doors. He headed for the barracks.

As he walked, he reviewed his own thoughts about Vond and the unexpected turn of recent events. He had not had a chance to sit down and think about it, but in the course of the morning’s several discussions, he had reached several conclusions.

The warlock’s plans had several good points to them, in truth. Uniting several of the Small Kingdoms, and putting an end to their stupid little wars, would hardly hurt anyone or anything except the egos of the conquered rulers. Most of the people affected would be peasants, who would acquire a new ruler, and who would no longer have to worry about having their farms looted and burned, their wives and daughters assaulted by invading soldiers.

That assumed, of course, that Vond actually could build and hold his empire as easily as he believed he could, but Sterren thought it was a very reasonable assumption. As Vond had pointed out, warlockry without the Calling was virtually limitless, and right now, at least, he was free of the Calling. Magic was scarce and feared in this region. Who could effectively oppose him?

The local nobility would find themselves deprived of their traditional powers and perquisites, but Sterren found himself untroubled by that prospect. Life was inherently uncertain, always a gamble; why should kings and nobles be exempt from that uncertainty? The lot of them could go elsewhere and find ways to survive, he was sure, or could presumably find places for themselves under Vond’s rule; even a warlock could not do everything himself, and would surely need experienced administrators to handle the de­tails of governing.

The question was, what else would Vond do, beyond uniting the kingdoms and dispossessing the nobility?

That, of course, Sterren did not know. Vond had spoken of concubines — that might mean abduction and rape, or it might just mean accepting offers. He was setting himself up as an absolute ruler, but did that mean only that he would expect his orders to be obeyed, or that he would treat everyone else as mere slaves, to be beaten or killed at whim?

Benevolent despot or brutal tyrant — the difference would lie in Vond’s personality, and Sterren simply did not know the man well enough to guess which he would be­come.

If he became a tyrant, then what? If he turned out benevolent, then Sterren would leave well enough alone, but what if he became a tyrant?

Walking out and heading back to Ethshar was a possibility, but somehow it did not seem like a very appealing one. After all, Sterren had to admit that he had brought Vond here.

He had had no way of knowing what would happen, of course. Nobody could have known about the new power source in Lumeth. Still, intention was not always as important as results. He had never intended to lose when he played dice, but that hadn’t put food in his mouth when he did lose. One had to live with the results of one’s actions, whether those results were planned or not.

If Vond were a tyrant, what then?

There was the Wizards’ Guild, of course, lurking somewhere in the background, but what Annara and Emner had told him of the Guild was hardly very inspiring. Slow, cautious, not eager to interfere — that did not describe an organization that would efficiently remove a tyrant.

There was assassination. Sterren had discussed the possible assassination of the kings of Ophkar and Ksinallion with Lar Samber’s son, his inherited spy, and thought he had a good idea of what would be involved. Semma had no history of assassination, no one trained in assassination; he could send his soldiers or Lar’s spies, but they would probably fail and either die or be captured in the attempt. They might also be traced back to him, their warlord. Against a mere king, Lar judged the odds on a first attempt no better than one in five, and getting steadily worse with each attempt as the target took ever stronger counter-measures.

Lar had hinted at knowledge of an organization of professional assassins, but Sterren had the clear impression that this group, if it actually existed, did not operate anywhere near Semma. Furthermore, if he had understood Lar’s hints, they were very expensive, very secretive, and generally not easy to deal with. They were not so much a gang or a guild as a cult; the name Demerchan had been mentioned once.

That might be worth pursuing if all else failed, but it did not look promising.

He could try to reason with Vond, of course; Vond considered him a friend and ally. Perhaps he could sway the warlock, keep him from becoming a tyrant in the first place.

He would have to try that.

There was one other possibility, one that he had seen almost immediately as the inevitable solution. He considered it as he opened the barracks door. It was a solution that would take care of itself, eventually, but which he could either hurry or hinder.

Vond thought he was free of the Calling, but if Sterren understood the situation correctly, Vond was missing a vital point.

He shoved the whole question to the back of his mind as someone shouted, “It’s the warlord! Three cheers for Ster­ren, Ninth Warlord!”

A ragged cheer broke out, and Sterren froze in the doorway.

He looked over his men, astonished by this display of enthusiasm. He had been so concerned with Vond that he had forgotten that it was only a day ago that the invading armies were sent fleeing. These soldiers didn’t care about any warlocks; they were happy to have the siege broken, the catapults and battering ram destroyed, their constant duties on the walls at an end, and the methods used did not worry them at all. They were spontaneously applauding him, Sterren of Ethshar, who had brought them this easy victory.

He smiled and raised his hands in triumph for a moment. The cheering died down, and as men sank onto their bunks he spotted the three hunched backs in the corner.

The gamblers had not let a mere warlord interrupt their dice game.

“Thank you for your . . . your welcome,” Sterren stammered. “I’m happy to be back! You did well!” He hesitated, looking at the listening faces and unsure what more to say.

He shrugged, and said, “What’s the game back there? Can I play?”

Startled laughter broke out, and then applause; some­one grabbed his arms, and a moment later he was in the corner, the dice in his hand.

“It’s three-count, bet on the low roll,” someone said.

Sterren nodded. He knew the game.

“Your turn, my lord,” someone else said, as coins rattled onto the stone.

He shook the dice and tossed them. To keep the dice and win the coins on a first roll, he needed to roll three ones. If anything else came up, he had to pass the dice and the coins stayed. Three-count, the primitive ancestor of Sterren’s favorite three-bone, was usually a long, slow game, with a good many small bets changing hands rather than a few large ones; it was something played by bored people eager to waste time, rather than serious gamblers, and Sterren had never played much.

He watched as the dice bounced from the wall and rolled across the floor. The first landed showing a single pip; the second bumped it, but did not tip it over, and it, too, showed just one pip when it came to rest.

The third bumped the toe of a soldier’s boot and stopped, showing one pip.

Laughter and applause sounded again, as Sterren picked up his winnings.

Nobody was laughing half an hour later, when Sterren had won some sixty copper bits in one of the shortest games of three-count ever seen.

The soldiers scattered, leaving him standing there with a full purse in one hand, the dice in the other. He stared at the bits of polished bone.

His talent was back. Vond’s attuning had worked, and he was drawing luck from the Lumeth source.

He wondered whether he should be pleased.