THE UNWILLING WARLORD 
by LAWRENCE WATT-EVANS (1989) 


[VERSION 1.1 (Oct 08 03). If you find and correct errors in the text, please 
update the version number by 0.1 and redistribute.] 


CHAPTER 1


 The dice rolled, smacked against the baseboard, then bounced back and 
skittered to a stop. One showed five pips, and the other two each showed six, 
clearly visible even in the flickering light of the tavern alcove.


 The paunchy farmer in the greasy gray tunic stared at the dice for a 
moment, then snapped his head up and glared suspiciously at his opponent. He 
demanded, "Are you sure you're not cheating?" His breath carried the warm, 
thick aroma of stale wine.


 The thin young man, who wore a patched but clean tunic of worn blue 
velvet, looked up from raking in the stakes with a carefully contrived 
expression of hurt on his face. His dark brown eyes were wide with innocent 
dismay.


 "Me?" he said. "Me, cheating? Abran, old friend, how can you suggest such 
a thing?"


 He pushed the coins to one side, then smiled and said, "Still my throw?"


 Abran nodded. "Make your throw, and I'll decide my wager."


 The youth hesitated, but the rules did allow a losing bettor to see the 
next roll before wagering again. If Abran did decide to bet, though, it would 
be at two-to-one instead of even money.


 That probably meant the game was over.


 He shrugged, picked up the bits of bone again, and rolled them, watching 
with satisfaction as the first stopped with six black specks showing, the 
second seemed to balance on one corner before dropping to show another six, 
and the last bounced, rebounded from the wall, spun in mid-air, and came down 
with five spots on the top face.


 Abran stared, then turned his head and spat on the grimy floor in 
disgust. "Seventeen again?" he growled, turning back. "Sterren, if that's 
really your name," he said, in a more natural tone, "I don't know what you're 
doing -- maybe you're just honestly lucky, or maybe you're a magician, but 
however you do it, you've won enough of my money. I give up. I'm leaving and I 
hope I never see you again."


 He stood, joints creaking.


 An hour earlier the purse on his belt had been bulging with the proceeds 
of a good harvest; now it clinked dismally, only a few coins remaining, as he 
walked stiffly away.


 Sterren watched him go without comment and dropped the coins of the final 
wager into the purse on his own belt, which had acquired much of the bulge now 
missing from Abran's.


 When the farmer was out of sight he allowed himself to smile broadly. It 
had been an exceptionally successful evening. The poor old fool had stuck it 
out longer than any opponent in years.


 And of course, where two could be seen having a game, others would sit in 
for a round or two. A dozen besides poor Abran had contributed to Sterren's 
winnings.


 For perhaps the thousandth time in his career as a tavern gambler, 
Sterren wondered whether he had been cheating. He honestly did not know. He 
knew he certainly was not guilty of anything so common as using weighted dice 
or muttering spells under his breath, but there were magicks that needed no 
incantations, and he had been apprenticed to a warlock once -- even if it had 
only been for three days before the warlock threw him out, calling him a 
hopeless incompetent. His master had tried to give him the ability to tap into 



the source of warlockry's power, and it hadn't seemed to work -- but maybe it 
had, just a little bit, without either his master or himself realizing it.


 Warlockry was the art of moving things by magically enhanced willpower, 
moving them without touching them, and it was quite obvious that a warlock 
would have no trouble at all cheating at dice. It wouldn't take much warlockry 
to affect something as small as dice, and it was said only warlockry could 
detect warlockry, so the wizards and sorcerers Sterren had encountered would 
never have known it was there.


 Might it be that he controlled the dice without knowing it, using an 
uncontrolled trace of warlockry, simply by wishing?


 It might be, he decided, but it might also be that he was just lucky. 
After all, he didn't win all the time. Perhaps one of the gods happened to 
favor him, or it might be that he had been born under a fortunate star -though 
except for his luck with dice, he wasn't particularly blessed.


 He stood, tucked the dice in his pouch, and brushed off the knees of his 
worn velvet breeches. The night was still young, or at worst middle-aged; 
perhaps, he thought, he might find another sucker.


 He looked around the dimly lit tavern's main room, but saw no promising 
prospects. Most of the room's handful of rather sodden inhabitants were 
regulars who knew better than to play against him. The really easy marks, the 
backcountry farmers, would all be asleep or outside the city walls by this 
hour of the night; he had no real chance of finding one roaming the streets.


 Other serious gamers would be settled in somewhere, most likely on Games 
Street, in Camptown on the far side of the city, where Sterren never ventured 
-- there were far too many guardsmen that close to the camp. Guardsmen were 
bad business -- suspicious and able to act on their suspicions.


 A few potential opponents might be over in nearby Westgate or down in the 
New Merchants' Quarter, which were familiar territories, or in the waterfront 
districts of Shiphaven and Spicetown, which he generally avoided; but to find 
anyone he would have to start the dreary trek from tavern to tavern once 
again.


 Or of course, he could just sit and wait in the hope that some latecomer 
would walk in the door.


 He was not enthusiastic about either option. Maybe, he thought, he could 
just take the rest of the night off; it depended upon how much he had taken in 
so far. He decided to count his money and see how he stood. If he had cleared 
enough to pay the innkeeper's fee for not interfering, the past month's rent 
for his room, and his long-overdue bar tab, he could afford to rest.


 He drew the heavy gray curtain across the front of his little alcove for 
privacy, then poured the contents of his purse on the blackened planks of the 
floor.


 Ten minutes later he was studying a copper bit, trying to decide whether 
it had been clipped or not, when he heard a disturbance of some sort in the 
front of the tavern. It was probably nothing to do with him, he told himself; 
but, just in case, he swept his money back into the purse. The clipped coin -if 
it was clipped -- didn't really matter; even without it he had done better 
than he had realized and had enough to pay his bills with a little left over.


 Only a very little bit left over, unfortunately -- not quite enough for a 
decent meal. He would be starting with a clean slate, though.


 The disturbance was continuing; loud voices were audible and not all of 
them were speaking Ethsharitic. He decided that the situation deserved 
investigation and he peered cautiously around the end of the curtain.


 A very odd group was arguing with the innkeeper. There were four of them, 
none of whom Sterren recalled having seen before. Two were huge, hulking men 
clad in heavy steel-studded leather tunics and blood-red kilts of barbarous 
cut, with unadorned steel helmets on their black-haired heads and swords 
hanging from broad leather belts -- obviously foreigners, to be dressed so 
tackily, and probably soldiers of some kind, but certainly not in the city 
guard. The kilts might possibly have been city issue -- though if so, some 
clothier had swindled the overlord's officers -- but the helmets and tunics 



and belts were all wrong. Both of the men were tanned a dark brown, which 
implied that they were from some more southerly clime -- somewhere in the 
Small Kingdoms, no doubt.


 A third man was short and stocky, brown haired and lightly tanned, clad 
in the simple bleached cotton tunic and blue woolen kilt of a sailor, with 
nothing to mark him as either foreign or local; it was he who was doing most 
of the shouting. One of his hands was clamped onto the front of the 
innkeeper's tunic. The other was raised in a gesture that was apparently 
magical, since a thin trail of pink sparks dripped from his raised forefinger.


 The group's final member was a woman, tall and aristocratic, clad in a 
gown of fine green velvet embroidered in gold. Her black hair was trimmed and 
curled in a style that had gone out of favor years ago, and that, added to the 
shoddy workmanship of the embroidery and her dusky complexion, marked her as 
just as much of a foreign barbarian as the two soldiers.


 "Where is he?" The sailor's final bellow reached Sterren's ears quite 
plainly. The innkeeper's reply did not, but the finger pointing toward the 
curtained alcove -- toward Sterren -- was unmistakable.


 That was a shock. It was obvious that the foursome meant no good for 
whomever they sought, and it appeared they sought him. He did not recognize 
any of them, but it was possible that he had won money from one or all of them 
in the past, or perhaps they were relatives of some poor fool he had fleeced, 
come to avenge the family honor.


 He tried to remember if he had won anything from any barbarians lately; 
usually he avoided them, since they were reputed to have violent tempers, and 
the World was full of gullible farmers. He did not recall playing against any 
barbarians since Festival, and surely nobody would begrudge anything short of 
violence that had happened during Festival!


 Perhaps they were hired, then. In any case, Sterren did not care to meet 
them.


 He ducked back behind the curtain and looked about, considering 
possibilities.


 There weren't very many.


 The alcove was absolutely simple, composed of three gray stone walls and 
the curtain, the plank floor with betting lines chalked on it, and a beamed 
wooden ceiling, black with years of smoke, that undoubtedly served as a floor 
for an upstairs room. There were no doors, no windows, and no way he could 
slip out. No hiding places were possible, since three wooden chairs were the 
only furniture. Smoky oil lamps perched on high shelves at either end provided 
what light there was, as well as the fishy aroma that combined with stale ale 
in the tavern's distinctive stench.


 No help was to be had in here, that was plain, nor could he hope to rally 
the tavern's other patrons to his aid; he was not popular there. Gamblers who 
usually win are rarely well-liked -- especially when they play for stakes so 
low that they can't afford to be lavish with their winnings.


 Sterren realized he would have to rely on his wits -- and those wits were 
good enough that he knew he would rather not have to rely on them.


 They were, however, all he had, and he had no time to waste. He flung 
back one end of the curtain and pointed at the door to the street, shouting, 
"There he goes! There he goes! You can still catch him if you hurry!"


 Only two of the foursome paid any heed at all, and even those two treated 
it only as a minor distraction, giving the door only quick glances. The two 
immense soldiers did not appear to have heard him. Instead, upon seeing him, 
they turned and marched heavily toward him, moving with a slow relentless 
tread that reminded Sterren of the tide coming in at the docks.


 The other two, the sailor and the foreign noblewoman, followed the 
soldiers; the sailor flicked his forefinger, and the trail of sparks vanished.


 Sterren did not bother ducking back behind the curtain; he stood and 
waited.


 It had been a feeble ruse, but the best he could manage on such short 
notice. As often as not, similar tricks had been effective in the past; it had 



certainly been worth trying.


 Since it had failed, he supposed he would have to face whatever these 
people wanted to do with him. He hoped it wasn't anything too unpleasant. If 
they had been sent by one of his creditors he could even pay -- if they gave 
him a chance before breaking his arm, or maybe his head. Even if someone 
demanded interest, there was no one person he owed more than he now had.


 The quartet stopped a few feet away; one of the soldiers stepped forward 
and pulled aside the curtain, revealing the empty alcove.


 The sailor looked at the bare walls, then at Sterren. "That was a stupid 
stunt," he said in a conversational tone. His Ethsharitic had a trace of a 
Shiphaven twang, but was clear enough. "Are you Sterren, son of Kelder?"


 Cautiously, Sterren replied, "I might know a fellow by that name." He 
noticed the tavern's few remaining patrons watching and, one by one, slipping 
out the door.


 The spokesman exchanged a few words with the velvet-clad woman in some 
foreign language, which Sterren thought might be the Trader's Tongue heard on 
the docks; the woman then spoke a brief phrase to the soldiers, and Sterren 
found his arms clamped in the grasp of the two large barbarians, one on either 
side. He could smell their sweat very clearly.


 It was not a pleasant smell.


 "Are you Sterren, son of Kelder, son of Kelder, or are you not?" the 
sailor demanded once again.


 "Why?" Sterren's voice was unsteady, but he looked the sailor in the eye 
without blinking.


 The sailor paused, almost smiling, to admire the courage it took to ask 
that question. Then he again demanded, "Are you?"


 Sterren glanced sideways at the unmoving mass of soldier gripping his 
right arm, obviously not in the mood for civilized discourse or casual banter, 
and admitted, "My name is Sterren of Ethshar, and my father was called Kelder 
the Younger."


 "Good," the sailor said. He turned and spoke two words to the woman.


 She replied with a long speech. The sailor listened carefully, then 
turned back to Sterren and said, "You're probably the one they want, but Lady 
Kalira would like me to ask you some questions and make sure."


 Sterren shrugged as best he could with his arms immobilized, his nerve 
returning somewhat. "Ask away. I have nothing to hide," he said.


 It must be a family affair, he decided, or his identity wouldn't be a 
matter for such concern. He might talk his way out yet, he thought.


 "Are you the eldest son of your father?"


 That was not a question he had expected. Could these people have some 
arcane scruples about killing a man's first heir? Or, on the other hand, did 
they consider the eldest of a family to be responsible for the actions of his 
kin? The latter possibility didn't matter much, since Sterren had no living 
kin -- at least, not in any reasonable degree of consanguinity.


 Hesitantly, he replied, "Yes."


 "You have a different name from your father."


 "So what? Plenty of eldest sons do -- repeating names is a stupid custom. 
My father let his mother name me, said there were too damn many Kelders around 
already."


 "Your father was the eldest son of his mother?" This made no sense to 
Sterren at all. "Yes," he said, puzzled.


 "Your father is dead?"


 "Dead these sixteen years. He ran afoul of--"


 "Never mind that; it's enough we have your word that he's dead."


 "My word? I was a boy of three, scarcely a good witness even had I been 
there, which I was not. But I was told he was dead and I never saw him again." 
This line of questioning was beginning to bother him. Were these people come 
to avenge some wrong his father had committed? He knew nothing about the old 
man save that he had been a merchant -- and, of course, the lurid story of his 
death at the hands of a crazed enchanter had been told time and time again. 



 It would be grossly unfair, in Sterren's opinion, for his own death to 
result from some ancestral misdemeanor, rather than from one of his own 
offenses or failings; he hoped he could convince these people of that.


 It occurred to him that perhaps this sailor with his pink sparks was that 
very same crazed enchanter, but that idea made no sense, and he discarded it. 
It was far more likely that the pink sparks were part of some shop-bought 
spell.


 In fact, they might well be all there was to the spell, a little 
something to impress the ladies, or anybody else, for that matter.


 "His mother, your grandmother -- who was she?" the sailor asked.


 His grandmother? Sterren was even more baffled than before. He had been 
seven when she died and he remembered her mostly as a friendly, wrinkled face 
and a warm voice telling impossible tales. His grandfather, who had raised him 
after all the others were dead, had missed her terribly and had spoken of her 
often, explaining how he had brought her back from a tiny little kingdom on 
the very edge of the world, talking about how she got along so well with 
everyone so long as she got her way.


 "Her name was Tanissa the Stubborn, I think; she came from the Small 
Kingdoms somewhere." As did these four, he realized, or at least three of 
them. The questions suddenly began to make sense. She must have stolen 
something, or committed some heinous offense, and they had finally tracked her 
down.


 It had certainly taken them long enough. Surely they wouldn't carry their 
revenge to the third generation! "She's dead," he added helpfully.


 "Was she ever called Tanissa of Semma?"


 "I don't know; I never heard her called that."


 There was another exchange in the familiar but incomprehensible language, 
including his grandmother's name as well as his own. By the end of it the 
woman seemed excited and was smiling.


 The smile didn't look vindictive, but that was very little comfort; 
whatever crime his grandmother had committed must have been half a century 
ago, and this woman could scarcely have been born then. She wasn't exactly 
young, but she didn't look that old -- and she didn't look young enough to be 
using a youth spell. She must have been sent on the hunt by someone else; 
perhaps her father or mother was the wronged party. In that case she'd be glad 
to have the job done, but would have no reason for personal dislike.


 A glance to either side showed the two soldiers as impassive as ever, and 
he wondered whether they understood what was going on any better than he did.


 The interpreter, as the sailor apparently was, turned back to Sterren and 
asked, "Do you have any family?"


 "No." He didn't think it was worth trying to lie.


 "No wife?"


 Sterren shook his head.


 "What about your mother?"


 "She died bearing me." Perhaps, he thought, they would take pity on him 
because he was an orphan.


 "Since you're the eldest, there could scarcely be brothers or sisters if 
she died bearing you. What about old Kelder, your grandfather?"


 It occurred to Sterren, a bit belatedly, that he was removing the 
possibility of spreading the blame or getting off on grounds of family 
support; but it was too late already, and he continued to tell the truth. "He 
died three years ago. He was an old man."


 "Uncles? Aunts? Cousins?"


 "None."


 "Your other grandparents?"


 "Dead before I was born, from drinking bad water."


 "Good!" the sailor said with a smile. "Then you should be able to leave 
immediately!"


 "What?" Sterren exclaimed. "Leave where? I'm not going anywhere!" He made 
no attempt to hide his surprise and indignation. 



 "Why not?" the sailor demanded. "You're not still an apprentice, are 
you?"


 "What if I am? Where are you taking me? Who are you?" His remaining 
assurance faded a little more; they wouldn't dare kill him here in the tavern, 
probably not anywhere in Ethshar, but if they managed to remove him from the 
city they could do anything they pleased. There was no law outside the walls 
-- or at least Sterren knew of none.


 "I'm just an interpreter..." the sailor began.


 "What were those sparks?" Sterren interrupted.


 The sailor waved the question away. "Nothing; I bought them on Wizard 
Street to help find you. Really, I'm just an interpreter. I'm not the one 
looking for you."


 "Then who are these others, and what do they want with me?"


 "The Lady Kalira is taking you to Semma," the sailor replied.


 "The hell she is!" Sterren said. "I'm not leaving the city!" He was close 
to panic; visions of death by slow torture flickered through his mind.


 The sailor sighed. "I'm afraid you are, whether you like it or not."


 "Why?" Sterren asked, letting a trace of panic into his voice in hopes of 
inducing pity. "What do these people want with me?"


 The man shrugged. "Don't ask me. They hired me in Akalla to get them to 
Ethshar and find you, so I got them to Ethshar and found you. It's none of my 
business what they want you for."


 "It's my business, though!" Sterren pointed out. He tried to struggle; 
the soldiers gave no sign they had even noticed. He subsided and demanded, 
"You can ask, at least, can't you?"


 "I can ask Lady Kalira," the sailor admitted. "Those two don't speak 
Trader's Tongue, and for all I know they're the ones who want you." He seemed 
appallingly disinterested.


 "Ask her!" Sterren shrieked.


 The sailor turned and said something.


 The tall woman did not answer him, but stepped forward and spoke directly 
to Sterren, saying very slowly and distinctly, "O'n Sterren, Enne Karnai 
t'Semma."


 "What the hell does that mean?" Sterren asked. He was about to say 
something further when he realized that the two barbarians had released his 
arms. He looked up at them and saw that their huge flat faces were broken into 
broad grins. One stuck out an immense paw and shook Sterren's hand vigorously, 
clasping it hard enough to sting. Utterly confused, Sterren asked the sailor, 
"What did she say?"


 "Don't ask me; that was Semmat, not Trader's Tongue. I don't speak 
Semmat."


 Lady Kalira saw Sterren's continued incomprehension and said, "Od'na ya 
Semma!" When he still looked blank, she said, "Et'sharitic is bad." Her 
pronunciation was horrendous.


 Sterren stared for a moment, then turned to the sailor and demanded, "Is 
she telling me my native tongue isn't fit for her to speak? Is this some sort 
of barbarian ritual thing?" He was even more thoroughly confused than before.


 "No, no, no," the sailor said, "she's just saying she can't speak it very 
well. I don't think she knows more than a dozen words, to be honest, and I 
taught her half of those on the way here."


 The Semman aristocrat apparently gave up on direct communication with her 
captive and gave the interpreter a long message to relay. He interrupted her 
twice, requesting clarifications -- at least that was what Sterren judged to 
be happening, since each interruption was followed by a careful repetition of 
an earlier phrase.


 Finally, the sailor turned to Sterren and explained, "She says she was 
sent by her king, Phenvel the Third, to find the heir of your grandmother's 
brother, the Eighth Warlord, who died four months ago. She consulted a 
magician -- I'm not clear on what sort -- and that led her to you. She is to 
bring you back to Semma to receive your title and inheritance and to fulfill 



your hereditary duties as the new warlord -- you're Enne Karnai, the Ninth 
Warlord."


 "That's silly," Sterren replied. He relaxed somewhat. If the story were 
true, then his worries about vengeance were groundless, and he saw no reason 
for the woman to bother lying.


 "That's what she said," the sailor replied with a shrug.


 "What if I won't go?" he asked. While it might be nice to have an 
inheritance waiting for him, that bit about 'hereditary duties' didn't sound 
good, and he wanted nothing to do with wars or warlords. Wars were dangerous. 
Besides, who would want to live among barbarians? Particularly among 
barbarians who apparently didn't speak Ethsharitic.


 The idea was ludicrous.


 The interpreter relayed his question, and Lady Kalira's face fell. She 
spoke an authoritative sentence; the sailor hesitantly translated it as, 
"Failure to perform one's duty to one's country is treason, and treason is 
punishable by immediate summary execution."


 "Execution?" The inheritance suddenly sounded much more attractive.


 Lady Kalira said something in Semmat; the smiles vanished from the faces 
of the soldiers, and each dropped a hand to his sword hilt.


 "But it's not my country!" Sterren protested. "I was born and raised here 
in Ethshar, of Ethsharitic parents!" He looked from the sailor to Lady Kalira 
and back.


 The sailor shrugged, a gesture that was getting on Sterren's nerves. Lady 
Kalira said, in halting Ethsharitic, "You, the heir."


 Sterren looked despairingly at the two soldiers; he could see no chance 
at all that he could outrun or outfight either of them, let alone both. The 
one on the left slid a few inches of his blade from its scabbard, in warning.


 "Hai! No bloodshed in here! Take him outside first!" The innkeeper's 
voice was worried.


 No one paid any attention to his outburst -- save that, Sterren hoped he 
would call the city guard.


 Hoping for the city guard was a new experience for him.


 Even if they were summoned, though, they could not possibly arrive in 
time to do him any good. He had no way out. Struggling to smile, Sterren 
managed a ghastly parody of a grin as he said, "I guess I'll be going to 
Semma, then."


 Lady Kalira smiled smugly. 


CHAPTER 2


 Sterren stared at the decaying, sun-bleached town of Akalla of the 
Diamond in dismay. It lived up to his worst imaginings of what the barbaric 
Small Kingdoms would be like.


 He had been given very little warning of what to expect. His captors had 
spirited him out of the tavern, paused at his room on Bargain Street only long 
enough to gather up his few belongings, and then taken him, protesting 
vigorously, onto their chartered ship.


 He had looked desperately for an opportunity to escape, but none had 
presented itself. At the last minute he had dived off the dock, only to be 
fished ignominiously out of the mud and dragged aboard.


 After that, he had given up any thoughts of escape for a time. Where 
could he escape to from a ship? He wasn't that strong a swimmer. Instead, he 
had cooperated as best he could, biding his time.


 His captors had separated him from the interpreter and made it plain that 
they expected him to learn their barbaric tongue, Semmat, they called it. He 
had swallowed his revulsion at the thought of speaking anything but proper 
Ethsharitic and had done his best to oblige. After all, if he couldn't 
understand what was being said around him, he would have little chance of 
learning anything useful. 



 His language lessons had not covered very much when the ship docked in 
Akalla of the Diamond, just ten days after leaving Ethshar of the Spices. The 
weather had been hot and clear, and fairly calm, which is why it took ten days 
just to cross the Gulf of the East and sail the South Coast. One of the two 
immense Semman soldiers, the one who called himself Alder d'Yoon, told Sterren 
in a mixture of baby Semmat and sign language that the voyage in the other 
direction had taken only four days because the ship had been driven before a 
storm much of the way, a very expensive storm, conjured up for that very 
purpose, if Sterren understood him correctly.


 Alder guessed the total distance between the two ports at less than a 
hundred leagues, a figure that surprised Sterren considerably. He had always 
thought of the Small Kingdoms as being a very long way off, on the far side of 
the ocean, and a hundred leagues across a mere gulf didn't seem that far.


 Of course, Sterren was not absolutely certain that he had understood 
Alder correctly. He knew he had the numbers straight, because he had learned 
them from counting fingers, but he wasn't completely sure of the Semmat terms 
for "day" and "league." He wished that he could check with the interpreter, 
but Lady Kalira, or rather, Aia Kalira, in Semmat, had expressly forbidden the 
man to talk to him in any language, and she was paying enough that the sailor 
would not take any chance of losing his job.


 Several members of the crew spoke Ethsharitic, but Lady Kalira had paid 
each of them to not speak it to Sterren except in emergencies. He was to 
communicate in Semmat or not at all.


 Too often, it was not at all, leaving him unsure of much of his limited 
vocabulary.


 Whatever the exact distances, there could be no doubt that on the 
afternoon of the tenth day their ship put into port at Akalla, in the shadow 
of the grim pile of guano-whitened stone the Semmans called Akalla Karnak. 
Sterren thought that karnak probably meant castle, but again he was not quite 
sure. He had never seen a castle before, and the forbidding fortification at 
Akalla did not encourage him to seek out others.


 He had gathered that Semma lay somewhere inland, and that Akalla of the 
Diamond was the nearest seaport to it. He was not yet clear on whether Akalla 
was a separate country, a conquered province, or a district within the kingdom 
of Semma. The truth was that he didn't much care, since it did not seem 
relevant to any plans to escape back to Ethshar.


 And Akalla looked like a place that very few people cared about. It 
consisted of three or four streets lined with small shops and houses, all 
huddled onto a narrow stretch of beach in the castle's shadow, between two 
jagged stretches of broken cliffs.


 The buildings of the town were built of some sort of yellowish blocks 
that looked more like brick than stone, but were far larger than any bricks 
Sterren was familiar with. The joints all seemed to be covered with faded 
greenery, brown mosses or gray lichen or half-dead ivy climbing the walls. The 
roofs were of turf, with thin, scorched brown grass on top. He saw very few 
windows. Flies buzzed in clouds above the streets, and the few people who were 
visible on those streets seemed to be curled up asleep, completely covered by 
dirty white robes. The whole place smelled of dry rot.


 Sterren was not at all impressed by the town.


 The castle was far more impressive, but it, too, was streaked with dying 
plant life and seemed lifeless, almost abandoned.


 As Sterren watched the sailors tying up to the dock, he asked the soldier 
beside him, not Alder, but the other one, Alder's comrade Dogal d'Gra, how far 
it was to Semma.


 Rather, he tried to ask that, but his limited knowledge of Semmat forced 
him to say instead, "How many leagues is Semma?" That assumed that he was 
using the correct word for leagues and hadn't screwed up the grammar 
somewhere.


 What he had thought was a simple question plunged his guard into deep 
concentration; the Semman muttered to himself, saying in Semmat, "Akalla, 



maybe one; Skaia, four or five; Ophkar, hmm."


 Finally, after considerable calculation, he arrived at an answer. 
"Twelve, thirteen, maybe fourteen leagues."


 Sterren knew the numbers up to twenty beyond any question, and a good 
many beyond with reasonable confidence, but to be sure he held up his ten 
fingers and said, "And two, three more?"


 Dogal nodded. "Yeah."


 Horrified, Sterren stared back out at the port. Thirteen leagues? The 
entire city of Ethshar was little more than a league from corner to corner, 
yet he had never managed to explore it all. It took a good hour just to walk 
from Westgate to the Arena, more, if traffic was heavy. They would have to 
walk all night to reach Semma!


 In the event, as he later learned, they would not walk at all, and 
certainly not at night. Instead, when the ship was secured at bow and stern 
and the gangplank in place, he found himself escorted not out onto the highway 
to Semma, but to a small inn near the docks, small by Sterren's standards, 
that is, since it was, except for the castle, the largest structure in town.


 The interpreter, to Sterren's consternation, stayed behind on the ship; 
he had fulfilled his contract and would not be accompanying them further.


 Upon learning this, Sterren suddenly wished he had tried even harder 
during his language lessons. Now if an emergency arose he would have to rely 
on his limited command of Semmat, rather than finding an interpreter. He felt 
more cut off than ever.


 Once inside the inn, out of the hot sun and into the cool shade, Sterren 
looked around, and his opinion of Akalla went up a notch. The inn was laid out 
well enough, with several cozy alcoves holding tables and one wall lined with 
barrels. A stairway at either side led up to a balcony, and the rooms for 
travelers opened off that. A good many customers were present, eating and 
drinking and filling the place with a pleasant hum of conversation, while 
harried but smiling barmaids hurried hither and yon.


 Most of the customers wore the thin white robes Sterren had seen on the 
street, but here they were thrown back to reveal gaily colored tunics and 
kilts beneath.


 Lady Kalira ignored the bustle and headed directly for the innkeeper, who 
stood leaning against one of the barrels. She took two rooms for her party, 
one for herself, and one for Sterren, Alder, and Dogal.


 Sterren glanced around and decided that even though it was a pleasant 
enough inn, he did not really want to be there, not with Alder and Dogal 
watching him constantly, and with, he presumed, nobody around who spoke 
Ethsharitic.


 Since he had no choice, however, he resolved to make the best of it. 
While Dogal took the party's baggage up to their rooms and Lady Kalira settled 
with the innkeeper on the exact amount of the party's advance payment, Sterren 
attempted to strike up a conversation with a winsome barmaid, using his very 
best Semmat.


 She stared at him for a few seconds, then smiled, said something in a 
language he had never heard before, and hurried away.


 He stared after her in shock.


 "What was..." he began in Ethsharitic, and then caught himself and 
switched to Semmat. "What was that?" he asked Alder.


 "What?" the soldier asked in reply.


 "What the... the... what she said."


 Alder shrugged. "I don't know," he said, "She was speaking Akallan."


 "Akallan? Another language?"


 "Sure," Alder said, unperturbed.


 Sterren stared about wildly, listening to first one conversation, then 
another. Lady Kalira and the innkeeper were speaking Trader's Tongue, he 
realized. A couple at a nearby table was whispering in some strange and 
sibilant speech that didn't sound like Trader's Tongue, Akallan, or Semmat, 
and which certainly wasn't Ethsharitic. Other voices were speaking any number 



of dialects.


 "Gods," Sterren said, "How does anybody ever talk to anyone here?"


 Alder asked, "What?"


 Sterren realized he'd spoken Ethsharitic again; he wasn't sure whether he 
wanted to weep or scream. He did know he wanted a drink. He sat down heavily 
in the nearest chair and resorted to a language understood everywhere; he 
waved a finger in the air in the general direction of the barmaid and threw a 
coin on the table.


 That worked, and the barmaid smiled at him as she placed a full tankard 
before him. He began to feel more cheerful.


 After all, he reminded himself, he was in a port. Naturally, there would 
be a variety of travelers, speaking a variety of tongues. "In Semma," he said 
to Alder, "all speak one language?" He knew, as he said it, that his phrasing 
was awkward, but it was the best he could do.


 "Sure," Alder said, settling down at Sterren's table. "Everyone in Semma 
speaks Semmat. Just about, anyway; I guess there might be some foreigners now 
and then who don't."


 Sterren struggled to follow his guard's speech. He had been resigned to 
learning Semmat, but now he was becoming really eager to learn. Whatever the 
ignominy of being forced to use a barbarian tongue, it was nothing compared to 
the isolation and inconvenience of not being able to speak with those about 
him.


 And it looked as if he was, indeed, going to be stuck in Semma for the 
foreseeable future, if he didn't get away very, very soon. Thirteen leagues 
inland! There was simply no way he would be able to slip away and cover that 
distance without being caught and dragged back, not if the Semmans had any 
sort of magic available, as they surely did.


 If he was going to escape, he would have to do so tonight, here in 
Akalla, and stow away aboard a ship bound for Ethshar.


 And how could he do that when he couldn't find three people in Akalla who 
spoke the same language as each other, let alone anything that he, himself, 
understood? How could he learn which ship was bound whither, and when?


 Even if he once got aboard a ship, how could he earn his way home, when 
he couldn't even understand orders, or argue about the rules of a friendly 
game? No, it was hopeless. He was doomed to go to Semma, a country that his 
grandmother had been only too glad to flee, even at the loss of her noble 
status. Being thus doomed, all he could do was make the best of it. He would 
have to find some way to fit in.


 He might even have to actually be a proper warlord. First though, he 
needed to know the language. "Alder," he said, "I want to learn Semmat better.


 Alder gulped beer, then nodded. "Sure," he said. "What do you want to 
know?" 
[MISSING PAGES???]


 The road had vanished, but they seemed confident of the route, so he did 
not question it. For one thing, he was far too busy trying to minimize the 
bruising of his backside to worry about where he was going, or why. He put 
aside all worries about wars and warlords and life among the barbarians, 
concentrating solely on matters closer to hand, and closer still to his seat.


 By the time the party stopped by a tiny stream for a midday rest and 
refreshment, out of sight of even Akalla Karnak's highest tower, Sterren's 
throat ached from dryness, his hands ached from clutching the reins, his feet 
ached from being jammed into the stirrups, his back ached from trying to keep 
him upright, and worst of all, his rump ached from the constant abrasive 
collisions with his saddle. He did not descend gracefully, but simply fell off 
his mount onto a tuft of prairie grass.


 Alder and Dogal politely pretended not to notice, but Lady Kalira was 
less kind.


 "You haven't ridden before, have you?" she demanded without preamble.


 Sterren took a moment to mentally translate this into Ethsharitic. "No," 
he admitted. He was too thirsty, weary, and battered to think of any sarcastic 



comment to add, let alone to translate it into Semmat. Her blithe assumption 
that an Ethsharitic street gambler would know how to ride seemed to call for a 
cutting remark, but Sterren could not rise to the occasion.


 "You should have told me back at the inn," she said. "I could have gotten 
a wagon. Or we could have walked. Or at the very least we could have given you 
a few lessons."


 Sterren tried to shrug, but his back was too stiff for any such gesture. 
"I... It was... It did not... damn!" He could not think of any word for 
"appeared" or "looked" or "seemed." Before any of the Semmans could volunteer 
a suggestion, he managed, "I saw it was not bad, but I saw wrong."


 "It looked easy, you mean."


 Sterren nodded. "I guess that's what I mean."


 "A warlord really should know how to ride," Lady Kalira pointed out.


 "I'm no warlord," Sterren said bitterly.


 "You are Sterren, Ninth Warlord of Semma!" Lady Kalira reminded him 
sternly.


 "I'm Sterren of Ethshar. I play dice in taverns," Sterren retorted.


 Lady Kalira backed away slightly. "You know, you mustn't tell anyone that 
when we get to Semma," she said.


 "Why not?" Sterren demanded.


 "Because you're the warlord!" Lady Kalira replied, shocked. "You hold a 
position of great power and respect. We can't let it be common gossip that you 
made your living cheating at gambling."


 Sterren did not follow all of this speech, but he guessed one vital word 
from context. "I didn't cheat!" he shouted; the effort sent a twinge through 
his back and legs, and more than a twinge through his buttocks.


 "Then how did you win regularly enough to live?"


 "I was lucky," he muttered unconvincingly. He had learned the word aboard 
ship.


 "Ha!" she said. "Wizard's luck, if you ask me."


 "Wizard?" Sterren asked. He knew the word meant one variety of magician, 
but wasn't sure which. "Warlock," he said in Ethsharitic.


 Lady Kalira did not recognize the word; instead she changed the subject.


 "You must relax," she said, demonstrating by letting her arms fall 
limply, "when you ride. Move with the horse, not against it."


 Sterren nodded, not really believing that he would ever learn the skill.


 "And we can pad the saddle, that velvet tunic in your pack will help. And 
you can walk sometimes."


 Sterren nodded again, with a bit more enthusiasm.


 By midafternoon, thanks to additional cushioning, a slower pace, and 
walking when the blisters on his rump became unbearable, he had improved 
enough that, although he still ached in every joint and in several unjointed 
places as well, he was able to think about his future and to carry on some 
limited conversation with his companions as he rode.


 He began by pointing in each direction and asking what lay there. All 
they could see was sand and sun and grass, which made it obvious that he was 
asking what lay beyond.


 Ahead, of course, was Semma; behind was Akalla of the Diamond. To the 
left, the north, Dogal told him, "Skaia." The name meant nothing to him.


 The reply when he pointed to the right was more interesting.


 "Nothing," Dogal told him.


 "Nothing?"


 "Well, almost. A couple of leagues of sand, and then the edge of the 
World. If you stand up in the stirrups and stare, you may be able to see it."


 "See it?"


 "Yes."


 That, Sterren thought, was a very interesting concept, seeing the edge of 
the World. Standing up in the stirrups, however, was a terrifying concept, so 
he decided to forgo the view.


 How, he wondered, could one see the edge of the World? What did it look 



like? What lay beyond it? The southern horizon, he noticed, did look slightly 
different from the others; there seemed to be a yellowish tinge to both ground 
and sky in that direction. He stared, but could make out nothing.


 The very idea fascinated him, all the same. To be so close to the actual 
edge!


 He had thought that Ethshar of the Spices was in the center of the World, 
but if he had come so close to the edge so quickly, then that could not be so; 
he knew the World was bigger than that. He had heard travelers speak of 
Ethshar as being in the southeast, but had, until now, put it down to a 
distorted worldview.


 Obviously, it was his own view that had been in error.


 That was quite a realization, that he had been wrong. He wondered if he 
had ever been wrong about anything important.


 Dogal distracted him from that line of thought. "Might be Ophkar to the 
north of us now," he remarked. "Skaia's not that big. Bigger than Semma or 
Akalla, smaller than Ophkar."


 "Semma is next, beyond Ophkar?" Sterren asked.


 Dogal nodded. "That's right. Your accent is improving greatly, Lord 
Sterren; congratulations."


 Sterren said nothing in return, but felt a touch of pride. He had tried 
very hard to get the accent right on the barbaric names of the surrounding 
kingdoms, and it was good to know he had succeeded.


 He had come to realize that Akalla, Skaia, and Ophkar were all indeed 
separate kingdoms, squeezed into the thirteen leagues between Semma and the 
coast, and he marveled that the Small Kingdoms were that small.


 He also wondered all the more just what he was getting into. If the 
kingdoms were crowded together that closely, they must surely rub each other 
the wrong way every so often. No wonder they needed warlords.


 "What is Semma... What... Tell me about Semma," he said, unable to come 
up with the words to ask, "What is Semma like?" or "What sort of a place is 
Semma?"


 Dogal shrugged. "Not much to tell."


 "There must be something you can tell me; are there many cities?"


 "No cities."


 Sterren could not think of a word for "town." Instead, he asked, "Are 
there many castles?" The word for castle was indeed karnak; he had checked on 
that back at the inn.


 "Just one, Semma Castle. That's where we're going."


 Dogal was not exactly a torrent of information, Sterren decided; he 
nudged his mount over toward Alder, on his right.


 "Hello," he said.


 Alder nodded politely. "Hail, Lord Sterren."


 Sterren sighed; he supposed he would have to get used to that pompous 
greeting. "Tell me about Semma," he said.


 Alder glanced at him curiously. "What do you want to know?"


 "What it... what I... how it is there."


 "What it's like, you mean?"


 Gratefully, Sterren latched onto the phrase he had been missing. "Yes, 
what it's like."


 "Well, Lord Sterren, it's hard for me to say, because it's the only place 
I've ever been, except for this trip to Et'shar to fetch you. I was born 
there, never lived anywhere else."


 "Ethshar, not Et'shar," Sterren said idly, pleased to be the one 
correcting for once, rather than the one corrected.


 "Et'th'shar," Alder said, spitting messily as he struggled with the 
unfamiliar combination of aspirants.


 "Are there many people?"


 Alder shrugged. "I don't know, really," he said. "The castle is certainly 
crowded enough."


 "I didn't just mean the castle." 



 "Well, that's where everyone lives except the peasants."


 That startled Sterren and caused him to wonder if he was still 
misunderstanding the word karnak after all. "Everyone?"


 "Just about."


 "Peasants?" The word was new to him.


 "The common people, the farmers," Alder explained.


 Sterren nodded, he knew about the easy marks from outside the walls. "Are 
there many peasants?" he asked.


 Alder shrugged again. "I guess so."


 "Are you a peasant?"


 "I'm a soldier, Lord Sterren." The reproof was obvious in Alder's tone.


 "You weren't born a soldier," Sterren pointed out, proud he had 
remembered the word "born" from Alder's earlier comments.


 Alder reluctantly admitted, "True. I was born a peasant."


 "Nothing wrong with that," Sterren said, seeing he had hurt the big 
guard's feelings. "I was born a peasant, too."


 This was a lie, of course; he had been born into the merchant class. He 
meant, however, that he had been born a commoner.


 Startled, Alder corrected him. "No, Lord Sterren, you were born a 
nobleman."


 "Well, I didn't know it," Sterren retorted. Alder considered that, then 
smiled. "True," he said. Sterren rode on in silence for a long moment, 
marshaling his thoughts.


 At least he would be living in the castle, which would presumably be at 
least an imitation of real civilization. He had feared that he might find 
himself in some muddy little village somewhere. A castle was not a city, but 
it was, he hoped, better than nothing.


 In the remainder of the afternoon and around the campfire that night, 
Sterren pieced together a rough idea of what Semma was like from a constant 
questioning of his two guards. This also served to improve his Semmat 
considerably, adding to his vocabulary and giving him practice in 
pronunciation and sentence construction.


 Semma was a quiet little kingdom, almost all of it occupied by peasants 
on small family farms, scraping a living out of the sandy soil by growing 
oranges, lemons, dates, figs, olives, and corn, or by raising sheep, or goats, 
or cattle. At one time some peasants had grown spices for export, but Semma 
had lost its spice trade long ago, when Ophkar had temporarily cut off all the 
routes to the sea and the markets had found other, more reliable sources. The 
soldiers knew of no mines, or towns, or any sort of manufacture or trade.


 In the center of the kingdom stood Semma Castle, with a large village 
clustered around it, the closest thing to a town or city that the kingdom 
could boast. The castle itself was home to something over a hundred nobles. 
Sterren had balked initially at believing that, but both Dogal and Alder had 
insisted it was the truth. Sterren could imagine a hundred people willingly 
jammed into a single building readily enough, since he had seen the crowded 
tenements of his native city, but he could not imagine a hundred people living 
like that who called themselves nobles.


 Back home in Ethshar, Azrad VII surely had a hundred or more people 
living in his palace, but only a few could call themselves nobles; most were 
servants and courtiers and bureaucrats.


 Alder had noticed his disbelief and had explained, "Well, that's counting 
the kids, and besides, a lot of them are lesser nobility, and it's a big 
castle. You'll see."


 Sterren considered that, and Lady Kalira took this opportunity to present 
him with a salve for his developing saddlesores.


 "It's always a good idea to bring a healing salve when traveling," she 
said, "though this wasn't exactly the use I had in mind."


 Sterren accepted it gratefully and crawled away from the campfire 
somewhat in pursuit of privacy. Lady Kalira discreetly turned away, and the 
Ethsharite slid down his breeches and applied the ointment liberally. 



 That done, he rejoined the others. He had just begun to inquire about the 
army he was supposed to command when Lady Kalira announced it was time to shut 
up and sleep.


 Sterren obliged, leaving military matters for the morning. 


CHAPTER 4


 They spotted the castle's central tower by midmorning of the third day, 
scarcely an hour after they had buried the ashes of their breakfast fire and 
set out again. Sterren had to admit that it looked like a big castle, as Alder 
had said.


 At that point they had just begun to pass farms, rather than open plain, 
compact yellow houses surrounded by small stands of fruit trees, patches of 
tall corn, and miscellaneous livestock grazing the native grass down to 
stubble. The various inhabitants of these establishments, intent on their own 
concerns of herding or cultivation or hauling water, invariably ignored the 
travelers.


 The plain was no longer quite so smooth and flat as it had been for most 
of the journey; the ground they traversed had acquired something of a roll, 
though it was still far from hilly.


 Sterren had never gotten around to asking much about the army, but he had 
learned that Semma was roughly triangular, bounded on the southeast by the 
desert that stretched to the edge of the World, on the north by the relatively 
large and powerful kingdom of Ksinallion, and on the west by Ophkar. Semma had 
fought several wars against each of her neighbors over the last two or three 
centuries, particularly Ksinallion, but under the Seventh and Eighth Warlords 
had stayed at peace for an amazingly long time. Alder and Dogal did not 
remember any of the wars themselves, but Alder's maternal grandfather had 
fought against Ksinallion in the Sixth Ksinallionese War, about fifty years 
ago. Sterren was still patiently listening to tales of ancestral bravery when 
the castle came into view.


 Not long after that a cloud of dust appeared ahead of them and grew until 
a dozen horsemen emerged from it. Sterren was worried, but the three Semmans 
seemed very pleased by this welcoming committee.


 The horsemen were all large, dark-skinned men dressed much like Alder and 
Dogal, riding horses in red and gold trappings, and Lady Kalira announced that 
this was an honor guard, sent to escort the newfound warlord to the castle.


 Sterren was relieved to discover, when the party came to a halt a few 
paces away, that this was correct. The government had not been overthrown 
since Lady Kalira's departure.


 The conversation between his original escort and the new arrivals was too 
fast for him to follow, so Sterren simply sat astride his horse until it was 
over.


 The newcomers wheeled about and formed up into a column around Sterren, 
Lady Kalira, and the two soldiers, and waited.


 Sterren looked about, puzzled, and saw Lady Kalira gesturing with her 
head. It dawned on him that he was in command; this guard was in his honor, 
and they were waiting for him to start.


 Reluctantly, he urged his mount forward, and the entire party rode on 
toward the castle.


 Sterren found his inquiries about Semma's army inhibited by the presence 
of a dozen uniformed strangers. He shrugged and accepted the situation. After 
all, he would be able to see for himself, soon enough, just how matters stood. 
He rode on in dignified silence, up the dusty road and into the village that 
surrounded the castle.


 The travelers were greeted at the castle gate by a ragged fanfare of 
trumpets, at least one trumpeter was always a fraction behind the others, and 
an occasional sour note could be heard, but in general it was an impressive 
and gratifying experience for Sterren. He had heard far better, far more 



stirring music played in the Arena, or in the overlord's occasional parades, 
or even by impromptu street bands, back in Ethshar, but never before had he 
heard more than a brief cheer in his own honor. He counted a dozen trumpeters 
spaced along the ramparts; impressed, he tried to sit up a little straighter 
on his horse, to live up to his role.


 Certainly, being a warlord had its positive aspects; as long as he could 
avoid any actual wars, he thought it might be enjoyable. Unfortunately, he 
doubted he would be able to avoid wars; the Small Kingdoms were notorious for 
constantly going to war over stupid little disputes.


 On the other hand. Alder and Dogal had said that Semma had been at peace 
for more than forty years. Maybe that peace would last.


 Or maybe a war was overdue. He simply didn't know anything about the 
situation.


 It was time, however, to start learning as much as he could, as quickly 
as he could. With that in mind, even as he tried to ride with dignity and 
pride, and to look the part of a warlord despite his shabby, travel-worn 
clothes, he was studying everything in sight.


 The castle stood upon a slight rise, the closest thing to a hill that 
Sterren had seen since leaving Akalla; Sterren could not tell if the little 
plateau, standing eight or ten feet above the plain, was natural or man-made, 
but it was certainly not new, in either case. Surrounding the castle and its 
raised base were scattered two or three dozen houses and shops, all the same 
dull yellow as the outlying farmhouses, all built of some substance Sterren 
had never seen before and could not identify, all with thick walls and only a 
few heavily shuttered windows. Gaily colored awnings shielded most of the 
doorways and served as open-air shops; there was no single market square, just 
a small plaza at the castle gate, and the streets were rather haphazard. All 
the ground in the castle's vicinity was dry, hard-packed bare dirt, trampled 
smooth and even, and the houses and shops were not arranged in clear, sharp 
streets, but just ragged lines that wiggled every which way.


 Outside the village in any direction Sterren could see scattered 
farmhouses, built in the same way as the village's structures, strewn unevenly 
across the plain.


 The castle itself was a stark contrast to these humble dwellings; it was 
an immense and forbidding structure built of dark red stone. An outer wall 
topped with iron-braced battlements stood more than fifteen feet high, with no 
opening anywhere in it save the gate by which Sterren's little party entered.


 As they passed through this portal, Sterren saw that the wall was roughly 
twenty feet thick and the gateway equipped with three sets of heavy doors as 
well as a spiked portcullis and openings overhead through which assaults might 
be made on anyone trying to enter uninvited.


 It was not, perhaps, as overwhelming a piece of engineering and defense 
technology as Ethshar's city walls and gate towers, but it had its own grim 
power, certainly. Sterren was quite sure that he would not care to try to pass 
that wall and gate without a very clear invitation.


 Of course, his escort, now numbering fifteen in all, clearly constituted 
an invitation.


 The castle within that outer wall was vaguely pyramidal in its overall 
shape. Low wings, a mere two stories in height, stretched out to either side 
of the central mass, which stood some six stories, and was in turn topped by a 
great central tower whose peak was, Sterren judged, fully a hundred feet from 
the ground upon which the castle stood. A few turrets protruded here and 
there, ruining the stepped outline. Window openings were nonexistent at ground 
level, but grew steadily from narrow slits on the second floor to broad 
expanses of glass under graceful stone arches on the uppermost level of the 
tower.


 The strip of ground between the curtain wall and the keep was entirely 
taken up with paved walks and close-packed patches of garden; Sterren was a 
bit surprised to see no inner line of defense there. The gap between Ethshar's 
walls and its outermost street, he knew, was carefully kept clear of trees and 



permanent structures of any sort, to allow for the deployment of troops and 
military equipment in the event of siege or assault; in times of peace, such 
as the past two centuries, this area filled up with the city's criminals and 
homeless. Semma Castle had no equivalent of this infamous Hundred-Foot Field.


 He had little time to look at the gardens, though. As soon as the last of 
the company had passed the outer-most gate, the trumpet fanfare ended with a 
final flourish, waiting guards slammed the outermost pair of the heavy doors, 
and servants in red and yellow garb leaped forward to take charge of the 
horses. Sterren was quickly lifted from the saddle and lowered to the ground 
by half a dozen of the men in his escort, as his mount was led to the stables 
beside the castle's inner gate.


 This assistance was welcome, since he suspected he would be too stiff, 
after so long in the saddle, to have dismounted under his own power.


 He was whisked past the stables and into the castle proper. The main door 
was, like the outer gate, equipped with a full range of defenses, but on foot, 
and alerted by the intervening greenery, he looked a little more closely this 
time and saw signs of disuse, dust on the hinges, a spider web across one of 
the overhead openings. Forty years of peace, he guessed, had naturally had an 
effect.


 He had expected the party to stop and disband once they were all inside, 
perhaps leaving him in the charge of servants, or a guard or two, but instead 
the whole contingent marched on down a broad, marble-floored central corridor. 
The soldiery kept him carefully centered in the group.


 "Where are we going?" Sterren demanded in Semmat.


 Lady Kalira glanced toward the commander of the honor guard and whispered 
a question Sterren could not catch. The soldier nodded in reply, and Lady 
Kalira called back to Sterren, "The king is waiting to meet you."


 "The king?" Sterren wasn't certain he had heard the word correctly; he 
did know its meaning, as it had come up in discussions with Alder.


 "Yes, the king, his Majesty Phenvel, third of that name, by right of 
succession King of Semma and lord of the southern deserts."


 "Oh." Sterren had never met a king before and was unsure how to react.


 A pair of heavy, gold-trimmed doors swung open, and Sterren found himself 
swept into what he immediately identified, despite a complete lack of previous 
experience with such things, as a throne room. A broad red carpet stretched 
from the door to the base of a dais and up three steps to the feet of a portly 
man in scarlet robes, seated on a large black chair. To either side of the 
carpet stood a small crowd of people, all well dressed, of all shapes and 
sizes.


 Lady Kalira stopped at the foot of the dais; the soldiers stopped at the 
same instant she did and gracefully stepped away to either side, with the 
exception of Alder and Dogal, bringing up the rear, who remained on the 
carpet.


 Sterren, not having known what was coming, took a step or two forward 
before he stopped himself, coming uncomfortably close to walking into Lady 
Kalira's back.


 Kalira bowed deeply, going down on one knee before her sovereign. 
Hesitantly, and awkwardly, since he had never made such an obeisance before, 
Sterren copied her actions.


 Lady Kalira rose, and Sterren stood again.


 The hall was almost, but not quite, silent; Sterren could hear a steady 
hiss of whispering among the watchers.


 "Your Majesty," Lady Kalira said, "may I present your servant Sterren, 
Ninth Warlord of Semma." She gestured toward Sterren and stepped aside, 
turning so that she stood on the edge of the carpet, her back to the audience 
and able to speak to either monarch or Ethsharite.


 Thinking some action was called for, Sterren bowed again, from the waist 
this time, wishing somebody had seen fit to coach him a little.


 "Hello," the king said.


 "Hello," Sterren replied nervously. He tried to judge the king's age and 



guessed it at something over forty, but almost certainly still short of sixty.


 "Are you really Tanissa the Stubborn's grandson? It's hard to believe."


 Sterren, still unfamiliar with the language, needed a moment to puzzle 
that out and phrase a response. This was not the sort of question he had 
expected from a king in what he took for a formal audience. "Yes, I... Yes, 
your Majesty, I am," he replied. He was grateful that Lady Kalira had provided 
him, in her introduction, with the correct form of address.


 "I never met her," the king said, "but I heard about her when I was a 
boy, especially from her brother, your great-uncle, that is, the old warlord. 
She ran away with that merchant a couple of years before I was born. And 
you're really her grandson, are you?"


 Sterren nodded.


 "There's no need to be shy, lad," the king said, smiling. "After all, 
we're all family here."


 "We are?" Sterren asked, puzzled.


 "Oh, certainly; didn't you know? You're my seventh cousin once removed. I 
looked it up." He gestured expansively, taking in the crowd of observers. "And 
these," he said, "are the collected nobility of Semma. And all of us, lad, are 
descended from Tendel the First, first King of Semma."


 "You are?"


 "You, too, lad," Phenvel corrected him, gently.


 "I am?"


 "Yes, indeed; I'm in a direct male line, of course, and you descended 
from the second son of Tendel the Second, rather than the first son. You're 
also descended from a couple of Tendel the First's daughters, the nobles here 
tend to marry back into the family."


 This came as something of a shock to Sterren, once he had puzzled out 
exactly what had been said, and at first he simply didn't believe it. A king, 
one of his ancestors? All these people his relatives? He was in the habit of 
thinking of himself as having no family at all; to find himself in a room 
crowded with his distant relations was more than he could absorb. He could 
imagine no reason for the king to lie about it, however.


 "Oh," he said.


 "That's one reason you're here, straight from your journey. We all wanted 
a look at you, our long-lost cousin."


 "Oh," Sterren said again.


 This whole situation was beginning to seem unreal. Oh, the castle was 
real enough, and the people, he could smell them, as well as see and hear 
them, and he'd never heard of an illusion as detailed as that, but the idea 
that they were really the ruling class of one of the Small Kingdoms, just a 
few leagues from the edge of the World, and that he was one of them, a 
hereditary warlord, seemed so completely absurd that for a moment it was 
easier to believe the whole thing was a gigantic joke of some kind.


 An uncomfortable silence fell, to be broken by Lady Kalira.


 "Your Majesty," she said, "I believe that our new warlord is weary from 
his journey and overwhelmed by meeting you. Nor has he eaten since dawn."


 This was not strictly true, since Sterren's party had finished breakfast 
well after sunrise, but it was close enough.


 "Of course," the king agreed. "Of course. Take him to his room, then, and 
let him recover himself. We'll speak with him more when he's rested and has 
eaten." He waved a hand in dismissal.


 Lady Kalira bowed, and Sterren imitated her again. Then she motioned for 
him to follow and led the way to the right, through the crowd to a door, and 
out of the throne room. Alder and Dogal followed discreetly.


 They emerged into a corridor, where Lady Kalira turned left and led the 
way up curving stairs. Sterren's stiff legs protested, but he followed her.


 At the second-floor she kept going, and Sterren followed without 
question.


 At the third floor he paused, hoping she would change her mind, but she 
kept on climbing. He suppressed a moan. 



 At the fourth floor he considered asking how much further they had to go, 
but couldn't think of the right words in Semmat.


 At the fifth floor he was panting heavily.


 At the sixth floor the staircase ended, and he breathed a sigh of relief 
as Lady Kalira led him down a passageway, and then she reached another 
staircase and started up again. He balked.


 Alder and Dogal came up behind him and did not stop; he yielded and 
hurried on, up into the tower.


 After just one more flight, on the seventh floor, they left the staircase 
and headed down one more short passage, to an iron-bound door. Lady Kalira 
turned a large black key in the lock, then swung the door open to reveal the 
room beyond.


 "This is your room, as the warlord," she announced. She stood back to let 
him enter. "It was your great-uncle's for almost twenty years, and his 
father's, your great-grandfather's, for half a century before that."


 Sterren stepped in cautiously.


 He was in a large, airy chamber, one side mostly taken up by three broad, 
curtainless, many-paned windows. Thick tapestries, slightly faded but still 
handsome, hid the stone walls. A high canopied bed stood centered against one 
wall, with a table on either side, a wardrobe beyond the left-hand table, and 
a chest of drawers to the right. Opposite the bed was a desk, or worktable, 
flanked by tall bookcases jammed with books and papers. A chair was tucked 
away in each corner of the room; counting the one at the desk, there were five 
in all.


 Sterren turned and discovered that the wall around the doorway was 
covered with displays of weapons, swords, knives, spears, pole-arms, and a 
good many he could not put a name to, even in Ethsharitic. He wondered if he, 
as warlord, was expected to learn to use them.


 The weapons were all dusty. In fact, everything was covered by a layer of 
dust, the desk, the books, the papers, everything. The air was full of the 
dry, dusty smell of disuse. It was plain that nobody had been living in the 
room recently.


 Hesitantly, he crossed to the windows and looked out. He judged the angle 
of the sun and decided he was looking almost due north.


 The view was spectacular; he could see the castle roofs below him, hiding 
his view of the outer wall and most of the surrounding village. Beyond that he 
could see a few houses, and then the plain, rolling on into the distance, 
spotted with farmhouses, orchards, and various outbuildings, marked off into 
individual holdings by hedges and fences. He saw no roads, however; what 
traveling was done here was apparently done straight across country.


 To the right he thought he could see, out near the horizon, the farms and 
grasslands fading into desert sand; somewhat to the left of center he thought 
he might be seeing the peaks of distant mountains somewhere beyond the 
horizon.


 He turned back to the doorway and saw that Lady Kalira and the two 
soldiers were still standing in the corridor. He had a sudden vision of the 
door slamming, trapping him inside.


 "Aren't you coming in?" he asked.


 Lady Kalira nodded and stepped in.


 "What did you wait for?" he asked.


 "I would not enter your private chamber without an invitation, Lord 
Sterren," she replied.


 Baffled by this pronouncement, which clearly implied that he had some 
authority and was not merely a prisoner, it took Sterren a moment to realize 
that Alder and Dogal were still waiting in the hall. He looked at Lady Kalira.


 She looked back, paying no attention to the soldiers. "May I sit down?" 
she asked.


 "Yes," Sterren said in Ethsharitic, again caught off guard by her sudden 
deference. He corrected himself, repeating it in Semmat, as he remembered his 
escort waiting for him, back out on the plain. 



 Maybe they were serious about calling him a lord.


 She pulled a chair from a corner and sat. Sterren considered for a long 
moment before lowering himself cautiously into the chair by the desk.


 The healing salve on his saddlesores was working; he could sit with only 
mild discomfort.


 "You must have questions," Lady Kalira said. "Now that we're safely home, 
maybe I can answer them."


 Sterren stared at her for a moment, still puzzled, and then smiled 
crookedly. "I hope so," he said. 


CHAPTER 5


 "Everything in this room is yours," Lady Kalira said. "This, and the 
position of warlord, are your inheritance from your great-uncle Sterren. 
Nothing else; everything he owned when he died is right here, or was given, at 
his request, to others."


 Sterren struggled with that for a moment and carefully phrased a 
question.


 "How did he give anything to me? How did he know I... I was alive, when 
he hadn't seen my grandmother for so long?"


 "Oh, he didn't know you existed, but he had no choice in the matter," 
Lady Kalira said, waving the question away. "Semma has very clear and definite 
laws on the lines of succession. This room and its contents were his as the 
warlord, not his, personally, so he had no say about who would receive them, 
nor who would receive the title. If people were allowed to influence 
successions it would result in all sorts of intrigues, and frankly, we have 
too much of that even as it is."


 "Succession? Intrigues?"


 Lady Kalira explained the words as best she could, and eventually Sterren 
thought he understood.


 "But why me?" he asked. "Isn't there anyone here who could be warlord?"


 The noblewoman snorted in derision. "Your ancestors," she said, "were 
about the worst line in the whole family at providing enough heirs. It doesn't 
help that warlords tend to die young, in battle."


 That statement, when the unfamiliar terms had been defined, did little to 
help Sterren's peace of mind, but he made no comment.


 "After you," Lady Kalira continued, "the next heir is the old warlord's 
third cousin, your third cousin twice removed. That's only the seventh degree 
of consanguinity. You're an heir in the third degree of consanguinity. That's 
a pretty big difference. And besides, you're young and strong..."


 Sterren took this as flattery, since he knew he was relatively scrawny.


 "She's past fifty. If she had a son, well, that would be the eighth 
degree, but it might do. Unfortunately, her only child is a daughter. 
Unmarried, even if we allowed inheritance by marriage instead of blood."


 An attempt to explain the new words this time was unsuccessful until, 
exasperated. Lady Kalira rose and crossed to the desk, where she found a sheet 
of paper, a pen, and ink, then leaned over and began drawing a family tree.


 Sterren, still seated, watched with interest as she ran down the history 
of Semma's nine warlords.


 The first, Tendel, was the younger brother of King Rayel II, born almost 
two hundred years ago. His son, also named Tendel, followed him, and a 
grandson after that, but this third Tendel managed to get himself killed in 
battle early in the disastrous Third Ksinallionese War, before he could get 
around to marrying and siring heirs. His brother Sterren inherited the title 
as Fourth Warlord, only to get himself killed three years later in the same 
war.


 This first Sterren had been kind enough to produce five children, though 
three of them were daughters, and the younger son died without issue. The 
elder son succeeded as Fifth Warlord. His only child became Sixth Warlord, and 



in turn produced only one son, the eventual Seventh Warlord, before meeting a 
nasty end after losing a war.


 Sterren, Seventh Warlord, was only twenty-one when he inherited the title 
and lived to be seventy-three. He was something of a legend. He broke with 
tradition and, instead of marrying a distant cousin, married an Ethsharitic 
woman he found somewhere.


 They had three children, though the second one, Dereth, died in infancy. 
The eldest, Sterren, eventually became the Eighth Warlord, and the youngest, 
Tanissa the Stubborn, ran away with an Ethsharitic trader in 5169 and was 
never heard from again.


 She, of course, was Sterren of Ethshar's grandmother. And since her 
brother never did get around to marrying or producing children, that made 
Sterren the Ninth Warlord.


 The next-closest heir was Nerra the Cheerful, a granddaughter of the 
Fourth Warlord's eldest daughter, not exactly an obvious choice.


 Lady Kalira put aside the sketchy genealogy after that and continued her 
explanation without further prompting. Sterren listened politely, following 
the unfamiliar words as best he could.


 When it had become clear that old Sterren was finally dying, the royal 
genealogist, unaware of Tanissa's son and grandson, had needed over an hour 
simply to determine who the heir should be.


 He had noticed the notation in the records of Tanissa's elopement and had 
reported it, along with his conclusions, to the king and his advisors. After 
considerable debate Agor, the castle theurgist, had been called in; he in turn 
had called up Unniel the Discerning, a minor goddess, who after much coaxing 
had, in her turn, called upon Aibem, a more powerful god, who had, finally, 
informed everybody that although Tanissa was dead, her grandson was still 
alive and well.


 After that, of course. Lady Kalira and her little entourage had been sent 
to find Sterren and bring him back to Semma and they had done just that. Lady 
Kalira, who was not anywhere in the line of succession for warlord, had gotten 
the job because she was the heir presumptive to her cousin Inria, Seventh 
Trader. Inria, eighty years old, could not have made the trip herself.


 When Lady Kalira had finished, Sterren nodded. "And here I am," he 
agreed. "Now what do I do?"


 "I would think that would be obvious, you're to take command of the army 
and defend Semma."


 "Defend Semma?"


 "Protect it from its enemies," she explained.


 "What enemies?"


 "All enemies."


 "Semma has enemies?"


 "Of course it does, idiot! Ksinallion, for one, and Ophkar, for another."


 Up until that moment, Sterren had entertained a vague hope that his 
unwanted new job would turn out to be a sinecure, with a title and pay and no 
duties. He suppressed a sigh of disappointment.


 It came as especially bad news that both Semma's larger neighbors were 
considered enemies, but at least, he told himself, he hadn't arrived in the 
middle of a war.


 "Do you think that... that a war may come soon?"


 Lady Kalira grimaced. "Much too soon," she said, "from the look of you, 
and what I've seen in the barracks of late."


 Had his knowledge of Semmat been good enough for the job, Sterren would 
have made a retort about being glad to relinquish his position as warlord, 
which he hadn't asked for in the first place, if she thought someone else 
could do better.


 Instead, he asked, "What do I do now? Today?"


 "Well," Lady Kalira said, looking about the chamber, "I suppose you'll 
want to settle in here, maybe clean up a little. I'll have Dogal fetch water 
and something to eat; I don't suppose that you'll want to come down for lunch. 



You'll be expected to eat at the high table at dinner, of course, to talk to 
his Majesty and meet some of the people here, the princes and princesses, for 
example, but I think you can leave all that until dinner. For this afternoon, 
I would recommend that you take some time to learn the situation here, talk to 
your officers, maybe look over the barracks, that sort of thing. You're the 
warlord; you must know more about it than I do."


 Astonished, Sterren said, "But I was never a warlord before!"


 "It's in your blood, isn't it?"


 "Not that I ever noticed," Sterren replied.


 Lady Kalira ignored that, as she turned to the doorway and called, 
"Dogal, go down to the kitchens and get wash water and something for Lord 
Sterren to eat, would you?"


 Dogal bobbed his head. "Yes, my lady," he said, and then quickly 
departed.


 "Alder, here, will help you unpack, if you like," she suggested.


 Sterren nodded absently. Alder stepped into the room, carrying the bundle 
of possessions that Sterren had collected from his room back on Bargain 
Street. He deposited it upon the bed and began untying it.


 "My officers, you said," Sterren said. The phrase carried an impression 
of power and authority, and he felt a sudden surge of interest.


 "Yes, of course," Lady Kalira replied.


 "I suppose I should meet them, talk to them."


 "Yes."


 The thought of all those stairs came to him, and he asked, "Could you 
send them up here?"


 "Of course, Lord Sterren," Lady Kalira said, with a faint bow.


 The bow startled him. Lady Kalira noticed his surprise, and explained, 
"Lord Sterren, I think I really should tell you that as warlord, now that you 
have accepted the position and that the king has acknowledged you, you outrank 
me. In fact, you are now one of the highest-ranking nobles in Semma. 
Historically, the warlord and the foreign minister are equal in rank and 
second only to the king and his immediate family, with all others, steward, 
treasurer, trader, all of them, your inferiors."


 "Really?"


 "Really."


 Sterren mused on that for a while, wondering just what such an exalted 
rank would actually mean in terms of power, privilege, and responsibility. He 
almost forgot Lady Kalira was there until she reminded him.


 "My lord?" she asked.


 "Ah," Sterren said, startled. "Yes?"


 "Lord Sterren, I'm tired and hungry, too. If you have no more questions, 
may I have your leave to go?"


 Startled anew, Sterren stammered. "Of course," he managed at last.


 Lady Kalira curtseyed, then turned.


 "Send up my officers," Sterren called, "when I'm done eating."


 He was sure she had heard him, but she said nothing as she slipped out of 
the room.


 He stared after her for a moment.


 The switch from her role as exasperated jailer to one of deferential 
subordinate was curiously unnerving. He was not accustomed to having anyone 
defer to him. He had always settled for simple tolerance, which was all a 
tavern gambler or street brat could reasonably ask.


 There was something very seductive about the thought of a woman unable to 
leave his room until he granted permission. Admittedly, the aging and 
irritable Lady Kalira was not herself seductive in the least, but the idea of 
such power certainly had its appeal.


 But it came with the job of warlord, with all the unknown hazards and 
duties that must surely imply. War meant swords and blood and death and 
killing, and he wanted no part of it.


 But Semma had been at peace since twenty years before he was born. Maybe 



he could defend it without fighting any wars, as his immediate predecessor, 
the great-uncle he had never known, had.


 "My lord," Alder said, startling him from his muddled thoughts, "shall I 
hang this in the wardrobe?" He held up one of Sterren's old tunics.


 "Yes," Sterren said. He took a sudden interest in his belongings, seeing 
that everything went somewhere appropriate, and that he knew how the room was 
arranged. It was becoming clear that, barring the unforeseen, he was going to 
be staying for quite some time.


 He was unsure, now, whether that was good news or bad. 


CHAPTER 6


 He pushed away the plate and stood up. Alder looked up, startled, and 
began, "My lord--"


 "Oh, go ahead and eat," Sterren said crossly. He was already getting 
tired of the strange new deference paid him. Alder had just started to eat, 
but he was obviously ready to leap up and follow orders, should his warlord 
care to give any.


 His warlord did not. His warlord was feeling very much out of place. His 
moods kept swinging back and forth. This room, and title, and rank were all 
very well, and could be a lot of fun, but they also seemed to be permanent and 
involuntary, which could be tiresome, quite aside from the accompanying 
responsibilities and risks. It was clear, despite the submissive gestures from 
Alder and Lady Kalira, that he was still something of a prisoner; if he tried 
to just walk out of the castle and head back toward Ethshar, he was quite sure 
that Alder or Dogal or both would follow him and probably stop him before he 
got out of the village.


 And he was tired of seeing Alder and Dogal, after several days spent 
traveling in their close, very close, company.


 At least Lady Kalira was gone, and he would be meeting other people soon.


 Of course, that, too, had both its appealing and frightening aspects. 
These people were barbarians, not Ethsharites; he was sure that he was not 
what anybody expected in a warlord and he had no idea just how the Semmans 
might deal with his shortcomings. That mention of summary execution, back in 
the tavern on Bargain Street, had stayed with him, always somewhere in the 
back of his mind.


 Dogal and Alder had eaten in turns, and Dogal was now guarding the door, 
keeping Sterren's officers, who had arrived a moment earlier, waiting in the 
hall.


 "Dogal," Sterren called, "send them in."


 Dogal said nothing, but stepped aside and allowed the three waiting men 
to enter.


 Each in turn stepped into the chamber, bowed, spoke, and then stepped 
aside to make room for the next.


 "Anduron of Semma, Lord Sterren," said the first, with a graceful bow and 
a jingle of jewelry. He was tall and sturdy, richly dressed in blue silk, 
perhaps thirty years old, certainly much older than Sterren. Like every Semman 
Sterren had yet seen, he was dark-haired and deeply tanned. Sterren thought he 
detected a family resemblance to the king.


 He also detected, more definitely, a trace of scent, something vaguely 
flowery.


 "Arl of the Strong Arm," said the next, bobbing his head. He was shorter, 
but Sterren guessed his weight to be no less than Anduron's, and his age was 
probably similar. He wore a red kilt and red-embroidered yellow tunic and 
smelled of nothing but leather and sweat.


 "Shemder the Bold," said the third, without ceremony. He fell between the 
others in height, but clearly weighed less than either of them, being thin and 
wiry, and was younger as well, surely no more than twenty-five, but still 
older than Sterren. His garb was similar to Arl's, but more ornate and better 



kept, and Sterren could detect no odor at all.


 These three were more or less displaying the forms of deference due a 
superior, but it was obvious they did not really feel any of the respect those 
forms implied.


 Lady Kalira had been subtler in her contempt.


 "I'm Sterren of Ethshar," Sterren replied, bowing in his turn. He 
pronounced "Ethshar" correctly, refusing to yield to the Semman usage. After 
all, he thought resentfully, Semmat did use the th sound, just not in 
combination with sh.


 "Your pardon, my lord," said Anduron, "but would it not be more proper to 
call yourself Sterren, Ninth Warlord of Semma?"


 Anduron's words were smoothly spoken, and Sterren would have liked to 
make a graceful reply. His limited knowledge of the language forced him to 
make do with, "I guess you're right. I'm still new at this." He smiled, not 
very convincingly.


 Behind him. Alder was hurriedly stuffing the last few bites of 
gravy-soaked bread into his mouth.


 The three new arrivals stood stiffly silent for a moment.


 "Lord Sterren," Shemder said, finally, "you sent for us?"


 "Yes," Sterren said. "Of course. Sit down." He waved at the chairs in the 
various corners. Alder was just getting up from the chair at the desk, and 
after an instant's hesitation Sterren settled on the foot of the bed instead 
of trying to maneuver behind the soldier.


 The officers obeyed, bringing the chairs to a rough semicircle. Once 
seated, they stared stonily at Sterren.


 He took a deep breath and delivered his little speech, two of the longest 
sentences he had yet contrived in Semmat.


 "I called you here because I am told I am a warlord now, whether I like 
it or not. I think I need to find out what that means, and what it is I am 
expected to do."


 The officers still stared silently.


 "You aren't making this easy," Sterren said, blinking at them.


 "Lord Sterren," Shemder said, "you still haven't told us what you want of 
us."


 "What I want," Sterren said, "is to know what I, your warlord, am 
expected to do. I want you three to tell me."


 The three exchanged looks.


 "My lord," Shemder said, "it is not our place to tell you what to do. It 
is your job to tell us what to do."


 Sterren suppressed a sigh. Whether they resented the elevation of a 
stranger as their superior, or whether they were testing him somehow, or 
whether they were simply stupid or stubborn or unimaginative, Sterren had no 
way of knowing, but he could see plainly enough that his officers were not 
going to be a great deal of help.


 At least, not at first. Perhaps they would adjust eventually.


 "Lord Shemder--" he began.


 "I am no lord," Shemder interrupted.


 Sterren acknowledged the correction with a nod and said, "Shemder, then, 
tell me your duties."


 "My duties. Lord Sterren?"


 "Yes, your duties." He hoped he hadn't gotten the wrong word.


 "I-have no duties at present, my lord; I am the commander of the Semman 
cavalry, not a mere guardsman."


 "Cavalry?" The word was unfamiliar.


 "Cavalry."


 Sterren looked at Alder, who supplied, "Soldiers on horses."


 Sterren nodded, filing the word away. "Cavalry. Good. You're the 
commander of the Semman cavalry. Do you have a particular title? Do I call you 
my lord, or commander?"


 "Captain, my lord," Shemder said grimly. "You call me Captain." 



 "Thank you. Captain Shemder. And Captain Arl, is it?"


 "Yes, Lord Sterren." Where Shemder had sounded barely tolerant of his new 
lord, Arl sounded resigned and despairing.


 "Captain of what?"


 "Infantry, my lord, foot soldiers."


 Sterren nodded politely, appreciative of Arl's trace of cooperation in 
explaining an unfamiliar word without forcing Sterren to ask.


 "And Captain Anduron?"


 "Lord Anduron, my lord. I am your second in command, in charge of 
everything that Captain Arl and Captain Shemder are not, archers, the castle 
garrison, supply, and so forth." He spoke with studied nonchalance, sprawling 
comfortably on his chair.


 "Ah!" That sounded promising, especially once Alder and Lord Anduron 
between them had explained the unfamiliar words. Sterren wondered if he could 
palm off all his duties on Lord Anduron and leave himseif to enjoy his 
position as a figurehead. Lord Anduron had a look of cool competence about him 
that Sterren hoped was not mere affectation. "How many archers are there?" he 
asked.


 Lord Anduron's reply burst Sterren's bubble instantly.


 "None, at present," he said calmly.


 "None?"


 "None. We've had no need of any for forty years, after all; archers 
aren't particularly impressive in parades or display, and bowwood is 
expensive. Old Sterren, that is, your esteemed predecessor, the Eighth 
Warlord, allowed all the old archers to retire and left it to me, or my father 
before me, to replace them, and we didn't trouble to do so. If we need 
archers, I'm sure we can find and train them quickly."


 "Ah." Sterren tried to look wise and understanding, although he had 
missed several words and was fairly certain that training a competent archer 
took a good deal more time and effort than Lord Anduron thought, especially if 
there were no trained archers around to serve as teachers. "What about the 
castle... garrison? Is that the word?"


 "My lord speaks Semmat like a native, of course," Lord Anduron said. 
Shemder interrupted him with a quickly suppressed burst of derisive laughter. 
Lord Anduron cast him a cold glance, then went on, "The castle garrison, my 
lord, is composed of whoever happens to be inside the castle at the time of an 
attack."


 "I see, you mean the nobles, and the servants, and so on?"


 "Why, no, Lord Sterren, of course not. One could hardly expect the 
nobility to soil their hands with the hauling about of gates and bars, or 
hurling-stones, and the servants will have their normal duties to perform. No, 
I mean whatever villagers reach the shelter of the castle walls in time."


 Sterren stared at Lord Anduron for a moment, then decided argument would 
do no good, most particularly in his limited Semmat. He turned his head and 
asked, "Captain Shemder, how many men and horses do you have?"


 "Twenty men, my lord, and twelve horses," Shemder replied promptly and 
proudly.


 Sterren realized with a shock that his escort into the castle had been 
most of the cavalrymen in the entire kingdom, and all the cavalry's horses.


 "Captain Arl?"


 "At present, Lord Sterren, I have sixty-five men and boys, all fully 
armed, well trained; and ready for anything."


 Sterren somehow doubted that the Semman infantry was ready for anything. 
What, he wondered, would they do in the face of an attack by the overlord of 
Ethshar of the Spices? Azrad VII had ten thousand men in his city guard alone. 
He could overwhelm Semma completely with a tenth of his soldiery, without 
calling on any of his more important resources, the militia, the navy, his 
magicians, the other two-thirds of the Ethsharitic triumvirate, and so on.


 But these were the Small Kingdoms, and things were obviously different 
here. 



 The three officers all seemed very confident, certainly, and they surely 
knew more of the situation than he, a foreigner, did.


 Even so, eighty-five men and a few frightened refugees did not seem like 
a very large force for a castle the size of Semma's.


 "Lord Anduron," he asked, "what about magic?"


 The young nobleman looked puzzled. "What about magic, my lord?"


 "What magicians do you command?"


 "None, my lord; what would I have to do with magicians?"


 "Are they infantry or cavalry, then?"


 "No," Arl said, as Shemder shook his head.


 "Aren't there any magicians in the castle, then?" Sterren asked, truly 
frightened.


 The three officers stared at each other. It was Lord Anduron who spoke, 
finally, saying, "I suppose there might be one or two. Queen Ashassa keeps a 
theurgist about, Agor by name, and I've heard the servants chatter about a 
wizard among their number. The village has an herbalist or two, and a witch, I 
believe, but they aren't in the castle. Lord Sterren, forgive me, but why do 
you ask?"


 "Don't you use magic... Isn't it..." Sterren's Semmat failed him 
momentarily. He took a deep breath and began again.


 "In Ethshar," he said, "Lord Azrad keeps the best magicians with him. 
They would use their... their magic, if the city were attacked. Ships carry 
magicians, to defend against... against other ships, which of course have 
their own magicians. No one would dare a big fight without magic." He cursed 
himself and all of Semma for his lack of a correct title for Azrad, and the 
words for "spells," "pirates," and "battle."


 For several long seconds the room was absolutely silent. Then Shemder 
spat a word that Sterren had never heard before.


 "Lord Sterren," Lord Anduron said, "we do not use magic in war here."


 Lord Andyron's tone was flat and final, but Sterren could not stop 
himself from shouting, "Why not?" In his thoughts, which were in Ethsharitic, 
his phrasing was a good bit more colorful.


 "It isn't done. It never has been."


 Sterren stared at him for a moment. "I see," he said at last. He blinked 
and then said, "If you will forgive me, I am tired from my journey. I need to 
rest." In truth, what he felt a need for was time to digest the situation. "Go 
now, and I will speak with you again later. Perhaps after dinner. I would like 
to... to look at the soldiers."


 "Review the troops?" Arl suggested.


 "I think so," Sterren agreed, nodding. He stood up.


 The other three leaped up as well. Each in turn bowed, then left the 
room.


 Lord Anduron bowed deeply and swept out; Arl bowed stiffly and marched 
out; Shemder bobbed his head and stalked out.


 Sterren stared after them, then burst out, in Ethsharitic, "What a bunch 
of idiots!" He had been willing to give them the benefit of the doubt in 
regard to the numbers and preparedness of their forces, but to so completely 
and arbitrarily rule out the use of magic in warfare was ridiculous! What 
would guard them against treachery? How could they know what the enemy was 
planning? Who would heal wounds? Sending soldiers out to fight with nothing 
but swords and shields was truly barbaric.


 And most importantly, what would they ever do if they fought an enemy who 
did not bother with such scruples?


 Obviously, they would lose, and lose quickly and decisively.


 He could only hope that nothing like that happened while he was warlord. 
His duty, Lady Kalira had told him, was to defend Semma, but some things were 
indefensible.


 An Ethsharitic obscenity escaped him.


 "My lord?" Alder inquired, startled by the outburst.


 "Nothing," Sterren said, "It's nothing." His initial amazement at the 



idea of fighting a war without using magic was beginning to fade, and another 
thought struck him. "What was that that Shemder said, about using magic to 
fight?"


 Uncomfortably, Alder asked, "You mean that word, gakhar?" He shifted 
uneasily.


 "Yes, that's it." Sterren saw Alder's discomfort, but declined to let him 
off the hook; he stared inquiringly.


 Reluctantly, Alder said, "It means a... a person of no culture, a person 
not fit to be among ordinary people."


 Sterren considered that, then stared after the vanished Shemder the Bold.


 "You mean he called me a barbarian?" Sterren was dumbfounded. He wasn't 
sure whether to laugh or scream with rage at the unbelievable insult of being 
called a barbarian by people such as these, but after a moment laughter won 
out.


 Alder stared at him, puzzled and amused, but not particularly displeased 
with his new warlord. 


CHAPTER 7


 The clothes in the wardrobe did not fit him; Sterren, Eighth Warlord had 
obviously been considerably larger than was Sterren, Ninth Warlord. Not that 
he had been anything like Alder or Dogal, but he surely had the advantage of a 
few inches over his great-nephew, both in height and circumference.


 Even so, Sterren thought that he would do better to wear something from 
the wardrobe, belted up tight, than to try to get any more use out of his own 
tattered garments. He was to eat dinner with the king, at the High Table, and 
he had not a single tunic left that had neither patches nor major stains.


 Furthermore, he saw that all his clothes were cut differently from the 
prevailing mode in Semma. The local style was looser, more flowing, but with 
more fancywork to it.


 He picked out an elegant black silk tunic embroidered in gold, and a pair 
of black leather breeches, black seemed to be the predominant color in the 
collection, and he guessed it had something to do with the office he held. It 
seemed an appropriate color for a warlord.


 Of course, it might just be that his great-uncle had liked the dramatic, 
or maybe he had a morbid streak, but in any case, black clothes might not look 
quite so oversized on him.


 He would, he thought with a sigh, have to alter all the clothes, take 
them in to fit him.


 No, he wouldn't, he corrected himself, brightening up; he was an 
aristocrat now! He could find a servant to do that. The castle probably had a 
tailor somewhere.


 He pulled the tunic over his head and looked in the flaking, yellowed 
mirror that hung in the back of the wardrobe.


 He shuddered. The tunic almost reached his knees; he looked like a little 
boy.


 He pulled on the breeches, then began adjusting belts and fabric.


 By tucking in the top of the breeches and folding under the cuff on each 
leg, he was able to make them fit, though they were still rather baggy in 
spots. The tunic was less cooperative, but he finally contrived an arrangement 
of two belts, one under and one over, that pulled the hem up to a height he 
could live with. The embroidered sleeves he had to roll up.


 He was studying his appearance critically when someone knocked on the 
door.


 "Who is it?" he called, unthinkingly using Ethsharitic.


 "What?" someone answered in Semmat. The voice was female, young and 
female.


 "Sorry," he called, switching to Semmat as he adjusted his belts. "Who is 
it?" 



 "The Princess Lura, Lord Sterren," Alder's voice replied.


 Sterren whirled around and stared at the door. A princess? He glanced 
down at himself.


 He looked foolish, he knew, but he would have to face this soon enough. 
He pursed his lips and decided not to put off the inevitable. "Come in," he 
called.


 The door swung open and Sterren looked up to see who was there, but at 
first he saw no one. Then he let his gaze drop.


 "Hello," Princess Lura said, smiling up at him. "You look funny in those 
clothes; don't you have any that fit?"


 Sterren was not particularly fond of children, but Lura, whom he guessed 
to be no more than nine, at the most, had an irresistible grin.


 Besides, she was a princess. He smiled back, and it was only slightly 
forced.


 "No," he said, "I'm afraid I don't. The clothes I brought with me are all 
worn out."


 "Can't you get new ones?" she demanded.


 "I haven't had time," he explained.


 "Oh, I guess not." Her gaze dropped for a moment, and an awkward silence 
fell, to be quickly broken when she raised her eyes again and said, "I wanted 
to meet you. I never met anybody from Ethshar before."


 Sterren noticed that she pronounced "Ethshar" correctly, even when 
speaking Semmat, and nodded approvingly. "I can understand that," he said. "I 
must seem... um... I must be like... I guess you haven't." His Semmat 
vocabulary had failed him again. He hastened to cover over his slip. "I never 
met a princess before."


 "No?"


 He shook his head. "No," he said.


 "Not even back in Ethshar?"


 "Not even in Ethshar. There's only one princess in all of Ethshar of the 
Spices, and I never met her."


 Actually, technically, there were no "princesses" at all, but Azrad VII's 
sister, Imra the Unfortunate, was a reasonably close approximation. Sterren 
had no idea what her correct title would be in Semmat; in Ethsharitic she was 
simply Lady Imra.


 "Oh, we have lots of princesses here!" Lura announced proudly. "There's 
me, of course, and my sisters -- Ashassa doesn't live here any more, she's in 
Kalithon with her husband Prince Tabar -- but there's Nissitha and Shirrin, 
still. And there's my Aunt Sanda. That's four of us, not counting Ashassa."


 Sterren nodded. "Four's a good number, I guess," he said, smiling 
foolishly.


 Lura's expression suddenly turned suspicious. "I'm not a baby, you know," 
she said. "You don't have to play along with me."


 "I'm sorry," Sterren said, dropping the false smile, "I didn't mean to... 
to do as if you were a baby. Um... how old are you?" He looked a little more 
closely at her face. He could not tell her age with any certainty, but he 
noticed a resemblance to her father, the king.


 "Seven," she said. "I'll be eight in Icebound. The ninth of Icebound."


 "I was born on the eighth of Thaw, myself," Sterren said.


 Lura nodded and another awkward silence fell. The two of them stood 
there, looking at each other or glancing around the room, until Sterren, 
desperately, said, "So you just wanted to meet me because I'm from Ethshar?"


 "Well, mostly. And you are the new warlord, so I guess you're important. 
Everybody else wants to meet you, too, but they didn't come up here, I did. My 
sister Shirrin was scared to, and Nissitha says she doesn't have time for such 
foolishness, but she's just trying to act grown-up. She's twenty-one and not 
even betrothed yet, so I don't know why she's so proud of herself!"


 Sterren nodded. Lura obviously loved to talk, another resemblance to her 
father, he thought. He wondered if he had finally found someone who would tell 
him everything he wanted to know about Semma Castle and its inhabitants; 



certainly, Lura wasn't reticent.


 On the other hand, how much would she actually know? Gossip about her 
sisters was one thing; a warlord's duties were quite another.


 "Are you really a warlord?" she asked, breaking his chain of thought.


 "So they tell me," he said.


 "Have you killed a lot of people?"


 Sterren shuddered. "I've never killed anyone," he said, emphatically.


 "Oh." Lura was clearly disappointed by this revelation. She did not let 
that slow her for long, however.


 "What's it like in Ethshar?" she asked.


 Involuntarily, Sterren glanced out the broad windows at the endless 
plains to the north. "Crowded," he said. He pointed out the window. "Imagine," 
he said, "that you were on the top of the tower at Westgate, looking east 
across the city. The eastern wall would be halfway to the... to where the sun 
comes up, and everything in between would be streets and shops and houses, all 
crowded inside the walls." He didn't know any word for "horizon," and hoped 
Lura would understand what he meant.


 Lura looked out the window and asked, "What about farms?"


 "Outside the walls, never inside."


 She looked skeptical, and he saw no point in arguing about it. "You 
asked," he said with a shrug.


 She shrugged in reply. "You're right," she said, "I did. When are you 
coming downstairs? Everybody's waiting to meet you."


 "They are?"


 "Well, of course they are, silly! Come on, right now; I know Shirrin 
wants to meet you, especially."


 "She does?" Even when he remembered who Shirrin was -- one of Lura's 
sisters, and therefore a princess -- Sterren could not imagine why she would 
particularly want to meet him.


 "Yes, she does. Come on!"


 Sterren glanced helplessly around at the room. He had no idea what his 
position was relative to this little terror of a princess; certainly, she must 
outrank him, but would her youth affect her authority to order him about?


 He couldn't be sure of that. Reluctantly, he followed her as she marched 
out of the room.


 Once in the hallway. Alder and Dogal fell in step behind him, and 
together the four of them tramped down the six nights of stairs to the door of 
the throne room. He stopped there to catch his breath while Lura waited 
impatiently.


 They did not enter the throne room, but turned aside at the last moment 
and headed down a short corridor and through an unmarked door of age-darkened 
oak. Beyond was an antechamber, paneled in smoke-stained wood and furnished 
with heavy velvet-upholstered benches; Lura led Sterren directly through this 
and on through another door.


 This gave into a sunny little sitting room, and as Sterren entered, Lura 
leading him by the hand, he glimpsed the inhabitants leaping to their feet.


 He found himself facing two women and a girl a few years younger than 
himself, all richly dressed, all standing and staring at him.


 "Shirrin, look who I found!" Lura announced.


 The girl blushed bright red and glanced about as if looking for some way 
to escape. Seeing none, she stared defiantly back at Sterren, her cheeks 
crimson.


 The older woman looked reprovingly at Sterren's guide. "Lura," she said, 
"watch your manners."


 The younger woman simply stood, silently gazing down her nose at Sterren. 
It was quite obvious that she had noticed his attire and didn't think much of 
it.


 Or maybe she didn't think much of him in any case; Sterren couldn't be 
sure. He had the distinct impression, however, that the woman would have 
sniffed with disdain if sniffing were not perhaps a trifle vulgar. 



 He smiled politely.


 "Hello," he said. "I'm Sterren of Ethshar, Sterren Ninth Warlord, they 
call me."


 "My lord Sterren," the older woman said, smiling in return, "what a 
pleasure to meet you! I'm Ashassa, formerly of Thanoria, and these are my 
daughters, Nissitha," with a nod toward the younger woman, "and Shirrin," with 
a nod toward the blushing girl. "Lura you have already met, I take it."


 "Yes," Sterren said, "she introduced herself." He realized, with a twinge 
of dismay, that he was speaking to the Queen of Semma, and had presumably just 
come barging into the royal family's private quarters.


 At that thought, he glanced around quickly.


 The room was pleasant enough; a floor of square-cut white stone was 
partly covered by bright-hued carpets, and white-painted paneling covered the 
walls on three sides. The fourth side was mostly window, the glass panes 
arranged in ornate floral patterns and the leading picked out with red and 
white paint. Several couches stood handy, all covered in red velvet, and a few 
small tables of white marble and black iron were scattered about.


 Nothing was extraordinarily luxurious, however. Sterren had seen rooms of 
similar size and appointments, though never in any style quite like this one, 
back in Ethshar.


 The queen was nodding. "I'm afraid Lura can be somewhat impetuous," she 
said. "Of course, we've all been looking forward to meeting you, our long-lost 
cousin."


 "A very distant cousin, of course," Nissitha interjected, with a 
meaningful glance at Sterren's tunic.


 "Lura said that you wanted to meet me," Sterren acknowledged. "She 
mentioned Shirrin in particular, thought I don't--"


 He was interrupted by a shriek from Princess Shirrin. The red had faded 
somewhat from her cheeks, but now it flooded back more brightly than ever, and 
she turned and ran from the room.


 Sterren stared after her, astonished.


 Lura burst into giggles. Nissitha stared down at her youngest sister in 
clear disgust. The queen's expression shifted to polite dismay.


 "Did I say something wrong?" Sterren asked, hoping he hadn't just 
condemned himself to a dungeon or worse.


 "Oh, no," Queen Ashassa reassured him, "or at least, not really. It's 
Lura's doing. And of course, Shirrin's being foolish, too. She's thirteen, you 
know, a very sensitive age, and Lura's doing her best to embarrass her. Don't 
let it worry you." She turned to Lura and said sternly, "Lura, you go 
apologize to your sister!"


 Lura's giggling suddenly stopped. "For what?" she demanded, "I didn't do 
anything!"


 "Do as I say!" the queen thundered, pointing.


 Lura knew better than to argue any further; she marched off after 
Shirrin.


 "I'm sorry, my lord," the queen said when Lura had closed the door behind 
her. "Those girls love to tease each other. You see, Shirrin's all full of 
romantic stories about Ethshar and warlords and lost heirs ever since our 
theurgist, Agor, first told us about you, and Lura's been making fun of her 
for it."


 "Silly things," Nissitha remarked. "Getting worked up over nothing!"


 Sterren was at a loss for a reply. "Ah," he said.


 "Well, then, my lord," Queen Ashassa said, "as long as you're here, Lura 
was quite right, we've all been eager to meet you and talk with you. You must 
understand, none of us have ever been more than a few leagues from this 
castle; my ancestral home in Thanoria is only six leagues or so, and that's 
the furthest any of us has traveled. Ethshar seems unspeakably exotic. Do sit 
down and tell us something about it!"


 Sterren glanced at his guards, but Dogal and Alder were being steadfastly 
silent. Seeing no polite way to refuse, he reluctantly and delicately seated 



himself on one of the velvet couches, while Queen Ashassa and Princess 
Nissitha settled onto others, and asked, "What can I tell you?"


 Princess Nissitha's expression plainly said that he couldn't tell her 
anything at all, but Queen Ashassa asked, her tone sincerely interested, "Is 
it true the city of Ethshar is so large that you can't see from one end to the 
other?"


 "Well," Sterren said, considering the question, "It would depend where 
you were standing. I suppose from atop the... the lord's castle you could see 
the city walls on both sides. But mostly, it's true."


 The overlord's palace was not really a castle, but his limited Semman 
vocabulary did not include a more suitable term.


 The queen asked more questions, and Sterren did his best to answer; 
gradually, as the topics ranged from the city's size to the recently-begun 
overlordship of Azrad VII to wizards and other magicians, Sterren found 
himself relaxing and enjoying the conversation. Queen Ashassa, despite her 
royal title, was a pleasant enough person.


 Princess Nissitha never said a word and eventually rose and glided 
haughtily away.


 After a time, a servant entered quietly and announced that dinner was 
ready. Queen Ashassa rose, and for a moment Sterren thought she was going to 
offer her arm, to be escorted in to the meal, as he had seen ladies do in 
Ethshar.


 Either Semman etiquette was different, or the difference in their 
stations as queen and warlord was too great; Ashassa marched off on her own, 
leaving Sterren to follow in her wake.


 The dining hall, Sterren discovered, was the throne room where the king 
had first received him. Trestle tables had been set up and covered with white 
linen, and chairs brought from somewhere to line either side. A smaller table 
stood upon the dais, crossing the T, with a dozen chairs behind it.


 As yet, almost all the chairs were still unoccupied.


 Queen Ashassa took a seat at the high-table, near the center; Sterren, 
recognizing that the high table was a position of special honor, guessed that 
it was reserved for the royal family and headed for a seat at one of the long 
tables.


 A servant caught his elbow.


 "My lord," the servant whispered, "you sit on the king's right." He 
pointed to the high table, indicating a chair two spaces over from the 
queen's.


 Sterren froze, suddenly overcome with fright at the idea of sitting up 
there and eating in full view of dozens, maybe hundreds of people, in his 
ill-fitting clothes, with his simple Ethsharitic manners that were surely 
foreign to these barbarians with their noble trappings. The servant pushed 
gently at his elbow, and, reluctantly, he allowed himself to be prodded 
forward, up the steps onto the dais.


 He seized control of his dignity, once he reached the top step, and 
marched on to his place unaided.


 The princesses, he saw, were taking their seats on the queen's side of 
the table, to his left. To his right, a young man of roughly his own age and 
with a resemblance to the royal family took a seat two places over. Another, 
perhaps a year younger, took the seat just beyond that. A mutter of 
conversation filled the room, but Sterren, with his still-poor grasp of 
Semmat, could not catch any of it.


 Then the king entered, followed by an entourage of soldiers and 
courtiers. Silence fell. Everyone who had been seated rose; Sterren followed 
suit a bit tardily. The courtiers gradually peeled away from the group and 
found seats at the long table as the party progressed up the length of the 
hall, but they remained standing by their chairs.


 King Phenvel reached his place and sat, and his guards took up 
unobtrusive positions along the back wall. He nodded politely, and the rest of 
the company sat as well. 



 That was the sign for the meal to begin, and the low mutter of 
conversation resumed. It quickly built up to considerably more than a mutter, 
punctuated by the occasional clash of cutlery as diners sorted out their 
table-ware.


 The knives and forks appeared to be silver, and Sterren wondered what 
they were worth.


 As yet, he had nothing to eat with them, so he let his own implements lie 
undisturbed on the tablecloth.


 The noise level was roughly that of a busy but well-behaved tavern, and 
Sterren found that somewhat startling. He had somehow expected a roomful of 
aristocrats to eat in dignified silence.


 That, he realized, was foolish. People were people, regardless of titles.


 Other people continued to drift in and take seats as the king exchanged a 
few pleasantries with the queen. Sterren looked about the room, feeling a 
little lost.


 A middle-aged man sat down to Sterren's right and smiled at him.


 "Hello," he said, "I'm Algarven, Eighth Kai'takhe."


 "Eighth what?" Sterren asked before he could catch himself.


 "Kai'takhe... Oh, you don't know the word, do you? Let me think." The 
fellow blinked twice, frowning, then smiled again, and said, in Ethsharitic, 
"Steward!"


 "You speak Ethsharitic?" Sterren asked eagerly, in Ethsharitic.


 Algarven smiled. "No, no," he said in Semmat, "just a few words."


 "Oh," Sterren said, disappointed.


 He suddenly remembered his manners and introduced himself.


 "Oh, we all know who you are," Algarven assured him.


 Somehow, Sterren did not find that reassuring.


 "Here, let me tell you who everybody is," Algarven said. He began 
pointing.


 "You know the king and queen, of course. There to the queen's left is the 
treasurer, Adrean."


 Adrean was a plump man of perhaps fifty, making him a decade or so older 
than Algarven; he wore a heavy gold chain around his neck, and his tunic was 
an unusually ugly shade of purple.


 "Beyond him, that's old Inria, our Trader. If she were a little younger, 
she'd have been the one to go and fetch you."


 Inria was an ancient, toothless hag, wearing black velvet and grinning 
out at the inhabitants of the hall.


 "And then there are the three princesses, Nissitha, Shirrin, and Lura..."


 "I met them this afternoon," Sterren remarked.


 "Ah! And did you meet the princes?" Algarven turned to the other side and 
gestured at the four youths there, ranging in age from a young man of perhaps 
eighteen to a boy of ten or eleven.


 "No," Sterren admitted.


 "We have here Phenvel the Younger, heir to the throne, and his brothers 
Tendel, Rayel, and Dereth."


 "A fine family," Sterren said.


 "The king certainly hasn't shirked his duty in providing heirs, has he?" 
Algarven agreed. "And his father didn't, either; down there at the first 
table, those three on the end here, that's the elder Prince Rayel, and Prince 
Alder, the king's brothers, and his sister. Princess Sanda. Another brother, 
the elder Tendel, got himself killed seven years ago in a duel."


 "Ah." Sterren could not think of anything further to say and was saved 
from the necessity of inventing something by the sudden arrival of servants 
bearing trays of food, breads, fruits, meats, and cheeses.


 From then on, the meal was simply another meal; Sterren forgot his 
exposed position on the dais, forgot his improvised garb, and set about 
filling his belly.


 Between bites he continued to make polite conversation with both the 
steward Algarven and King Phenvel himself, but this largely consisted of 



simple questions and required little thought. Any time he found himself at a 
loss for words he simply reached for another orange or buttered a roll.


 By the end of the meal he felt fairly comfortable with the royal family 
and his fellow lords. They were, after all, just people, despite the titles, 
and he was one of them.


 When he reflected on this, he was amazed at himself for accepting his 
situation so readily. 


CHAPTER 8


 The barracks adjoining the castle gate was reasonably tidy, but Sterren 
would not have applied the word "clean" to it. The cracks between the stones 
of the floor were filled with accumulated black gunk, and cobwebs dangled 
unmolested in the less-accessible corners of the ceiling. Various stains were 
visible on the whitewashed walls; some of them, particularly those near the 
floor, were very unappetizing.


 He had certainly seen worse, though; his own room, back on Bargain 
Street, had been only marginally better.


 His belly was pleasantly full, and his head very slightly aswim with 
wine, and he decided not to pick nits.


 He had come directly from the dining hall out to the walls to make this 
inspection of his troops and their lodging, so as to get it over with. His 
main purpose, he reminded himself, was to see what sort of men he was supposed 
to command, not to criticize anybody's house-keeping.


 But still, it seemed to him that a really first-rate group of soldiers 
would keep their quarters in better shape.


 He did not bother to look in the cabinets or kit bags at each station, 
nor under the narrow beds. He would not have known what to look for, and 
besides, it seemed like an invasion of the soldiers' privacy. He glanced at 
the bunks, each with one blanket pulled taut and another rolled up to serve as 
a pillow, and could see nothing to comment on.


 He walked on through to the armory, where a fine assortment of weapons 
adorned the walls and various racks. He reached out at random and picked up a 
sword.


 It came away from the rack only reluctantly and left a little wad of rust 
behind. The area of blade that had been hidden by the wooden brackets was 
nothing but a few flakes of dull brown rust, and the leather wrapping on the 
hilt cracked in his grasp. Gray dust swirled up, and he sneezed.


 Behind him, he heard some of his men shuffling their feet in 
embarrassment. He carefully placed the sword back on the rack.


 He should, he knew, reprimand somebody for the incredibly poor condition 
of the sword, but he was unsure who, specifically, to address. Furthermore, 
even if he was the warlord, he was also a foreigner and a mere youth and not 
even particularly large. The soldiers were all considerably older and larger 
than himself. He knew that his title should give him sufficient authority to 
berate them all despite being so thoroughly outweighed and outnumbered, but he 
could not find the courage to test that theory.


 Maybe later, he told himself, when he had settled in a bit more, he could 
do something about it.


 Even as he thought it, he was slightly ashamed of his cowardice.


 "My lord," someone said, "these are the weapons we use for practice." A 
hand indicated a rack near the door.


 Sterren picked up another sword. This one was in far better shape, 
without a spot of rust, the grip soft and supple, but the blade, he saw, was 
dull.


 Well, it was only a practice blade. You wouldn't want to kill anyone in 
mere practice, would you? he asked himself. He nodded and returned the weapon 
to its place.


 He wished he knew more about swords and other weapons. He had no idea 



what to check for.


 The rust, however, was obviously a very bad sign.


 He turned back to face his men.


 All of them, as he had noticed before, were larger than himself, but not 
all were mountains of muscle like his personal escorts, Alder and Dogal. In 
fact, the majority seemed to be pot-bellied or otherwise running to fat. He 
mentally compared them to the city guards he had seen back in Ethshar, 
strolling the streets to keep the peace, or rousting the beggars from Wall 
Street, or carousing in the taverns.


 The Royal Army of Semma did not fare well in the comparison. Ethshar's 
guardsmen came in all sizes, but they all had a certain toughness that this 
oversized bunch did not display. Guardsmen might be fat, but they were never 
soft.


 Much of Semma's soldiery looked soft.


 Sterren suppressed a shrug. Things were different here. Whatever duties 
these men had, they obviously didn't require the sort of ruggedness that was 
needed to maintain order in the world's largest, richest, and rowdiest city.


 Alder had told him that Semma had been at peace for more than forty 
years; Sterren hoped that was not about to change.


 If it did, though, and all he had to fight with was this pitiful handful 
of men, well, Semma wasn't his homeland. He could always surrender.


 Couldn't he? It occurred to him that he had no idea what the customs were 
in the Small Kingdoms regarding prisoners of war.


 He walked from the armory back into the barracks and noticed something he 
had missed before. One of the bunks had been moved. It had been shoved up 
against a wall, so that the space between that bunk and the next was twice the 
space between any other two. As further confirmation, half the floor in the 
widened space was cleaner and lighter than the rest of the barracks floor.


 His curiosity was piqued. "You," he said to the nearest soldier, "slide 
that bunk out from the wall, would you?"


 The soldier glanced at his mates, who all somehow managed to be looking 
in other directions.


 "Come on," Sterren said, using the phrase Lady Kalira had used when 
urging her horse onward.


 The soldier stepped forward, moving slowly as if hoping for some 
miraculous reprieve, and pulled the bunk out, back to its original position.


 In doing so, he uncovered several lines of chalk drawn onto the dirty 
planks.


 Sterren recognized the lines immediately and grinned. He suddenly saw 
that he had something in common with these oversized barbarians.


 "Three-bone?" he asked, in Ethsharitic.


 The soldiers looked blank, and he puzzled out a Semman equivalent and 
tried that.


 One soldier shook his head and replied, "No, double flash."


 His companions glared at him, too late to hush him. Sterren waved their 
displeasure aside. "What stakes?" he asked. "And do you pass on the first loss 
or the second?" He had picked the word for gambling stakes up from Dogal 
during the journey from Ethshar. Double flash was not his favorite dice game, 
by any means, he would greatly have preferred three-bone, but it was certainly 
better than nothing.


 A friendly game was just what he needed to help him feel at home.


 It would also serve nicely to get to know some of his men and perhaps to 
build up a little money that the other nobles would know nothing about. That 
could be very useful if he ever decided to leave.


 He still had his purse, and the winnings from his last night in Ethshar. 
He pulled out a silver bit. "Will this buy me a throw?"


 Feet shuffled, and someone coughed.


 "Well, actually, my lord..."


 "For now, just call me Sterren, all right?"


 "Yes, my lord. Ah... Sterren. We usually play for copper." 



 "Good enough; can someone make change? And who's got the dice?"


 Coins and dice emerged from pockets and purses, and a moment later 
Sterren and three soldiers were crouched around the chalked diagram, tossing 
copper bits into the various betting slots. Any further inspection was 
forgotten.


 When the dice were passed, Sterren felt the familiar thrill of 
competition, but the sense of calm oneness with the dice that he usually felt 
was absent. He dismissed it as an effect of the unfamiliar surroundings and 
proceeded to throw a deuce, losing his turn.


 It was well after midnight when Sterren wearily climbed back up to his 
room in the tower. His purse was lighter by several silver bits, the 
equivalent of over a hundred coppers. His luck had been consistently bad.


 Whatever talent or charm had kept him alive and solvent in the taverns of 
Ethshar obviously had not worked in this alien place.


 He wondered, as he hauled himself up the dimly lit stairs, if it would 
ever work again. If it didn't, he would have to give up dice for good.


 Now, that was a really terrible thought!


 He thrust it aside as he reached the top and saw Alder standing by the 
door of his room. As he walked down the short stretch of corridor and into his 
room he ran over the rest of the day in his mind.


 It had certainly been an eventful one.


 He hoped he never had another like it.


 Alder opened the door and followed him into the room. As Sterren stood 
yawning, the big soldier lit a candle on the desk and stood awaiting orders. 


CHAPTER 9


 Sterren stretched, thought for a moment, and then shooed Alder out. When 
the door had closed behind Alder's back he took a moment to make sure all his 
belongings were stashed where he could find them. That done, he lay down on 
the great canopied bed and tried to sleep.


 His blood was still pumping hard from the excitement of the game, the 
shock of losing so badly, and the long climb up the stairs from the barracks, 
all coming at the end of an extraordinarily long and bewildering day; sleep 
was slow in coming. He was still lying awake when he heard a quiet knock on 
his door.


 "What is it?" he called.


 The door opened partway, and Alder stuck his head in.


 "There's someone here who wants to see you. Alder said apologetically. 
"He says he has business with you."


 "At this hour?"


 Alder explained, "He's been stopping by regularly all evening, but you 
weren't in before."


 That was true enough. "All right," Sterren said, "what kind of business?"


 "He won't say. Something about settling an account your great-uncle left, 
I think."


 "Settling an account?" That did not sound encouraging at all. "Who is 
it?"


 Alder considered before replying, "He's a traveling merchant, I think, if 
that's not too grand a word for him. He deals in trinkets and whatnot. I don't 
know his name, but I've seen him before. He really did deal with the old 
warlord."


 "Trinkets?"


 Alder explained, "This and that. Little things."


 Sterren considered telling Alder to get rid of this uninvited visitor, 
but his curiosity got the better of him; what had the old warlord had to do 
with a traveling dealer in trinkets? Why was the merchant so eager to see him 
that he had not been able to go to sleep at a reasonable hour and leave the 
business, whatever it was, until morning? 



 "Send him in," he called, as he sat up on the bed.


 Alder ducked back out of sight, and a moment later another man slipped in 
through the half-open door, then carefully closed it securely behind him.


 He was short and dark, his hair graying, and he looked as if he had been 
fat once, but was not eating well lately. He wore a greasy brown tunic and 
even greasier gray breeches; his boots were well made and also well worn. 
Despite his clothing, his face and hair were clean, and he had no 
objectionable odor.


 After closing the door he checked the latch carefully, then turned and 
made a polite but perfunctory bow.


 "Hello, Lord Sterren," he said. "Allow me to introduce myself. I'm called 
Lar Samber's son. As your guard said, I'm a dealer in trinkets and oddities, 
and the occasional love charm or poison."


 Sterren nodded an acknowledgment, but before he could say anything, Lar 
continued, "And I'm sure you're wondering what old Sterren had to do with me, 
and what this account is I want to settle. That wasn't really my reason for 
coming here. I have another business besides my trading, you see, or rather, I 
trade in a product less tangible, but more important, than beads, and gewgaws. 
Your great-uncle was my only customer and the only person who knew about it." 
He paused, eyeing Sterren, his face curiously expressionless.


 Sterren nodded expectantly. "Go on," he said.


 Lar hesitated for the first time.


 "I don't know you," he said.


 "I don't know you, either," Sterren pointed out.


 Lar nodded slowly. "True enough, and it's not as if I have a choice." The 
merchant hesitated again, but only briefly. "I'm your chief spy," he burst out 
hurriedly. "I deal in information. Naturally, this is a secret, one that your 
great-uncle kept well; nobody else in Semma ever knew, until now. I'm trusting 
you with my life, my lord, by telling you this."


 His face remained oddly blank even as he said this; if he felt any great 
anxiety over the risk he was taking, it did not show.


 Sterren puzzled over the word "spy" for a moment, then smiled and pointed 
to a chair. "Sit down," he said, "and tell me about it."


 Lar's face did not change as he took a seat, but Sterren was sure he was 
relieved.


 He was relieved himself; it was good to know that his predecessor had 
even had spies, and had not relied entirely on his three officers and their 
men.


 A thought occurred to him; Lar was a traveler and a dealer in 
information. "Do you speak Ethsharitic?" he asked.


 Startled, Lar admitted, "Some. Not much. Mostly I speak Ophkaritic, 
Ksinallionese, Thanorian, and Trader's Tongue."


 Sterren had never even heard of Thanorian, but he didn't let that worry 
him. Instead, he burst out with a string of questions in his native tongue.


 Lar had to repeatedly ask him to slow down, and several times the 
conversation switched back into Semmat for a time, or slipped into a pidgin of 
the two languages that they improvised on the spot. Even so, Sterren was able 
to communicate more freely than he had in days.


 Unfortunately, what Lar had to communicate was not encouraging.


 Both Ophkar and Ksinallion were planning to invade Semma.


 Somehow, although he had been trying to convince himself war was 
unlikely, this news did not really surprise Sterren at all.


 This impending invasion was not really a secret; in fact, the suspicion 
that it was being planned had been responsible for the urgency of Lady 
Kalira's mission to Ethshar. The aristocrats of Semma were confident that they 
could survive a war, if they had a warlord.


 So they had sent for Sterren.


 Lar, however, did not stop his revelations at the mere fact of the coming 
war; he went on to detail the reasons for it, and also the reasons it had not 
yet begun. 



 The underlying reasons were simple enough: Ophkar and Ksinallion both 
wanted Semma's land and wealth and people. For three hundred years, Ophkar and 
Ksinallion had been bitter enemies; they had fought six wars in that time. In 
the first, Ophkar had captured the Ksinallionese province of Semma; in the 
second, Ksinallion won it back. It was during the Third Ophkar-Ksinallion war, 
in 5002, that Semma, under Tendel the Great, had rebelled against the cruel 
yoke of Ksinallion and asserted its independence, siding with Ophkar and 
leading to an Ophkarite victory.


 Five years later, when Tendel died, Ophkar invaded Semma and attempted to 
annex it. Semma survived by enlisting Ksinallion's aid.


 From then on, Semma's policy was to maintain a balance of power between 
Ophkar and Ksinallion by siding with whoever was weaker at any given time, 
playing the two off against each other in order to maintain its independence. 
Tendel's son and heir, Rayel the Tenacious, had understood that; it was only 
when he was old and ill that matters had gotten out of hand, and a war with 
Ksinallion resulted in 5026. His successor, Tendel II, known as Tendel the 
Gentle, reigned for twenty-two years without ever letting the balance slip.


 He was followed by Rayel the Fool, who only lasted nine years, six of 
them spent fighting Ophkar -- and losing.


 Phenvel I, also called Phenvel the Fat, had done much better; no wars 
were fought during his twenty-one years on the throne.


 The idea of the balancing policy was beginning to fade, though, as the 
kings of Semma forgot how precarious their position actually was; Phenvel II, 
Phenvel the Warrior, fought Ophkar for seven years of his seventeen. 
Admittedly, he won, the only time Semma ever single-handedly defeated Ophkar, 
but seven years of war could not have been pleasant. Many stories of the 
horrors of that Third Ophkar-Semma War were still told.


 And the resulting weakness was largely responsible for Ksinallion's 
victory over Semma in the Third Ksinallion-Semma War, during the reign of 
Rayel III. He earned the name Rayel the Patient by waiting eleven years, 
carefully building up his forces and waiting until the time was right, before 
he launched his counterattack and won the Fourth Ksinallion-Semma War.


 Even that victory was probably a mistake; it laid the groundwork for the 
disastrous defeat Rayel IV suffered in 5150, in the Fifth Ksinallion-Semma 
War. Only Ophkar's threat to come in on Semma's side had prevented Ksinallion 
from annexing Semma outright.


 That was Rayel the Tall; he was followed by Rayel V, Rayel the Handsome, 
whose death brought about the negotiated peace at the end of the Sixth 
Ksinallion-Semma War, establishing the present borders. That had also been the 
Sixth Ophkar-Ksinallion War.


 Tendel III had been called Tendel the Diplomat because he managed to talk 
his way out of war several times in his twenty-four year reign; he was an 
expert at playing Ophkar and Ksinallion off against each other, even bringing 
in their other neighbors: Skaia, Thanoria, Enmurinon, Kalithon, even little 
Nushasia, far to the north, at Ksinallion's farthest extreme. None of those 
bordered on Semma, but the threat of a two-front war was surprisingly 
effective. Ophkar had no desire to fight Skaia or Enmurinon; Ksinallion 
preferred peace with Kalithon and Nushasia; and Thanoria served as a threat to 
both.


 But then Tendel III died, in 5199, and his son Phenvel III came to the 
throne.


 Lar hesitated to characterize his sovereign unfavorably, but from his 
mutterings about inbreeding and "other interests" it was plain to Sterren that 
the merchant considered the king an idiot.


 Fortunately, Phenvel III had retained the services of a few people who 
were not idiots, notably Sterren, Seventh Warlord, and Sterren, Eighth 
Warlord. Father and son had kept up the policies of Tendel III, using 
diplomacy, threats, saboteurs, and whatever else was necessary to keep peace.


 King Phenvel had made this difficult, with his arbitrary insults directed 
at both his larger neighbors. When Prince Elken of Ophkar asked for the hand 



of Princess Ashassa the Younger, Phenvel had instead sent her to Prince Tabar 
of Kalithon. When King Corinal II of Ksinallion offered a treaty on trade 
routes, Phenvel had first ignored it, then sent an envoy to Ophkar asking if 
they cared to make a better offer. When a secret envoy came from Ophkar to 
discuss the possibility of war with Ksinallion, Phenvel publicly announced the 
whole affair; when Ophkar reacted with protests and Ksinallion offered an 
alliance, Phenvel had dismissed the whole thing as a foolish joke.


 There had been other incidents, as well, and now, for the first time in 
three hundred years, Ophkar and Ksinallion had arranged an alliance against 
Semma, considering Phenvel III a mutual foe.


 While they lived, the warlords had prevented such an alliance, but with 
the death of the Eighth Warlord, all the elaborate network of checks and 
treaties had collapsed. Enmurinon and Kalithon and Thanoria and Nushasia and 
Skaia were no longer involved; despite the web of inter-marriages that had 
allied them to Semma, they all refused to make any further promises. Phenvel's 
mother had come from Enmurinon, his wife from Thanoria; a daughter was a 
princess in Kalithon, and an aunt had been queen in Nushasia. Still, Semma was 
on its own. Phenvel had somehow offended every single one of his foreign 
relatives.


 Sterren's spirits sank steadily as he listened to all this.


 "Why aren't the Ophkaritic and Ksinallionese armies already here?" he 
asked.


 Lar sighed and explained that the only reason the armies of Ophkar and 
Ksinallion had not yet invaded was that they were still settling how the booty 
and conquered territory were to be divided. Lar and his like, he employed 
several people himself, and was fairly sure that old Sterren, Eighth Warlord, 
had some others in his own employ, had done their best to delay these 
negotiations, bringing up potential difficulties, picking at nits, losing 
messages, and so forth, and had managed to hold things off this long. The 
coming winter rains would presumably provide another short breathing space, 
but in the spring both armies would surely march.


 And it was Sterren's job, as warlord, to hold them off indefinitely, or 
if possible to defeat them outright.


 "How am I supposed to do that?" Sterren demanded.


 Lar shrugged. "I wish I knew," he replied, "I really do." 


CHAPTER 10


 As usual, the off-duty soldiers were playing dice in a corner of the 
barracks. Sterren sighed at the sight.


 His dismay was partly due to the fact that despite his best attempts at 
speech making, his repeated talks about how important it was that Semma's 
chosen defenders do all they could to get themselves ready to fight had 
obviously had no effect on how his men spent their leisure time.


 It was also due, however, to the knowledge that he didn't dare join the 
game. Since arriving in Semma, his once-notorious luck at dice had deserted 
him completely.


 He had been embarrassed to discover that without that edge, he was 
actually a very poor gambler. Whenever he played, he lost steadily.


 At least he now knew, beyond question, that he had indeed picked up a 
trace of warlockry in his brief apprenticeship; nothing else could explain how 
he had flourished for so long back in Ethshar. Wizards and witches had been 
unable to detect any magic in use, but wizards and witches knew nothing about 
warlockry.


 It was slightly odd, perhaps, that he'd never been caught by a warlock, 
but maybe warlocks took pity on him, or chose to protect one of their own, no 
matter how feeble his talents.


 And his talent had to be warlockry, because no other form of magic was so 
dependent on location. He knew that much. Wizardry and witchcraft and sorcery 



and theurgy and demonology and herbalism and all the others worked equally 
well almost everywhere, or so he had heard, though there were those who 
complained that so much wizardry had been used in the city of Ethshar of the 
Spices that its residue fouled the air and weakened subsequent spells.


 Warlockry, though, a warlock's power depended on how close he was to the 
mysterious Source of the Power that all warlocks drew on.


 Nobody knew exactly where the Source was, or what it was, because nobody 
who went to find it ever came back, but every warlock knew that it was 
somewhere in the hills of Aldagmor, near the border between the Baronies of 
Sardiron and the Hegemony of Ethshar. It supposedly called to warlocks who 
grew strong enough to hear it and lured them away, and since all warlocks 
improved with practice, that meant most of them heard it, sooner or later, and 
if they stayed within range they were eventually drawn away to Aldagmor. This 
was referred to as the Calling, and it was invariably accompanied by weird, 
frightening dreams and other strangeness, and it was something that warlocks 
did not talk about to outsiders; it frightened them, and admitting that 
warlocks were afraid of anything was not in the best interests of the art. 
Sterren only knew about it because his former master had explained it, in 
lurid detail, in trying to discourage him from his apprenticeship.


 Even warlocks, though, even those who had heard the Calling and woke up 
every night with nightmares about it, did not know what the Source was. Nobody 
knew what it was, or why it should be in that particular place.


 Some people theorized that that spot was the exact center of the World, 
and that the Power was a gift of the gods, but others maintained that the 
Source was something from outside the World entirely, a mysterious something 
that had fallen from the heavens on the Night of Madness, back in 5202, when 
warlockry first emerged. Sterren had been a babe in arms on that night when 
half the people in Ethshar woke up screaming from nightmares they could never 
remember, and when one person in a thousand or so was suddenly transformed, 
forever after, into a warlock, able to move objects without touching them, to 
kill with a thought, to start fires with a mere gaze.


 Whatever the Source was, whatever the Power was, Sterren had never had 
more than the faintest trace of it, and here in Semma, dozens of leagues to 
the southeast of Ethshar and almost that much farther from Aldagmor, which lay 
well to the north of the city, even that trace was gone.


 In fact, in two sixdays of careful investigation, Sterren had been unable 
to find any evidence that anyone in all of Semma had ever heard of warlockry, 
or ever had any trace of the Power at his or her command. Nobody could provide 
him with a Semmat word for "warlock" or "warlockry." Nobody even remembered 
anything about a night of bad dreams, twenty years before, and Sterren had 
always thought that the effects of the Night of Madness had been worldwide.


 Warlockry was totally, completely unknown in Semma.


 Sterren had to give up playing dice.


 Watching the men toss down their coins on the betting lines, totally 
ignoring the presence of their warlord, he also gave up any hope of 
successfully defending Semma against the armies of Ophkar and Ksinallion with 
the forces at his disposal.


 Lar had brought another report the night before; Ophkar had two hundred 
men under arms, Ksinallion two hundred and fifty.


 Semma had ninety-six. And that was after Sterren had calls for volunteers 
posted in all the surrounding villages. Furthermore, although fifteen or 
twenty of them took their role seriously, the rest seemed to think being a 
soldier meant nothing more than an excuse to go drinking and wenching in 
exchange for a few hours a day of marching and weapons drill, or, in the case 
of the cavalry, riding and weapons drill.


 Sterren knew that war was coming. Lar knew that war was coming. Lady 
Kalira and a dozen other nobles knew war was coming. The rest of the castle's 
inhabitants, including the king, refused to worry about it.


 Princess Shirrin apparently believed that war was coming, but thought 
that it was all very exciting, and that Sterren, her valiant warlord, would 



save the kingdom by singlehandedly slaughtering the foe, as if he were some 
legendary hero like Valder of the Magic Sword. At least, that was what 
Princess Lura reported her sister's thoughts to be; Shirrin herself still 
found it impossible to say more than a dozen words in Sterren's presence 
without blushing and falling into an embarrassed silence.


 She hadn't actually run away from him for more than a sixday, though, and 
he had seen her, several times, watching him and his men from a window, or 
around a corner.


 Princess Nissitha deigned to speak to him on occasion, now, but still 
obviously considered him far beneath her.


 He sighed again. His life was not going well.


 He had carefully broached the subject of defeat to Lady Kalira one night, 
in the castle kitchens, when both of them had been drinking.


 "You don't want to think about it," she had said, very definitely.


 "Why not?" he had replied.


 "Because if you lose a war, you'll be killed."


 "Not ness... ness... necessarily. Surely you don't expect the army to 
fight to the last man..." he began.


 "No, you silly Ethsharite, that's not what I mean." She had glowered at 
him.


 "What do you mean, then?" he asked, puzzled.


 "I mean," she said, "that for the last century or two it's been 
traditional for a victorious army to execute the enemy's warlord, as a 
symbolic gesture. You can't go around killing off kings; it sets a bad 
precedent. And you don't want to slaughter anyone useful, not even peasants. 
But a defeated warlord isn't any good to anybody and he might go around 
plotting revenge, so he gets beheaded. Or hanged. Or burned at the stake. Or 
something." She hiccupped. "Your great-great-grandfather, the Sixth Warlord, 
got drawn and quartered, back in 5150."


 Sterren, who up to that point had been more or less sober, had proceeded 
to finish the bottle and a second one as well.


 He had no desire to die, but he was beginning to run out of alternatives. 
He still saw no way to escape from Semma; his door was always guarded, as was 
the castle gate, and any time he set foot outside at least one soldier 
accompanied him. He had not tried ordering his escort away; it seemed 
pointless.


 Even if he did lose an escort and make a dash for it, he would probably 
be caught and brought back long before he could reach Akalla of the Diamond 
and get out to sea, and that was assuming he could find Akalla despite the 
lack of roads, maps, guides, and landmarks.


 Chances of escaping back to Ethshar looked slim, and a failed escape 
attempt would mean execution for treason. That made it too dangerous to risk.


 If he stayed, however, he would wind up leading his pitiful army into 
battle and inevitably being defeated. If he survived the battle, which was 
certain to be a rout and probably a bloodbath, he would still be executed by 
the victors.


 He could not imagine any strategem whereby he could win, with his 
ninety-six men against more than four hundred. A purely defensive war would 
take longer, perhaps, the castle could probably hold off the invaders for a 
month or two, at least, but a long siege would not put the enemy in a very 
favorable frame of mind, and Semma had no friends who might come to lift a 
siege, nor much hope of outlasting the foe.


 Sterren wished he had some way of coaxing his native Ethshar into aiding 
Semma; Azrad's ten thousand guardsmen would make short work of these silly 
little armies that the Small Kingdoms fielded.


 When Azrad VII had come to power a little over a year before, however, he 
had inherited from his father, Azrad VI, a long-standing policy handed down in 
unbroken line from Azrad I against interfering in the internal squabbling of 
the Small Kingdoms. On the rare occasions when an army from Lamum or Perga or 
some other little principality had strayed across the border into the 



Hegemony, it had been quickly obliterated; but Ethsharitic troops were never, 
ever, sent into the Small Kingdoms themselves.


 Sterren leaned against the whitewashed stone wall of the barracks and 
told himself that he needed a miracle.


 Well, he replied silently, every Ethsharite knows that miracles are 
available, if one can pay for them.


 Miracles were available in Ethshar, though, in the Wizards' Quarter; not 
in Semma.


 The only magician of any sort that the royal family put any trust in was 
Agor, the castle's resident theurgist. Other than a glimpse or two of that 
rather confused and confusing fellow, Sterren had not as yet encountered a 
single magician worthy of the name during his stay in the Small Kingdoms.


 He hadn't been able to do much looking, of course; his duties, and his 
desperate attempts to train his "army" into something useful, had not left him 
the free time to go wandering about investigating village herbalists and the 
like.


 It was always possible that some eccentric hermit was lurking in a hut 
somewhere out there, a hermit with sufficient magic to defeat both of the 
would-be invaders, but how could Sterren locate him, if he existed?


 Well, how had the Semmans located him, when they needed a warlord?


 They had asked Agor, of course.


 And Agor might actually be quite a good theurgist, for all Sterren knew. 
He might be all the miracle-worker Sterren needed.


 Sterren glanced again at the dice-players, at the unmade bunks, at swords 
lying about unsheathed and dropped carelessly anywhere convenient, and decided 
that it was time he spoke with Agor. He had tried acting like the warlord he 
was supposed to be and had gotten nowhere; now, thinking like the Ethsharite 
he had always been, it was time to call on a magician. When all else fails, 
hire a magician, that was sound Ethsharitic thinking!


 He turned and marched out the door of the barracks.


 He knew exactly where he was going, for once. Princess Lura had pointed 
out the theurgist's door to him a few days earlier. Agor made his home in a 
small room in one of the smaller towers, far above the barracks, but a level 
below Sterren's own more luxurious quarters.


 Sterren stood in the corridor for a minute or two, gathering his courage, 
before he knocked.


 "Come in," someone called from within.


 He lifted the latch and stepped in.


 Agor's chamber was hung with white draperies on every side, covering all 
four walls. Two narrow windows were left bare, and provided the room's only 
light, but given all that white and the sunny weather outside, that was 
plenty. The chamber smelled of something cloyingly sweet, incense, perhaps? 
Sterren was unsure.


 A few trunks, painted white and trimmed with silver, stood against the 
various walls. A plump feather bed, also white, occupied one corner.


 In the center of the room, seated on a grayish sheep-skin that had 
probably been white once, was Agor himself, a rather scrawny fellow of thirty 
or so, with a pale, narrow face and a worried expression.


 He wore white, of course, white tunic worked with gold, and off-white 
breeches. His feet were bare. A scroll was unrolled on the floor in front of 
him.


 "Yes?" he asked, looking at Sterren in puzzlement.


 "I'm Sterren, Ninth Warlord," Sterren said. "You're Agor, the theurgist?"


 "Oh, yes, of course, my lord. Yes, I'm Agor. Do come in!" He gestured 
welcomingly.


 There were no chairs of any description, so Sterren rather hesitantly 
seated himself on the stone floor, facing the theurgist.


 "So you're Sterren," Agor said. "I'm glad to meet you. I take a special 
interest in you, you know; I was the one who found you." He smiled 
uncertainly. 



 "I know," said Sterren, while inwardly wondering just what sort of 
special interest the other was referring to. After all, in the dozen days 
since his arrival in the castle, Agor had not bothered to say as much as a 
single word to him and had apparently not even bothered to get a look at him, 
since he had not immediately recognized him.


 He knew he should say more, but found himself unsure how to begin. He 
knew he wanted a miracle that would keep him from getting killed as a result 
of the coming war, but he did not know how to ask for it.


 He didn't really know just what sort of a miracle he wanted. He did not 
really want anyone to get hurt or killed.


 He was still thinking about this when, after a slightly 
longer-than-comfortable silence, Agor asked nervously, "What can I do for you, 
my lord?"


 Sterren resolved to simply present the situation to Agor and then see 
where the discussion went. Perhaps a way out of his quandary would appear.


 "Well, first, you can promise me that anything I tell you won't be 
repeated outside this room," he replied.


 "If you wish it so, my lord."


 "I do. Ah... tell me, have you taken any interest in Semma's military 
situation?"


 "No," the theurgist immediately answered, "would you like me to?"


 This response caught Sterren off guard, and his tongue stumbled over his 
answer.


 "I... that... I mean, that's not..." He paused, caught his breath, and 
tried again.


 "What I meant was, are you aware that Semma is in very serious danger?"


 "No," Agor replied calmly. "Is it?"


 "Yes!" Sterren collected his wits and continued. "This is what I don't 
want you telling anyone. A war with both Ksinallion and Ophkar is coming, and 
soon. I expect both of them to attack as soon as the mud dries in the spring. 
And we don't have a chance of defeating them; we're outnumbered four to one, 
and our army is in terrible shape, and I'm the warlord, but I have no idea at 
all how to run a war, or even how to get these damn soldiers to take it 
seriously!"


 "Ah," Agor said, his face blank.


 "Yes," Sterren said.


 "So you expect to lose a battle? Do you want me to try and get a god's 
blessing on our troops, is that it? I don't suppose that would violate the ban 
on using magic to fight wars."


 "No! Or at least, not just that, though I suppose it couldn't hurt." He 
paused, considering. "Would it really help?"


 "No," Agor said, without an instant's hesitation. "I've explained this to 
everybody before, but I suppose you weren't here. The gods don't approve of 
war or fighting and they won't have anything to do with it. They don't take 
sides."


 "I don't approve of it, either! Are you sure they wouldn't be willing to 
take into consideration that we're being attacked, that we don't want to 
fight?"


 "It wouldn't matter. The gods swore off war after they wiped out the 
Northerners two hundred years ago and they don't change their minds easily. 
Besides..." This time Agor did hesitate, but at length he said, "besides, can 
you tell them that we did nothing to provoke an attack?"


 "I didn't do anything!"


 "But did anyone?"


 Sterren remembered what Lar had told him about King Phenvel's behavior. 
"I suppose so," he admitted.


 "Then the gods won't help. At least, not directly."


 That reminded Sterren of his original intention in visiting Agor. "But 
they might indirectly?" he asked.


 "Oh, certainly. It might seem odd to a layman, but the fact is, the gods 



tend to be very careless indeed about the long-term consequences of their 
actions. You could probably get a great deal of useful advice from them, as 
long as it's not overtly military."


 Locating a powerful wizard would hardly be overtly military, but Sterren 
decided to check out other possibilities first. He asked, "Could they, 
perhaps, do something to stop Ophkar and Ksinallion from attacking? Start a 
plague, or something?"


 Agor was visibly shocked by the suggestion. "A plague? My lord, how can 
you think such a thing?"


 "Could they?" Sterren persisted.


 "No, of course not! My lord Sterren, I am a theurgist, not a 
demonologist! The gods are good; they do not do evil. Plagues are the work of 
demons!"


 Sterren's cynicism, drummed into him by years on the streets of Ethshar, 
came surging to the fore. "The gods don't do evil?" he inquired, 
sarcastically, remembering that he, himself, was in Semma, facing eventual 
execution, because of a god's interference.


 "Well," Agor said, "not directly. Sometimes their actions can have evil 
consequences, for some--"


 "I would think so!"


 "But they won't start a plague, or anything else like that."


 Sterren considered this.


 Agor was probably right. After all, he was a theurgist and surely he knew 
his business. All his life, Sterren had heard from priests and theurgists and 
even laymen that the gods were benevolent, that they did not approve of any 
sort of destruction or disorder, that the evil in the World was due to demons 
or human folly.


 It was probably true.


 Or if not, at least it was probably true that he, Sterren of Ethshar, 
would be unable to get the gods to take his side in the upcoming war.


 "All right," he said, "We'll forget that idea, then." Another thought 
popped into his head, though, and he asked, "Might they protect us from the 
invaders? Stop the war somehow, or at least provide us with what we need to 
withstand a siege? You say they don't like war; could they prevent this one?"


 "Excuse me, my lord, but wouldn't that violate the traditional ban on 
magical warfare?"


 "What if it did?" Sterren snapped, his frayed temper breaking. "I never 
agreed to any such ban and I'll be killed if we lose this war! I'm no Semman, 
and I think it's a stupid tradition."


 "Ah," the theurgist said, nodding. "I see."


 "Does breaking the ban bother you?"


 "Well, not really; it's none of my business."


 "Then, can the gods do something to prevent this war?"


 Agor hesitated and chewed his lower lip for a moment before replying, 
"Well, maybe..."


 "Maybe?"


 Agor blinked uneasily and shifted on his sheepskin. "Well, actually, my 
lord, they..." He stopped, visibly unhappy.


 "They what?" Sterren urged.


 "Well, actually, my lord, some of them would probably be glad to do that 
sort of thing--"


 "But what?"


 "Well..." Agor took a deep breath, then admitted, "but I don't know how 
to contact them." 


CHAPTER 11


 Sterren stared at the bony theurgist, who stared back miserably. 
"What do you mean, you can't contact them?" Sterren demanded. "Aren't you 



the royal theurgist here?"


 "Yes, my lord, I am."


 "Are you a fraud, then?"


 "No," Agor said, with a touch of wounded pride visible through his 
dismay, "I'm not a fraud; I'm just not a very good theurgist."


 "You aren't?"


 "No, I'm not. Ah... do you know anything about theurgy?"


 "I know as much as most people, I suppose," Sterren said, glaring.


 "But do you know anything about how it actually works?" Agor persisted.


 "No, of course not!"


 Agor nodded, as if satisfied with Sterren's answer. "Well, my lord," he 
said, "it's like this. A theurgist is just a person with a natural talent for 
prayer, who has learned how to pray in such a way that the gods will actually 
listen."


 "I know that," Sterren said sharply.


 "Well, anybody can pray, of course, but the odds are that the gods won't 
hear, or won't answer. Have you ever wondered, my lord, why the gods don't 
listen to everybody, but they do listen to theurgists?"


 "No," Sterren replied flatly. This was not strictly true, but he didn't 
care to be sidetracked.


 "Well, it's because of the prayers we use. We learn them as apprentices, 
just as other magicians learn their spells. The gods are too busy to listen to 
everything, but there are certain prayers that catch their attention, just the 
way certain sounds might catch your ear, even in a noisy place, the rattle of 
dice, for instance."


 Sterren realized that Agor really had taken an interest in him; coming up 
with that particularly appropriate example could not have been a coincidence. 
His annoyance faded somewhat. "Go on," he said.


 Agor continued, "Some people are better at some prayers than others. I 
don't know why, they just are, just as some people are better at drawing 
pictures, or singing."


 Sterren nodded. He knew, firsthand, that some people had a talent for 
warlockry, while others, like himself, emphatically did not, and he could see 
no reason other magicks, such as theurgy, should be any different.


 "There are many, many gods, my lord. I only know the names and prayers 
for nineteen of them; that was all my master knew, all he could teach me 
during my apprenticeship. It's not a bad number, really. Many of the best 
theurgists only know a dozen or so specific prayers, and I've never heard of 
anyone who knew more than perhaps thirty, unless he was also dabbling in 
demonology, except we don't call those prayers, we call them invocations or 
summonings."


 "So you can ask nineteen different gods for help, but only those 
nineteen?"


 "Yes, but really, not even all those. You see, as I said, some people are 
better at some prayers than others. Some gods are just harder to talk to, too. 
And I know nineteen names and prayers, but I can't get all nineteen of them to 
listen to me. Or at least, I never have. Maybe I learned a syllable wrong 
somewhere, or maybe they just don't like me, but I can't get all of them to 
listen."


 Sterren saw where this was leading. "How many do listen to you, then?" he 
asked.


 "Usually, three," Agor replied nervously.


 Sterren stared. "Three? Out of nineteen?"


 "I told you I'm not really a very good theurgist," Agor said defensively.


 "How did you ever wind up as the royal magician, then?"


 "The royal magician to the court of King Phenvel III of Semma? Of Semma, 
my lord? You're from Ethshar; you know better. If I were any good, would I 
still be here?"


 "I suppose not," Sterren admitted.


 "I was born in Semma, but I ran away from home when I was twelve and 



served my apprenticeship in Lumeth of the Towers. I couldn't make a living 
there, though, and I didn't speak anything but Semmat and Lumethan, so when I 
got tired of starving in Lumeth I came back here, where there wasn't any real 
competition. They don't care if I can only talk to Unniel, Konned, and Morm, 
because nobody else here can talk to any of the gods!" A trace of pride had 
crept into Agor's voice.


 "Um... Who were those, again?"


 "Unniel, Konned, and Morm. Unniel the Discerning is the goddess of 
theurgical information, Konned is a god of light and warmth, and Morm the 
Preserver is the god of genealogy."


 "I never heard of any of them," Sterren said. "And how many gods have you 
heard of by name?"


 "Not many," Sterren admitted. Laymen virtually never bothered with names, 
since only theurgists could count on getting a specific deity's attention. 
Usually prayers were directed to categories of gods, or just any god who might 
be listening, to increase the chances of reaching someone.


 Sterren realized he could not name a single god, other than the three 
Agor had just mentioned, and he didn't think he could pronounce two of those. 
Konned was easy enough, but the diphthong in Unniel and the r sound in Morm 
were very alien indeed.


 "So, could any of those three help us?" he asked. "I don't see how," Agor 
replied. "Morm is completely useless; all he does is keep track of family 
trees. If you need to know your great-great-grandmother's childhood epithet, 
or when your third cousin was born, he can tell you, but that's it. He's been 
very useful to me, since all the nobility of Semma are obsessed with family, 
but a war is completely out of his area."


 "And Konned?" Sterren did not care to try pronouncing Unniel.


 "Well, if you make a regular sacrifice to him, he'll provide you with 
supernatural light at night, brighter than any candle, and he'll keep you warm 
in the winter, so we don't have to worry about freezing during a siege but 
that's about it. And freezing isn't very likely in Semma anyway.


 "And..."


 "Unniel's our best hope, I suppose. She knows everything there is to know 
about all the other gods and sometimes she can be coaxed into carrying 
messages to them; I found you by having her call her brother Aibem for me. I 
know a prayer for Aibem, but I can never make it work right, so when I really 
need him, sometimes I can get him through Unniel. Aibem is a god of 
information; I've never found anything he doesn't know, but getting him to 
tell me what I'm after is usually like trying to catch a black cat in a 
dungeon at midnight. Unniel can also talk to the dead, sometimes, not all the 
dead, just certain ones, and I have no idea why."


 "Information? Couldn't Um... Unniel or Aibem tell us how to avoid the 
war, then?"


 Agor shrugged. "I don't know," he said. "Maybe." He sighed. "It's too bad 
I could never get Piskor the Generous to answer; she provides food and water 
and advice, and that would be ideal if we're besieged, wouldn't it?"


 "It would help, certainly," Sterren agreed.


 They sat in moody silence for a moment, thinking.


 Sterren considered what he had just been told and decided that he did not 
care to rely on the gods for help.


 That meant returning to his original intent of locating a really powerful 
magician and somehow buying a miracle. Agor, it appeared, did not qualify.


 "So, Agor," he said, "are there any other theurgists in Semma?"


 "No," Agor answered. "It's too bad, because I wouldn't mind having 
someone to talk theurgy with."


 "What about other magicians? Do you know of any?"


 "Oh, certainly! When I first got the job here, naturally I looked over 
the potential competition. It turned out I had nothing to worry about." 
Sterren suppressed a groan at this news. Agor continued, "There are a few 
village herbalists, of course, and a couple of local shamans who seem to be 



more fraud than anything else. There are two wizards in the whole kingdom; 
one's here in the castle, where he helps out in the kitchen, and the other's 
in a village to the east. The one here in the castle used to be the other's 
apprentice, I think."


 He paused, thinking.


 "I don't remember exactly how many witches there are; four or five, I'd 
say. None of them are in the castle."


 "What about sorcerers, or demonologists, or warlocks, or... or anything?"


 "Well, demonology is illegal, of course, and I haven't found any outlaw 
demonologists, but I suppose one could be hiding somewhere. The gods can't see 
demons, usually. Sorcery is illegal, too, I suppose because the Northerners 
used to use it so much, and I know for certain there aren't any sorcerers."


 "And warlocks?" He used the Ethsharitic word, since he had never heard a 
Semmat term.


 Agor looked puzzled. "What's a warlock?" he asked.


 "Another sort of magician," Sterren explained. "We've had them in Ethshar 
for about twenty years now."


 Agor shrugged. "I never heard of them," he said.


 That accorded well with Sterren's suspicion that warlockry did not work 
in Semma, that the Power in Aldagmor was too far away. Quite aside from his 
losses at dice, surely, if warlockry were possible, there would be warlocks.


 "Anything else?" he asked.


 "Not that the gods would tell me about. Believe me, I've asked them."


 Sterren nodded. No mysterious hermits, then. He could not help asking, 
"You're absolutely sure there aren't any you've missed?"


 "I could have missed a demonologist and maybe one of these warlock things 
you mentioned, but that's all."


 "How good are the two wizards? And the witches?"


 "My lord Sterren, the younger wizard is working in the castle kitchens, 
lighting fires and entertaining the cooks; how good do you think he is? And 
they always say you can judge the master by the student."


 Sterren did not entirely believe that particular proverb, but he admitted 
that the older wizard could not be much of a miracle-worker. "What about the 
witches?"


 "Well, my lord, none of them ever gave me any competition for the post of 
royal magician; does that tell you enough?"


 Sterren had to agree that it did. He stared at the gleaming silver hasp 
on a nearby trunk, trying to think what else he could ask.


 "My lord Sterren," Agor said, after a thoughtful pause, "Do you really 
mean to use magic to fight this war?"


 Sterren started. "Of course I do!" he shouted. "How else am I going to 
get out of this alive?"


 "In that case, my lord, I don't think you'd want Semman magicians in any 
case. They've all been raised in the tradition of using no magic in war. 
Wouldn't it make more sense to get your magicians from somewhere else?"


 "I suppose so, but where?"


 "Ethshar, of course."


 "Of course," Sterren said sarcastically, "except that I'm not allowed to 
go back there!"


 "Really? Well then, you could send somebody. But are you really sure you 
aren't?"


 Sterren opened his mouth, then closed it again.


 Because of the way he had arrived, he had assumed that he would not be 
allowed to leave Semma, but nobody had ever actually said that. And certainly, 
there were all the magicians he could ever need in the Wizards' Quarter of 
Ethshar of the Spices. Not that they would be eager to go gallivanting off to 
Semma to get involved in something as nasty and unpleasant as a war. He would 
need a powerful incentive. Gold would work just fine, of course.


 Sterren didn't have any gold himself, but Semma's royal treasury 
contained a good bit of the stuff. As warlord, his officers had assured him 



that he had access to the treasury for legitimate military expenses. He didn't 
even need the treasurer's cooperation; as warlord, he outranked the treasurer.


 However, he did need the king's permission for any expenditures out of 
the ordinary.


 Sterren realized that it was time to speak to the king. 


CHAPTER 12


 His Majesty Phenvel III looked distinctly bored, but Sterren pressed on 
with the speech he had prepared, trying not to stumble over any of the 
unfamiliar words. He had picked up a few choice Semmat phrases from Agor and 
Lar, and did not want to ruin their effect by mispronouncing them.


 "It seems clear," he said, "that if Semma has won so many of its wars, 
and yet neither treacherous Ophkar nor perfidious Ksinallion has ever resorted 
to magic to defeat us, then Ophkar and Ksinallion cannot have many magicians 
available. If they had magicians surely they would have used them rather than 
admit defeat! Therefore, they will be unable to counter whatever magic we use. 
One really good wizard could probably turn the tide of this next conflict, a 
competent demonologist might be even better, if one could bring oneself to 
deal with such dark forces--"


 "No demons," the king interrupted.


 "Your Majesty?"


 "No demons, no demonologists," Phenvel said, emphasizing his words with a 
wagging finger. "No sorcerers, either. We'll use good, clean magic if we need 
to use magic at all."


 "Oh, we do need to, your Majesty," Sterren replied quickly. "I swear that 
my own inexperience and the sorry state that my poor senile great-uncle left 
the army in leave us no other choice." He mildly regretted insulting his dead 
relative, but after all, the man was dead and he really had left the army in 
sad shape.


 "All right," the king said, "but no demonology and no sorcery. Is that 
clear?"


 "Oh, yes, your Majesty!" Sterren grinned with sudden relief. Up until 
that moment he had thought the king was not listening and would reject the 
whole idea out of hand.


 "It might be entertaining to have some real magic around here," Phenvel 
said. "Agor's all very well, with his lights and voices, but I'd like to see 
something new. Do you think you can find a wizard who can fly? I've heard that 
some of them can do that; is it true?"


 "Oh, yes, your Majesty," Sterren assured him. "I've seen it myself, in 
Ethshar's great... in Ethshar." That was true enough. He had meant to say that 
he had seen wizards fly in the Arena, but he didn't know the Semmat word. He 
had also seen his warlock-master fly. It was not a particularly rare or 
valuable talent.


 "Good. Find a magician who can fly."


 Sterren nodded. He knew better than to argue, though he could see little 
military value in the ability to levitate.


 "Yes, your Majesty. Then may I have a letter of credit against the 
treasury, to show that I--"


 "No letter!" Phenvel snapped. "Do you think I'm a fool, to give you free 
run of my money like that? No, I'll give you a pound of gold and a few jewels, 
I understand that wizards like jewels. That should be enough, I should think."


 The bottom dropped out of Sterren's stomach, but he did not dare argue at 
this point, for fear the king would change his mind and cancel the whole 
project.


 A pound of gold, though, would barely buy a single untraceable death 
spell back in Ethshar, let alone magic on a scale to be of real military 
value. Powerful wizards did not work as cheaply as the pitiful village witches 
and herbalists out here on the edge of the World. 



 So much for borrowing against the entire royal treasury to hire a squad 
of hotshot magicians from the Wizards' Quarter. He would be lucky to find one 
really good wizard at that price; more likely he would have to settle for a 
few failed apprentices.


 "I do like the idea of getting a few new magicians around here," Phenvel 
mused, "I really do. But no sorcerers, and no demonologists, not even a little 
one."


 Sterren nodded again. The king was repeating himself, but that was hardly 
unusual. Nobody had ever dared point out such little slips, so the king made 
them frequently.


 He was trying to phrase a request to be excused, when Phenvel said, 
"You'll need to have a guard along, of course, and I think Lady Kalira should 
accompany you. Does that suit you?"


 "Very much, your Majesty," Sterren lied. He had hardly dared to admit it 
even to himself, but he had naturally had the idea of taking this opportunity 
to simply vanish in the streets of Ethshar in the back of his mind right from 
the start. Guards would make that much more difficult, but perhaps no more 
difficult than buying the services of a competent magician for a pound of gold 
and a few nondescript gems.


 It appeared he was still doomed.


 At the very least, though, he would be able to revisit his homeland 
before he died. He had been fighting off homesickness for the last day or two, 
ever since the possibility of returning to Ethshar had begun to seem real.


 "Good," the king said. "You're excused, then, and I wish you a safe 
journey."


 Sterren bowed and backed out of the audience chamber.


 In the corridor outside he straightened up, brushed at his cut-down black 
tunic, and then stood, staring stupidly at the door, for a good three minutes.


 What was he supposed to do now? Just turn and go? How was he to collect 
the gold and gems, or find Lady Kalira? Who was to chose the guards he would 
take with him?


 Kings were not much on detail work, he supposed. It was up to him. Unless 
someone told him otherwise, he assumed that he would have to organize the 
expedition himself.


 He glanced around. The only people in the antechamber with him were the 
two doorkeepers, and he knew better than to ask one of them to leave his post.


 Sterren had no servants of his own and always felt uneasy ordering the 
castle servants about, since they always seemed to have plenty of work to do 
without running his errands, but he was the warlord, commander of the Semman 
army, and his soldiers never seemed to do anything at all unless he was there 
egging them on.


 He headed for the barracks.


 As usual, half a dozen soldiers were dicing in the corner. The barracks 
were otherwise empty.


 "You men!" he called.


 Two of them looked up, without much interest.


 "Settle up, the game's over. Right now."


 The two glanced at each other, and two more looked up, startled.


 "Now!" Sterren bellowed.


 Reluctantly, the game broke up, and the six men came sloppily to 
attention, facing him.


 "All right, you, Kather, go find the Lady Kalira and tell her I must 
speak to her as soon as possible. Let her choose the time and place, but make 
plain that it's very urgent, and then come back here immediately and tell me 
what she said."


 Kather stood silently, accepting this.


 "Go!"


 Startled, Kather nodded. "Yes, my lord," he muttered, as he started off.


 "You, Terrin," Sterren said to the next. "Go find the Lord Treasurer and 
tell him that I need a pound of gold and a dozen of the finest gems in the 



treasury, no later than dinnertime tonight, by the king's express order. 
Arrange a time and place for me to pick them up. If he needs to check with the 
king first, I have no objection, so long as he's quick about it. If he doubts 
your authority, bring him back here to speak to me."


 Terrin, having learned from Kather's experience, essayed a quick bow, 
said, "As you wish, my lord," and departed.


 Sterren looked over the remaining four. He knew them all slightly, but 
only slightly, and did not think much of any of them.


 "Gror," he said, choosing the best of the lot, "I need a party for a 
voyage to Ethshar, a peaceful expedition, recruiting aid for the coming war. 
Who would you suggest?"


 "Uh..." Gror blinked. "My lord, I... I don't know."


 "You could call for volunteers," another soldier, Azdaram by name, 
suggested.


 "I could," Sterren agreed.


 He considered the idea.


 He almost immediately saw an obvious drawback and prepared to discard the 
whole notion.


 Then he caught himself.


 The problem with calling for volunteers was that he might well wind up 
with men only interested in a diversion from the tedious life of a Semman 
soldier. It was entirely possible that some of them would desert at the first 
opportunity...


 He stopped his chain of thought at that point and backed up.


 They might desert. The guard intended to keep him from deserting might 
themselves desert.


 That might not be good for Semma, but it would, on the other hand, be a 
gift from the gods for him, personally. If his escort were to vanish he could 
easily lose himself in the streets of the city and leave Semma to fend for 
itself.


 It probably wouldn't do much worse without him than with him, really. He 
was hardly a great warlord, after all.


 He tried to think what would happen if the guards did desert, and he, 
too, slipped away.


 What would Lady Kalira do? What would the others, back here in Semma do, 
the king, the queen, the princesses, his officers and men, even Agor the 
theurgist?


 Well, the officers and men would presumably go out, fight, and lose. Some 
would die, the rest surrender. Semma would probably be divided up between 
Ophkar and Ksinallion, and the royal family sent off into exile somewhere. 
Agor would almost certainly find employment elsewhere, without much 
difficulty.


 That wasn't so awful, was it? It seemed that a few soldiers were going to 
die anyway, no matter what happened, so he refused to worry about that. As for 
exiling the royal family, it was hard to imagine King Phenvel in exile, but on 
the other hand, it was hard to imagine him doing much of anything. He seemed 
born to be an incompetent monarch; the only way he could survive the way he 
was seemed to be if other people had no choice about putting up with him.


 Princess Shirrin would find exile terribly romantic and exciting, Sterren 
was sure. Princess Lura would think it was fun. Princess Nissitha would be 
mortified. Queen Ashassa would take it calmly in stride.


 The young princes he didn't know well enough to say, but he suspected 
they would rather enjoy a change of scene.


 As for divvying up Semma, would anyone but the deposed aristocrats care? 
In his sixnights in Semma he had never seen any sign that the peasants cared a 
whit which king they paid taxes to.


 There might be practical problems in slipping away, though. Lady Kalira 
would be in Ethshar when he deserted and she would probably try to track him 
down. She might even succeed, eventually, though surely not before the war was 
lost. 



 What if she found him?


 Well, it was obvious that the aristocracy of Semma would not be at all 
happy with Sterren, Ninth Warlord. He would, beyond question, be guilty of 
treason under their laws. In all probability, any Semman noble who ever found 
him would try to kill him on sight.


 That was not really a very appealing long-term prospect, but then, he 
didn't have to stay in Ethshar of the Spices. He could move on to Ethshar of 
the Sands or Ethshar of the Rocks, or even head north to the Baronies of 
Sardiron. The nobility of Semma would not be likely to find him; the World was 
a big place.


 The Small Kingdoms would be too dangerous, though; the Semman 
aristocracy, all two or three hundred of them, were likely to scatter through 
the region, sponging off various relatives and allies.


 He'd want to take a new name, of course.


 It occurred to him that the Semmans knew his true name. That was awkward. 
That meant that they would always be able to find him if they could afford a 
good wizard, or even a very good witch. Warlocks didn't use true names; 
neither did sorcerers, so far as he knew.


 Theurgists sometimes did, and the Semmans were familiar with theurgy. 
That was how they had found him in the first place.


 And worse, couldn't demonologists use true names?


 If the Semmans were determined to track him down and kill him, and had 
the sense to hire magicians, they could do it.


 Desertion looked considerably less appealing than it had a moment before.


 On the other hand, Semmans weren't accustomed to magic, and if Sterren 
could keep the gold and gems with him when he slipped away, perhaps he could 
buy himself some decent magical protections.


 Could a true name be changed?


 He didn't really think it could, but he didn't know.


 He realized he was standing there looking stupid in front of his four 
men, so he cut off his thoughts abruptly.


 "All right, then, I'm calling for volunteers, do any of you four want to 
sail to Ethshar?"


 The four looked at each other and then one by one, answered.


 "No."


 "No, my lord."


 "I don't think so."


 "Not really. Not sail. I don't trust boats."


 Sterren was not surprised.


 "All right, then, I want all four of you to separate and go find my other 
soldiers, all of them, and ask for volunteers. Then meet me back here, with 
the volunteers. And if you don't find enough volunteers, I'll take you four, 
instead. Understood?"


 "Yes, my lord," they chorused raggedly. One by one, they straggled away 
on this unwanted errand. One of them, Arra Varrins's son, thought to bow as 
they headed for the stairs.


 Sterren watched them go and pretended, not to hear the grumbling that 
began as soon as they were out the door.


 When they were out of sight, he sank down onto a convenient bed and began 
thinking, planning, and weighing possibilities.


 Could he really slip away in the streets of Ethshar?


 Did he want to?


 Which death was more certain, commanding a grossly outnumbered army, or 
being an escaped traitor?


 That was a very hard question to answer and it was one he had to consider 
carefully. He had no interest in dying.


 He had plenty of time to consider the question, of course. He would have 
the entire journey to Akalla, then the voyage across the Gulf of the East, to 
decide what to do and make his plans.


 Of course, he knew he might never have a chance to slip away, his 



soldiers might not desert, he might be closely watched at all times. Still, he 
also knew he would be thinking about an escape all the way to Ethshar. 


CHAPTER 13


 As the rooftops of Ethshar grew slowly nearer, Sterren leaned on the 
ship's rail and stared at them hungrily. He could smell the city as well as 
see it, a scent of smoke and spices with an undertone of sewage, a wonderfully 
familiar odor that he hadn't smelled in far too long. He had never realized, 
until this moment, that the city had a distinctive odor, he had never left the 
city until being dragged off to Semma, so the smell had always been there, 
unnoticed.


 Now, though, he knew that he had missed that smell during his absence, 
that to him that scent meant home, as the salt spray of the ocean or the hot, 
rotting-grass smell of Semma never could.


 To his left, Dogal the Large, Dogal d'Gra, that is, sneezed.


 To his right, Alder the Very Large, Alder d'Yoon, said, "May the gods 
keep you well!"


 Dogal snuffled in reply, wiped his nose with the back of his hand, and 
then spat at the ocean below.


 Alder, apparently interpreting Dogal's response as a negative one, said, 
"Well, at least we're finally here. Not much longer now before we're off this 
damned boat."


 "Except that we've got to sail back," Dogal muttered.


 "But going back, the wind should be with us, rather than against us," 
Alder said.


 Sterren took no part in the conversation, but he thought that it was 
certainly true that the wind had been against them. He understood now why Lady 
Kalira, on her previous voyage to Ethshar, had bought herself a storm from the 
weather-wizards in Akalla of the Diamond, and why she had wanted to spend 
two-thirds of his meager hoard of treasure on another one for this trip, 
after, of course, she had used up most of her own resources in hiring a ship 
that would sail when and where she wanted, rather than one that would treat 
the Semman party as ordinary passengers.


 Sterren had absolutely forbidden wasting their funds on a storm; the 
little gold he had would not really be enough as it was, he was sure. He had 
refused to listen to any argument from Lady Kalira; it was easy enough to 
simply stop thinking in Semmat, so that her words became meaningless noise. 
His mind was made up.


 Of course, he had not realized that the prevailing winds of the season 
were from the northwest, and that it would take their chartered ship a month 
and a day to tack up the Gulf of the East to Ethshar of the Spices. To make 
any progress to the northwest at all against the cold, steady autumn wind, 
they had been forced to beat back and forth, zigzagging across the Gulf from 
one side to the other.


 The only good thing about the delay was that it had given him 
considerable time to practice his Semmat.


 Sterren was heartily sick of the cramped shipboard life and the ship's 
constant wallowing and rolling, and his feet were almost itching at the 
thought of walking on dry land again.


 The fact that the land in question was his homeland, and that he might 
yet have a chance to slip away to freedom, made waiting all the harder.


 Of course, he might not have a chance to slip away. Lady Kalira, when 
informed of the expedition, had insisted on bringing the two soldiers she most 
trusted, Alder and Dogal, and had gotten royal backing for this demand. 
Sterren had been given no choice but to yield.


 He thought that Alder and Dogal liked him, at least slightly, but he was 
also quite certain they would not willingly let him desert and leave Semma to 
its fate. 



 This was unfortunate, since the other four in the party might well 
desert, themselves. They were genuine volunteers, Kendrik, Alar, Zander, and 
Bern were their names, and Sterren was not impressed with any of them.


 He knew Kendrik's type from his gambling days; the man was obviously 
convinced that he was smarter than anybody else and only needed the right 
opportunity to make himself rich, famous, and powerful. Semma certainly didn't 
provide many such opportunities, Sterren had to admit, but he suspected that 
Kendrik wouldn't find them in Ethshar, either, because he wasn't anywhere near 
as clever as he thought he was.


 People like Kendrik had been among the most generous suppliers of 
Sterren's funds before his abrupt departure from Ethshar's taverns, but they 
were also bad losers and very likely to accuse him of cheating. Sterren didn't 
like Kendrik any better than he had liked those old opponents.


 Alar appeared to have volunteered just because somebody asked him. He was 
easygoing, not too bright, and highly suggestible. Sterren suspected that he 
had wound up a soldier at somebody else's suggestion, and that he might well 
desert along with one of the others because he wouldn't see any reason not to, 
until it was too late.


 Sterren might have suggested it to Alar himself, if Alder and Dogal 
hadn't been present. Once they were ashore he might well make a few suggestive 
comments in Alar's hearing. For now, though, he was keeping Alar close at 
hand. He didn't really like the poor fool, but such people could be useful to 
have around, they could be talked into doing all the unpleasant tasks one 
inevitably encountered.


 Zander had joined the army to get away from a boring life as a peasant 
farmer. He had volunteered for this trip to get away from a boring life as a 
soldier in Semma Castle. Ethshar, whatever its flaws, certainly wouldn't look 
boring to him, and he could easily decide against returning to his boring old 
homeland.


 Sterren thought Zander was pretty boring, himself.


 Bern was a mystery; he had said nothing beyond the necessary minimum for 
politeness ever since he answered the call for volunteers. Sterren had 
absolutely no idea what to expect from Bern, desertion, loyalty, insanity, 
anything might be possible.


 Alder and Dogal, of course, had not volunteered. Alder might have, given 
a choice, but Dogal was clearly fed up with travel after his previous journey 
and would greatly have preferred to have stayed home, where he had a friendly 
understanding with one of the cook's more attractive female assistants, and 
where he didn't have to worry about seasickness or foreign languages and 
customs.


 Alder was a bit more adventurous and seemed genuinely, if inexplicably, 
fond of Sterren. Sterren suspected it might be an emotion similar to what one 
might feel toward a stray puppy one had taken in; after all, Alder had found 
Sterren, taught him Semmat, and helped him settle into his job as warlord.


 Lady Kalira would never have volunteered; on her previous journey she had 
discovered, to her surprise, that she hated travel and hated Ethshar. Neither 
one fit her romantic preconceptions; the stories never mentioned seasickness, 
rude sailors, smelly crowds, and all the other inconveniences she had 
encountered. Furthermore, she thought the whole idea of using magic to fight a 
war was revolting. She did, however, have a powerful sense of duty, which 
accounted for her cooperation, such as it was. The king had sent her, and she 
did as her sovereign ordered.


 She had surely heard the call from the lookout when the city came into 
view, but she was ignoring it, staying in her cabin below.


 To some extent, Sterren thought he could sympathize with her, but at the 
sight of the city spreading across the World before him, with its smell in his 
nostrils, he found his eyes filling with tears and felt a swelling in his 
chest as if he were about to burst.


 He swallowed and, to distract himself, he called to a sailor who was 
hanging from the forestay, "Hey, there! Where will we tie up?" 



 The sailor glanced at him, but shook his head.


 Sterren realized he had spoken in Semmat, since Alder and Dogal had been 
speaking it.


 "Where will we tie up?" he called in Ethsharitic.


 "The Tea Wharves," the sailor called back, "near the New Canal!"


 Sterren was unsure exactly where the Tea Wharves were, but he knew the 
New Canal, which, despite its name, was about four hundred years old; it was 
new only in comparison to the Grand Canal, which was no longer particularly 
grand, but had been there for centuries before the New Canal was dug.


 The New Canal divided Spicetown from Shiphaven, in the northwest corner 
of the city. The Wizards' Quarter was near the southeastern corner. Sterren's 
party would need to do some walking, it appeared.


 That was no problem; it might provide more opportunities to escape from 
his escort. If there was a crowd at the Arena, for example, he could easily 
become separated "accidentally." The Arena was directly on the way, too; Arena 
Street was certainly the best route to the Wizards' Quarter from either 
Shiphaven or Spicetown.


 That assumed that he actually wanted to slip away. After a month of 
debating that with himself, he still hadn't really decided.


 It would seem an easy enough decision to make, really, life as a fugitive 
in his homeland, or near-certain death in a nasty little kingdom in the middle 
of nowhere, but whenever he thought he had settled on escape he kept finding 
himself reconsidering, thinking of what might happen to the people he had come 
to know in Semma. Would Princess Lura wind up starving somewhere? Might 
Nissitha and Shirrin be raped by their victorious enemies? Would Alder and 
Dogal and all the soldiers he had diced with get themselves killed in a futile 
defense?


 None of this, he told himself, really ought to be any responsibility of 
his, he hadn't volunteered to be warlord.


 Still, he was the warlord, like it or not, and abandoning Semma to its 
fate seemed wrong.


 Of course, not abandoning Semma might get him killed, and that seemed 
even worse.


 Perhaps, he thought with sudden inspiration, he could hire his magicians, 
then disappear into the city streets. Semma could still win its stupid war, 
but he would be free and home. True, he would be guilty of treason under 
Semman law, but surely nobody would go to all that much trouble looking for 
him under those circumstances. The Semman nobility would have no very strong 
reason to hold a grudge against him, if he won their war for them, whether he 
was present at the time or not.


 And if his magicians didn't win, and given his estimate of the purchasing 
power of his available funds, that seemed likely, at least he would have made 
an honest effort and would be no worse off than if he had deserted before 
recruiting anybody.


 He would have tried, and if the Semman princesses were still raped or 
murdered, if the Semman army was still slaughtered, he would have done the 
best he could.


 He liked that approach. He would carry through on his promise, hire the 
best magicians he could, and then, if the opportunity arose, he would escape 
on the way back to the ship.


 That shouldn't be too difficult, he thought. He smiled and blinked away 
the tears of homesickness.


 He would hire magicians, but how did one go about hiring magicians for 
something like this?


 His smile vanished again as he realized that he had no idea at all.


 To buy a love spell or a curse, to cure warts or foresee the future, he 
knew exactly what to do. He would take his money to the Wizards' Quarter and 
pick a likely magician by reading the signboards.


 None of the signboards had ever advertised "Wars won," though. How would 
he know which magicians to approach? Trial and error would not work; there 



were hundreds of magicians in the Wizards' Quarter, and asking each one in 
turn would take years. Most of them surely wouldn't be interested.


 Recruiters of various sorts always worked in the city's markets, 
particularly Shiphaven Market and Westgate Market, calling out their offers to 
the passing crowds; anyone who wanted to take up a career as an adventurer, or 
any other particularly hazardous and messy job, could go to the markets and 
pick from several options.


 But there was no market in the Wizards' Quarter. There was Arena Plaza, 
but Sterren had never seen a recruiter there. The nearest true market was in 
Southgate, and Sterren had never been there at all. The taverns and gaming in 
Southgate were organized, and freelancers like himself were not welcome.


 Or would Southmarket, by the reservoir, be closer to the Wizards' Quarter 
than Southgate? He had passed through there once. He didn't remember seeing 
recruiters, but he could not be absolutely sure they hadn't been there.


 And there was always Eastgate Market, and Hempfield Market, and 
Newmarket, and Newgate, he had gambled in inns and taverns near all those, at 
one time or another, before settling back into his home turf around Westgate 
and the two Merchants' Quarters. Those other markets had no recruiters, 
generally, and weren't particularly close to the Wizards' Quarter, but should 
he rule them out completely?


 For the first time, Sterren began to see the city's immensity as a 
serious drawback.


 He blinked, shook his head, and reconsidered.


 None of the various markets seemed exactly right, but pretty obyiously, 
Shiphaven Market would be the best if he decided to go that route. It was the 
traditional place to recruit people interested in traveling by sea, after all, 
and it would be closest to the Tea Wharves, wherever they might turn out to 
be. That would mean less walking through the city streets, but on the other 
hand, Shiphaven Market was always crowded, was not too far from his old 
stamping grounds, and was surrounded by places to hide.


 He didn't know all those places as well as he might, since he had usually 
avoided Shiphaven in order to avoid drunken sailors who might be prone to 
violence, or ships' officers who might stoop to kidnapping to complete their 
crews, but he thought he could manage to find something.


 But would there be any magicians around Shiphaven Market?


 The Arena Plaza was certainly much closer to the Wizards' Quarter, and he 
thought he remembered a signboard there that he could post a message on, that 
was a second possibility that did not deserve to be discarded out of hand.


 For that matter, simply asking around in the Wizards' Quarter, or walking 
the streets calling for volunteers, might produce results. Perhaps he could 
inquire after ambitious near-term apprentices, or even journeymen. The 
magicians surely gossiped among themselves and would know who might be 
desperate enough for work to be interested in such an adventure.


 And what's more, there was no reason he couldn't try all three 
approaches.


 He smiled again. That would certainly be reasonable and would call for a 
good, long stay in Ethshar, with visits to two of the most crowded places in 
the city, Shiphaven Market and Arena Plaza. The Wizards' Quarter was less 
crowded, but full of nooks and crannies and odd little byways where a person 
could easily lose sight of his companions.


 That seemed very promising indeed.


 As the city loomed before him, heart-twistingly familiar, his resolution 
to stay until he had hired magicians evaporated. He decided instead that he 
would take any opportunity to escape that arose, because any opportunity might 
be the last.


 If the opportunity never came at all, he would live with that.


 He was a gambler, after all. He was accustomed to accepting what the gods 
of luck sent him and making the best of it. If his luck let him slip away, he 
would; if he never got a chance, he would go through with the hiring of 
magicians and play out his role as warlord. 



 He could see the docks ahead, now, and the mouth of the New Canal. Three 
wharves projected out at an angle, across a band of mud, a few hundred feet to 
the left of the canal; the ship seemed to be headed directly for them, and he 
guessed that these were the Tea Wharves.


 That was the Spicetown side, but getting across to Shiphaven would be 
easy enough. Spicetown had no market square; the spice merchants did their 
bidding right on the docks. Shiphaven Market would still be the first stop in 
the search for magicians.


 This expedition, he thought, might even be fun. 


CHAPTER 14


 Sterren stopped walking and pointed. "That's the New Canal," he said, 
speaking loudly to be heard over the wind, "And Shiphaven Market's just the 
other side. That's where we want to start looking."


 Lady Kalira glanced at the row of shops on the opposite bank and sniffed. 
"I don't see any market over there," she said, a trifle petulantly.


 "It's not right on the canal, it's a few blocks in." In truth, Sterren 
was not at all sure how far it was; he was not overly familiar with this part 
of the city and had never before needed to get from Spicetown to Shiphaven 
Market. "Are you still sure we should start looking immediately, and not find 
ourselves a good meal or a place to sleep?"


 "We can sleep on the ship," Lady Kalira replied, irritated, "and eat 
there, too, if we have to. Now, where's this market?"


 "How do we get across?" Alder asked. "Is there a bridge?"


 Sterren had to think for a minute. "Well, there is on the Upper Canal, 
which turns off this one, or maybe it's on the New Canal right before the 
Upper Canal turns off. I'm not sure."


 "Boats," Kendrik pointed out. "There must be boats going across."


 "Of course there are," Sterren said, although he hadn't known there were 
until he saw what Kendrik had spotted: a small, flat-bottomed boat, obviously 
unfit to leave the calm waters of the canal, tied up to a dock on the opposite 
side. A man lay dozing in it, and some rotting fruit rinds were bumping gently 
against one gunwhale. Looking around, Sterren saw that a similar dock on the 
near side jutted forty feet out into the canal and had a space on one side 
where just such a boat could readily tie up.


 "A ferry, that's what it is," he added, as he led the way down to the 
dock.


 He hoped it actually was a ferry; if not, he knew he was going to look 
very foolish.


 "I don't understand why we're doing this," Zander muttered as he followed 
his warlord down the cobbled slope.


 "Because Shiphaven Market is where people recruit for foreign adventures; 
I told you all that," Sterren retorted, as his feet hit the first planks.


 Zander was not silenced. "Is it always this cold?" he asked, pulling his 
tunic tighter at the throat.


 "No," Sterren and Lady Kalira replied, simultaneously.


 Sterren was not particularly pleased with the cold and wind, or with 
Zander's whining. Both acted as deterrents to desertion. The immense size of 
the city did, as well; Sterren, being a native and accustomed to it from 
birth, had not realized how intimidating it must be to a foreigner, newly 
arrived from the rural openness of Semma, to find himself surrounded by a 
seemingly endless maze of walls and streets.


 Even the rich city smell that he found so comforting probably seemed like 
an alien stink to the Semmans.


 He was rapidly losing hope that all four of his volunteers would desert, 
but if even one did, he thought he could send the others after him, while he 
and Lady Kalira supposedly continued his recruiting mission. That might 
provide sufficient opportunity for his own escape. 



 He came to the end of the dock, stopped, and waved an arm above his head.


 Here he called, shouting at the top of his lungs in order to be heard 
over the wind, "Over here!" The man in the flat-bottomed boat looked up, 
startled out of his doze, and saw the party on east side. He sat up, then 
stood, and picked up a long-handled oar.


 Sterren could feel Lady Kalira's impatience as they stood and watched 
while the ferryman casually used the blunt end of the oar to push off from the 
dock and then began paddling his way slowly across the canal, fighting the 
steady breeze that wanted to push his ungainly craft out to sea. The gap 
between the two docks was a good forty yards, Sterren judged, and it took 
several long minutes for the boat to cross it.


 When it drew near, the ferryman stopped rowing, reached down, and came up 
with a coil of rope. He threw one end of it up onto the dock.


 Alder, with admirable presence of mind, caught it and began hauling the 
boat in.


 The other end of the rope was secured to the boat's blunt bow, and in a 
moment that bumped up against the battered end of the dock.


 "Bunch of barbarians, is it?" the ferryman muttered in Ethsharitic. "I 
can't take you all at once!" he called aloud.


 The Semtnan soldiers spoke no Ethsharitic and were all crowding forward 
toward the boat. "Wait!" Sterren called. "Not all at once! You'll... 
you'll..." He could not think of a Semmat equivalent for "sink," "swamp," or 
"capsize."


 He didn't need one; the soldiers got the idea and stopped pressing.


 In his native tongue, Sterren called to the boatman, "Yes, they are a 
bunch of barbarians, but I'm stuck with them. How many can you take?"


 "How many of you are there?" the boatman asked, eyeing the little mob.


 Sterren did a quick head count to make sure he hadn't forgotten anyone, 
then answered, "Eight, in all."


 The boatman considered, then said, "I can take four each time easily 
enough. Two trips will do it, then. I'll give you a cut rate, too, six bits 
the lot."


 Sterren was not at all sure that was actually a cut rate, but he paid no 
attention. Here, sent by the gods, was a chance to split the party. He turned 
to Lady Kalira. "He says he can only take four at a time," he explained. "I'll 
go on ahead with Zander and Alar and Bern, say, and then he'll come back for 
the rest of you."


 "Oh, no!" she replied. "No, I stay with you! You, me, Alder, and Dogal go 
first, and the rest can follow."


 "My lady, need I remind you that I am in charge here, and not you? This 
is my city, and I am your warlord."


 "This is your city, all right," Lady Kalira interrupted, "and that's 
exactly why I'm staying with you."


 Sterren opened his mouth to argue, then caught sight of the expression on 
Alder's face.


 It was not an easy expression to describe, having something of 
resignation, annoyance, and doubt in it, but Sterren knew immediately that it 
meant Alder didn't trust him any more than Lady Kalira did. He closed his 
mouth.


 "All right," he said after a moment. "We'll go first, then those four." 
He pushed his way past the soldiers and climbed down into the boat. "My lady, 
if you will?" he said, turning back and offering a hand.


 Lady Kalira accepted his aid, stepping down into the boat. She settled on 
one of the seats in the bow.


 Dogal followed, then Alder with the bowline, and Sterren, prompted by the 
ferryman's gestures, settled the two of them amidships, while he sat in the 
bow beside Lady Kalira.


 "Oars are on either side," the ferryman pointed out from where he stood 
in the stem.


 Sterren translated, and Alder and Dogal each took an oar as the ferryman 



reached over them with his own long oar and pushed them away from the dock.


 It took the Semman soldiers a minute to get the hang of rowing, but even 
so, the trip west was much quicker than the ferryman's solo trip east had 
been.


 Once across, they clambered quickly ashore.


 The ferryman waited, and once they were all safely on the dock he said, 
"That'll be six bits. I don't get the others until I see the money."


 Sterren did not bother to translate this for the others; he just pulled 
the money from his purse and tossed it to the ferryman, who caught it deftly.


 Then the foursome had to stand on the western dock and wait while the 
ferryman returned for the other soldiers.


 It was only then that Lady Kalira realized that none of the other four 
spoke a single word of Ethsharitic, or even Trader's Tongue. The ferryman did 
his best to make himself understood in both languages, bits of his shouting 
carried across the water, but the four Semmans were very slow indeed to find 
places in the boat and cast off successfully.


 Sterren watched the others carefully, glancing back now and then at the 
city streets behind them, but he saw no opportunity to make a dash for 
shelter. He waited, unhappily, until the party was reunited.


 The north wind was chilly, and Dogal was shivering badly by the time the 
others scrambled up out of the boat. Even Sterren felt the cold.


 "This way," he said, with no idea whether it was the right way; he just 
wanted to get moving and out of the wind.


 He led the way up away from the canal, past a cross street, around a 
sinuous bend, and through two three-way intersections.


 Then he stopped, trying to figure out where he was.


 The other seven, all close behind him, nearly trampled him.


 He looked about. The others followed suit.


 They were obviously in Shiphaven. Most of the people in sight on the 
streets wore the blue kilts and white tunics of sailors. Two chandlers' shops 
were in sight, and a cooper's as well. A red-haired woman sat on the balcony 
of a nearby brothel, but wore a heavy shawl wrapped about her against the 
wind. She called a greeting, judging the soldiers to be potential customers; 
Kendrik in particular stared at her greedily.


 Sterren did not recognize the street. He considered stopping one of the 
sailors strolling by, but rejected the idea immediately; he would not admit so 
easily to being lost in his native city.


 Even over the clatter of passing feet and the whistle of the wind in the 
nearby eaves, he could hear voices ahead and to the left. "This way," he said, 
marching on.


 The Semmans followed. Alder and Dogal close on his heels. Lady Kalira 
just behind, and the others trailing along.


 The next intersection was another cross street, and he turned left, to 
find himself looking directly at Shiphaven Market, two blocks away.


 He recognized the street, then; he was on East Wharf Street. He still 
could not identify the one he had followed from the canal, however.


 "There you are," he said, pointing, "Shiphaven Market!"


 He was rather proud of having led the party successfully through an 
unfamiliar part of the city, but none of the Semmans seemed impressed by his 
accomplishment. None of them realized, of course, that this part of the city 
was unfamiliar.


 In fact, he wondered if it had really sunk in yet that the city was big 
enough that he wasn't familiar with all of it.


 "Good," Lady Kalira snapped. "Let's go find a wizard and get back to the 
ship, before we all freeze."


 "Doesn't have to be a wizard," Sterren began, but Lady Kalira's glare 
discouraged him from saying any more. He marched on.


 The market was not crowded, probably because of the weather, Sterren 
guessed. The foul winds would have kept down the number of ships reaching the 
harbor with goods to sell or vacancies in their crews to fill, and the cold 



would discourage the casual browser. He doubted he saw much more than a 
hundred people milling about.


 One of them, however, was unmistakably a wizard, complete with crimson 
robe and an assortment of well-filled pouches and sheathes on her belt. 
Another, tall, thin, pale, and wearing black, might well be a warlock.


 Sterren suddenly began to think that his presence here was a mistake. 
What did he want with magicians? All he wanted was to be left alone. He 
stopped walking.


 "Come on," Lady Kalira said, and Alder reached out for his elbow.


 He walked on into the market square, found a quiet spot, and then stopped 
again.


 "Now what?" Lady Kalira demanded.


 Sterren was overcome with irrational fear, stage fright, although he had 
never encountered that term for it. He knew that the time had come to call out 
his recruiting pitch, but he could not bring himself to speak.


 Inspiration struck. "You tell them what we want," he told Lady Kalira.


 "Me?"


 "Yes, you; as your warlord, I demand it."


 "But my lord, I don't speak Ethsharitic!"


 In his panic, Sterren had forgotten that.


 Reminded of it, a sudden inspiration struck him, and before he could lose 
his nerve again he raised his hands and shouted, "People of Ethshar! These 
barbarians think I'm going to give a recruiting speech for them, but the truth 
is that they're holding me prisoner against my will! I ask that you summon the 
city guard!"


 "Wait a minute," Lady Kalira said, hauling down one arm. "What was that 
you said?"


 "I said--"


 "You didn't say anything about magicians, and I heard you say something 
about the city guard, I think."


 Sterren saw that doubtful expression on Alder's face again and saw his 
hand fall to the hilt of his sword. He cleared his throat.


 "Just warming up," Sterren said. He looked about and realized that nobody 
else had paid any attention to him, anyway. The wind had apparently carried 
his words away unheard, or perhaps they had been taken for a joke, or a stunt 
to attract attention.


 He looked over his own party and for the first time he noticed that 
Kendrik was gone.


 He smiled, but decided not to point this absence out. Not yet, anyway. 
For now, it would clearly be safer to behave himself and seriously try to 
recruit magicians; his chances of slipping away might well improve later on.


 He turned back toward the center of the square and shouted in 
Ethsharitic, "Magicians needed! Magicians needed! I represent his Majesty, 
King Phenvel the Third of Semma, and I am here to hire fine magicians of every 
school to aid the royal Semman army!"


 "That's better," Lady Kalira muttered, recognizing the familiar names.


 A young man stopped to listen as Sterren continued, "Excellent pay! 
Comfortable accommodations! An opportunity for glory and honor in a worthy 
cause! Magicians of every sort are needed!" He found himself getting into the 
spirit of the occasion; it wasn't really all that different from the times he 
had needed to talk a losing opponent out of retaliation.


 "You think you're going to find decent magicians here, at this time of 
year?" the young stranger asked, smirking.


 "Shut up," Sterren answered conversationally. "Magicians!" he called.


 The listener snorted.


 A middle-aged couple in fine clothing wandered up to listen.


 "We need magicians! Payment in gold and gems, all expenses to be borne by 
the royal treasury!"


 The red-robed wizard approached, and then the tall man in black.


 "You, wizard," Sterren asked, beckoning, "would you be interested in a 



trip to Semma, the jewel of the Small Kingdoms?"


 The wizard smiled wryly and turned away.


 "I might be," the man in black answered.


 "Are you a magician, sir?" Sterren asked.


 The man in black raised a hand, and a thick swirl of dust rose up from 
the hard-packed ground of the market, spiraling upward before him, ignoring 
the wind that should have scattered it across the marketplace. The dust 
gathered into a ball the size of a fist, hung there in the air for an instant, 
and then burst apart and vanished, whipped away on the breeze.


 "I'm a warlock," said the man in black. 


CHAPTER 15


 After an hour's harangue, Sterren gave up. His throat was sore, his voice 
giving out, and he had lost the crowd's interest completely.


 The warlock had stood by, waiting patiently the whole time. He had 
neither committed himself to the venture nor turned it down, had not demanded 
to know more, but had simply waited.


 A black-haired woman with a runny nose, about Sterren's own age and 
wearing a purple gown with stains that resembled those one might acquire 
sleeping in the Hundred-Foot Field, had also turned up, claiming to be a 
wizard, and she had actually volunteered. She had been more concerned with 
Sterren's guarantee that she would be fed for as long as she was in Semma's 
employ than in the particulars of the job, or the payment offered.


 The sun was low above the rooftops on the western side of the square. 
"Time for dinner," Sterren said in Semmat, turning to Lady Kalira. "Don't you 
think so?"


 "I suppose," she said.


 She had spent much of the hour wandering about the market looking at the 
goods offered for sale, but she had not bought anything. Sterren suspected 
that she had been too embarrassed by her poor command of Ethsharitic, if you 
could call her dozen or so phrases "command", to try to haggle in that 
language, and the local merchants, while likely to speak several tongues, 
would not be likely to know anything so obscure as Semmat.


 Of course, Lady Kalira spoke Trader's Tongue, Sterren remembered, and 
most of the merchants could probably handle that, but perhaps she didn't 
realize it. Or maybe language had nothing to do with it, and her funds were 
running low. That might be inconvenient, since he had hoped that her purse 
would be there to fall back on in an emergency.


 Whatever the reason. Lady Kalira had returned, empty-handed, a few 
minutes before.


 Dogal and Alder had stayed close at hand throughout Sterren's pitch; even 
while speaking he had watched for a chance to slip away from them, but had not 
seen one.


 The same could not be said of Alar, Zander, and Bern, all of whom had 
wandered off. Zander and Bern had returned; Alar as yet, had not, nor was 
there any sign of Kendrik.


 Sterren switched back to Ethsharitic and asked the warlock, "Would you 
care to join my companions and myself for dinner, and perhaps discuss the job 
further?"


 The warlock nodded casually.


 "Is there somewhere around here where we can get a decent meal," Sterren 
asked. "Or should we head down to Westgate?"


 "This is not my part of the city," the warlock replied.


 Sterren hesitated, then thought better of asking him any further 
questions, such as which part of the city was his, and why wasn't he there. 
Instead, he turned to the wizard, a questioning look on his face.


 Before he could speak, without a word, she pointed to a tavern on the 
north corner of Flood Street, where a faded signboard depicted a golden 



dragon.


 "Good enough," he said, as he led the way.


 "Wait a minute," Lady Kalira objected. "What about Kendrik and Alar?"


 Sterren stopped. "My lady," he said, "Kendrik deserted before we even 
reached the market; I last saw him among the... the..." He paused, then 
resorted to using the Ethsharitic word. "The brothels on..." He paused again, 
sighed, and said, "East Wharf Street" in Ethsharitic. Switching back to 
Semmat, he continued, "Alar wandered off some time ago, and I have no idea 
where he has gone and I don't want to either search for him, or wait for his 
return."


 "But you can't allow desertion!"


 "I can't allow myself to starve, either, or perish of thirst."


 A look at Lady Kalira's face let him know that that was not going to be 
sufficient. "All right," he said, capitulating, "Zander, you and Bern go find 
Kendrik and Alar. Then meet us at that inn, there." He pointed to the Golden 
Dragon. "If we aren't there, go back to the ship. It's at the..." He stopped. 
He wished he knew the word for "wharf" in Semmat, but he didn't, and besides, 
if these two asked for directions in Semmat, nobody would know what they were 
saying. "Tea Wharves" he said in Ethsharitic, then asked in Semmat, "Can you 
say that?"


 "Why should we say it?" Zander asked.


 "In case you get lost," Sterren explained.


 The concept of getting lost was not one Zander, born and raised on an 
open plain, thought of the same way a city boy like Sterren did, but looking 
at the maze of streets Zander saw the sense in it. He said, "Oh."


 "Tea Wharves," Sterren repeated. "Try it."


 Zander struggled to wrap his tongue around the unfamiliar syllables. The 
resulting mess was not recognizable.


 "Bern?" Sterren asked.


 "Tea Wharves," Bern said, in accented but perfectly intelligible 
Ethsharitic. Sterren peered at him suspiciously.


 "You don't speak Ethsharitic, do you?"


 "No, my lord," Bern replied.


 "Zander, try it again. Tea Wharves."


 Zander managed to produce something almost adequate this time.


 "Good enough, I suppose. Work on it while you're hunting for your 
comrades."


 Zander nodded; Bern didn't bother. Together, they turned and marched back 
into the market crowd.


 Sterren watched them go, neither knowing nor caring whether he would ever 
see either of them again.


 He had gotten rid of four of his seven unwanted companions, he thought; 
he was more than halfway to freedom!


 "This way," he said, leading the way to the Golden Dragon.


 The tavern was less than half full, and they found a table readily, not 
far from the door. Sterren, after some consideration, decided that neither 
facing the door nor sitting with his back to it would be best for slipping 
away; he sat with his right side toward the door, his back to the open room.


 Lady Kalira sat opposite him, against a wall; Alder took the chair to his 
right, back to the door, and Dogal to his left, facing the door. The warlock 
sat between Alder and Lady Kalira, the wizard between Dogal and Lady Kalira.


 Sterren took the opportunity for a look at his two recruits.


 Both were thin, but the wizard's slenderness appeared to be due to 
borderline malnutrition, while the warlock was simply built that way. The 
wizard wore her hair in long black ringlets that trailed halfway down her 
back, and even in her present tattered and dirty condition they still showed 
signs of having been combed not too long ago. Her face was rather drawn, her 
eyes brown and anxious; if she were clean, smiling, and better-fed, Sterren 
thought, she would be attractive, possibly even beautiful.


 She sniffled, then dabbed at her nose with a stained cuff. 



 The warlock was clean and looked as if he was as well fed as he cared to 
be, but he was definitely not smiling. His lined, narrow face was fixed and 
expressionless, his mouth a thin line, his pale green eyes unreadable. His 
hair, black with the first traces of gray, was cut short, barely covering his 
ears. Sterren guessed him to be over forty; how much over he had no idea. He 
might have been handsome once, but now, Sterren thought, he was merely 
striking.


 As soon as they were seated, even before the serving maid could reach 
them, the warlock said, "I notice that in an hour's speech, you never once 
specified the nature of the employment you offered."


 Caught off guard, Sterren agreed, "I suppose I didn't."


 The wizard was staring hungrily at the approaching tavern girl, and 
Sterren used that as an excuse to change the subject. "My lady," he said in 
Semmat, "what shall we have, and at whose expense?"


 "You brought us here," Lady Kalira said, "you pay for it. You wanted 
dinner, we'll have dinner. What was the man in black saying?"


 "He asked a question about our offer. Wine with your meal?"


 Lady Kalira nodded.


 Sterren glanced at each of the remaining soldiers in turn, and each 
nodded. "Wine would be welcome," Alder said.


 Sterren nodded back, then switched to Ethsharitic and asked the wizard, 
"Would you like wine with dinner?"


 The serving maid had reached the table, heard this final question, and 
saw the wizard's nod.


 "We have several fine vintages," she said. Her tone made it a question.


 Sterren said, in Ethsharitic, "The three barbarians wouldn't appreciate 
it, and I can't afford it, so I do hope my two guests will forgive me if we 
have the regular house wine and whatever you have for the house dinner 
tonight, rather than anything special. That's for all six of us, unless..."


 He looked questioningly at the warlock, who made a small gesture of 
acquiescence with one hand. The wizard said, "That would be fine."


 The tavern girl departed.


 "The nature of this proposed employment?" the warlock said.


 Sterren had carefully avoided being specific in his marketplace spiel, 
for fear of frightening off prospects, but he realized that the time for 
prevarication was past.


 He sighed. "I'm the hereditary warlord of one of the Small Kingdoms, a 
little place in the far south called Semma. I didn't want the job, but I'm 
stuck with it. Semma is on the verge of war with two larger neighbors, and 
we're doomed. The army is absolutely pitiful and badly outnumbered. We don't 
stand a chance unless we cheat. In the Small Kingdoms, at least in Semma's 
neighborhood, they don't use magic in their wars; it's considered dishonorable 
or something, it's cheating. Well, I'm ready to cheat, because otherwise I'll 
be killed for losing. So I'm here looking for magicians who can help us win 
this war. It shouldn't take much, since there's so little magic there and the 
soldiers will never have fought against magicians before." He looked at the 
warlock, hoping that he wouldn't dismiss the idea out of hand.


 "A war?" The warlock's tone was calm and considering.


 Sterren nodded, encouraged that the warlock had not rejected the idea out 
of hand. He glanced at the wizard.


 She had hardly listened; her attention was on the door to the kitchen. It 
was an interesting door, with the skull of a small dragon mounted so as to 
form the top of the frame and the dragon's lower jaw serving as a door-handle, 
but Sterren suspected the poor young woman was far more interested in what 
would be coming through that door than in the decor that gave the tavern its 
name.


 The wizard caught his eye and turned back to him. "I don't care what the 
job is," she said, sniffing and brushing a stray ringlet back over her 
shoulder, "if it won't get me killed outright and you pay in gold. I'll take 
it." She hesitated, then wiped her nose and asked, "It won't get me killed 



outright, will it?"


 "I certainly hope not," Sterren said. "If we win, it won't, but if we 
lose, you'll probably have to flee for your lives." He shrugged. "Fleeing 
shouldn't be difficult; it's wide-open country, and the kingdoms are so small 
it should be easy to get safely across a border before they can catch you."


 The warlock nodded. "You say Semma is far to the south?"


 Sterren nodded again. "About as far to the southeast as you can get, 
really; from the castle's highest tower you can see the edge of the World, on 
a clear day. I've seen it myself." He stared at the warlock, a suspicion 
growing in the back of his mind.


 He had not really had time to consider his two prospective employees, but 
now he did.


 Warlockry was virtually unknown in Semma. He had no way of knowing for 
certain whether it would work there at all and he was quite sure it would be 
far less effective than it was in Ethshar. A warlock, therefore, would not be 
his preferred sort of magician.


 On the other hand, this particular warlock seemed very interested in 
going south.


 Sterren could guess what that meant. This particular warlock probably 
wanted to get as far away from Aldagmor and the Power's Source as he could. He 
might have already had the first warning nightmares that meant he had pushed 
his warlockry to dangerous levels.


 Warlockry, as Sterren knew from his aborted apprenticeship, drew its 
power from a mysterious Source located somewhere in the Aldagmor region, a 
mountainous area far to the north of Ethshar, on the edge of the Baronies of 
Sardiron. A warlock's power varied as the inverse square of the distance from 
this thing. A warlock's power also increased with use; every spell a warlock 
cast made the next one a shade easier. Most magic worked that way, of course; 
most skills of any kind did. The effect was rather extreme with warlockry, 
however, because warlockry, unlike all other magic, also directly counteracted 
fatigue; magic not only didn't tire a warlock, it revivified him, without 
limit.


 Except that there was a limit. When a warlock's power reached a certain 
level, he began to have nightmares. From then on, every further use of 
warlockry caused more and worse nightmares, which could make life virtually 
unbearable.


 Eventually an afflicted warlock wouldn't even need to be asleep to suffer 
these hideous visions and, in the end, every warlock ever known to have 
reached this point had died or vanished. Those who did not commit suicide were 
often seen wandering north, toward Aldagmor, usually flying, but then were 
never seen again.


 This was known as the Calling, because that was what the nightmares 
seemed to be: a horrible, supernatural summons of some kind that would draw a 
warlock either to Aldagmor or death, or both.


 What most warlocks did was, when the first nightmare hit, to move south 
or west, further from Aldagmor, and give up warlockry for good. The smarter 
ones would have been charging exorbitant fees in anticipation of this and 
could afford to retire in comfort.


 Sterren guessed that this warlock had pushed his luck, and had already 
had considerably more than one nightmare, so that he was now desperate to get 
as far from Aldagmor as possible, as quickly as possible.


 Whatever his reasons, the warlock might be either a great stroke of luck 
or utterly worthless, depending on just what power did remain to him in Semma, 
so very far from Aldagmor.


 Bringing him along would be a gamble, but after all, Sterren had always 
been a gambler.


 If any warlock could be of help in Semma, one already touched by 
nightmare, on the verge of the Calling, would surely be most likely. The 
Calling only came when warlocks reached the height of their power. In fact, 
one theory was that the Calling was something the gods used to remove warlocks 



who were becoming too powerful, who might damage the gods' plan for the World.


 A lesser warlock would not be worth bothering with, but a really powerful 
one might be. He would surely be greatly weakened, but he would also be 
something that nobody in Ophkar or Ksinallion would ever have seen before.


 "Nightmares?" Sterren asked quietly.


 For the first time since Sterren had first seen him in the market, the 
warlock's calm expression changed; he let a flicker of surprise at Sterren's 
knowledge show. Then, slowly, he nodded.


 Sterren smiled slightly. He knew that the Calling gave the warlock 
reasons for coming south far more important than a pound of gold.


 That meant he would probably work cheap, far cheaper than his level of 
power might otherwise justify.


 "You'll be coming, then?" Sterren asked.


 The warlock nodded again.


 Sterren turned to the wizard. "And you?"


 "What's the pay, exactly? Are meals included?" Her voice shook a little. 
She looked at Sterren as she wiped her nose on her sleeve again.


 The serving maid chose that moment to return with a tray holding six 
plates of stewed vegetables, tainted with only the smallest trace of mutton. A 
bottle of red wine and half a dozen stacked mugs were included, as well.


 Sterren and the two Semman soldiers distributed the plates, while the 
warlock sent the cups floating through the air to the appropriate places. At a 
gesture, the cork sprang from the bottle's neck, and the bottle then settled 
itself in front of Lady Kalira.


 Startled, she picked it up and only after a moment's hesitation did she 
begin pouring.


 Sterren threw the warlock a puzzled glance. If he had reached the 
threshold of nightmare, didn't he realize that every additional use of 
warlockry would increase his danger? At least, that was what Sterren's master, 
Bergan the Warlock, had said.


 The warlock saw the look and smiled slightly. "In honor of our imminent 
departure for more southerly climes," he said, raising his cup as if in a 
toast.


 The others probably thought it was just a toast, but Sterren knew what 
the warlock meant. After keeping his magic in check, for hours, days, 
sixnights, even months, perhaps, he was allowing himself a little freedom, 
secure in the knowledge that he would soon be sailing away from whatever 
waited in the mountains and valleys of Aldagmor.


 Sterren put that out of his mind and turned to the wizard. "The pay," he 
explained, "will include meals, and a hammock aboard ship, and a room in Semma 
Castle, possibly shared with others, but a bed of your own, at any rate. 
You'll need to learn some Semmat, I'm afraid; virtually nobody there speaks a 
word of Ethsharitic. If we win our war, then the magicians involved, as a 
group, will be paid ten rounds of gold, and, a dozen choice gems, I can show 
them to you later, if you like, but not in a tavern like this. How this 
payment is to be divided up is yet to be determined; either the magicians can 
decide amongst themselves, or King Phenvel can divide it up as he deems 
appropriate. Would that suit you?"


 She nodded, sniffling.


 "If you don't mind my asking, just what magic do you know?" Sterren 
inquired. Obviously, she knew no spells to keep a cold away.


 "Wizardry, of course," she said.


 That was no surprise, but Sterren knew well that wizards came in a wide 
range of skills and power. "Much wizardry?" he asked.


 "Well..." She hesitated, then admitted what her soiled clothes and empty 
belly had already made obvious. "No, not really. A few spells."


 "Not just tricks, though, I hope," Sterren said, knowing he was prodding 
her on what was surely a sensitive subject.


 "No, real spells!" she snapped. "I am Annara of Crookwall and I am a full 
journeyman in the Wizards' Guild; I served my six years as apprentice and I 



learned what my master could teach me!"


 Her flash of pride vanished as suddenly as it had appeared. "That wasn't 
much, though," she admitted, nervously tugging her hair back from her face.


 That was no surprise. Sterren nodded and poured himself wine.


 As they ate, the warlock and the three Semmans said nothing, while 
Sterren and Annara made polite small talk. Sterren inquired about her 
upbringing in Crookwall, while she, in turn, asked about Semma and was 
surprised to learn that he was a native of Westgate, rather than someplace 
more exotic.


 After the meal had been consumed, Sterren leaned back in his chair and 
looked across at Lady Kalira as he tried to decide what to do next.


 "Well, my lord," Lady Kalira said, seeing his attention focused on her, 
"you have two magicians here, do you not?"


 Sterren nodded.


 "Is that sufficient, then?"


 Sterren guessed at what the Semmat word for "sufficient" meant. He 
glanced at Annara, who would give no details other abilities beyond admitting 
to "a few spells," and then at the warlock, who had as yet given no name, who 
might well be totally powerless in Semma.


 "No," he replied immediately, before even considering his own hopes for 
escape. "These two may help, but neither of them can provide any assurance of 
winning."


 "Then you plan to try to recruit more?"


 Sterren nodded.


 "My lord, are you sure you have no other intentions?"


 He picked up her phrase to ask, "What other intentions might I have?" He 
eyed her cautiously.


 "Delay, perhaps."


 "Baguir?" He did not recognize the word. He guessed it to be something 
like "escape," but could not be certain. "What's baguir?"


 "To put off, to stall, to hold back, to go slowly; I don't know the 
Ethsharitic."


 That was not the reply Sterren had feared and expected. "Delay?" he 
asked. "Why should I want to delay?"


 "I would not know, my lord, but your refusal to purchase any magical 
assistance in sailing hither, and your insistence that two magicians are not 
enough, would seem to imply that you are certainly in no hurry about this 
foolish, disreputable business."


 He picked up her phrase again, without any very clear idea what it meant, 
save that it had a strong negative connotation. "This disreputable business 
may save Semma, my lady."


 "Not if you continue to delay."


 "I'm not delaying! Why should I?"


 "Well, my lord, it has occurred to me, in my more cynical moments, that 
if you can stretch your visit to this, your homeland, long enough, perhaps the 
war in Semma will be fought and lost before our return, and you can retire to 
a comfortable exile here."


 Sterren stared at her. That possibility had never occurred to him.


 A very tempting possibility it was, too.


 He glanced quickly to either side, at the two other Semmans, the only 
ones in the tavern who could understand this Semmat conversation.


 Alder looked seriously upset; Dogal was calmer, but eyeing Sterren 
suspiciously.


 "I am not delaying," Sterren insisted.


 "Then tell me, my lord, just how much longer we must remain here, and how 
many magicians you think to find."


 "My lady Kalira, I've only just started! One hour in a... in one market 
is nothing! If we could find one magician I could be sure was powerful enough, 
that would be all we need; without that one, I think half a dozen might serve. 
To find the right ones, though, I have no way of knowing how long it will be!" 



 Lady Kalira sighed. "My lord Sterren, let us speak frankly," she said. 
"You know that despite your rank, I was sent here as your gaoler, to make sure 
that you did, in fact, return to Semma before the spring, when invasion is all 
but certain."


 Sterren noticed Alder turn to stare at Lady Kalira as she said this; he 
had obviously not realized either that Sterren was still under suspicion by 
anyone but Dogal and himself, nor that an invasion was imminent.


 "You have managed to lose four of the six men set to guard you, though I 
am not sure how."


 "They may come back," Sterren interrupted.


 Lady Kalira held up a hand. "Yes, they may, but at present they are not 
here. Let me continue." She glared at him.


 "Go on," Sterren said.


 "As I was saying, you have very cleverly disposed of two-thirds of your 
escort already and acquired two of the magicians you sought, to confuse 
matters and perhaps, for all we know, to deceive the two guards remaining. We 
have no very clear idea what you have been discussing with them throughout 
this meal, since we don't know Ethsharitic; you could have been planning your 
escape, with their connivance, under our very noses."


 Sterren wished he had been bold enough to try it.


 "Now, you are demanding an effectively unlimited opportunity to stroll 
about the city, looking for a chance to slip away and hide from us in a city 
you know far better than we could ever hope to. I am sorry, but as your 
unwilling gaoler, I can't allow it, we must set a term, at the end of which we 
will depart this place and sail homeward with all due speed. I would suggest 
that by noon tomorrow we be under way."


 Sterren sat back and used a fingernail to pick the last remnants of his 
supper from between his teeth as he considered this.


 "I see what you mean, my lady," he said at last, "and I truly do 
understand. I do not suppose that you would accept my word that I will not 
escape, or delay until it's too late." To his own surprise, he realized that 
he really would be willing to give his word, and that he would keep it, as he 
always had. Semma was not really as bad as all that, and the idea of his 
soldiers being slaughtered was not an appealing one. If he could just find the 
right magic, he was sure he could win the war. It was a challenge, a gamble, 
and he wanted to meet it head on. He wanted to see if a little magic really 
could change a sure defeat into victory.


 And after it was over, maybe then he could desert.


 "No, my lord," she said, "I'm afraid I couldn't accept your word. After 
all, despite your noble ancestry and your apparent good intentions, what are 
you really but a merchant's brat, brought up in the streets, accustomed to 
cheating at dice to earn your bread? How much honor can I expect from such as 
you?"


 Sterren smiled wryly, to hide how much Lady Kalira's clinically exact 
description hurt him. "More than you might think," he said, "But if you will 
not take my word, there is little I can do to make you believe me." He sighed. 
"Until noon, though, is not enough. If you could give me three days..."


 He let his voice trail off.


 "Three days?" It was her turn to sit back and consider.


 "Today is the twenty-first of Snowfall, she said. "You will agree, then, 
that we must all be aboard ship by nightfall on the twenty-fourth, ready to 
set sail with the next tide?"


 Sterren nodded. "Agreed," he said.


 "You'll promise not to attempt escape?"


 "You said that you can't accept my word, but all the same, I'll give it. 
I won't try to escape before nightfall on the twenty-fourth of Snowfall."


 "Allright," she said, "Three days, and then we drag you back to the 
ship." 



CHAPTER 16


 By morning the month of Snowfall was living up to its name. It was 
snowing, and Sterren decided that Shiphaven Market was not going to be worth 
another visit. Instead, he left Annara and the warlock aboard ship while he, 
Lady Kalira, Alder, and Dogal all set out in the early gloom for the Arena and 
the Wizards' Quarter.


 None of the other four soldiers had turned up yet, and that meant Lady 
Kalira was in a very bad temper. Sterren made no attempt at conversation as he 
led the way up Warehouse Street, through Shortcut Alley to North Street, and 
on out of Spicetown.


 As they neared the Grand Canal, however, the overlord's palace gradually 
became visible ahead, and Sterren noticed all three Semmans staring at it.


 They weren't being quite attentive enough to encourage escape, and 
besides, he had promised not to, but he did venture to remark, "Pretty, isn't 
it?"


 "Is that where the wizards live?" Lady Kalira demanded.


 Startled, Sterren said, "No, of course not! That's Lord Azrad's... ah... 
castle."


 "How far to the magicians, then?"


 "Well. North Street forks ahead and we go left on..." He hesitated and 
then switched to using Ethsharitic for place names. "We go left on the 
Promenade, then on the other side of the Palace Plaza we take Arena Street, 
and then it's about a mile to the Arena, I guess."


 "You're joking!"


 "No, I'm not."


 "A mile?"


 "About that."


 "I will never get over the size of this city," Lady Kalira said, more to 
herself than to Sterren. "What a mess!"


 Sterren did not consider his home city a mess, but he knew better than to 
say anything. They made the rest of the journey in silence.


 The streets were almost empty because of the snow, and the city's normal 
odor was largely suppressed by the pale gray blanket that covered the rooftops 
and most of the streets, but the scent of spices, wood smoke, and charcoal was 
still strong. The mansions of the New City were silent and elegant, the snow 
hiding much of the damage that time had done them; even the slums of the outer 
Arena district were quieter and less offensive in such weather.


 They passed Camp Street, then the Arena itself, and came to the plaza 
just south of the main entrance.


 There, to the right of the rampway into the Arena, was the message board 
that Sterren had remembered, a six-foot-high wall of rough pine planks 
weathered gray, fifteen feet long, plastered over its entire surface with 
faded and torn bits of paper, parchment, and fabric.


 Sterren had written up his notice the night before, aboard ship, but he 
realized as he looked for a place to put it that he had not thought to bring 
any tacks or nails. With a shrug, he found a notice that had been attached 
with unusually long cut nails, announcing an estate auction that had taken 
place a sixnight before, and he rammed the corners of his own message over the 
blunt ends of the nails.


 Satisfied, he read it over again.


 "Magicians," it said in large letters at the top, then continued in 
smaller writing below, "Employment opportunity for magicians of every school. 
The Kingdom of Semma is recruiting magicians for government service for a term 
of several months, but not to exceed one year. Room and board furnished, and 
transportation both ways, as well as payment in gold and gems. To apply, or 
for further information, contact Sterren, Ninth Warlord of Semma, aboard the 
Southern Wind, now docked at the Tea Wharves in Spicetown. Final application 
must be made by nightfall, 24 Snowfall, 5221."


 He stepped back and realized that his fine, big page was almost lost amid 



the jumble of paper and cloth.


 There was, however, nothing he could do about it.


 He looked at some of the other messages on the board, wondering what they 
were all about. One caught his eye immediately.


 "Acclaimed prestidigitator seeks part-time employment. Leave message with 
Thorum the Mage, Wizard Street."


 Sterren was unsure exactly what a prestidigitator was; some sort of 
magician, surely! Part-time employment, that wasn't exactly what he was 
offering, but still...


 Thorum the Mage, he told himself, on Wizard Street. That wouldn't be too 
hard to find.


 He was about to start looking for more notices when he was reminded of 
his companions by the sound of feet shuffling in the slush.


 "Hai, you three," he said, "come here and help me read these! Some of 
them are from magicians looking for work! I should have come here in the first 
place, instead of bothering with Shiphaven!"


 Dogal shook his head. "I can't read," he said.


 Lady Kalira and Alder started forward, but then Alder stopped. A moment 
later, as she got close enough to make out the messages, so did Lady Kalira.


 "We can't read them, either," she said. "They're all in Ethsharitic."


 "Well, of course they..." Sterren let his voice trail off as he realized 
that he was the only one present who could read Ethsharitic. He turned back to 
the board and drew a deep breath, then let it out in a sigh.


 "I'll read them, then," he said.


 Two hours later he felt he had covered the board adequately. Snow, 
meanwhile, had attempted to cover Alder and Dogal; Lady Kalira had taken 
shelter in the arched entrance of the Arena.


 "Doesn't this stuff ever stop falling?" Dogal asked.


 "Of course it does!" Sterren retorted, instinctively leaping to the 
defense of his native city.


 "And then what happens to it?" Alder asked. "What do you people do with 
it all?"


 "Nothing; it melts, of course," Sterren said. "This isn't Sardiron, where 
it piles up all winter."


 "Well, how would we know that?" Alder replied angrily, his temper 
obviously shortened by the long, cold wait.


 "From experience, of course. Haven't you ever seen... seen it before?" He 
could not think of a Semmat word for "snow."


 Alder and Dogal both stared at him, startled. "No, of course not!" Alder 
replied.


 "How could we have seen it before?" Dogal asked.


 It was Sterren's turn to be startled. "Oh," he said. "Doesn't it... I 
mean, don't you have this stuff in Semma?"


 "No," Alder answered.


 "It doesn't fall in the winter, like this?"


 "No, it rains in the winter in Semma. We don't have snow."


 Sterren noted the word for later use, then dropped the subject. "Oh. 
Well, I have a dozen messages here from magicians looking for work and I want 
to follow up on them, before I forget any names. Come on."


 The "dozen" was actually fifteen, though there was some overlap in the 
message drops they used.


 With much grumbling, the soldiers came. Lady Kalira emerged from the 
entryway and joined the party as Sterren led them back out to Arena Street and 
on to the southeast, toward the Wizards' Quarter.


 Five blocks took them to Games Street, a thoroughfare that Sterren 
remembered well, even though he had rarely played there. The times when he 
tried it had all been remarkable enough to stay very clear in his memory.


 And Games Street, of course, marked the line between the indeterminate 
streets between the Arena and the Wizards' Quarter, where various performing 
magicians made their homes, and the heart of the Wizards' Quarter proper, 



where virtually all the city's magic shops were clustered.


 In fact, just one more block south on Arena brought them to Wizard 
Street. There was no marker, but it was unmistakable. "Tanna the Great," 
advertised a signboard at the corner, "Wizardry for Every Need, Love Charms a 
Specialty." Peculiar odors mixed with the inevitable smell of wood smoke, the 
city's famous spices had been left behind a mile to the north, but here there 
were strange new scents that might have been spices, or herbs, or something 
else entirely.


 Two doors down on the right was a signboard announcing the presence of 
Thorum the Mage, which was one of the names Sterren had memorized. He headed 
directly for it.


 Two hours later they took a break for a midday meal and bought bits of 
beef fried in dough from an open-front shop between two gambling halls on 
Games Street. They ate in silence, leaning against a wall, as snow drifted by 
and Sterren, between bites, considered what he had learned.


 For one thing, he now knew what a prestidigitator was, little more than a 
charlatan, really. A great deal of magic appeared to be fraudulent. Never 
having had money to spend on spells and amulets, he had never had occasion to 
find this out.


 Other magic, of course, was completely real and authentic and could be 
enormously powerful.


 Unfortunately, while the frauds would often work cheap, for the more 
serious magicians a pound of gold would not pay for a sixnight's work, let 
alone the month or more that might be necessary for a trip to Semma and back 
with a war in the middle.


 He had been turned down by two witches, two theurgists, a wizard, a 
warlock, and someone who called himself a thaumaturge, a term Sterren was not 
familiar with.


 On the other hand, he had turned down a prestidigitator, an illusionist, 
a sorcerer whose talents seemed genuine but hopelessly inappropriate for the 
job at hand, and an herbalist.


 Not all of these were from the advertisements at the Arena; the 
theurgists and the sorcerer had turned up on their own while Sterren and his 
party were discussing matters with Thorum the Mage, a pleasant old fellow who, 
thanks to his central location, made a significant income as a message center 
and referral service, in addition to what his wizardry brought him.


 The morning, Sterren had to admit, had been a washout. He chewed his last 
bite of dough, pulled his coat collar tighter, and stared longingly through 
the snow at a dice game visible through a tavern window on the opposite side 
of the street.


 He wished that he could just go back to playing dice and thinking 
entirely in his native tongue, without having to switch languages every few 
minutes, without worrying about wars or wizards or warlords or warlocks, 
hereditary duties, and summary executions. He wanted to forget that Semma had 
ever existed, forget that he had ever met any of the inhabitants of that silly 
little kingdom.


 He couldn't, of course. Semma was real, and somehow or other he had the 
misfortune to be its warlord now, rather than just a tavern gambler.


 Joining that game across the street was a tremendous temptation, but a 
glance at Lady Kalira's sour expression convinced him that it wasn't even 
worth asking if he could take a few minutes to replenish their finances.


 He sighed, swallowed the last traces of his meal, and said, "Come on."


 The three Semmans looked at him, uncomprehending. "Oh, come on," he said, 
in Semmat this time. They came. 


CHAPTER 17


 The afternoon was more successful than the morning. For one thing, the 
snow stopped and the sun came out, which improved tempers all around. 



 For another, the neighborhood grapevine was working for them now and when 
they checked back in at Thorum's they found a young witch, eager for adventure 
in foreign lands and willing to work cheap.


 Another cooperative and promising witch turned up a few stops later, and 
then a sorcerer by the name of Kolar, whose collection of talismans included a 
few that clearly had some military usefulness, and, fortunately for Sterren, 
not all that much commercial value, so that Kolar was willing to accept 
Sterren's offered job.


 All three of these individuals were instructed to report to the chartered 
ship, the Southern Wind, by midday on the twenty-fourth.


 At the next stop an argument broke out. The magician in question here was 
ready and willing to take the job, but Lady Kalira recognized the emblem she 
wore at her throat.


 "She's a demonologist!" she said. "We can't take a demonologist!"


 "Why not?" Sterren demanded. "She can probably do more for us than the 
rest put together! Demons love war! They created it!"


 "And that's one reason that using a demonologist is too dangerous!" the 
Semman aristocrat shouted.


 "That's ridiculous!"


 "It is not..." Lady Kalira began; then she caught herself and continued 
with enforced calm, "it is not ridiculous, my Lord Sterren. And in any case, 
the reasons do not matter. If I might remind you, his Majesty specifically 
forbade the inclusion of sorcerers or demonologists. Are you going to defy a 
royal edict? Might I point out that the penalty for doing so is entirely up to 
the king's discretion, even to beheading, for a member of the nobility?"


 Sterren opened his mouth to argue, then stopped.


 Phenvel III was more than a little foolish and prone to whims. For all 
Sterren knew, he really might order Sterren's execution if he was angry enough 
and only think better of it after it was too late.


 And he had specifically forbidden demonologists and sorcerers.


 Sterren had forgotten that for a moment. He had not made the connection 
when he hired Kolar, Kolar the Sorcerer.


 "Oh, damn," he said.


 He apologized to the demonologist, a woman by the name of Amanelle of 
Tirissa, and led the way back to the house where Kolar rented an upstairs 
room.


 When that little problem was dealt with, Sterren continued with his 
search.


 When the sun was below the rooftops and the shop-keepers began lighting 
the torches out front, he called it a day and headed back toward Spicetown, 
the Semmans trailing along behind him.


 He didn't even think about trying to slip away. The quest for magicians 
had caught his interest.


 If was full dark well before they reached the wharves, and Sterren had to 
ask directions twice before locating the Southern Wind. He was asleep within 
seconds of falling into his hammock.


 That was the twenty-second of Snowfall.


 On the twenty-third, once again, the day was spent in the Wizards' 
Quarter, recruiting. Word had gotten around, however, and this time Sterren 
was able to sit at Thorum's table, drinking cheap ale and making jokes with 
old Thorum about the Semman barbarians he was saddled with, while candidates 
presented themselves.


 The Semmans sat idly by, wondering what Sterren and the fat old wizard 
found so funny.


 The weather was warmer, too, and the snow had melted away completely by 
midafternoon.


 Even the now-familiar walk back to the ship seemed easier, especially 
since Sterren took care to set out well before dark. Lady Kalira brightened 
considerably when she discovered Alar aboard the vessel, waiting for her, 
apologetic about both his own extended absence and having completely lost 



track of Kendrik, Bern, and Zander.


 Sterren thought he was a fool for coming back, but did not say so. 
Sterren did not bother to leave the ship on the twenty-fourth, but 
instead began the preparations for the journey back to Akalla of the Diamond.


 He had found no chance to slip away and he was not at all sure he would 
have taken it if he had. Princess Lura's grin and Shirrin's blush lurked in 
the back of his memory, and he did not want to leave them defenseless.


 When the ship sailed on the evening tide, she had aboard her Sterren, 
Lady Kalira, Alder, Dogal, and Alar, of the original party of eight; the other 
three had never turned up. Sterren hoped that they would get by, stranded in a 
foreign city where they didn't speak the language or know the customs. They 
had chosen to desert, but they had not necessarily known what they were 
getting into; life in Ethshar was much more complex than their simple 
existence back in Semma.


 Perhaps, he thought, Alar was not such a fool after all.


 In addition to Sterren and the four Semmans, the Southern Wind carried 
the warlock, who had still not given a name; Annara, the journeyman wizard; 
three witches, named Shenna of Chatna, Ederd of Jiastwark, and Hamder Hamder's 
son; and a wizard who called himself Emner of Lamum. All but the warlock were 
young, beginners who had not yet found places for themselves, though none of 
the others were quite so young as Annara and Sterren himself.


 Sterren had turned down assorted frauds and charlatans, and given in to 
the royal fiat against sorcerers and demonologists; he had talked to several 
theurgists, only to be told that they could not help with anything to which 
the gods objected as strongly as they objected to war. No other warlocks had 
turned up once the amount of the pay was known. A few of the more obscure or 
minor sorts of magician had turned up, such as oneiromancers and herbalists, 
but after much discussion had not stayed.


 Still, Sterren had half a dozen assorted magicians.


 He hoped it would be enough.


 He wished he knew more about magic.


 He did know a little, of course. He had taken an interest in the arcane 
arts as a child.


 It was only a little, though, not much more than a few characteristics of 
the major varieties.


 He knew something more than a minimum about warlockry, of course, from 
his brief stay with old Bergan. He knew it used no spells or incantations, but 
only the warlock's will, to guide and shape the Power it drew upon. The only 
differences between what one warlock could do, and what another could do, 
depended on the relative level of imagination and expertise in manipulating 
Power.


 The other magics did not appear to operate that way at all. For example, 
theurgists and demonologists used rote formulae to summon superhuman beings, 
as Agor had explained to him, and those beings were specialized and 
individual.


 To a warlock, Power was Power, at least until the nightmares began, and 
there were no formulae, or at least, so Bergan had told him, and Sterren had 
no reason to doubt his old master.


 That meant that Sterren's warlock would be able to do as much as any 
warlock in waging war; there were no special spells or formulae he had to 
know.


 Wizards, on the other hand, carried formulae to bizarre extremes; where 
theurgists and demonologists just used words and songs and signs, wizards 
needed an incredible assortment of ingredients for their spells, dragon's 
blood and virgin's tears and so forth. Wizardry seemed to have no logic to it 
whatsoever. And Sterren, accordingly, had no idea at all what his two wizards 
were capable of. Annara had a small pouch of precious ingredients for her 
spells; Emner had a large traveling case jammed full of jars and boxes for 
his. Neither would specify what spells he or she could perform. A 
demonstration would be meaningless; spells that proved beyond doubt that their 



wizardry was authentic and powerful would not mean that they knew any spells 
that would stop Ophkar or Ksinallion.


 Witches fell somewhere in between. Witches used rituals, chants, trances, 
and so forth, but could improvise them apparently at will and did not require 
the arcane substances that wizardry called for. Witches had individual spells, 
but seemed to be able to modify them far more readily than wizards could. They 
had specialties, but almost any witch could tackle almost any piece of 
witchcraft, though naturally, a specialist in a given field could outperform a 
novice.


 Witchcraft was versatile and adaptable, but limited. It just didn't do 
anything as impressive as the other magics. No witch ever moved a mountain or 
flattened a city, but wizards had reportedly done both. Warlocks could call up 
storms, shatter walls, strike foes dead with a glance, set the very ground 
ablaze; wizards seemed to be able to do absolutely anything if they could find 
the proper spell; but witches were far more limited. A witch could light a 
fire in an instant, but only in a proper fuel. A witch could open a locked 
door, but not shatter one. A witch could predict a storm, but not bring one.


 What use his three witches would be in battle, Sterren was not quite 
sure, but he thought they would be far better than any ordinary warriors.


 Sorcerers, with their prepared talismans that could be used instantly, 
seemed much like wizards, though perhaps a little less impressive. He wondered 
what Phenvel had against them.


 Herbalists might be very useful if the war was lost, for treating the 
wounded, but unless one were to poison Ophkar's water supply, Sterren could 
not see much use for an herbalist in battle. The various other specialties 
likewise seemed too narrow in scope. What good was an oneiromancer, for 
example, if nobody happened to have any dreams?


 So he had his three witches, his two wizards, and his nameless warlock, 
and ninety-three fighting men. He hoped it would be enough.


 After all, his life depended on it. 


PART TWO


 War 


CHAPTER 18


 Sterren stood shivering beside the right-hand draft horse and stared 
miserably through the rain and gloom at the distant glow of the campfires and 
the looming black shape of Semma Castle. The mare's breath puffed up in clouds 
from her nostrils, and Sterren could smell her sweat. Raindrops pattered 
heavily on the old wagon that he had bought in Akalla, on the driver's seat he 
had just abandoned, and on the hooded heads of the six magicians huddled in 
the back. The four Semmans, on their own mounts, were clustered nearby.


 "I thought they'd wait until spring," he said again.


 Lady Kalira replied, "We all did. They always waited before." Her tone 
was flat and dead. Sterren was grateful that she was not castigating him for 
refusing to buy a storm to speed their journey; it was bad enough that he was 
cursing himself for it.


 "I guess one of their warlords must have as little respect for tradition 
as I do," he said resignedly.


 "Or maybe," Alder suggested, "they heard you were gone and figured that 
it would be a good time to attack, when you weren't there to lead us."


 "More likely they found out he was fetching these damned magicians and 
they wanted to take the castle before they could get here," Dogal muttered.


 Sterren ignored that and tried to think what to do.


 A selfish part of him suggested turning around and heading back to 
Akalla. After all, through no fault of his own he had been cut off from the 
castle and its defenders. If he left, who could say he had failed in his duty? 



 He glanced up at Lady Kalira, sitting astride her horse. She could, for 
one, and he could accuse himself, as well. He had gone and fetched magicians 
to fight his war; well, here he was, here were his magicians, and here was the 
war, a little sooner than he had expected, perhaps, but so what?


 All he had to do was figure out how to use the magicians he had hired. He 
had to at least make the attempt after coming this far, he told himself.


 If he tried and failed, if the castle fell anyway, then he could flee in 
good conscience, and even Lady Kalira could not fault him.


 First, though, he had to try to defeat the enemy. But how was he supposed 
to do that with his six sorry magicians?


 "What do we do now?" Annara called from the wagon in Ethsharitic, echoing 
his own thoughts. She glanced at the deserted farmhouse off to the party's 
left, as if expecting monsters to leap from it at any minute.


 "Are you sure it's really the enemy besieging the castle and not just a 
festival of some sort?" one of the witches asked in the same tongue; Sterren 
did not see if it was Hamder or Ederd and could not yet distinguish them by 
voice.


 He did not bother to reply to the witch, but after a moment he told 
Annara, "That's up to you people. This is what I hired you for, after all, to 
fight this stupid war. I'd say that your first job is to break the siege." He 
did not say how, of course, since he didn't have the faintest idea how to go 
about it.


 "In the rain?" Shenna of Chatna wailed.


 The other two witches shushed her.


 "Don't tell me to shut up!" she shouted. "I'm cold and I'm wet and I 
don't like this place and I wish I'd never come here!"


 Hamder and Ederd exchanged unhappy glances; then Ederd, in the rear of 
the wagon and out of Shenna's sight, raised his hands in a curious embracing 
gesture.


 Shenna abruptly fell silent, but her expression was still one of abject 
misery.


 The Semmans watched all this uncomprehendingly; none of them had picked 
up much Ethsharitic in the twelve days of the return voyage, and the magicians 
had not had time to learn much Semmat. All six magicians had preferred relying 
on Sterren as their translator to struggling with the unfamiliar tongue, and 
as a result he now saw the wisdom of Lady Kalira's ban on Ethsharitic during 
his own first voyage south. He had been forced to learn Semmat in order to 
make himself understood; the magicians were picking up a few words, at least, 
some of them were, but only as a sideline, not as a matter of survival.


 Forbidding the crew to speak Ethsharitic, or refusing to use it himself, 
would not have made much difference, since the six magicians had each other to 
talk to. Besides, he hadn't noticed the problem until after they reached 
Akalla of the Diamond. Once he had noticed, he had thought he could safely 
leave it until the party reached Semma Castle.


 And now, of course, it was too late, and they might never reach the 
castle at all.


 He had just said that breaking the siege, if siege it actually was, was 
up to the magicians. Shenna's outburst, however, had not been followed by any 
suggestions from any of the others. They were all waiting for him to tell them 
what to do.


 He suppressed a sigh. What had he done, he wondered, to deserve this? Why 
did he have to be in charge?


 Sterren observed the witches silently for a moment, then beckoned to 
Hamder.


 The young witch clambered over the side of the wagon, dropped to the mud, 
and splashed over to the shelter of the farmhouse eaves. Sterren joined him 
there.


 "Witches can read minds, can't they?" Sterren asked.


 Hamder hesitated. "Sometimes," he admitted.


 "Well, right there two leagues ahead of us are a few hundred minds, I'd 



say, and I'd like to know what some of them are thinking and planning. I'd 
like to be sure just who we're facing, for one thing; is that both Ophkar and 
Ksinallion there, or did one of them decide to get the jump on the other? If 
one of them tried a sneak attack, then maybe we can swing the other over to 
our side after all, despite King Phenvel."


 Hamder looked distinctly unhappy. "My lord Sterren--" he began.


 "Oh, forget the 'lord' stuff, when we're speaking Ethsharitic!" Sterren 
interrupted. He had grown accustomed to hearing the title in Semmat, but it 
still sounded silly in Ethsharitic.


 "Yes, my... yes, sir. As I was saying, I doubt I'll be able to learn 
much. None of those people out there are going to be thinking in Ethsharitic."


 Sterren stared at him. "Thinking in Ethsharitic?"


 "Yes, sir. After all, people do tend to think in words, or at least the 
same concepts that we use words for, and those are different in different 
languages."


 "So you can't read minds unless you know the right language?"


 Hamder nodded, then stopped himself. "Well, there are exceptions. If 
you're up close to someone and paying close attention, you can usually start 
to pick up the underlying concepts after a while. In fact, that's how we 
witches learn other languages so quickly..."


 "You learn other languages quickly?"


 "Of course! Witches are famous for the gift of tongues!"


 "I haven't heard you speaking Semmat."


 Hamder's mouth opened, then closed. "Oh," he said. After a moment's 
pause, he asked, "Were we supposed to? I didn't think there was any hurry."


 "It might have been nice," Sterren pointed out. "I don't particularly 
enjoy translating back and forth for everybody, especially when I don't know 
Semmat all that well myself, yet."


 "Oh." Hamder was obviously embarrassed. "I'm sorry, sir."


 "Never mind that." Sterren brushed it away. "Can you tell me anything 
about whoever's around all those campfires, or can't you?"


 "I... I... I don't know, sir. Probably not, from this distance."


 "You have my permission to go closer, witch."


 Hamder glanced at the distant campfires, then back at Sterren. "Ah... 
could it wait until morning? They're liable to be a bit nervous at night..."


 Sterren sighed. "They're presumably fighting a war; they're liable to be 
a bit nervous any time. But never mind, at least for now." He started to turn 
away, then paused.


 "The other witches, I assume that they would give me the same answers?"


 "I think so, sir, but I can't be certain. We do have our specialties."


 Sterren nodded and waved in dismissal. Hamder sloshed away, back to the 
wagon; Sterren stayed where he was and gestured for Emner, his second wizard, 
to join him.


 Emner slid from the wagon and slogged up beside him.


 "You're a wizard, right?"


 Emner nodded, cautiously.


 "Wizardry can do just about anything, right?"


 "Given the right conditions, the right materials, and the right spell," 
Emner replied judiciously, "wizardry appears to be capable of almost 
anything."


 "But you, yourself, are limited in what you can do, I suppose."


 "Yes," Emner answered immediately, "very limited."


 Sterren nodded. "Over there," he said, waving an arm in the direction of 
Semma Castle, "It appears that there is a hostile army besieging the castle 
that I hired you to defend. I don't know what the situation is, but that's how 
it appears. Is there anything you can do about it?"


 Emner considered this carefully. He gazed thoughtfully at the distant 
campfires, then looked up at the sky. He moistened a finger and held it up to 
check the wind, then scanned the eastern horizon.


 "I don't know," he said, finally. "I know a few spells I thought would be 



useful in a war, but I don't see how any would help in the present situation. 
If the wind were behind us, I could levitate and drift over that way, with a 
magical shield under me in case I were spotted, to see what's happening, but 
the wind's awfully light and from the north, and I'd need to go east. I don't 
have a spell for directional flight. I know a spell that can stun a man and 
make him somewhat suggestible, so that if we could catch someone alone I might 
well coax truth from even a reluctant tongue, but I can't think... Hmm..." His 
voice trailed off.


 Sterren waited patiently, and after a pause Emner continued, "I have 
another spell. I never thought it would be any help, but it might serve here, 
after all. I can make a stone or a stick whistle, from a distance, hardly a 
valuable talent, I'd have said, and I certainly chafed at being forced to 
practice it as an apprentice. Now, though, perhaps I can lure someone over 
with a whistle, stun him, and question him."


 Sterren nodded, considering. "You're sure you can do that?"


 Emner hesitated, then said, "Reasonably sure."


 "Could Annara do it?"


 "No." Emner did not hesitate at all this time.


 "Why not?" Sterren asked, genuinely curious.


 Emner blinked, then slowly replied, "I am not sure it's my place to say."


 "Oh, go ahead," Sterren said, annoyed.


 Emner paused, as if thinking out his words in advance, and then said, "I 
suppose you know that Annara had been sleeping out in the Hundred-Foot Field 
and hadn't eaten for two or three days when you found her."


 "I suspected as much," Sterren acknowledged.


 "Well, it's so," Emner said. "She told me, as a fellow Guild member. 
Naturally, I was curious about how she came to be reduced to that, and she was 
glad to have a chance to discuss her situation with a fellow wizard. It seems 
that although she is a true wizard, served the full apprenticeship required by 
the Guild, and was initiated into the Guild's mysteries, she never managed to 
master more than a handful of simple spells. Her master only knew a dozen or 
so, and she found herself unable to manage some of those, including the ones 
that provided most of his small income. The spells she did learn, well, 
they're real enough, and they have their places, but they aren't exactly 
marketable. There isn't any demand for them, as a rule. And I can't see how 
they could be of any use at all in the present situation."


 "You didn't think your own could help, at first. Perhaps I should ask 
Annara directly; after all, she's surely more familiar with the possibilities 
of her magic than you are."


 Emner shrugged. "Maybe. We've agreed to trade spells and better both our 
positions, but to be honest, I think I agreed to that as much from pity as 
from my own self-interest. Her spells... Well, for instance, what use is there 
to an invisibility spell that only works on transparent objects?"


 "Transparent objects?"


 "Yes, transparent. Water, ice, glass, and so on."


 Sterren nodded. "I see your point. It's an interesting idea, though, that 
invisibility spell. What if you were to make weapons out of glass, and then 
enchant them?"


 Emner considered that. "I'm not sure how it works, but you're right, that 
might be interesting. Hard to parry a glass sword, I suppose, but easy to 
break one."


 "I was thinking of glass arrows. You wouldn't know where they're coming 
from."


 Emner nodded slowly.


 "Well," Sterren said, after a moment's silent thought, "that's not doing 
us any good right now, is it? We don't have a glassmaker's oven at hand. Thank 
you for your help, wizard, and if you would go back and send me the warlock, 
I'd appreciate it."


 Emner bowed slightly in acknowledgment, then trotted back to the wagon 
and hauled himself back aboard. 



 A moment later the warlock strode up beside Sterren. He wore a heavy 
black cloak and hood against the rain, and had it pulled well forward, hiding 
his face completely. Sterren found himself speaking to an oval of black 
shadow.


 "How do you feel?" he asked.


 "Terrible," the warlock replied, through clenched teeth.


 "Oh?" The warlock had been complaining of headaches and constant fatigue 
since the third day aboard ship. He had also taken to sleeping long hours, he 
was always the first to retire at night and the last to awaken. The morning 
after leaving Akalla he had to be hoisted into the wagon still half asleep and 
had almost fallen out twice since then.


 But at least, Sterren thought, there had been no sign of nightmares.


 "My head feels as if it's going to burst."


 "Oh." Sterren made a sympathetic noise. "Ah... are you aware of the 
situation here?"


 "No."


 Sterren waited for a moment, expecting him to go on.


 "No?" he said at last.


 "No. Should I be?"


 "I think so, yes."


 "All right, then, what's the situation?"


 "Well, over there is Semma Castle, which is what we all came here to 
defend. And all around it there appear to be campfires and what look like 
tents, sentries, siege machinery, and so forth. What's more, judging by this 
house behind us and the others we passed in the last league or two, the 
peasants in the area appear to have fled their homes. I would assume that what 
we see here are the armies of Ophkar and Ksinallion, besieging the castle, but 
I am not actually certain of that. I called you up here in hopes you might be 
able to help me settle the matter."


 "You want to know if those are really the armies you think they are?"


 Sterren nodded. "That's right."


 The warlock snorted. "How the hell should I know?" he demanded.


 "You're a warlock, aren't you?" Sterren asked calmly.


 "That's right, I'm a warlock, I'm not a damned mind-reading witch, or a 
wizard with a scrying spell, or a sorcerer with a crystal ball, or a theurgist 
with a god whispering in my ear, or even a demonologist with an imp to run my 
errands! I can do things, or I could back in Ethshar, anyway, but I don't have 
any way of knowing any more about what's out there than you do."


 "Do you have any way of finding out? Could you fly over and take a look 
around, perhaps?"


 The warlock was silent for a long moment, the only sounds the patter of 
the rain and the snuffling of the horses a dozen paces away.


 "I don't know," he said at last. "I know how to fly, certainly, but I'm 
so weak here..." He took two steps away, then stood, arms raised, hood thrown 
back, face up.


 He seemed to shudder, from his head right down to his muddy boots; his 
cloak flapped suddenly, although there was no more wind than a moment before.


 Then he toppled over backward into the mud.


 Sterren hesitated, then decided against lending aid.


 The warlock got to his feet under his own power, then glared at Sterren 
and shook his head.


 "No," he said, "I can't fly here."


 Sterren nodded. "All right," he said. He turned back to face the rest of 
the party, where the others had watched the warlock's pratfall in puzzled 
silence.


 "We'll stay here until morning!" he called, first in Ethsharitic, and 
then in Semmat, pointing at the empty farmhouse.


 "Then what?" Lady Kalira called back to him.


 Sterren glanced over his shoulder at the dozens of campfires that ringed 
the castle. "Then we find out who those people are," he said. 



 "And if they're the enemy?" Lady Kalira demanded. 
"Then," Sterren said, "we attack!" 


CHAPTER 19


 Shenna's shriek awoke Sterren from a sound slumber; he sat up quickly, 
looking around for the source of the scream.


 Everyone else was roused as well, and the other two witches reached her 
first. After an exchange too quick for spoken words, Hamder turned and called, 
"Sterren! Shenna says that someone was prowling around the house we're in, and 
saw us!"


 Sterren was still not really thinking. "Who was it?" he asked.


 "I don't know!" Shenna replied. "I didn't see him."


 "Then how do you know he was there?" Annara asked.


 "I had wards set, and he tripped one, wizard!"


 "Well, if he didn't know we were here before, he certainly does now, the 
way you screamed," Emner said.


 Ederd and Hamder frowned at that; Shenna chose to ignore it. Sterren said 
nothing, but mentally filed it away for future reference that the witches and 
the wizards did not appear to like each other much. He wasn't sure if it was a 
personal matter, or something inherent in the two arcane disciplines.


 "Did anyone else have any wards, or other spells, set to warn us of 
intruders?" Sterren asked.


 "I don't even know what wards are," Annara announced.


 "I wouldn't brag about it," Ederd snapped.


 Sterren raised a hand for silence, just as Lady Kalira demanded in 
Semmat, "What's going on?"


 "The witch... her magic heard something," he said.


 Alder, who had been watching the magicians, heard this and immediately 
headed for the nearest window, approaching it carefully, then peering around 
the frame, out into the rain.


 Dogal took a window on the opposite side, and after a moment Alar headed 
for the door. The fourth side of the room was the wall separating the main 
room from the kitchen; the warlock, seeing what the soldiers were doing, slid 
quickly through the curtained doorway, presumably to look out the kitchen 
window.


 "There's someone running off toward the castle," Dogal announced. "A 
soldier, I guess, he's wearing a red kilt and a sword, anyway."


 "What army?" Sterren asked.


 Startled, Dogal replied, "How should I know?"


 Sterren, not fully awake even yet, could not think of a Semmat word for 
"recognize" or "identify," so after a moment's mental fumbling he just said, 
"What uniform?" He had certainly had to learn that word in order to function 
as warlord.


 "I can't tell Ophkar from Ksinallion," Dogal said, "or from Shan on the 
Desert or anywhere else, for that matter. It's not Semman, though."


 Alder had crossed the room during this exchange and was squinting after 
the fleeing figure. Lady Kalira came up behind Dogal, as well.


 "Looks Ksinallionese to me," Alder said. Lady Kalira nodded agreement.


 "Not Semman?"


 "On, no," all three agreed, "not Semman!"


 Sterren sighed. "We'd better get out of here, then," he said.


 Nobody argued, and in five minutes the party had collected its belongings 
and retired to the porch, where the horses were waiting.


 In another five, the Semmans were all mounted, the draft horses were 
hitched up, and Sterren and the magicians were all settled in the wagon, 
moving unhappily out of their shelter into the thin morning drizzle.


 "Which way?" Hamder asked.


 That, Sterren had to admit, was a very good question. With a shrug, he 



pointed north. "That way," he said. He shook the reins, and the wagon led the 
way across a muddy brown cornfield.


 After a few minutes he reined in his horses and held up a hand to signal 
the Semman outriders. They gathered into a little knot at the center of what 
was probably a pasture in the summer, but was now mostly more mud.


 The others all stared at him expectantly, hunching against the thin misty 
rain.


 Sterren hesitated, unsure of what to say.


 "Well," he said at last, in Ethsharitic, "here we are in Semma, and 
that's the Ksinallionese army over there, and maybe the Ophkarite army as 
well. Your job is to drive them out of Semma. Go right ahead."


 The magicians glanced at one another, then back at Sterren, for a long 
moment before Hamder asked, "How?"


 "How should I know?" Sterren said, irritated. "You're the magicians, with 
all your secrets."


 "But you're the warlord," Annara pointed out, "and you're the boss; you 
hired us, now tell us what to do."


 Sterren had dreaded this, and here it was. "I don't know anything about 
it," he said. "I was forced into this stupid job and I don't know any more 
about fighting a war than you people do."


 "In that case," Hamder said, "I think we may all be in very serious 
trouble."


 "Why don't we just go home?" Shenna asked. "We can't do anything here! 
Look at all those people!"


 In point of fact, the besieging armies were invisible from where 
Sterren's party happened to be at that moment, but nobody bothered to correct 
her. Sterren had told them, on board ship, that they would be facing armies 
totaling about four hundred and fifty men.


 "Not a one of those soldiers," Sterren pointed out, "knows anything about 
magic. Not one! They've probably never even seen any magic; it's all scarce as 
fish fur in this part of the world!"


 "Well, we aren't exactly Fendel the Great," Annara retorted.


 "No, but you're magicians, and you all agreed to come here and fight this 
war. Now, let's fight it! You, Emner, last night you were telling me you could 
levitate and that you have a shield spell and a way of dazing people?"


 "Felshen's First Hypnotic Spell," Emner replied, "and Tracel's 
Levitation, and Fendel's Elementary Protection. But I'll still just be one man 
against an army, and Felshen's won't kill anyone, or make them give up the 
fight. I can harass them, I suppose, but--"


 "But nothing!" Sterren interrupted. "You're forgetting the effect it will 
have on their morale to have a genuine wizard attacking them! These soldiers 
have never conceived of using magic to fight a war; you'll terrify them!"


 Emner looked doubtful.


 Sterren was growing desperate. "Listen, I don't expect you to destroy an 
army overnight, but this is what you all agreed to do, what you came here for, 
the reason we fed you all and transported you here and even clothed some of 
you." Annara had owned only a single tattered purple robe; Lady Kalira had 
provided her with a decent change of outfit while aboard ship, so that she 
could clean and repair the gown with fabric, thread, and needle provided by 
Lady Kalira. She was wearing her own purple again at the moment, but she knew 
who Sterren meant. "I think you'll find that it's not as hard as you expect. 
Remember, it's not just the eleven of us here; we have an army of our own 
inside that castle over there, with three fine officers who I'm sure will take 
advantage of any opportunity we give them." Sterren was not at all certain of 
anything of the sort and actually expected his three officers to fumble every 
opportunity, but he knew better than to admit that. "Those people in the 
castle, hundreds of them, including dozens of innocent women and children, are 
depending on us!"


 That was most likely true; he could easily picture Princess Shirrin 
watching from the castle windows for the triumphant return of her warlord 



hero. She probably expected him to ride up on a white charger, banners flying 


and trumpets sounding, rather than driving a battered Akallan haywagon.


 "I can set some traps," Annara admitted grudgingly.


 "At least, while my supplies hold out. I'll need some wax. And parchment, 
if you have any."


 "There!" Sterren said. "That's more like it!" He looked at the others 
expectantly.


 "If one of these witches or the warlock can push me once I'm airborne, I 
can levitate and go see what's happening, or take messages into the castle," 
Emner said.


 The witches glanced at each other, but it was the warlock who said, "I 
ought to be able to manage that much. You're weightless when you levitate, 
aren't you?"


 "Well, not really, not with Tracel's," Emner admitted. "There's another 
levitation spell that makes you weightless, but I never got the hang of it."


 "Well, I can try it, anyway," the warlock said.


 "We can probably help," Hamder volunteered, "as long as you're in sight."


 "You can do a test run," Sterren suggested.


 That elicited a round of nods.


 "We can... well, I can pick off enemy soldiers, strangle them at a 
distance, if we can find them away from the main camp," Ederd said.


 "Or drop rocks on them," Hamder said.


 Shenna wrinkled her nose in disgust, then admitted, "I can poison their 
water. Without touching it, I think." She hesitated, then repeated, "I think, 
it's a lot easier to just make their food go bad, if you can find out where 
they keep it and it's not sealed in anything."


 All eyes fell on the warlock, who shrugged and said, "I don't know how 
much I can do, here, but I'll do what I can. Strangling from a distance, I 
might be able to do that. Easier, for me, to just stop hearts."


 A moment of uneasy silence followed this announcement.


 "There!" Sterren said, breaking it. "You see? This shouldn't be as bad as 
all that! There's a lot we can do, and they won't have any way to fight it, or 
even know what's going on!"


 A couple of the magicians nodded glumly. Nobody argued. Nobody displayed 
any enthusiasm, either.


 Sterren decided to settle for what he could get. Enthusiasm might come 
later. A lack of resistance was enough to start with.


 "What's going on?" Lady Kalira asked, in Semmat. Sterren sighed and told 
her. 


CHAPTER 20


 Two days later, in a barn roughly a mile and a half northwest of Semma 
Castle, two of the witches were straining, watching or listening or using some 
other sense Sterren couldn't guess at. The Semmans and the other magicians 
were waiting for something to happen. For himself, Sterren didn't expect to 
know anything about it until the witches told him.


 Both witches started suddenly, but that was nothing very new. They often 
reacted to unseen events while in perceptive trances.


 Even with that warning, the bang a second or so later came as a complete 
surprise. Sterren had been quite sure he wouldn't hear it.


 For that matter, he hadn't expected the spell to work. Annara had been so 
very pessimistic about her abilities ever since he first met her that he had, 
he realized, given up on ever getting any use out of her.


 He glanced over at her, and she looked as surprised as he felt. "Gods!" 
she said, "I made it as big as I could, but that must have been huge."


 Sterren had to agree with that. According to what the witches had gleaned 
from the minds of passing soldiers, Sterren and his band were presently almost 
a mile from the Ophkarite warlord's tent, and that was where the false message 



had presumably gone. An explosion that could be heard for a mile would have to 
be much larger than what they had expected.


 Ederd suddenly emerged from his trance. "I thought you'd like to know," 
he said without preamble, "We just killed the general's secretary, I mean, the 
warlord's. We didn't get the warlord himself."


 "Killed him?" Annara squeaked.


 Ederd nodded. "You don't want the details," he said, "but I'm sure he's 
dead. Didn't hit anybody else, though, and although there were plenty of 
sparks, the tent didn't catch."


 Sterren looked at Annara with new respect. "Good work," he said.


 "But the Explosive Seal isn't supposed to kill anybody!" she protested. 
"At worst, it's intended to... well, to blow their hands off. Usually it just 
burns them a little."


 "Well, maybe you got something wrong, then," Sterren suggested.


 "I don't think so," Ederd replied. "He was holding the parchment up to 
his face, studying the seal. I think he suspected something."


 "Oh..." Annara looked sick.


 "What's going on?" Alder asked, in Semmat.


 "We just killed the... the... a helper to the Warlord of Ophkar," Sterren 
told him.


 "Helper?"


 "The man who writes and reads for him."


 "His aide?"


 "I guess so."


 Alder grinned broadly. "Well, it's a start," he said.


 "This magic may do some good after all," Dogal admitted grudgingly.


 Sterren nodded, but he doubted that they would be able to use that 
particular stunt again. The enemy was warned.


 Well, maybe they would find other ways to use the Explosive Seal. Could 
it be put on tent flaps, perhaps? Or saddles, to detonate when the cavalry 
unsaddled their horses?


 And could the enemy really afford to ignore sealed messages?


 They hadn't ignored this one. Hamder's witchcraft had convinced the 
sentries that he was telling the truth, despite the total lack of 
confirmation; they had accepted him as an Ophkarite courier despite his lack 
of uniform, his unfamiliarity with the Ophkaritic language, and the fact that 
he had approached, on foot, from entirely the wrong direction. Even though he 
had only been able to pick a dozen or so words of the language from their 
minds, he had managed to make them absolutely certain that the parchment they 
accepted was an urgent message from the King of Ophkar that must be delivered 
to their warlord immediately.


 Not a bad stunt at all, and Sterren had made sure Hamder knew how 
impressed everyone was. He regretted that Hamder wasn't in the main room to 
thank again.


 And now Annara had come through, as well; Sterren had not expected the 
seal to do any real damage.


 He hoped that Emner and Hamder would be equally successful.


 Even as that thought crossed his mind, Shenna dropped out of her trance 
and announced, "Hamder's bringing the wizard back, but I don't know why."


 Sterren answered, "Thanks. I'll go ask."


 He got up from the floor, brushed himself off, ambled across the room, 
and mounted the ladder to the hayloft.


 Hamder was sitting cross-legged in the open loft door, staring fixedly 
out toward the castle. Sterren looked over his shoulder and saw a small black 
dot growing larger in the distance.


 "What's happening?" he asked.


 The witch ignored him. Sterren glanced down just as Hamder's breath came 
out all in a rush, and he toppled over sideways into the hay.


 "I can't do it any more," he said in a breathy whisper.


 Sterren could see, now, that Hamder had completely exhausted himself. He 



leaned forward and peered at the distant figure of Emner, drifting helplessly 
above the enemy armies.


 "Maybe the warlock can fetch him back," he said. Hamder had no breath to 
reply, but he managed a feeble nod.


 Sterren turned and clambered back down the ladder, then headed for the 
corner where he had last seen the warlock.


 The black-robed Ethsharite was still there, crouched down and muttering 
to himself. He did not glance up as Sterren approached.


 "We have a problem," Sterren said. "Emner's drifting out there, and 
Hamder's exhausted."


 The warlock shook his head, then winced; it was obvious he had another of 
his headaches. "Get one of the other witches," he said. "I've been 
experimenting; I can't move anything as massive as a person, not even when 
he's levitating."


 "They're busy; are you sure?"


 The warlock looked up at Sterren, then rose to his feet. "Do you have any 
string?" he asked.


 "I don't know," Sterren replied. "Why?"


 "Because if you did, I might be able to lift one end of it up to him, and 
he could just pull himself in with it. But I know what I can do and I can't 
move him. You'll need to get one of the other witches."


 Sterren sighed and went to get one of the other witches.


 That trick with the string, though, that might be useful. He wanted to 
remember that.


 He sighed again, remembering the high hopes he had first had for his 
warlock. The fellow was turning out to be pitifully feeble. He could levitate 
a few pounds at a time, light small fires, open locks, but that was about it, 
and he was almost constantly sick with his ferocious headaches.


 The headaches worried Sterren somewhat. He had never heard of warlocks 
getting headaches. Ordinarily, warlocks were the epitome of health and vigor, 
able to heal themselves, able to obliterate any diseases that attacked them, 
drawing strength from the Power, at least, until the nightmares started. Even 
then, they stayed physically healthy, except perhaps for some minor adverse 
effects of not sleeping.


 The nightmares had stopped for this one, but the mysterious headaches 
might well be worse than the nightmares. Since the headaches had started, the 
warlock even seemed to have more gray in his hair.


 Sterren had heard of warlocks who fled south when the nightmares began, 
but he had never heard anything about headaches.


 Shenna was back in trance, but Ederd was taking a break, leaning back 
against a pile of straw. After all, the excitement was over, the explosion had 
gone off; Shenna could keep an eye on things by herself for the moment. 
"Ederd," Sterren said, "you'll have to take over with Emner; Hamder's worn 
out."


 "Is he all right?" Ederd asked, getting quickly to his feet.


 Sterren was not completely sure whether Ederd meant Emner or Hamder, but 
it didn't really make much difference. "I think so," he replied.


 Ederd was already at the ladder and climbing. Sterren looked around the 
interior of the barn. Alder and Dogal were sitting on one side, chatting 
quietly in Semmat. Lady Kalira and Alar were talking nearby. Shenna was 
sitting cross-legged in the center of the floor, and the warlock was in his 
corner, leaning against a wall. Annara was doing something with her belt 
dagger and a bucket in another corner. Ederd and Hamder were up in the loft, 
fetching Emner back from his scouting mission.


 It was a shame Emner knew no Semmat, and Sterren could not be sure anyone 
in the castle spoke Ethsharitic or Emner's native Lamuinese; otherwise, he 
could have used the wizard to establish contact with the besieged Semmans. 
Nobody else in the party could levitate that far; the witches could, working 
together, get one of their number a good way off the ground, but only for a 
very short time, nowhere near long enough to propel him or her all the way to 



the castle ramparts. The warlock had been able to fly in Ethshar, but here he 
was unable to lift himself so much as an inch.


 It occurred to Sterren for the first time that he could send written 
messages back and forth, even if his own Semmat was limited, especially in 
writing. Lady Kalira was fluent and literate.


 That was something to keep in mind, but then, what would he say in a 
message? And Hamder had half killed himself hauling Emner about on his 
scouting trip; getting him in and out of the castle would be a major project.


 The whole project of winning the war was turning out to be more work than 
he had hoped. His magicians, while willing enough once they got started, 
seemed unable to think for themselves and needed to be told what to do almost 
every step of the way. He had thought at first that he could turn them loose 
and sit back and wait for victory, but instead he found himself plotting and 
planning constantly.


 He wondered why he bothered. He had made his gesture; why didn't he just 
pack up and go home to Ethshar?


 There was Lady Kalira, of course, and the three soldiers, who might try 
to stop him, but he thought that he could slip away if he tried, take a horse, 
or all the horses, to prevent pursuit and give him something to sell in Akalla 
to pay for passage, and make a dash for it.


 The longer he stayed here, the more likely he was to be captured or 
killed outright by the invaders. He wasn't really doing Semma much good; only 
one enemy soldier dead so far, after two days!


 There were all those people in the castle depending on him, but how much 
good could he really do them?


 He thought it over, very seriously, and decided he didn't know why he was 
staying.


 Maybe he would flee, in a day or two.


 But not yet. 


CHAPTER 21


 He had still not fled by the twenty-first of Midwinter, 5220. In two 
sixnights of war, Sterren and his little band had settled down into a calm 
routine. Each day, Sterren and the magicians would pick away at the enemy, 
using whatever stunts and devices they could come up with, while the four 
Semmans would scout out a new hiding place. Sterren did not think it would be 
safe to stay in the same place two nights running, and it made the Semmans 
feel useful.


 He still had just the four Semmans with him. None of them had deserted, 
if it would have been desertion, under the circumstances, and no one else had 
turned up who cared to join Sterren's guerrilla band.


 So far as Sterren knew, no one had been able to slip out of the castle; 
and if anyone had, he might well have other plans, in any case.


 Occasionally a peasant who had fled when the invaders arrived and taken 
shelter with friends or relatives not too far away would wander by to see if 
it was safe to go home, but these people always left immediately once they saw 
that the invading army was still there. None of them ever volunteered to help 
Sterren and his crew.


 Sterren got the impression from these strays that most of the peasants 
who had lived in the village and surrounding farms were now lurking quietly 
just beyond the horizon, waiting for the war to be over and refusing to get 
involved with a struggle that they saw as being the aristocrats' affair and 
none of their business.


 Lady Kalira denounced them as unpatriotic cowards; Sterren and the three 
soldiers were less condemnatory. After all, what could a few unarmed peasants 
do?


 Even the three Semman soldiers weren't doing much. It was the magicians 
who were waging the war, and the Semmans did nothing but run errands. 



 Annara had become quite expert at the Explosive Seal and had successfully 
booby-trapped books, tent flaps, and even a pair of boots. Actually, she had 
not ensorcelled the tent flaps themselves, merely the leather ties that laced 
them shut. The witches had found it very difficult to put the laces back 
without disturbing the seals.


 She had not managed to do a saddle; the horse had refused to stay 
sufficiently still.


 The spell had four noticeable drawbacks.


 First, it took half an hour, and any interruption during that time, 
Annara insisted, could be disastrous. She needed to be left strictly alone for 
the full time. That meant that someone had to stand guard over her, and that 
she could not be moved quickly if an emergency arose. So far, no emergency had 
arisen, but Sterren worried about it all the same.


 Second, she had to have whatever she was putting the seal on right there 
in front of her, which meant that somebody had to steal it away from the 
enemy, then put it back again later. Emner and the witches had been able to do 
this, using Emner's levitation spell or the witches' little mind-twisters, but 
it was very risky, especially when cautiously putting sealed tent ties back in 
place.


 Third, the spell required a drop of dragon's blood for each seal, and 
Annara had only had a tiny vial of the stuff, perhaps a dozen drops in all. 
Emner was no help; when asked, he said, "I never use the stuff. None of my 
spells need it, and it's so expensive!"


 Sterren knew it was expensive, and was amazed that Annara hadn't sold 
hers long ago, but she explained, "With it, and my other things, I'm a wizard 
and I can work magic. Without my supplies, I'm just another charlatan. And 
besides, if you hadn't turned up when you did, I would have sold it. I just 
wasn't that desperate yet."


 Fourth, and finally, the seal was visible. It came out either red or 
black, Annara was unable to explain why it should be one or the other, rather 
than always the same, but it seemed to vary at random between the two.


 The seal itself was made of wax, and when Annara used clear beeswax from 
a supply found in an abandoned kitchen, she was able to enchant the stuff with 
Eknerwal's Lesser Invisibility so that the wax could not be seen at all, but 
even then, the trace of dragon's blood remained visible, shaped into a strange 
rune, and nothing could be done to hide it.


 That hadn't helped the owner of the boots, who started to put them on in 
the dark and lost his right hand and foot. It hadn't helped the lieutenant who 
opened the first book, who had taken the rune to be mere ornament, and lost an 
eye and three fingers, as well as the book. The first enchanted tent flap laid 
a soldier up with serious burns from shoulder to fingertip.


 The owner of the second enchanted tent flap, however, had been more 
cautious and had carefully not disturbed the rune. He slipped into his tent 
from the back, crawling in the mud, and had then taken the tent down entirely 
and moved it well away from camp before poking at the flap with a stick.


 The resulting explosion burned the tent to ash, but injured no one.


 After that, the enemy knew what to look for, and the use of the Explosive 
Seal changed somewhat. Annara no longer bothered with the Lesser Invisibility 
and, instead of seriously trying to injure anyone, she put the seal in places 
where it would have maximum nuisance value.


 For example, with all three witches standing guard, convincing the few 
late-night passers-by that Annara either wasn't there or had every right to be 
there performing her arcane ritual, she sealed the wheel of a water cart to 
its axle hub. The seal blew the wheel off, terrifying the horses, when it came 
time to haul the next load.


 The warlock pointed out that one of the witches could have done the same 
damage with a hammer, but Sterren thought the demoralizing effect was worth 
the special effort.


 He took the hint, though, and later sent the witches around breaking 
spokes and cutting ropes. 



 The Ksinallionese army's financial records were found with a seal on 
them, and a messenger was sent home to fetch another copy, since no way could 
be found to open them without incinerating them.


 Two more tents were sealed and had to be taken down and detonated.


 All in all, Annara was earning her keep. So were the witches who helped 
her.


 Emner, with his levitation spell, had provided excellent scouting 
reports, locating the enemy's headquarters tents and counting the soldiers 
present, which turned out to be about three hundred, not the full four hundred 
and fifty. He had stunned a few sentries, when the witches needed a 
distraction, and had made life miserable for a few of the enemy for several 
hours by enchanting a cockroach to sing "Spices in the Hold," an old sea 
chanty, loudly and off key for hours on end. That had only stopped when one of 
the soldiers, more by luck than skill, stamped on the roach.


 That the roach was dead, Emner explained, made no difference, as far as 
Galger's Singing Spell was concerned, but a hard tap on the enchanted object 
was the signal to stop. If somebody happened to step on the dead insect again 
later, it would start singing again.


 Unfortunately, nobody happened to step on the dead roach.


 In addition to helping the wizards, the witches had pulled off several 
little tricks of their own. Shenna had spoiled a hundredweight of meat and a 
wagonload of vegetables, so that at least for a few days the besiegers ate 
less than the besieged. Sentries had acquired the habit of disappearing, then 
turning up dead in entirely the wrong place, so much so that for the last 
three nights there had been no sentries at all.


 Only one water cart's load had been poisoned; Shenna found it to be far 
more difficult than she had thought. Furthermore, the result had a discernible 
odor and a nasty taste, so that no one would take more than a tiny sip before 
spitting the stuff out.


 The warlock had not worked closely with the others. He preferred to slip 
away by himself and pick off random enemy soldiers. He did not need them to be 
nearby and isolated, as the witches did. Also, where the witches' victims 
turned up strangled or stabbed, the warlock's simply fell over dead, without 
warning, without a mark on them, in the midst of their friends and companions.


 This had created a good deal of near-panic. The witches reported picking 
up snatches of conversations about curses and demons.


 Unfortunately, the enemy officers had not allowed this to get out of 
hand. They had even launched a counterpropaganda campaign, arguing that this 
demonic activity indicated that the evil Semman king had joined forces with 
powers of darkness and had to be stopped before he became more powerful.


 The success of this argument was in doubt, but as yet the invading army 
seemed to be holding up. Sterren had no reports of desertion or mutiny.


 There were certainly casualties, though. All in all, Sterren counted 
forty-one dead and seven injured among the enemy as a direct result of the 
magicians' efforts, and in addition they had created considerable disorder. He 
was pleased. Forty-eight men were a significant part of the besieging army, 
and Sterren had not lost a single person! His people had been spotted, on 
occasion, but so far they had always escaped.


 He had managed to establish communication with the inhabitants of Semma 
Castle, too. Although the warlock could not lift or push a person that far, 
and the witches could only do so by utterly exhausting their reserves, the 
warlock could, and did, send messages written on parchment sailing over the 
enemy's encirclement and into the castle, to drop into the courtyard there.


 In reply, the people in the castle would run a green banner up on the 
west ramparts and hang their own message beneath it on a string. The warlock 
could usually retrieve this without too much trouble.


 Thus, Sterren knew that the castle's inhabitants were far from 
comfortable. They were horribly overcrowded, as over a hundred peasants had 
taken shelter within the walls when the invaders arrived, in addition to the 
usual dense population, and those peasants also added heavily to the food 



consumption, of course, since none of them had brought any significant amounts 
of food with them.


 Fortunately, the winter stores had been safely inside the walls when the 
invaders came. Even with all the additional mouths to feed, the castle had 
plenty of food and water, enough for at least another month.


 In addition to the crowding and worry attendant upon any siege, the 
attackers had siege machines in use that dropped flaming bundles into the 
castle every so often, and at other times hurled heavy stones through windows 
or even through roofs. The stable in the western courtyard had been burned to 
the ground one night when a watchman dozed off at his post. A dozen windows 
had been smashed, and holes punched through three roofs. Five people had been 
killed outright, a score injured, and a great many were ill, overcrowding made 
isolation impractical and hygiene more difficult, and diseases of various 
sorts were getting out of hand. Lice were a nuisance, too.


 Sterren's three officers were apparently unable to organize a very 
coherent defense, and any thought of a sortie was abandoned when they could 
not agree on who would lead it.


 That, somehow, did not surprise Sterren in the least.


 And finally, the enemy was trying to undermine the castle walls, and the 
defenders could not agree on what to do about it. A few hastily trained Semman 
archers had forced the attackers to stay under shelter, but that was easy 
enough, given the village outside the gate; crude galleries had been built 
connecting some of the houses and shops, so that enemy sappers could approach 
without exposing themselves to arrows.


 With all this in mind, on this particular day, the twenty-first of 
Midwinter, Sterren had resolved that it was time to do something about the 
siege machines. The sappers were a more serious problem in the long term, but 
the siege machines would be easier to get at and were doing more harm to the 
morale of the besieged.


 Their shelter, at the moment, was a partially burned farmhouse to the 
northeast of the castle, and it was there, on the morning of the twenty-first, 
that Sterren gathered his entire band into a circle on the floor of the main 
room.


 "Emner," he said, "tell me about their siege machines."


 Emner shrugged. "What can I tell you? They're siege machines."


 Sterren glared. "How many are there? What kinds? Where are they?"


 Emner coughed, embarrassed. "Oh," he said. "Well, I'd say they have about 
half a dozen in all, mostly trebuchet catapults, but also a mounted ram. The 
ram's in the village; the others are arranged in a ring around the castle, 
spaced out pretty evenly."


 "What's a trebuchet?" Annara asked. Sterren was pleased, partly because 
it meant she was paying attention, but mostly because now he didn't need to 
ask himself and show how little he knew.


 "Well, it's like a big lever on a frame; there's a heavy weight on one 
end, usually a big box filled with rocks, and on the other end is a sling. 
There's a rope attached to the sling end, and the rope winds around a drum at 
the bottom of the frame. You wind the rope around the drum, and it pulls the 
sling down and the weight-box up. You load whatever you want to throw into the 
sling, release the rope, the weight falls, and whap, the sling flies up and 
throws whatever you put in it. Depending on what weight you use, it can toss 
up to, oh, three hundred pounds, I'd say, over a castle wall from safely 
outside archery range. Anything heavier than that and the frame's likely to 
break."


 Sterren nodded; whatever his other faults, Emner was good at 
descriptions. Sterren felt he had a good, clear picture of how these catapults 
worked.


 That didn't mean he knew what to do about them. "Is there some way we can 
burn them all?" he asked. The witches looked at each other, while Annara and 
Emner blinked and shrugged.


 "What sort of wood are they?" Hamder asked. 



 "Um... ironwood, I think. Maybe oak. Something very hard and strong," 
Emner replied.


 "I can't kindle that," Shenna said. "Sorry."


 "Not me," Ederd said.


 Hamder shook his head.


 Sterren looked at Annara.


 "I don't think so," she said. "All I have that can burn things is the 
Explosive Seal, and that generally won't set anything more than paper or 
oilcloth on fire. And besides, I meant to tell you, I only have enough 
dragon's blood left for one more seal, and not a very big one, either."


 That was unpleasant news; the Explosive Seal had been one of their best 
resources. He turned to the four Semmans, who were huddled against one wall, 
looking bored.


 "Does anyone in the castle," he said in Semmat, "have... ah... from an 
animal that makes fire..." As he spoke, he was vaguely aware that the witches 
were whispering with Emner about something.


 "A dragon?" Lady Kalira asked. "There are dragons in the mountains north 
of Lumeth of the Towers, but they've never come this far south."


 "Not the whole dragon, just the... the stuff. Red stuff. From inside." 
Sterren knew he had heard the Semmat word for "blood," but he could not think 
of it.


 "Blood? Dragon's blood?" Alder asked.


 "Yes! Blood. Dragon's blood."


 "I never heard of anybody who had any," Lady Kalira replied. "Why? Is it 
good for something?"


 "Annara needs it for her magic."


 The four Semmans looked at one another, then back at Sterren. "Sorry," 
Alder said.


 Sterren sighed and switched back to Ethsharitic. "About these 
catapults..."


 "From Emner's description, they're too big for us to move," Hamder said. 
"Especially if it's really ironwood."


 "It takes ten men to move one, even with the wheels," Emner explained.


 "And witches may use magic instead of arms and legs and backs, but they 
aren't any stronger than Ophkarite or Ksinallionese soldiers, even so," Shenna 
said.


 "Can you break them, somehow?"


 Shenna and Hamder started to glance at each other, but Ederd flatly 
stated, "No. Not if they're as strongly made as Emner says."


 Emner shrugged apologetically. "They need to be strong to heave rocks 
that big," he said.


 "All right," Sterren said, "the witches can't do anything. What about 
you, Emner?"


 "I can make them whistle or sing, but that's all. I'm sorry." He spread 
his hands in a gesture of helplessness.


 Sterren turned to Annara, but before he could speak, she said, "Not 
without more dragon's blood, and probably not then."


 That left the warlock.


 "I don't know," he said. "I can't burn the frames, nor break them 
outright, not in my present condition, but I might be able to break some of 
the ropes, or do some other damage. I don't have the straight lifting power 
these witches have here, but I believe I can do subtler things, crackings and 
frayings and twistings, that they cannot."


 "Crackings?" Emner looked thoughtful, and said, "If you could crack the 
main crosspiece, the lever, while they were preparing to fire, the whole 
machine would probably come apart under the strain."


 "That would be perfect," Sterren said.


 The warlock shrugged. "I can try," he said.


 "Good," Sterren replied. "And you will." 



CHAPTER 22


 "Will this do?" Sterren asked, pointing. The warlock crept up beside him 
and peered over the ridgepole. "I think so," he said. "I can see the structure 
from here, anyway."


 Sterren nodded. "Good," he said, "Because we can't find anywhere better 
that's half this safe."


 The warlock glanced at him. "Why did you come with me, then, if it's 
dangerous?" he asked.


 Sterren was not really sure himself. He shrugged and said, "I get tired 
of just hearing reports. I wanted to see some of the action for myself." He 
did not really want to think about that any more; it only reminded him just 
how dangerous his situation actually was, perched on a rooftop a hundred yards 
from an enemy camp. He changed the subject.


 "How's your head today?"


 "Better, or at least different," the warlock said.


 "Different? How is it different?"


 The warlock hesitated, then said, "Maybe I'm just getting used to it."


 It seemed to Sterren that his mysterious black-clad companion was being 
unusually talkative today, and he decided to try to take advantage of that to 
get a few answers to mysteries that had been bothering him.


 "You know," he said, "I never heard of warlocks having headaches like 
yours. That's not what the stories say happens when you move south."


 "I never heard of it, either," the warlock said. "I don't understand it."


 "It is somehow related to your magic, isn't it?" Sterren asked.


 "Oh, I would say so." He hesitated, then continued, "You're a warlock 
yourself, aren't you? I thought I could see that, before we got so far south 
and I lost my finer perceptions."


 "Not really," Sterren admitted, "I failed my apprenticeship."


 "Ah, that would explain it entirely! It took me a long time, you know, to 
decide that you were one, you didn't act like one, but you seemed to know the 
art, and I could feel something in your mind. I thought you were just keeping 
it secret for some reason."


 "No," Sterren said, "I might have a trace of the Power, but I'm not 
really a warlock. I won more than I should at dice, back in Ethshar, but 
that's all."


 The warlock nodded. "Then you wouldn't know," he said.


 "Know what?"


 "What it feels like to use the Power."


 "No," Sterren agreed, "I don't know. What is it like?"


 "Well, it's hard to explain. It's as if something, not someone, because 
it clearly isn't human, but something, perhaps a god or a demon or something 
we don't have a name for, is whispering in your mind, and you can't understand 
anything it's saying, you can't be sure it's words at all, but you can pull 
strength from it all the same. You can take the sound of the whisper and 
reshape it and use it to feel and shape and change the world around you. Do 
you understand?"


 Sterren almost thought he did. He nodded, but said nothing.


 "And after you've used warlockry a lot, the whisper is always there, 
always, whether you're listening or not, using the Power or not, awake or 
asleep. It's a constant background and it gets a little louder each time you 
draw on it. And it's trying to tell you something, but you don't know what." 
He paused, then said, "You know about the night-


It was not a question, but Sterren nodded again.


 "The nightmares are when the whisper begins to make sense. You still 
can't make out the words, still can't tell what it's trying to tell you, or 
what's whispering, but you catch bits of it, little bits and pieces of images. 
And you can't shut them out; the whisper is always there, it won't go away, 
and those images seep into your mind little by little." He shivered. 



 "And when you came south?" Sterren prompted. "When I came south," the 
warlock said, "the whispering faded away. It was wonderful at first; I could 
forget the little glimmers of meaning I'd been catching, and the nightmares 
stopped. I couldn't hear the whisper at all. But then, when we headed inland, 
I started to hear buzzing."


 Startled, Sterren stared at him. "Buzzing?" he said.


 "Humming, buzzing, something like that. It's not really a sound, it's a 
source, a mental sensation, like the whisper, but this one isn't a voice, 
isn't an intelligence at all, it's a mindless drone, like a beehive or a 
millstone. And... well, have you ever lived somewhere where you hear some 
unpleasant noise constantly, a loud one? It gives you a headache." He sighed. 
"But after a while, you get used to it and, in time, you don't even notice it 
any more. I expect that eventually I won't notice this any more. At present, 
I'm still constantly aware of it, but my head doesn't hurt."


 Sterren nodded.


 He thought he understood the analogy the warlock made and had an idea 
what it must feel like, but he had no idea what could be causing the buzzing 
the warlock described.


 But then, nobody knew what the Aldagmor Source was, either. Presumably 
there was another, different one somewhere near Semma, one that had never 
created its own magicians the way the Aldagmor Source had back in 5202, but 
which warlocks could perceive.


 "If it's like the Source," he asked, "can you draw Power from it?"


 The warlock looked at him, startled. "I have no idea," he said. "I 
haven't been able to so far; it doesn't offer Power the way the Source does. 
But it... I don't know."


 He chopped his words off short and stopped speaking.


 Sterren decided not to push the matter. He peered over the farmhouse 
ridgepole and said, "I think they're getting ready to load. It looks like 
pitch. A ball of pitch. I suppose they'll light it right before they release."


 The warlock stared. "Yes," he said.


 "Can you crack the beam?"


 The warlock didn't answer; Sterren glanced over and saw his jaw clenched 
with strain, his eyes narrowed.


 Sterren shaded his eyes with a hand and stared at the trebuchet. Was the 
beam starting to bend a little more than it should, perhaps?


 He shifted, squinted, and stared harder.


 The catapult exploded. One moment it was there, the crosspiece bending 
only slightly; and the next instant the entire superstructure was gone, lost 
in a spreading cloud of red-hot debris. The great wooden bucket of stones that 
served as the counterweight crashed to the ground and shattered, the ball of 
pitch burst into flame and rolled back onto the crew that had just loaded it, 
and the framework simply vanished in the burst of glowing fragments. The earth 
shook, and a tremendous rolling roar reached the two men on the rooftop.


 Sterren gaped and clung desperately to the thatch as the building swayed 
beneath him.


 A long moment later, burning splinters began to rain down about him, 
spattering onto the thatch. The scent of burning reached his nose, and he 
began sliding quickly backward down the slope.


 He stopped at the edge and looked back up the slope.


 The warlock was still lying there on the roof, but nothing touched him; 
fragments that might have struck him instead swerved aside as they approached.


 "Gods," Sterren said, "What happened?"


 The warlock turned and grinned down at him, by far the broadest smile 
Sterren had ever seen on that dour face. "Can't you guess?" he said. "It was 
your idea, you know."


 Sterren shook his head.


 "I've tuned into the buzzing; I'm drawing Power from it. I'm as powerful 
as I ever was!" He rose upright, in a totally unnatural manner; his hands and 
knees never moved, but his body simply swung up unsupported. Once standing, he 



lifted further, up into the air. His black robe spread into great flapping 
wings, and he laughed triumphantly. "Sterren," he called, "there are no 
voices! It's just Power, nothing but Power!" He laughed again, and thunder 
rolled overhead.


 The warlock looked up at the sound, and, without warning, a bolt of 
lightning flashed down and incinerated the remaining fragments of the 
catapult.


 The lightning was not the natural blue-white; it was a fiery orange-red. 
Warlock lightning. Sterren had heard of it, but never seen it.


 Another bolt struck off to the left, destroying another catapult; then a 
third, and a fourth, and a fifth, and the enemy's long-range arsenal was gone.


 The wind was rising, and Sterren decided that a roof was not a good place 
to be. He was unsure how completely the warlock was actually controlling this 
sudden storm and did not care to risk a miscalculation, or even a deliberate 
attack, since after all, he hardly knew the warlock. He slid down until his 
feet caught on the ladder they had used to climb up, then descended quickly.


 Thunder boomed again, and this time even the thunder was clearly 
unnatural, it was great rolling laughter.


 It was recognizably the warlock's voice.


 He hurried around the corner of the house and was in time to see the wind 
sweeping soldiers off their feet, knocking them flat to the ground.


 The wind stopped, and the braver Ksinallionese -- Sterren had learned the 
different uniforms and could see no Ophkarites on this side of the castle -got 
to their feet again.


 The thunder-voice spoke again, in words this time.


 "Go home!" it roared, "This land is under the protection of Vond the 
Warlock! To stay here is to die!"


 Then, again, laughter rolled across the plain.


 Sterren saw the enemy milling in confusion at first; then a mounted 
officer panicked and spurred his horse to a gallop, bound north toward 
Ksinallion.


 Panic spread like a wave through the besiegers, rippling out from that 
fleeing lieutenant, and in minutes the entire army was in full flight, pursued 
by howling unnatural winds.


 Their morale had been deteriorating for days, men dying mysteriously, 
explosive booby traps scattered about, strange figures flying overhead 
invulnerable to arrows. This supernatural storm and voice like an angry god 
was more than these frightened soldiers could take. Individually or in groups, 
they broke and ran, bound for their homes.


 Sterren did not blame them in the least for running. He stood and 
watched, smiling happily, as the storm swept on around the castle, driving the 
besieging army away from every side.


 He had won the war. He and his six magicians had defeated fifty times 
their number. He was safe from execution by either side. In fact, he would be 
a hero to the Semmans.


 He looked up at the warlock, hanging in mid-air, his black robe 
transformed into immense black wings that gave him the appearance of a 
hovering hawk, and waved triumphantly.


 Vond, as the warlock had called himself, returned the wave. Thunder 
rumbled about him, and clouds gathered thickly overhead, ready to burst.


 Sterren looked at the distant castle. The inhabitants had a celebration 
coming. They were saved.


 At least, Sterren corrected himself, they were saved from Ophkar and 
Ksinallion. He supposed they would now have to deal with Vond, he would 
presumably want to stay here permanently, away from the whispering of 
Aldagmor. Having so powerful a warlock around the place might well change a 
few things. He might not be satisfied with the handful of gold and gems he had 
been promised. At the very least, Agor would probably be displaced as royal 
magician in short order.


 But, Sterren thought, his grin returning, that wasn't his problem. 



 He remembered the peasants whose only interest in the siege was knowing 
when it would be over, so they could go home, regardless of who won. They 
probably wouldn't care about anything Vond did, either. It wasn't their 
problem.


 King Phenvel might have a problem. Agor might have a problem. Any number 
of other people might have problems.


 Right now, Sterren felt as if he had none at all. Vond probably felt the 
same way, Sterren thought, and a tiny little thought poked its way into his 
mind, like a pin working into a quilt.


 If the warlock thought his problems were gone, he was wrong; he 
definitely had a very real problem. Sterren looked up, wondering if Vond knew. 
The storm broke suddenly, and sparkling blue rain spilled heavily down, 
soaking him instantly. He looked up, blinking, and saw Vond hanging in the 
sky, cloak spread, head thrown back, laughing wildly as the sheets of rain 
parted before him, leaving him untouched and dry. 


CHAPTER 23


 Eventually, of course, Vond landed again. Sterren was stubborn enough to 
wait for him.


 He was not stubborn enough to wait out in the rain, though. He ducked 
into the little farmhouse and tried in vain to dry off, glancing out the 
windows every so often to see if Vond had tired of playing with the storm.


 The clouds were rained away completely somewhat before sunset, but the 
warlock stayed aloft, whipping the winds back and forth, sending sprays of 
sand and rock hither and yon. The besieging armies were long since gone, 
leaving behind scattered bits of equipment and trash, strewn across a sea of 
mud.


 Sterren saw no bodies, but he suspected a few might be out there. He 
noticed that much of the village surrounding Semma Castle had been flattened, 
not just the sappers' ramshackle structures or the lightly built shops, but 
the solid original houses as well.


 The sun was down, and the last light fading, when the warlock finally 
settled to earth.


 "Hai," Sterren called from his shelter. "Congratulations!"


 Vond turned, spotted him in the window, and bowed. "Thank you, my lord," 
he said. He smiled. "Gods, that felt good! To be able to let myself go, use 
all the power I wanted, without worrying about those damned nightmares, it was 
wonderful!"


 Sterren did not bother going around to the door. He hoisted himself up 
into the window and was about to drop down on the outside when he felt an 
invisible grasp close about him and pull him free of the frame.


 He floated smoothly over and found himself hanging in the air in front of 
the warlock.


 This was disconcerting, but not particularly uncomfortable. Sterren 
flexed a little and found he could move freely, but that no matter how he 
moved he remained floating in the same spot, a couple of yards from the 
warlock's face.


 "Hello, there," he said.


 "Hello," Vond replied, grinning broadly.


 Sterren shifted, getting a bit more comfortable in his unnatural 
elevation. He considered carefully exactly what he ought to say and finally 
just asked, "What happened?"


 "Well," Vond said thoughtfully, "I'm not sure of all the details. 
Somehow, though, I tapped into the buzz, and then I had all the power I 
wanted, all at once." He waved at the desolation on all sides, displaying his 
handiwork.


 Sterren nodded, contemplating the wasteland. "And you aren't worried 
about nightmares?" he asked. "What if this new source is just like the one in 



Aldagmor, in the long run?" While the warlock had been reveling in his new 
power, Sterren had spent much of the storm considering the various 
possibilities and he felt that it would be unfair to not point the many 
possible dangers out to Vond.


 Vond shook his head. "It isn't. It can't be. I'd know."


 Sterren didn't reply, but the warlock read his doubting expression.


 "You think I'm being reckless, don't you? Don't worry, Sterren, I'm not. 
I tell you, I know this new source isn't like the old. Whatever the Source in 
Aldagmor is, it's conscious, or at least run by a conscious entity, I've known 
that since I was an apprentice. We warlocks always have a vague feeling of 
contact, of communication, when we use our magic, and besides, surely the 
nightmares and the Calling to go to Aldagmor are sent by something."


 Sterren nodded. He had to admit that much.


 "Well," Vond said, "This power source does not seem to be conscious, it's 
just raw power. When I used the Aldagmor Source, as I told you, it was like 
listening to a whisper, hearing it but not catching the words. Using this new 
source is like listening to the hum of a bee, there are no words, just sound."


 "But if that's so, then why aren't there any warlocks here already, 
drawing on this source?" Sterren asked. "They don't even have a word for 
warlock in Semmat!"


 "I can only guess," Vond said.


 "Guess, then," Sterren said.


 Vond waved dramatically. "Warlockry, my dear Sterren, first appeared on 
the Night of Madness, back in 5202, you know that. That was when the Source 
first appeared in Aldagmor. It created warlockry, all at once; warlocks 
appeared spontaneously, hundreds of them. It was... well, it was as if the 
thing let out one shout, to get people listening, and then its voice died away 
to that whisper I keep talking about."


 Sterren nodded.


 "Well," Vond continued, "this new source never shouted. There's no 
telling what it is, or how long it's been there, but it could mean a whole new 
existence for warlocks, because if it's not conscious, then it won't cause any 
nightmares or compulsions, now, will it?"


 "I don't know," Sterren said, "and neither do you. Maybe it's just 
sleeping. Maybe the one in Aldagmor was just sleeping there, all along, until 
it woke up in 5202, and this one could wake up tomorrow."


 "Or it could sleep for another thousand years, if you're right," Vond 
said, "But you aren't. I can feel it, I tell you; this new source is dead, not 
just sleeping. It was never alive and never will be. It's totally mindless."


 "You're the one taking the risks," Sterren said, "so it's none of my 
business, really, but Vond, I wouldn't put that much faith in it if I were 
you. How do you know it isn't sleeping? You can't know. Your feelings could be 
wrong."


 Vond shook his head. "No, you don't understand what it's like. I can use 
the power itself to tell me whether it's conscious, sleeping, alive, dead, 
whatever.


 It's mindless, empty, like a... a running stream, or a millwheel 
grinding."


 Sterren was still uneasy, but saw no point in further argument on that 
particular subject. Vond was clearly not eager to consider any negative 
aspects to his situation just now, and after all, anything Sterren could say 
would be mere guesswork. "I hope you're right," he said.


 "I know I'm right," Vond replied.


 "If you are," Sterren said, nettled by Vond's certainty, "then why hasn't 
anybody found this thing before? Even if it never made its own warlocks, the 
way the Aldagmor Source did, there have been warlocks for twenty years, and 
you can't be the first one to ever come south."


 "I may be the first one to ever come this far south," Vond replied.


 Sterren conceded the point, but said, "Even so--"


 Vond cut him off. "Maybe," he said, "I'm somehow different. Perhaps I'm 



unique, the only warlock who can use this new source, it is a bit different, 
after all, and I might never have... have listened to it, if you hadn't 
suggested it."


 "Did you ever think you weren't like other warlocks before this 
happened?"


 "No, not really. I was getting very powerful, of course. The power 
increases with use as one becomes attuned to it, better able to listen in to 
the Source, as it were, and I'd been listening very closely for quite some 
time. Lord Azrad hired me to dredge the harbor last year you know, and I did 
it singlehanded, and... well, after that, the whisper was more of a mutter, 
and then... well."


 "The nightmares," Sterren said.


 "Eventually, yes. And then you came along, and here we are."


 Sterren decided to stop looking for flaws. For one thing, he had not even 
mentioned what he saw as the most likely long-term problem, but seeing how 
easily Vond had hauled him out of the window, he had a certain uneasiness 
about the warlock's new power and he thought he might someday want Vond to 
have problems.


 Not that he had any intention of telling the warlock that. "And so here 
you are with this new source of magic," he said, smiling. "Congratulations!"


 "Yes, isn't it wonderful? I was straining hard, trying to listen to the 
old Source, to draw enough power to crack that beam, and I was ignoring the 
buzz. Then I thought about what you said and tried to listen to the buzz, too, 
and then it wasn't a buzz anymore, it was something entirely different, 
something that I could draw power from, and it was close and strong and I was 
more powerful than I ever was back in Ethshar!"


 "It's close?" Sterren asked. He had somehow assumed that the buzz came 
from somewhere beyond the edge of the World, and was a good distance away.


 "I think so, in that direction." He pointed off vaguely northwest, but 
then, Sterren thought, almost the entire World lay to the northwest of Semma. 
This new source was not beyond the edge of the World, but that didn't really 
narrow it down much.


 The two men looked at each other, glanced around at the storm-blasted 
plain, and then simultaneously started to speak. They stopped, and Sterren 
gestured for Vond to speak first.


 "I'd say the war is won," the warlock said. "Now what do we do?"


 "I'd say," Sterren replied, "that we go to the castle and collect our 
rewards."


 Vond nodded. "Sounds good to me," he said.


 "We'll want to get the others," Sterren pointed out.


 "That's no problem," Vond said, "I'll bring them." With that, he rose 
again into the air and began soaring toward Semma Castle.


 Sterren, quite without any action on his part, sailed along close behind 
and he glanced back to see other figures being swept up and carried along in 
similar fashion -- he spotted Annara by her distinctive purple robe, and Lady 
Kalira by her red gown, and Adier and Dogal by their size and armament. The 
other five were just black dots at first.


 A moment later they were all standing at the castle gate, ranged in two 
neat rows, Sterren and Vond in the front row center. An unearthly glow of 
Vond's making played across them all and lit the area a pale gold.


 A sentry peered timidly over the ramparts above. "Hai," Sterren shouted, 
remembering at the last minute to use Semmat. "It's I, Sterren, Ninth Warlord, 
and my comrades! Open the gate!"


 The soldier hesitated. "But, my lord," he said, "the invaders..."


 "The invaders are gone," Sterren replied. "The war is over!"


 The sentry glanced uneasily out across the ruins of the village, where 
Vond's storm had indeed ripped away every trace of the sappers' shelters and 
most of the other buildings as well. "They're really gone?" he asked.


 "All of them," Sterren assured him. "The war is over. We won."


 "Sterren," Vond said, speaking Ethsharitic, "I can open the gates." 



 "I know," Sterren replied in the same tongue, "but let's be polite about 
it. Give them another five minutes."


 "Five minutes, then."


 Sterren switched back to Semmat and said, "The magician who made the 
storm is becoming impatient. He says in five minutes, if the gate is still 
closed, he'll smash it to pieces."


 The sentry immediately said, "Yes, my lord. I'll have it open in a 
moment."


 It took about a minute and a half before the gate swung wide, and Sterren 
thought he saw disappointment on Vond's face as the whole party marched in. 


PART THREE


 Warlock 


CHAPTER 24


 Sterren was uneasy even before he led his victorious little squad into 
the throne room. They had been kept waiting in the antechamber considerably 
longer than he had expected. Most of the party had taken it well, after all, 
the Semmans were used to their king's foibles, and the others had not known 
what to expect, but Vond seemed noticeably impatient.


 Sterren found that he really did not tike the idea of being around 
someone as powerful as Vond when he got impatient.


 He marched into the throne room neither meekly nor belligerently, but 
with the best approximation of calm assurance that he could manage, and found 
Vond on his right hand, sweeping forward a few inches off the floor, while the 
others straggled along behind rather haphazardly.


 As he marched in, while he kept his face turned straight forward toward 
the king, as protocol demanded, his eyes were flickering back and forth, 
taking in as much as he could of the people gathered there.


 The soldiers who stood in ragged lines on either side mostly looked 
either bewildered or bored; Sterren suspected that not a one of them really 
knew what was going on. Behind them, he could see a significant percentage of 
the castle's noble population and he tried to read their expressions without 
letting his own interest show.


 He saw a wide variety of emotions, puzzlement, delight, anger, but the 
dominant reaction to the arrival of Semma's warlord and his party appeared to 
be poorly suppressed fear.


 That did not bode well.


 Remembering the violence of the warlock's storm, however, Sterren could 
not say it was an unreasonable reaction.


 He spotted the king's children huddled to the left of the throne; the 
faces of Lura and Dereth were alight with excitement. Nissitha's mouth was 
drawn up in her usual expression of polite distaste.


 Shirrin's expression was unmistakably wide-eyed adoration.


 Sterren stopped at the appropriate distance from the throne and bowed.


 Vond stopped beside him and condescended to dip his head slightly. 
Sterren saw this from the corner of his eye and was relieved; it was not a 
bow, but at least it was something. He had worried that Vond would go out of 
his way to antagonize Phenvel, with Sterren caught in the middle. Given how 
frightened most of the Semmans looked, and how easily fear might turn to 
anger, he very much wanted to avoid any open antagonism.


 "So you're finally back!" the king said, and Sterren's hope for peace and 
amity faded.


 "We returned as quickly as we could, your Majesty," he said, his tone as 
ingratiating as he could manage -- which was quite ingratiating indeed -- as 
he had acquired years of practice with creditors and innkeepers. "The wind was 
not in our favor." 



 "You had magicians with you, didn't you?" King Phenvel demanded.


 "Only on the way back, your Majesty, and none of them could... could turn 
the wind," Sterren explained.


 The king stared at him, then snapped, "Are you trying to tell me that 
little breeze we had today was natural?"


 Sterren blinked. "Oh, no, your Majesty," he said, "That was the... the 
work of Vond the Warlock." Sterren gestured at the warlock. "However, it's a 
spell he... it's new, a spell he had not... um, not learned yet during our 
journey." He wished he knew Semmat better.


 Even what he did know was somewhat rusty, since he had mostly been using 
Ethsharitic for the last few six-nights, talking far more to the magicians 
than to Lady Kalira and the three soldiers.


 Furthermore, the obvious hostility was making him nervous, so that he was 
forgetting some of what he did know.


 Vond recognized his name and bowed slightly in acknowledgment.


 "Ah," the king said, "so he found some way to study the arcane arts while 
hiding from the invaders, rather than fighting?"


 Sterren was shocked at this snide question, with its implications of 
cowardice and incompetence. "Your Majesty," he replied, "Vond defeated the 
armies of Ophkar and Ksinallion, almost by himself."


 "And took his own sweet time doing it, too! I suppose he thinks he'll be 
getting more money out of me by making it look hard, but he won't, and neither 
will any of these other sorry specimens you've dragged back here. One storm 
and the enemy ran! The gold and gems I gave you are too generous for such a 
sorry performance!"


 Sterren could think of no reply to this. He did, however, find himself 
sympathizing with the rulers of Ophkar and Ksinallion who had ordered the 
invasion.


 "Besides," the king continued, "the war is hardly over merely because we 
won a battle. I'll need to send ambassadors to arrange a peace and settle 
terms, won't I? If you'd gotten a surrender, instead of a rout, I could have 
given terms to the warlords and saved some time."


 This hardly struck Sterren as a major problem, but he managed to avoid 
saying anything disrespectful by saying nothing.


 "And furthermore," the king said, "what about the mess you people left? 
Half the village is ruined, there's mud everywhere, and all that wind blew 
tiles-off half the roofs and took the banners right off the flagpoles. I went 
up to the tower and looked, and it looks awful! And I don't suppose any of 
your magicians would dirty their hands with cleaning it up! No, don't say 
anything, warlord, I won't ask them to; I'll have my people see to it. You can 
pay your magicians and send them home now; we won't be needing them around 
here any more."


 He waved a dismissal, but Sterren found, to his own astonishment, that he 
was not willing to be dismissed yet. "Your Majesty," he said, trying hard not 
to clench his teeth disrespectfully, "I did not start this stupid war. I ended 
it, as quickly as I could. I had... had hoped that you would... would show 
more..." His Semmat failed him completely.


 "Gratitude?" Phenvel practically sneered. "Gratitude, for doing the job 
you were born to? Warlord, if you had fought the enemy properly, with sword 
and shield, I might be more respectful, but to bring in wizards and witches is 
hardly a courageous act. It's the doing of a merchant, not a warlord, and what 
I expect from someone three-quarters Ethsharitic, not a true Semman at all!"


 "Not for me!" Sterren said, outraged, "I don't want anything for me! For 
them, the magicians! They left home to come here and fight for you!"


 "I didn't ask for them," King Phenvel retorted. "And they've been paid. 
And who the hell are they all, anyway? A ragged-looking bunch, I must say!"


 Sterren stared at the king's slippered feet and forced himself to calm 
down. When he was once again in control of himself, he said, "If I might 
present them, your Majesty?"


 "Go ahead," the king said, with a nonchalant wave. 



 Sterren gestured to his right. "Vond the Warlock, late of Ethshar of the 
Spices." He switched to Ethsharitic and said, "Vond, this is his Majesty, 
Phenvel, Third of that Name, King of Semma."


 Vond bowed, mockingly.


 Sterren ignored the mockery and turned.


 "Annara of Crookwall, journeyman wizard," he said.


 Annara curtseyed deeply. The king nodded politely.


 "Shenna of Chatna, witch."


 Shenna, too, curtseyed, moving more briskly than gracefully. Her skirt 
was so thoroughly soaked that this sent a spatter of mud onto courtiers at one 
side of the hall.


 "Chatna," said the king, "Where is that?"


 "In the Small Kingdoms, my lord," Shenna said, in slurred Semmat, "Just 
inland of Morria, near the Gulf of the East."


 Sterren was startled, both by this information and by Shenna's use of 
Semmat. He had assumed Chatna to be an Ethsharitic village somewhere and he 
had not realized that Shenna had bothered to pick up any of the local language 
during her stay in Semma.


 Not that she knew it well, since she had used entirely the wrong title.


 He gathered his wits quickly and continued with the introductions, hoping 
that Phenvel would not criticize the error in protocol.


 "Ederd of Eastwark, witch. Emner of Lamum, wizard. Hamder Hamder's son, 
witch."


 Each bowed in turn.


 "Lamum?" Phenvel asked.


 "A kingdom on the Eastern Highway, your Majesty," Sterren replied, before 
Emner could react, "just across the border from the Hegemony of the Three 
Ethshars." He was pleased that he had remembered that bit of trivia.


 "Sterren," Vond said, during the momentary lull while the king absorbed 
the introductions, "what the hell is going on?"


 Sterren ignored him long enough to ask, "Your Majesty, may I translate 
your words to the magicians? Most of them speak no Semmat."


 Phenvel waved a hand. "Go ahead," he said.


 Sterren turned to Vond and said quickly, "He's been making an ass of 
himself, complaining that we took too long to get back here and too long to 
break the siege and that the storm damaged the castle and he'll have to have 
his people clean up the mess it left. I don't know why he's in such a foul 
mood; he's been gratuitously insulting to all of us, particularly you and me. 
I think it might be because he's scared to death of you."


 He noticed that Annara and Emner were listening closely, and added, "He's 
probably scared of all of you. Magic is scarce around here."


 "I suppose that means no more pay and no big celebration," Emner said.


 "I'm afraid not," Sterren agreed.


 "Ah," Vond said, "I'm not really surprised. That's rather what it sounded 
like. Has he said what he expects us to do now?"


 "He expects you to take your pay and go home. I haven't yet mentioned 
that you may not want to."


 The warlock shrugged. "You don't need to tell him; he'll see for himself 
soon enough. Do you think you could arrange us some rooms for the night, 
though? It's getting late."


 "I was planning on it; dinner, too."


 "Good." The wizards nodded agreement, and Sterren turned back to the 
throne.


 "Your Majesty," he said, "I ask a favor of you. These six magicians have 
fought for you. Please, give them food and shelter here for a few days, to 
rest after their efforts. We ask no more than that."


 Relief flashed quickly across the king's face, then vanished. "Granted," 
he said. "We have dined, but I'm sure the kitchens can provide for you, and my 
chamberlain will find accommodations. You may go."


 Sterren bowed and started to back out. 



 "Wait a minute," the king said, holding up a hand, "Lady Kalira, didn't 
you take six soldiers with you?"


 "Yes, your Majesty," Lady Kalira replied.


 "I see only three now and I had asked to see your full party; what 
happened to the others? Wounded? Killed?"


 "Deserted, your Majesty, while we were in Ethshar."


 "Deserted?" King Phenvel said, aghast.


 Lady Kalira nodded. Sterren, hearing the king's tone, wished she had lied 
a little.


 "Warlord, I am not pleased at all. Three desertions!" Actually, he 
sounded as if he were quite pleased. Sterren guessed that he was happy to have 
something with which to rebuke his warlord, should the occasion arise.


 Sterren started to phrase a reply, then thought better of it. Pointing 
out that desertion spoke worse of Semma in general than of his performance as 
warlord would only make trouble. "Yes, your Majesty," he said. He looked up 
and met Phenvel's eyes. He was not ashamed of any part of what he had done. 
After all, he had won the war, or at least the battle, whatever Phenvel might 
say.


 The king met his gaze for a moment, then turned angrily away. "All right, 
then, you may go!" Sterren bowed, and he and the magicians went, bound for the 
kitchens and dinner. 


CHAPTER 25


 The long climb to his chamber, after the long and bewildering day, was 
exhausting, and Sterren fell into his bed and lay staring at the canopy for 
only a moment before falling asleep.


 During that moment he thought about the conversation in the kitchens, 
held as the magicians ate the best meal they had eaten in sixnights.


 The kitchens, and for that matter the corridors and halls, were full of 
peasants who had taken shelter in the castle during the siege, but the 
magicians had no difficulty in establishing their right to privacy. A wave of 
Vond's hand had sent the refugees scurrying, leaving the new arrivals alone.


 They had discussed the division of their pay. Everyone conceded that Vond 
deserved the lion's share, but the other magicians felt that they, too, had 
contributed something and that their demoralization of the enemy had made the 
warlock's triumph easier.


 Vond had said almost nothing during this, but had nodded calm acceptance 
when Sterren proposed that each of the other five be paid one full gold piece, 
and that Vond receive the other five and all the gems.


 Sterren had gone on to apologize for the poor reception the king had 
given them, and all six had been wonderfully understanding. Shenna had made a 
few bitter remarks, but had carefully not directed them at Sterren.


 Vond had said nothing, then.


 The conversation had shifted to whether or not they should all head 
directly back to Ethshar. The wizards and witches discussed various ideas 
without reaching any conclusions.


 Vond had stated simply, "I'm staying here," and said nothing more.


 The party had broken up not long after that, and servants had escorted 
the magicians to rooms in the south wing. Sterren had wearily ascended to his 
own room in the tower. His last sight of the warlock was not reassuring; Vond 
was clearly very much awake, unlike the rest of the party, and was looking 
about intently as he followed the footman down the crowded passage.


 Vond's entire manner worried Sterren, but he was too tired to really 
think about it. He closed his eyes and slept.


 It seemed just a moment later that a distant rumble awoke him. He 
blinked, and saw sunlight pouring into his chamber, and realized it was 
midmorning.


 The rumble sounded again, and he felt the bed shift slightly beneath him. 



He realized that bright, unobstructed sunlight was pouring in. The rumble was 


not thunder.


 He sat up, startled.


 The rumble sounded again, and despite the trembling of the bed he thought 
it came from the outside. He slid from the bed and crossed to the window.


 The view had changed since last he saw it. The castle roofs were 
spattered with broken tiles and shards of stone, wood, and tile. The outer 
houses of the village were gone. The rolling countryside was no longer a neat 
patchwork of farm and field, sprinkled with houses and barns, but a great 
expanse of mud and wreckage, strewn with all manner of debris.


 And directly before him, a half mile or so away, a black-robed figure was 
hanging in mid-air, arms spread wide, cloak flapping like wings, and below him 
the earth itself was splitting open. The sandy mud had washed back to either 
side, forming a deep pit easily a hundred yards across, and not just the mud, 
but the clay beneath, down to the hard bedrock.


 Then the rumble came again, and as Sterren watched an immense block of 
that bedrock rose up into the air toward the hovering warlock.


 The block was rectangular, and by comparing it to Vond, for the flying 
man could hardly be anybody else, Sterren judged it to be about ten feet high, 
fifteen feet long, and five feet thick, give or take a foot or three in any 
dimension.


 The block hovered for a moment, then slid sideways through the air, and 
dropped to the ground.


 The rumble sounded again, and again, and again, and another block lifted 
into the air, slid sideways, and landed on top of the first. The cutting and 
lifting went more quickly this time.


 A third and a fourth were added to the stack, and the cutting was just 
beginning on a fifth when someone pounded loudly on the door.


 "Lord Sterren?"


 Sterren started for the wardrobe, but then realized he had never 
undressed the night before. He still wore the same tattered and mud-stained 
garments he had worn through the storm and the audience with the king.


 This was not the time to worry about neatness, he decided. He changed 
direction and crossed to the door.


 "Yes?" he called.


 "My lord, the king wishes to see you immediately."


 Sterren was not surprised. He opened the door and found himself facing a 
very worried-looking messenger boy. "I'm here," he said. "Come on."


 A few minutes later he found himself facing a very worried Phenvel III in 
the royal family's private sitting room, the king's expression an odd contrast 
to the warm sunlight and bright, cheerful furnishings. The only other people 
present were the messenger boy and a worried valet. Another rumble ran through 
the castle as Sterren made his formal bow.


 "Warlord," the king demanded, "what the hell is your magician doing out 
there?"


 "I don't know, your Majesty." Sterren would have been far more expressive 
in Ethsharitic; in Semmat he had to stick to the simple statement of fact.


 "Is this something to do with the war?" the king demanded peevishly. "Do 
you expect another attack? I thought you said the enemy was beaten!"


 "I don't know, your Majesty," Sterren repeated.


 "Why not? He's your damn wizard!"


 "He's a warlock, your Majesty, not a wizard," Sterren explained wearily. 
"I hired him for a job. I don't own him. He does as he pleases."


 "What in hell is a warlock?"


 "He is, your Majesty, a kind of magician unknown here in Semma. Until 
now."


 "All right, he's a warlock," the king said. "What's he doing?"


 "I don't know, your Majesty," Sterren admitted. "Well, damn it, go find 
out!" The note of fear in King Phenvel's voice was obvious.


 Sterren bowed. "As your Majesty wishes," he said. He departed quickly, 



before the king could change his mind or impose stupid conditions. He was 
curious himself.


 He did not bother with any sort of preparations or cleaning up; he 
marched directly from the royal apartments out of the castle, ignoring the 
peasants huddled asleep on the corridor floor, pausing only to ask the man at 
the gate, "Did the black-robed magician come through here?"


 "No, my lord," came the reply. "He flew over the north wall."


 Sterren nodded and marched on.


 The outside air was cool, but wonderfully fresh and clean. The ruined 
market at the castle gate, however, was not clean at all.


 Traveling by air, he quickly concluded, was a major advantage. As he 
picked his way through the wreckage of the village he wondered how he and his 
party had ever gotten to the castle gate without so much as tripping over a 
broken beam.


 Then he realized that Vond had been with them, more or less leading the 
way. He had undoubtedly cleared a path. Sterren had been following an old 
road, but now he stopped and looked around.


 Sure enough, a path had been cut directly through the village, straighter 
than any street there had ever been, from the gate out toward the farm where 
he and Vond had climbed the rooftop to spy on the Ksinallionese trebuchet. He 
clambered across a smashed pottery shop to reach it, then followed it easily 
out into the open fields beyond.


 Once clear of the ruins of the village, he turned north and headed toward 
Vond, who was still hanging in the sky, stacking up immense blocks of stone.


 A bird sang cheerily somewhere nearby, and a gentle breeze rumpled 
Sterren's hair as he walked.


 He was perhaps halfway to the edge of Vond's pit when the warlock stopped 
cutting slabs and turned to a low rise nearby, not that there were any real 
hills, other than the one covered by Semma Castle; this little bump in the 
ground was one of the higher elevations in the area. It also had the 
distinction of somehow having avoided being churned into mud by armies and 
storms; the top of it still bore a large patch of brown grass.


 With a deeper, louder rumble than any that had come before, the top of 
the hillock lifted up and flattened out. The rumble continued for several 
minutes, and the ground shook wildly; Sterren stumbled and fell to all fours. 
The birdsong stopped abruptly.


 He watched and realized that Vond was filling in underneath the patch of 
grass, pulling soil and rock from all sides, and building himself a 
rectangular mound of earth with the grassy area on top.


 It took several minutes; then, abruptly, the rumbling and shaking 
stopped. The rectangular mound stood like a giant block.


 Vond eyed the mound critically and then made a few adjustments, hauling 
tons upon tons of rock and sand to prop this corner or that edge up a little 
farther.


 That done, he then leveled out the area around his raised rectangle until 
it was as smooth as a well-laid floor for at least fifty feet on all sides.


 Sterren watched this without moving.


 When the warlock was satisfied, the slabs of stone that he had quarried 
earlier began lifting from their piles and drifting over to the mound, 
settling in on all sides, walling it in with solid stone.


 Sterren stood and marched on as this proceeded. He got within shouting 
distance within another few minutes, but merely stopped and watched at first.


 The stone slabs were being set upright against the sides of the mound, 
then pressed in at the base until they stood exactly vertical. When one was in 
place, the next would fly over to join it. Sterren could not be sure, he was 
still a couple of hundred feet away, but it appeared that the seams between 
stones were somehow being welded shut, so that the rectangular mound was soon 
surrounded by what amounted to a single solid piece of rock.


 When that casing was done, more slabs were laid horizontally around the 
outside, their inner edges butted up flush against the base of the retaining 



wall.


 The operation was thunderously loud, of course; anything that slapped 
tons of stone about like building blocks had to be. During a lull, however, 
when the next slab was just beginning its flight toward the construction site, 
Sterren called, "Hai! Vond! Hello!"


 Vond glanced over, saw him, and waved.


 Sterren waved back.


 Vond held up a hand, signaling Sterren to wait. The slab continued along 
its path, fell in neatly next to its predecessor with a resounding crash, and 
then with much grinding and hissing was pushed tightly into place against the 
wall.


 That done, the warlock dropped from the sky until he hung a foot or so 
off the ground, five feet in front of Sterren.


 "Good morning," Sterren said.


 Vond nodded a polite greeting.


 "Pardon me for asking so bluntly," Sterren said, "but what are you 
doing?"


 "I'm building a palace," Vond replied.


 Sterren looked at the stone construction. "A palace?" he asked.


 Vond turned and followed his gaze.


 "Well," he admitted, "it doesn't look like much yet, but I've just 
started. I want it on a hilltop, but there aren't any around here, so I'm 
going to build my own. It seemed stupid to build a hill, and then dig half of 
it back out for the crypts, so I'm building the crypts now and then I'll put 
the hill up around them."


 "Oh," Sterren said, "Oh, I see; that piece in the middle, the rectangle 
with the grass on top, that'll be a courtyard, right?"


 "Yes, exactly!" Vond smiled broadly.


 "And you'll have cellars on all four sides, and then the palace on top of 
the cellars, and then you'll pile up the dirt and put a hill around the whole 
thing?"


 "Yes, exactly!" Vond repeated. "What do you think?"


 "Seems like a lot of work," Sterren said.


 "Oh, no," Vond protested, "it's fun! After all, I'm a warlock; the more 
magic I use, the better I feel. It's not like other magics that tire people 
out, or like ordinary work; it's invigorating! And I'm pretty much 
all-powerful now, you know."


 Sterren nodded. "Ah... I don't know if it's any of my business," he said 
after a moment's hesitation, "but I don't know how well this is going to go 
over with the local people around here. After all, you're tearing up several 
small farms here, and I don't suppose that the peasants who lived here are 
gone for good. Most of them probably just ran to the castle, or to some 
relative's house, and will be back as soon as they hear that the war's over; 
and they're likely to be pretty upset about this."


 Vond shrugged. "Too bad," he said. "What can they do about it?"


 Sterren blinked at this callousness and said, "You're still mortal, 
aren't you? Somebody might put a knife in your back."


 "Ha!" Vond said derisively. "Let them try! Don't worry about me, Sterren. 
It'll take more than any of these barbarians can do to kill me."


 "You're sure of that?" Sterren asked, genuinely curious.


 "Oh, yes," the warlock replied confidently.


 Sterren looked over the beginnings of Vond's palace and remarked, "I 
don't suppose old King Phenvel is going to like this much, either."


 "I don't expect him to," Vond retorted. "That's why I'm doing it, well, 
one reason, anyway."


 "What's another?"


 Vond grinned. "For one thing, it's fun! Haven't you always wanted to live 
in a palace and have everything at your beck and call? I have, and now I can! 
Warlockry's just about limitless, you know; nobody's ever found anything it 
can't do. It's just that we've all always been so scared to use it, because of 



the nightmares and the whispering and the Calling. Well, here, I don't have to 
worry about those! I have the power without the limits! Old King Phenvel can 
go bugger a goat, for all I care. I can do anything I want to here, and there 
isn't a damn thing he can do about it."


 "For your sake, I hope you're right," Sterren said. "I'd feel awful if 
you got killed because I brought you here and you misjudged the situation."


 "I haven't misjudged anything! It's that old fool of a king who 
misjudged, telling me to take my lousy jewelry and go home. You know why I 
want a hill, Sterren? So it'll be higher than his. I could have taken his 
castle away from him, and I might do it yet, if he goes on bothering me, but I 
thought it would be more fun to just outshine him completely, build a palace 
bigger and higher and more beautiful than his castle ever was. After all, his 
is something of a dump, really, sloppy and crowded and not much to look at."


 Sterren nodded. "I can understand being annoyed at him," he agreed. "But 
don't you think you're overreacting?"


 Vond considered this for a few seconds, then said, "No. I mean, if it 
weren't going to be fun, that would be different. It's not as if I have 
anything better to do, or anywhere else to go. I'm stuck here and I might as 
well make the best of it. Getting back at Phenvel for being such a fool is 
just a little extra, not the real reason."


 "I can see that," Sterren admitted. He hesitated, then asked, "What do 
you plan to do when the palace is finished?"


 "Live in it, of course."


 "I mean, do you have any long-range plans?"


 Vond shrugged. "I hadn't decided. I expect to collect a few concubines, 
spend some time decorating the palace, collecting treasures to go in it, that 
sort of thing."


 "I see," Sterren said. He hesitated, and then plunged on. "So, at least 
so far, you weren't planning to conquer Semma, or anything like that?" He 
hoped fervently that he hadn't just presented Vond with an appealing idea.


 No, he decided, he was certain that anyone in Vond's position would have 
thought of it already.


 Vond laughed. "Don't be silly," he said. "I've already conquered Semma. 
They just don't know it yet!" 


CHAPTER 26


 Sterren stayed and chatted with Vond for several more minutes, but he 
could see that the warlock was eager to get back to his palace-building and he 
knew that the king would be growing ever more impatient.


 He was not looking forward to facing King Phenvel, but he knew he would 
have to, sooner or later, and he decided he might as well get it over with. He 
told Vond farewell and started back toward the castle.


 He had gone scarcely a dozen steps when he paused and considered.


 Did he really have to go back to the castle at all? Couldn't he just turn 
and head overland to Akalla, back home to Ethshar? After all, if Vond had 
conquered Semma, then presumably he was no longer the hereditary warlord, and 
King Phenvel no longer had any authority over him, or anybody else, for that 
matter.


 It occurred to him for the very first time that royal power and authority 
were simply a matter of belief, of common consent to an arrangement. There was 
nothing inherent in Phenvel of Semma that gave him the power of life and death 
over his subjects; that power existed only because the people of Semma 
believed it existed. His castle guards and his courtiers obeyed him because 
they believed he was the rightful ruler of the land, and others obeyed because 
those guards and courtiers enforced his wishes.


 If the guards ever decided that Phenvel was just a crazy old man, then he 
would be just a crazy old man.


 Vond's power, on the other hand, was quite real. He might not have any 



hereditary title or special cachet of authority, but he could easily make 
anyone obey him by using his warlockry. He needed no guards or courtiers. When 
he said that he had already conquered Semma, Sterren could accept that, who 
could defy him?


 And wasn't that the true definition of power? Vond could do anything he 
pleased, and no one could prevent it. Phenvel could do what he pleased only so 
long as people believed in his authority as king.


 Vond's power seemed much more substantial.


 This, Sterren guessed, would soon make the warlock's conquest an accepted 
fact. Phenvel had offended Vond, and now Vond was making plain just who really 
held power in Semma. Surely, Phenvel's power would collapse quickly once it 
became obvious that he could do nothing against Vond. His authority would be 
destroyed, and the whole elaborate structure of hereditary nobility would 
undoubtedly collapse with it.


 Sterren would no longer be warlord.


 He could just turn, now, and go home.


 But on the other hand, it was a long trip, and he was in no particular 
hurry. The situation in Semma had gotten very interesting, and he was curious 
about how it would turn out.


 He was interested, also, in what might befall some of the people in the 
area.


 He walked on, toward the castle.


 The gatekeeper let him in without discussion, and he headed directly for 
the royal apartments.


 He was admitted immediately. Queen Ashassa and the two younger princesses 
had joined the king; Princess Lura grinned at him, and even Princess Shirrin 
managed a tentative smile.


 The instant Sterren had completed his formal bow King Phenvel demanded, 
"Well? What's he doing out there?"


 "He says he's making a castle, your Majesty," Sterren replied. He did not 
know the Semmat for "palace," and was unsure what other verb might be most 
suitable for "building."


 "Making a castle?" Queen Ashassa asked, puzzled. "Yes, your Majesty," 
Sterren said.


 "What do you mean, making a castle?" the king demanded.


 "I mean, your Majesty, that he is taking stones, very large stones, and 
putting them together into a... a castle. I don't know the right words to make 
it clearer."


 "A real castle, or just an image of some kind, a model?"


 "A real castle, your Majesty. He says he will live in it."


 "That's ridiculous. This is Semma Castle, and I am king! No one else may 
build a castle in my realm!" Sterren did not waste time answering that. "Go 
tell him to stop!" the king demanded.


 Sterren hesitated. "I can tell him," he said. "But he won't stop."


 "Well, make him stop! This is all your fault, after all; you're the one 
who brought all these infernal magicians here! We've never needed a lot of 
fancy magicians in Semma, and we got along just fine until you brought this 
whatever-it-is who's not a wizard here!"


 "Your Majesty, your army was... the enemy had at least three men to each 
one of yours. Magic was..."


 "Oh, stop arguing! You go tell him to stop what he's doing and put 
everything back the way it was!"


 "Your Majesty--"


 "Go! Do it!"


 Sterren went.


 He nodded politely to the man at the gate and followed the clear path 
through the ruined village once again.


 Vond saw him coming.


 "Oh, hello," he said, "I didn't expect you back so soon."


 Sterren shrugged as he looked over the half-built crypts. "The king sent 



me," he said. He strolled out onto one of the stone slabs.


 "Oh?" Vond said.


 "Yes. He wants you to stop what you're doing and put everything back the 
way it was."


 "I daresay he does."


 "He ordered me to come tell you to stop."


 Vond nodded. "Go ahead, then."


 "In the name of Phenvel, King of Semma, stop building your palace and put 
everything back the way it was!"


 "No. You can go back and give him that answer. Was there anything else?"


 "Not from him. I was wondering, though, don't you think it might get 
rather lonely, out here in this palace?" He waved at the cellars, which now 
covered a wide area around the "courtyard" and had a partially completed outer 
wall around most of two sides.


 Vond looked down at his elaborate stone box.


 "Maybe at first," he admitted. "A little. But I expect other warlocks 
will come along, once word gets out about the new source of power here."


 "You expect word to get out?"


 Vond looked momentarily disconcerted for the first time since he drove 
off the invading armies.


 "Of course," he said, "but if it doesn't, I'll send messengers back to 
Ethshar. You know, I hadn't thought about that, we're really way out here in 
the middle of nowhere, aren't we?"


 Sterren nodded. "If you go up about a hundred feet and look over that 
way," he said, pointing south, "you ought to be able to see the edge of the 
World."


 Vond sighed. "I've always lived in Ethshar, back in the middle of things, 
where you can't keep a secret if you try. I hadn't thought about how the news 
would spread; I just took it for granted."


 "I don't think you can, here."


 "Well, I'll send messengers. I expect people will notice when I start 
building an empire, in any case."


 "Oh," Sterren asked, "are you planning to build an empire?"


 "Oh, I think so," Vond said. "Isn't it sort of traditional, for 
conquerors? Besides, Semma is so tiny! If I want to put together a decent 
harem I need more to choose from, for one thing!"


 "What did you have in mind?" Sterren asked cautiously.


 "Well, to start," Vond said, "I was planning to conquer Ophkar and 
Ksinallion; that should be easy enough, since I've already routed their 
armies. After that, I thought I'd see how far I could go before I start to 
hear that whisper out of Aldagmor again. I'm not stupid, Sterren; I won't be 
sailing off to Ethshar where the nightmares will get me. Even so, I ought to 
be able to put together half a dozen of these silly little kingdoms, don't you 
think?"


 Sterren had to concede that the warlock probably could, indeed, rule 
everything in the area. After all, he had lost contact with Aldagmor and 
started getting his headaches back in Akalla, which meant that Akalla, Skaia, 
Ophkar, and Semma would almost certainly be well within his grasp, and 
probably Ksinallion and several other kingdoms as well.


 Not that any of those kingdoms amounted to much of anything.


 "And you don't think you'll get lonely, or bored?" he asked.


 "Why should I?" Vond snapped. "I can have as many people around as I 
want, just by ordering it! And beautiful women, there must be some, even here. 
Men in power always attract beautiful women."


 "But they'll all be scared of you. You won't have anyone you can talk to 
just casually, as an equal, or even near-equal. And what will you do with this 
empire?"


 "I'll just sit back and enjoy it, or course! I'll live the good life. And 
other warlocks will hear about it and will come to live here; I'll have my own 
court, and all the nobles will be warlocks, and we'll rule because we deserve 



to, not because we were born lucky."


 "What if one of these other warlocks gets ambitious and decides to take 
over, though?"


 Vond shook his head. "It can't happen; I thought of that. But I got here 
first, so I'll always be the most powerful, as long as I keep using magic. 
Look I was almost as powerful as a warlock could ever get, back in Ethshar. I 
had the nightmares pretty badly. If I'd done one or two more big magics, I'd 
have heard the Calling and gone north. So nobody is going to arrive here any 
more powerful than I was when I got here. And nobody will have any special way 
to overtake me, because warlockry doesn't work that way. You get more power by 
using power, and you can only use it so fast. As long as I keep working magic, 
I'll always be more powerful than anyone who comes after me. You see?"


 Sterren did see and said so.


 Vond nodded. "So," he said, "My empire will be a haven for warlocks, when 
they start worrying about the Calling, they'll pack up and come here, where 
they can safely use all the magic they want."


 Sterren could see how this might, in fact, happen. He could see how it 
would be very pleasant indeed for warlocks.


 He could also see how it might be very unpleasant for everybody else. 
Magicians elsewhere always kept each other in check, or were kept in check by 
natural limits on their magic. Witches and seers and sorcerers and a variety 
of other magicians generally had only very limited abilities. Demonology was 
risky, and ever more risky as it got more powerful, since demons couldn't be 
trusted. Theurgy was limited by the gods' unwillingness to interfere with the 
World beyond a certain level. Wizardry, well, Sterren didn't really know what 
kept wizards from getting out of hand, unless it was rivalry with other 
wizards, or something about the seemingly chaotic way wizardry worked, or 
maybe just the difficulty of acquiring the bizarre ingredients they needed for 
their spells.


 Warlockry had always been kept in check by the Calling. Now Vond had 
found a way around that, or at least he thought he had.


 Sterren suspected that Vond was being overly optimistic about that, but 
in light of his announced plans to build an empire, mentioning this seemed to 
be a mistake.


 He wondered what the other sorts of magicians might think about all this. 
Might the rumored-to-exist Wizards' Guild resent the presumption of a warlock 
establishing an empire?


 They very well might, Sterren thought, and he almost said as much to 
Vond, but then he caught himself.


 Why should he do Vond any favors? The man was about to enslave an entire 
section of the Small Kingdoms to avenge a slight from a foolish old man, and 
for the fun of it. It was true that he and Sterren had been comrades in arms, 
as it were, but that hardly took precedence over a common decency.


 But on the other hand, would Vond be any worse than Phenvel? He might 
turn out to be a perfectly adequate ruler.


 Sterren had no way of knowing. He decided to wait and see. Meanwhile, he 
would keep any possible threats to Vond's usurped authority to himself, in 
case he needed them later. That included both the Wizards' Guild and what 
Sterren thought was a basic flaw in Vond's logic about his safety from the 
Calling. For one thing, he could not be completely certain that either threat 
really existed.


 "Hai, Sterren!" Vond called. "Did you fall asleep or something?"


 Sterren realized that he had been standing motionless, absorbed in 
thought, for several seconds. "No," he called. "Just thinking."


 "About what?"


 "Oh," he said evasively, "what an empire of warlocks would be like."


 "Well," Vond replied, "I hope you'll stay around and find out! I owe you 
a favor, Sterren, for bringing me here. You treated me well and fairly, and it 
was your suggestion that helped me tap into the new source. Oh, I think I 
might have latched onto it eventually by myself, but you made it easier. You 



know, you've got a tiny bit of warlockry yourself; you could be one of the 


rulers of the empire!"


 Sterren shook his head. "I don't have any warlockry. Not here, anyway."


 "It's there, Sterren, it's just attuned to the Aldagmor Source, not the 
new one. I can fix that. I can let you hear the new one, at least as well as 
you ever heard the Aldagmor one."


 "I doubt that. I've got no aptitude for it."


 "Don't be silly; you lived off it for years, didn't you?"


 "I never affected anything but dice and I didn't even know I was doing 
that! Some magic!"


 "But it should be different here; after all, I think we're only ten 
leagues from the source itself."


 That caught Sterren's interest. "Ten leagues?"


 "I think so; I can feel it, you know, and sort of measure... there aren't 
words for it in Ethsharitic. We warlocks haven't worked them out yet. But yes, 
I'm pretty certain the source is ten leagues that way." He pointed to the 
northwest; Sterren noted the exact direction as carefully as he could, for 
future reference.


 "Ten leagues or a hundred," he said, "I don't think I'll ever be much of 
a warlock."


 "Don't argue with me!" Vond snapped. He gestured at Sterren, and Sterren 
blinked.


 Something had happened; he could feel it in the back of his head.


 "There!" Vond said, "I've adjusted your brain a little; now you can hear 
the new source!"


 "I don't hear anything," Sterren said.


 "I don't mean hear, with your ears! I mean you're a warlock. You can draw 
power from it. Here, catch this without touching it!"


 Vond pulled a clear, shiny object object from the air in front of him and 
tossed it at Sterren.


 Sterren threw up his hands to ward it off, and at the same time, in the 
back of his mind, thought to himself that maybe he was a warlock, maybe he 
could catch it, control it as if it were the dice he had guided back in 
Ethshar. He tried to think of it that way, to imagine what it would feel like 
to move something without touching it.


 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. Go tell those people in that castle that I'm in charge 
now and when finish the palace I'll tell them what I want from them."


 Sterren started to say something and thought better of it. 


CHAPTER 27


 "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, 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, but I get confused dealing with two different languages. 
Could you people wait a while?" 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, 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 nonwizards. 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 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 will 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 antisocial. 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 28


 "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 and 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 not had any 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, getting steadily worse with each attempt as the target took even 



stronger countermeasures.


 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, 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. 


CHAPTER 29


 The peasants were being evicted from the castle, and Sterren stood atop 
the wall and watched as they went unwillingly out the gate into the wreckage 
that had been their village.


 These were the people who had run for the shelter of the castle walls 
when the banners of the invaders first appeared on the horizon; the gates had 
been shut and barred well before the enemy armies came within bowshot, leaving 
the stragglers to flee in all directions. The people who had reached the 
castle were not the bravest, and were in no hurry to venture back out into the 
World.


 King Phenvel, however, had put up with enough of the crowding and 
inconvenience and at dinner the previous night had announced that all peasants 
were to be outside the gates before noon. He had ordered Sterren and Lord 
Algarven, the royal steward, to see to it.


 Although he did not really think that Phenvel's authority still amounted 
to much, Sterren had shrugged and obeyed. Vond had only begun building his 
palace the previous morning, and despite Sterren's warnings, the new situation 
had not yet sunk in. Phenvel still thought of himself as ruler of Semma, and 
the other Semmans still had the habit of obeying him. The castle was still 
his.


 So now Sterren stood on the ramparts, watching his soldiers herd the 
peasants out the gate.


 Each one, whether man, woman, or child, did the same thing upon passing 
the gate. Each one looked north, at the warlock's building site.


 Vond's project was progressing well. He had completed his crypts, or at 
least the shell, in that first day, and had built his hill up around them 
overnight. Now he was erecting white marble walls on that base. The ground 
shook each time a new section dropped into place, and the roar of stone 
grinding against stone was almost constant.


 Vond's first quarry, now closed, had yielded granite, so the marble, 
gleaming in the morning sun, was a surprise, and combined with the horrendous 
racket it was very hard to ignore.


 The entertainment, for Sterren, was not that each face turned toward the 
palace, but in seeing what each one did next.


 Some stopped and stood staring, open-mouthed, until proddings from behind 
forced them to move on. Others took a single glance and marched on, stolidly 
accepting this miraculous construction as just another event that was none of 
their business. A few looked, then looked away, clearly frightened, as if just 
looking at the palace might somehow get them in trouble. Some of the children 
laughed and applauded as huge stones fell into position, or pointed 
wonderingly at the tiny black-robed figure hanging unsupported above the high 
white walls.


 The next thing that each peasant did, after looking at Vond's latest 
handiwork, was to look at the ruined village, and the reactions to that were 
far more consistent. Sterren could see despair plainly in the expressions and 
slumped shoulders of virtually all the evictees.


 He had already decided, by the time the first peasant passed the 
threshold into the mud-soaked, debris-strewn village market, that he would 
order his soldiers to help with the clean-up and rebuilding. They were 
supposed to be men of war, and it was the war that had made this mess, so 
cleaning it up fell within their duties as Sterren saw them.


 The last peasant was stepping unwillingly out into the mud when the roar 
from the north stopped.


 It took a moment for the echoes to die away and silence to descend, and 
by then everyone had noticed the change, and every face had turned toward the 
new palace. 



 The little black shape no longer flew above the marble walls; instead, it 
was soaring gracefully toward them. Sterren heard a few whispers from the 
crowd below, but then silence fell again as they all stared at the approaching 
warlock.


 Sterren, too, stared, wondering why Vond had stopped work at this 
particular moment. He hadn't finished the wall he was working on. If he was 
coming to force King Phenvel to surrender, it struck Sterren as rather 
peculiar timing.


 Then he realized that from his position high above the palace, Vond would 
have seen the people emerging from the castle. He might even have seen 
Sterren, on the battlements above, and recognized him.


 And Sterren, after all, was warlord of Semma. The warlock might think 
that an attack was being organized, or a formal surrender, or some other 
operation involving him.


 "Hai!" he called, waving an arm. "Vond! Over here!" He did not want the 
warlock to believe for even a moment that anything suspicious was going on. He 
could probably kill every peasant there, and Sterren, too, as easily as 
Sterren would stamp on an ant.


 Vond waved and a moment later he settled down onto the wall beside 
Sterren. The peasants below stared up at the two of them. "Hello, Sterren," he 
said, "What's happening? I saw the crowd from over there." He waved toward his 
palace, and Sterren saw a proud smile flash across his face. "Coming along 
nicely, isn't it?"


 "Yes, it is," Sterren agreed. Privately, he thought that the place looked 
somewhat forbidding; Vond had not bothered with much architectural detailing, 
but had used huge blank slabs of stone for most of his construction. He had 
not yet cut windows in them, either. The result, despite the white marble, 
looked more like a fortress than a palace.


 Vond himself looked as human and ordinary as ever, just a smiling 
middle-aged man in black robes, and it was a bit hard to comprehend that he 
had singlehandedly erected most of that fortress in a day and a half.


 "What's this?" the warlock asked, waving at the market square. It was 
obvious to anyone that the ragged crowd milling below was no army readying for 
an attack.


 "The king's evicting them," Sterren explained. "They took shelter in the 
castle during the siege and, now that the siege is over, they're leaving."


 "Where are they going?" Vond asked, interested.


 "Here," Sterren said, waving. "They're mostly from the village here. 
They'll have to clean it up and rebuild, of course; I'll be sending my men out 
to help. I suppose some of them come from the farms, too." He couldn't resist 
adding, "I don't know if any of them are from the farms you've torn up for 
your palace."


 Vond glanced at him, startled, and then looked back down at the peasants.


 "Oh," he said, "but this can't be all the people from all those farms and 
the entire village, too! What happened to the rest? Did the invaders kill 
them?"


 Sterren shrugged. "Some of them, probably, but a lot must have fled every 
which way. You remember meeting some of those. These are just the ones who got 
to the castle before the gate was closed; nobody's gone out to bring in the 
others yet."


 Vond stared down at the people for a moment longer, and a good many of 
them stared back at him.


 "Hai," he called suddenly, "I am the Great Vond, the new lord of Semma! 
You see my palace over there!"


 Sterren started to protest, to grab the warlock's sleeve, and then 
thought better of it. After all, the warlock was speaking Ethsharitic, which 
none of the peasants understood, a fact that Vond had clearly forgotten.


 "I am going to want servants. Any of you who would be interested in 
working for me, you need only walk over to my palace and wait there! You need 
not decide immediately; come when you choose, and I will find places for you!" 



 A mutter of puzzlement ran through the crowd. Nobody moved.


 "I will show you, now, why I am the true ruler of Semma, and not the oaf 
who calls himself your king!"


 Vond raised his arms, and the mud of the marketplace rippled. Stones and 
broken beams were thrown up, to hang in mid-air for an instant, and then fling 
themselves away, out of the village and into the distance. The mud itself 
separated into water and soil, and the water, too, was flung away.


 In a moment, the marketplace was clean and dry, the dirt hard-packed 
beneath the peasants' bare feet, pressed down almost into pavement by Vond's 
warlockry.


 Sterren, watching in fascination, thought that even the dirt from the 
peasants' clothes and faces had gone into that smooth surface, leaving the 
crowd noticeably cleaner.


 With a rush of wind, debris rolled up from one blocked street into a ball 
that hung in the air and then sailed away.


 Then another street was cleared, and another, in similar fashion.


 In twenty minutes, Vond had cleared out all the wreckage, leaving 
untouched the houses that still stood, and removing all trace of those that 
had been knocked down.


 Unfortunately, that left only half a village, and most of that half was 
missing windows, doors, roofs, or even chunks of wall.


 Vond eyed the results critically, then shrugged. "It's a start," he said. 
He raised a hand again.


 Something, perhaps a motion in the corner of his eye, made Sterren turn 
and look at the castle. Faces were crowded in every window, watching this 
spectacle.


 He turned back toward the village.


 The wreckage that had been sent off over the rooftops was coming back 
now, as one huge, irregular mass that hung in the air like a cloud. It was 
shifting its shape like a cloud, too, though far faster than any natural 
formation. Wood, stone, and thatch were separating out into distinct portions; 
everything else was being dropped into a refuse heap in a handy field.


 It occurred to Sterren for the first time that there were no natural 
clouds anywhere in sight, which, in light of what he had been told, hardly 
seemed normal for winter in Semma. He wondered if the warlock was controlling 
the weather, keeping the sky clear to make his working environment more 
pleasant.


 When the different materials were sorted, Vond chose a house and studied 
it critically.


 The thatch roof and most of the shutters were gone, but it was otherwise 
intact. Vond waved, and masses of thatch came flying down from the cloud and 
piled themselves into place.


 "What about the shutters?" Sterren asked.


 Vond glanced at him, then back at the house. "To Hell with the shutters," 
he said, "I can't do everything! How am I supposed to find the right ones out 
of all that?"


 Sterren shrugged. "Just asking," he said.


 The repair work continued, as Sterren and the peasants watched.


 As the day dragged on, most of the peasants settled to the ground, 
sitting or lying on the hard earth and chatting amongst themselves. A few 
leaned up against the castle walls. None dared venture out of the market.


 The faces in the castle windows changed, as people tired of watching and 
were replaced by others. Still, Vond had a steady audience for his 
performance. Sterren thought he saw Princess Shirrin there almost the entire 
time.


 Some time after noon Sterren spotted one of his soldiers and ordered that 
food and drink be brought out for the peasants and himself. He asked Vond if 
he cared for anything.


 The warlock declined the offer and continued with his work.


 Sterren realized he hadn't seen Vond eat anything in days, and that there 



was surely no food in his unfinished palace. Was he living on magic alone?


 Perhaps he was. Sterren thought better of inquiring and didn't worry 
about it. He watched as his soldiers distributed bread, water, cheese, and 
dried fruit to the peasants, then ate his own meal, which was similar save 
that he drank wine.


 The restoration of the village took a long time; in fact, Vond still had 
three houses unfinished when the sun sank out of sight and the sky began to 
darken.


 Vond took care of that easily enough by summoning an orange glow in the 
sky that gave him enough light to work by.


 When he had completed repairs to every house that had still stood, he 
lowered his arms and said, "There!"


 Sterren nodded. "Very impressive," he said.


 Vond leaned over a merlon and called, "You can go home, now! If your 
house is gone, stay with a neighbor, and I'll take care of you later!"


 The crowd below stirred; some of the peasants, particularly the children, 
had gone to sleep and were awakened. Nobody left, however. Nobody made any 
move to leave the market. They just stared up at the warlock and the warlord.


 "Why are you just sitting there?" Vond shouted.


 Sterren reached out and put a hand on his arm. "They don't understand 
Ethsharitic," he said.


 Vond whirled and stared at Sterren for a moment. Then he turned back to 
the market below, realization dawning.


 "Oh," he said. "Oh, damn!"


 "You might want to learn Semmat," Sterren suggested mildly.


 "I'd rather they learned Ethsharitic," Vond snapped. "And if I'm going to 
build an empire, I don't want to have to learn half a dozen different tongues, 
damn it!"


 Sterren shrugged. "Well, in time I'm sure you can make Ethsharitic the 
common language for your court, but right now, none of these people knows a 
word of it."


 "How the hell did all these stupid little languages happen, anyway? This 
was all part of Old Ethshar once, you know!"


 "I have no idea," Sterren said. "But they did. Maybe it was demons, or a 
trick by the ruling class to keep people where they belonged."


 Vond glared down at the village, lit a weird shade of orange by his 
unnatural illumination. "I suppose I'll need interpreters," he said.


 "At least for now," Sterren agreed.


 For a moment, nobody spoke. Then Vond said, "You tell them, Sterren. Tell 
them they can go home. Tell them that if any of them want to work as my 
servants, they should come to my palace in the morning. I'm going home." He 
rose into the air.


 Sterren waved a farewell as the warlock began drifting away, then leaned 
over the ramparts and called, "The Great Vond has finished his work! Go home 
now! The Great Vond wants servants! If you want to be a servant to the Great 
Vond, go to his castle..." He remembered the word for "palace" from earlier 
conversation and rephrased that. "Go to his palace in the morning! If your 
house is not fixed, stay with a friend!"


 The peasants stared up at him, and he heard someone say, "Who in the 
World is that?" He didn't know if the man meant him or Vond; after all, since 
he had gone off to Ethshar before the invasion, he had not been seen much in 
his role as warlord.


 Then, as his message sank in, the people began scattering to their 
rebuilt homes and shops.


 The orange glow was fading rapidly as Vond moved off toward his fortress, 
but both moons were in the sky to allay the darkness. Sterren took one final 
look at the palace, its marble walls gleaming an eerie yellow against the 
black sky and plain in the strange mixed light, and then climbed back down 
from the wall and went inside.


 So far, he could hardly accuse Vond of tyranny. 



 Even so, he knew that the empire was doomed from the start. 


CHAPTER 30


 Nine days after the rout the Ksinallionese army marched back into Semma.


 The exterior of Vond's palace was almost complete; only the top of the 
huge northwestern tower remained open to the sky, although none of the roofs 
had yet been tiled.


 The warlock scarcely needed to worry about leaky roofs, of course, since 
he could keep the rain away easily enough, as he in fact had so far. Besides, 
Sterren thought, a leaky roof wouldn't do any harm, since there was nothing 
inside the palace as yet but bare stone walls and floors. He and Ederd had 
spent much of the previous day strolling through its empty halls and chambers, 
admiring the vast expanses of bare marble, as Vond explained what would 
eventually go where.


 The warlock's half-dozen servants had watched silently from their 
impromptu camp in what would in time be the kitchens. They had little to do, 
as yet, beyond seeing to their own most basic needs. Nothing needed cleaning 
yet, and Vond could not be bothered to eat real meals, but simply conjured up 
food from somewhere whenever he got hungry. He had no wardrobe to worry about; 
he still wore the same black warlock's robe.


 The stairways were not yet built, so the only way into the upper floors 
was by levitation. Some rooms had no windows as yet.


 Even so, it was a very impressive job for a mere eight days' work. All 
the more so, because Vond had spent a day or so cleaning and rebuilding the 
village around the old castle.


 Looking out from his tower room in the old castle, and seeing the army on 
the horizon beyond the new palace, Sterren wondered what they thought of this 
great brooding edifice that had not been there when they left, just nine days 
before.


 For that matter, he wondered what the people of Semma thought of it.


 He sighed. He should, he thought, have realized that the lords of 
Ksinallion and Ophkar would not give up so easily as all that. A single battle 
was not a war.


 Well, it wasn't his problem, now that Vond had conquered Semma.


 He watched as Vond appeared, rising out of the unfinished tower, his 
cloak spreading like wings on either side. He waited for the Ksinallionese 
army to be swept away.


 It wasn't. Instead, Vond dropped to the ground facing it, out of sight 
behind the palace.


 Puzzled, Sterren waited a moment for him to reappear, then turned and 
headed for the stairs. He wanted to see what was happening.


 By the time he had saddled a horse and ridden out the gate and past the 
palace, it was all over. He found Vond standing atop a newly erected stone 
dais in the middle of a field, and the entire Ksinallionese army spread out 
before him, bowing in obeisance.


 Three fresh corpses lay at the foot of the dais, sprawled awkwardly, 
swords fallen from their hands. Another corpse lay in the dirt amid the bowing 
Ksinallionese, this one burned black.


 "Hello, Sterren," Vond said as he rode up.


 "What happened?" Sterren asked.


 "Well, these men marched up, as you see, and I stopped them. I didn't 
hurt them, just stopped them. Most of them couldn't understand a word I said, 
but a few spoke Ethsharitic, and one of them said they wanted to parley. I 
think my citadel had impressed them. Anyway, that one there," he said, 
pointing to one of the bodies that wore an officer's uniform, "claimed to be 
the Ksinallionese warlord. That fellow over there," he went on, indicating a 
bowing survivor, "served as his interpreter. They said that they had no 
quarrel with me -- they called me a wizard, but I let that slide, since they 



didn't know any better. Anyway, they said they were at war with Semma, not 


with me."


 Sterren nodded.


 "Well, I explained that I had conquered Semma and intended to conquer 
Ksinallion, too, but that I hadn't gotten around to it yet; and I offered them 
a chance to surrender. The warlord got all red in the face and swore he'd 
never surrender to a damned wizard, or something like that, and I told him 
that in that case, he might as well try and kill me, and we'd see what 
happened. So he tried, and I let him take a few stabs at me with his sword, 
and then I exploded his heart."


 Sterren found the calm way in which Vond described this murder to be 
extremely upsetting, but he hid that reaction and asked, "What about the 
others?"


 "Well, after that, there was a lot of discussion in whatever language 
these people use amongst themselves -- Ksinallionese, I suppose it is. Then 
this one," he said, indicating another corpse, "tried to distract me, while 
that one," pointing to the final unburned body, "came up behind me and tried 
to stab me. I stopped both their hearts. And while I was doing that, that one 
over there," he pointed to the burned remains, "fired an arrow at me. He was 
too far away to be sure of getting his heart properly the first try, so I 
fried him, instead. After that, I told the interpreter that I would now accept 
the surrender of anyone who cared to surrender and bow to me. And then you 
rode up, and here we are." He waved a hand. "I think a few at the back ran, 
instead, but I won't worry about it." He looked over the hundreds of groveling 
figures. "I think I've just acquired a palace guard," he said, smiling.


 "What are you going to do about Ksinallion, then?" Sterren asked.


 "Oh, I guess I'll fly there this afternoon, stage a few demonstrations, 
and let them surrender. I wasn't planning to start empire-building until I had 
my citadel finished, but I can't just leave them there after this."


 Sterren nodded.


 That afternoon, Corinal II, King of Ksinallion, capitulated. He abdicated 
in favor of the Great Vond, and the Kingdom of Ksinallion became the second 
province of the Empire of Vond.


 At least, Vond considered it the second. Sterren, who had ridden along to 
watch, pointed out that Phenvel had not actually surrendered yet.


 Vond shrugged that off. "I'll worry about that after I finish my palace."


 Two days later Vond intercepted a party of Ophkarite soldiers spying on 
his palace and took a break from construction to force another capitulation. 
He had to kill King Neran IV before Neran's heir, the newly elevated King 
Elken III, would surrender and add Ophkar to the Empire of Vond.


 Vond got home in time to finish tiling the roof. That night, during 
dinner at the high table in Semma Castle, Phenvel finally confronted Sterren 
directly and demanded, "Whose side are you on, the warlock's or mine?"


 "I am on the side of what's best for Semma, your Majesty," Sterren 
replied quietly, putting down his fork.


 "What does that mean?"


 "Your Majesty, I mean what I said."


 What he actually meant was that he was in favor of whatever caused the 
least trouble and did the least damage to lives and property. He was not 
particularly concerned with any other criteria in choosing "best."


 "And who do you see as best for Semma, me or the warlock?" Phenvel 
demanded.


 "At the moment, your Majesty," Sterren said, "I see only that to argue 
with the warlock is to die."


 "To defy me can get you killed, too, warlord!" Sterren tensed at this 
threat, but forced his voice to remain calm. "Your Majesty," he said, "I don't 
think you want to do that. The warlock thinks me his friend and would not like 
it if you killed me." He hesitated, considering whether he dared say anything, 
and if so how much, then added, "Besides, I can promise you that he will not 
rule for long." 



 "Oh?" Phenvel eyed Sterren intently. "Why not?"


 "I'm sorry, your Majesty, but I can't tell you that." He gestured at the 
crowded tables. "If someone here were to hear and word get back to Vond, I 
fear what would happen." In a moment of inspiration, he suggested, "Perhaps 
you could ask the wizard Annara."


 Phenvel looked without thinking, then realized that Annara, as a mere 
commoner, was not at the high table; as a rule, she and Ederd ate their meals 
in the kitchen with the servants.


 He snorted and turned back to his fried potatoes. Sterren was able to 
finish his meal in peace and then slip out of the castle unnoticed.


 He strolled through the village, with its odd empty spaces where houses 
had been destroyed, and down the hill, where he paused and looked at Vond's 
palace.


 The greater moon was high in the sky, the lesser low in the east, and the 
white marble seemed to almost glow in the moonlight. The five towers, one at 
each corner, and a much larger one over the gate in the center of the 
northwestern wall, stood out starkly against the starry sky. Lights shone from 
a few windows, but he knew that most of the structure was still empty.


 He watched it unhappily.


 Vond was accomplishing some impressive feats. The palace was beautiful, 
at least on the outside, although a bit ominous in its appearance, with its 
high, blank walls. The village at Semma Castle was cleaner and sounder than 
ever before, at least, what there was of it. Ophkar, Ksinallion, and Semma 
were united for the first time in three hundred years, and at the cost of only 
seven lives in all, counting from the day after Vond's sudden acquisition of 
access to the Lumeth power source.


 But it all made Sterren very uneasy. He knew that it could not possibly 
last, and even while it did last, he did not trust Vond to remain as harmless 
as he had been so far.


 He had more or less decided on a course of action already, but he was not 
happy with it. He liked Vond; the warlock was like a child with a new toy, or 
really, an entire new playroom. Still, Sterren intended to do all he could to 
remove Vond from power in Semma, not on behalf of any foolish king, but 
because Vond was clearly very dangerous indeed.


 What would happen if the Wizards' Guild did decide to remove Vond? A 
magical battle on the scale Vond operated on might lay waste to the entire 
area.


 What if other warlocks did come along and take part in ruling the empire? 
No matter how benevolent Vond might be, a question that was still in doubt, 
sooner or later, a warlock would come along who was not.


 And Vond would not always be there to stop such a warlock.


 Better, Sterren thought, if Vond were to go quickly, before any other 
warlocks arrived.


 He sighed and decided to go sleep at the Citadel, as Vond's palace was 
now known, rather than Semma Castle. The warlock had said he was always 
welcome there, though he had not yet been given a room specifically for his 
own use or moved in any of his belongings. Phenvel, on the other hand, was no 
longer making Sterren feel welcome at all.


 He said nothing to the warlock of what had happened.


 It was only coincidence that the next day Vond came to Semma Castle, 
smashed every door that was closed against him to splinters, and demanded 
Phenvel's formal surrender of authority.


 Phenvel, Third of that Name, King of Semma, agreed immediately, and the 
Kingdom of Semma ceased to exist, becoming instead the Capital Province of the 
Empire of Vond. 


CHAPTER 31


 By the first of Greengrowth in the year 5221 Vond's palace was complete, 



furnished inside and out. The streets of his capital were laid out and paved. 
His new courtiers, recruited from his three provinces, could all hold a simple 
conversation in Ethsharitic and were teaching the tongue to others.


 Sterren of Semma, once Sterren of Ethshar, was now Lord Chancellor of the 
Empire of Vond.


 His reaction to Vond's announcement of this honor had been, "What's a 
chancellor?"


 Vond had shrugged. "Whatever you like. I don't need a warlord, since I do 
my own fighting, and that Ophkarite warlord is in charge of my guards, but I 
wanted to keep you around the palace, so you needed a title. That was the 
vaguest high title I could think of. Make of it what you will."


 Sterren had kept it vague. His primary duty, he knew, was to provide 
someone Vond could speak to freely. Beyond that, he set himself no definite 
duties, but managed to imply that he was Vond's second in command, an 
implication the warlock supported.


 Despite his new title, he still maintained his quarters in the tower of 
Semma Castle, as well as in the new citadel, and had managed to retain command 
of what had been the Semman army. His men, or at any rate those who had not 
gone over to the citadel to sign up with the Palace Guard, were now the 
Chancellor's Guard.


 All three of his officers had resigned, at different times and giving 
different reasons. Captain Arl had submitted his resignation two days after 
Vond's storm had routed the invading armies; that had been the earliest he had 
been able to speak to Sterren. He had done so on the grounds that his men had 
been inadequately prepared for battle, which meant he had failed in his 
duties.


 Sterren suspected that Arl had expected to be asked to stay on, but he 
had accepted the resignation. Arl had failed in his duties. Besides, Sterren 
preferred not to have his great-uncle's officers around.


 Captain Shemder had resigned when King Phenvel surrendered, refusing to 
serve a foreign sovereign.


 Lord Anduron had finally resigned when Sterren accepted the title of 
chancellor, saying he no longer understood what his position was supposed to 
be.


 Sterren had named Dogal and Alder as his aides and lieutenants, but did 
not replace his captains.


 His soldiers seemed to accept the new order, and Sterren's place in it, 
readily enough. The Semman nobility were another matter. When Sterren 
encountered any of them in the corridors of the castle he was usually snubbed, 
or presented with a ferocious glare. Phenvel's son Dereth, no longer a prince, 
spat on Sterren's best tunic. Shirrin, upon seeing him, invariably broke into 
tears and ran, she obviously felt her hero had betrayed her. Nissitha sneered, 
but then, she always had. Even Lura seemed subdued and told him, "I'm not 
supposed to like you any more, but I don't really see why."


 Sterren caught whispers in the hallways, whispers he thought he was meant 
to overhear, whispers containing words like "traitor," "barbarian," and 
"coward." Mutters about his unfortunate ancestry, three-fourths Ethsharitic, 
were common. "Money-grubbing merchant's brat!" was one epithet he encountered 
often. "Blood will tell" was another favorite.


 Sterren did not let any of this bother him. He had chosen his path and he 
was committed to it. The only things that bothered him were Shirrin's tears, 
and he thought that if he could manage a moment alone with her, he would 
explain to her why he was doing what he was doing. She was a very pretty girl, 
after all, and just turned fourteen, not that much younger than he was 
himself.


 But no opportunity to explain himself to her ever came along.


 Every so often Sterren wondered why he didn't just leave and go home to 
Ethshar, but he always arrived at the same answer. He had brought Vond here, 
so he was partly responsible for him. He was the only one in Semma except Vond 
himself who knew anything about warlockry, which meant that he was the only 



one who could see and understand everything that was happening.


 And he also thought he was a restraining influence on Vond. The warlock 
had no other friends or confidants at all. Besides, now that he was no longer 
the warlord, there was no great hurry about getting out of Semma, and there 
were clearly historical events happening that were interesting to observe.


 Actually, life in Semma and even in Semma Castle had not really changed 
that much at all. Most of the nobles still lived in the castle, undisturbed; a 
few had slipped away, but the majority remained, still more or less 
acknowledging Phenvel's authority. Admittedly, about a fourth of the servants 
had deserted them to work at the palace, but that did little more than reduce 
the crowding somewhat. For most of the castle's inhabitants, life coasted on, 
and they tried very hard to ignore the warlock and his palace.


 Sterren noticed that peasants no longer came to the castle much. No taxes 
were paid to King Phenvel any more, and the castle's stores were being 
consumed but not replaced, taxes were now going to the warlock's citadel. This 
did not affect Sterren directly, since he was welcome at Vond's table, but it 
did not bode well for the other nobles.


 Those few of the bolder aristocrats who departed had accepted that their 
old way of life was doomed and had gone looking for greener pastures, 
"visiting" relatives in other kingdoms, or simply seeking their fortunes, like 
so many failed apprentices.


 The nobles who lingered all seemed to think that matters would somehow 
right themselves, and everything would go back to what it had been before, 
with Phenvel once more uncontested ruler of Semma, but none of them seemed to 
have any idea how this would come about, and none of them, so far as Sterren 
could see, were doing anything to help it along.


 He was helping it along, at least slightly, but he did not dare explain 
that; instead he put up with being labeled a traitor. He was not entirely sure 
that in a sense, he might not be betraying Semma by working toward Vond's 
downfall. After all, for the peasants, all the changes were for the better. 
Vond controlled the weather and regulated the climate to an unheard-of 
evenness of temperament. Rain came when needed, usually at night, and never 
more than needed. When days threatened to grow uncomfortably cool the clouds 
would be forcibly scattered, and when the sun was hot clouds would gather. As 
a result, the spring planting was begun earlier than usual, and the fields 
were already turning green.


 Vond had promised that roads and houses would be built once the palace 
was no longer occupying his time and energy. The peasants Sterren had spoken 
to all agreed that this would be wonderful, but he thought they didn't really 
believe it would ever happen. They were accustomed to empty promises from 
their rulers.


 Somehow, this bothered Sterren far more than the hatred of the 
dispossessed nobles. He knew that Vond sincerely intended to carry through on 
his promises -- not so much out of altruism as to enhance his own position. 
The ruler of a rich land accrues more power and glory than the ruler of a poor 
one, and the warlock knew that well.


 But Sterren also knew that Vond might not have time to make his promises 
good.


 He sat in the tower room the warlock had given him, staring out the 
window at the palace sprawling below him, and wondered what he should do.


 He had encouraged Vond to build his citadel as lavishly as possible, big 
and elaborate throughout, and created entirely with magic. Not a single stone 
had been lifted into place by human muscle; even the carpets and tapestries, 
although woven by hand, had been delivered and laid or hung by warlockry. 
Sterren had steadily urged Vond to use as much power as possible, not that he 
had needed much urging. Warlockry was like a drug; the more Vond used, the 
more he could use, and the more he wanted to use.


 And somehow, he did not see what the inevitable outcome of this would be.


 Sterren thought that he, ignorant as he was of warlockry, knew what was 
going to happen to Vond better than Vond did himself. The warlock was having 



too much fun with his magic to see that in time, the Calling would find him 
even in Semma.


 Sterren stared down at the citadel and wondered whether he should warn 
him. Now that the palace was complete, Vond might not throw his power around 
so freely.


 That brought up the question, of course, of what he would do.


 Well, Sterren told himself, he could hardly learn anything about Vond's 
plans sitting in his room. He headed for the door. He had intended to go all 
the way down to the warlock's audience chamber, but halfway down the first 
flight of stairs Sterren changed his mind and at the next landing he turned 
down the corridor and knocked on the first door.


 It opened, and Annara of Crookwall thrust her head around the edge.


 "Hello," she said.


 "Hello," Sterren replied. "May I come in?"


 Annara hesitated, glancing back into the room, then swung the door wide 
and admitted him.


 Sterren was not surprised to see Agor, the Imperial Theurgist, sitting on 
Annara's bed. They exchanged polite greetings.


 At Annara's direction Sterren found a seat by the window. He settled onto 
the cushion and then fumbled about, trying to figure out how to ask what he 
wanted to ask.


 Annara offered him a plate of honeyed cashews, and he nibbled on those 
without speaking, while Agor chatted in his newly acquired and horribly 
accented Ethsharitic about the delightful weather that Vond had ensured.


 Sterren glanced around the room, looking for something that might serve 
to divert the conversation along the lines he wanted. He noticed a sparkle on 
a high shelf.


 Something shiny was moving up there, he realized.


 He squinted.


 A coin, a silver bit, was spinning on edge, but he had not seen anyone 
spin it, and it showed no signs of slowing down as he watched.


 "What's that?" he asked, pointing.


 The two magicians followed his finger. Annara said, "It's a spinning 
coin."


 "How long has it been spinning?"


 "Oh, three or four months," Annara replied.


 "But you haven't lived here that long!" Sterren said, startled.


 "I brought it with me from the castle," Annara said.


 "How could you do that?"


 "It's on a little card that folds up into a box for traveling," she 
explained.


 "What's it for? What keeps it spinning?"


 "It's magic," Agor said.


 "I could have guessed that for myself," Sterren said sarcastically. "I 
mean, what's it for?"


 "It's a very simple little spell," Annara said. "It's called the Spell of 
the Spinning Coin."


 "And it just makes a coin spin on forever? That seems pretty pointless."


 "It does do a little more than that," the wizard admitted. "Emner spun 
that one, I taught him the spell, as it wasn't one he knew. It will keep 
spinning as long as he's alive. If he's seriously ill, or badly injured, the 
spinning will slow down, and it may even wobble a little if it's very bad. If 
he dies, it will stop."


 "Oh, I see," Sterren said. "So you would know if, say, he had been killed 
by bandits on the way to Akalla."


 Annara and Agor exchanged glances. "It wasn't the bandits I was worried 
about," Annara said.


 Sterren nodded. "I suppose not." He hesitated, then pushed on. He could 
hardly have realistically hoped for a better opening. "I see it's still 
spinning, and he's been gone for all these months. He must have contacted the 



Wizards' Guild by now."


 "Yes," Annara said, flatly.


 "And they haven't done anything? Have they communicated with you?"


 She hesitated, then said, "My lord Sterren, why do you ask?"


 Sterren blinked. "I'm curious," he said.


 "You'll pardon me, my Lord Chancellor, but I'm not sure I care to satisfy 
your curiosity."


 He had half expected this reaction. "Annara," he said slowly, "I can 
understand your caution, but believe me, I'm not going to cause you any 
trouble."


 "You will forgive me, my Lord Chancellor, if I..."


 "Stop calling me that!" Sterren snapped. "I didn't ask for the stupid 
title! People keep hanging these silly titles on me, when I was perfectly 
happy just being Sterren of Ethshar. Look, Annara, I know you're worried that 
I'm Vond's spy, but I'm not his spy, not unless he can read my mind without my 
knowing it. If he wanted to know something, I suppose he could force it out of 
you easily enough by torture; you aren't enough of a wizard to defend yourself 
against him. Or if you are, you're also one hell of an actress, because you've 
had me fooled! I can't force anything out of you, though." He paused for 
breath, then continued more calmly, "If you're worried about which side I'm 
on, right now I'm not really on any side. I think I know how to either destroy 
the warlock, or to keep him in power for at least a while longer, and I 
honestly haven't decided which I want to do, or whether I should just leave 
well enough alone. I came here hoping for more information to help me decide. 
I can't force it out of you; Vond can. You can tell me now, and if I'm telling 
the truth it won't do you any harm, and if I'm lying, Vond can come up here 
and convince you."


 He stopped, suddenly unsure what he was saying and whether he should be 
saying it.


 Annara threw a look at Agor, then turned back to Sterren and said, "All 
right, Sterren. I don't suppose it will do any harm to tell you. I've had 
dreams, dreams where wizards tell me things. Some of them may be ordinary 
dreams, but I think at least some must have been sent. I don't always remember 
them when I wake up; there are tricks to remembering your dreams, and I'm not 
very good at it. All the same, I think I have an idea what the Guild is 
doing."


 "Ah," Sterren said. "What are they doing?"


 "Nothing. At least, nothing yet. They're watching the situation, using 
scrying spells and prophecies, and that's all. Oh, and it seems that reports 
of the events here are somehow not spreading very well, particularly not to 
warlocks, and those warlocks who do hear about the new power source are being 
discouraged or diverted in various subtle ways."


 Sterren nodded. "You know, I had begun to wonder why not a single other 
warlock had turned up."


 "Remember, Vond's invitations have all emphasized his own supremacy, and 
warlocks are not prone to play the sycophant. Even without my guildmates 
interfering, I suspect he would be attracting few converts."


 "True enough," Sterren acknowledged. He sat for a moment, munching 
cashews and considering this news.


 "So," he said at last, "is the Guild contemplating any more drastic 
action?"


 "No," Annara said, after a moment's hesitation. "At least, not that 
they've told me about. The general noninterference policy seems to be holding 
good."


 Sterren nodded, and as he did a thought occurred to him. He asked Agor, 
"What do the gods think about all this?"


 The theurgist shrugged. "Like the wizards, they don't interfere," he 
said. "Not since the Great War."


 Sterren accepted that. "One more question," he said, "and I'll go." He 
looked at the two magicians closely. 



 "For yourselves," he asked, "do you want Vond removed?" 
Annara and Agor looked at each other. 
Agor shrugged. 
"I don't know," Annara said, "I really don't." 


CHAPTER 32


 Five minutes after he left Annara's room Sterren peered around a drapery 
into Vond's audience chamber. The warlock spotted him immediately.


 "Ah, Chancellor Sterren!" he called, "Come in! Come in!"


 Sterren obeyed, looking curiously about as he did. He had seen the 
audience chamber before, of course, the rich red draperies down either side, 
the ornately patterned marble floor, the luxurious red carpet down the center. 
Twenty-foot-high windows behind the dais let sunlight pour in from the 
palace's central courtyard; stained-glass medallions set in the windows 
painted colors on the floor, and the cut-glass bevels that edged the 
medallions ringed the colors with sprays of rainbows. Golden banners hung from 
the vaulted white marble ceiling; most were plain and unadorned, but three 
bore battle flags sewn onto them, representing Semma, Ophkar, and Ksinallion.


 Three broad steps, alternating black and white marble, led up to the 
black marble dais, and above its center Vond floated comfortably in mid-air; 
he had not yet bothered with a throne.


 That much was familiar. What was new to Sterren was the group of young 
women who stood at the foot of the dais.


 He counted twelve of them, all young and all uncommonly attractive. Their 
garb varied from simple peasant homespun to the rich velvets and silks of the 
conquered nobility; their expressions varied from uncertainty to bold 
defiance. None of them were so much as whispering; the only sound was the 
rustle of their clothing.


 "What's going on?" Sterren asked, breaking the silence.


 "I'm choosing a harem," Vond replied.


 Startled, Sterren took another look at the women. "I've had my eye out 
for the last sixnight or so," the warlock explained, "and I'd noticed these 
young ladies as promising prospects, so when I had a moment, I brought them 
here to look over." He smiled wolfishly.


 "Do they know what's going on?" Sterren asked, seeing confusion and fear 
on several faces.


 Vond shrugged. "I told them, but I don't know if they understood."


 "May I speak with them?" Sterren asked.


 "Be my guest," Vond said with a wave.


 "Ladies," Sterren said, in Semmat, "I am Sterren, Ninth Warlord of 
Semma." He did not know a Semmat equivalent for "chancellor," if one existed 
at all, and he was not yet comfortable with the title in any case. "Do you 
know why you are here?"


 His reply was a babble of voices; he raised his hands for silence.


 It took a moment, but the women quieted. Sterren pointed to one. "You; 
who are you?"


 The chosen one looked back at him blankly. "Ksinal-Uoni," she said, with 
an odd accent.


 Sterren picked another. "Do you speak Semmat?"


 This one nodded.


 "Who are you?" Sterren asked.


 "Kyrina the Fair," she replied, "Daughter to Kardig Trak's son and Rulura 
of the Green Eyes."


 Sterren could easily understand how she got her epithet. She wore a 
simple green tunic and a brown peasant's skirt, but even so, she was easily 
more beautiful than the most elaborately attired noblewoman Sterren had ever 
seen in Semma.


 "You live near here?" he asked. 



 "In the village," she said, gesturing vaguely in the general direction of 
Semma Castle.


 "Do you know why you are here?"


 She shook her head, which sent a ripple through her long, gleaming black 
hair and wafted perfume in Sterren's direction. "No, my lord."


 "How did you come here?"


 She glanced at Vond and at the other women, clearly not eager to act as 
spokeswoman. Nobody volunteered to take her place, and after an instant's 
further hesitation she explained, "Perhaps an hour ago, something like a great 
wind, yet not a wind, snatched me up and brought me here. I found myself in a 
great hall, where I could move freely, but where all the doors but one were 
closed and barred, and the one open door was guarded by men who would not let 
me leave. Another woman was there, as well, and then these others were swept 
in, as I was, one by one; and when we were all there, the guards led us here, 
using their spears to keep us together."


 Sterren nodded his understanding.


 "This is the Great Vond," he said, gesturing toward the warlock. "You all 
probably guessed that."


 Several women nodded.


 "You all know he now rules this land?"


 Seven women, by Sterren's count, nodded. He guessed the other five spoke 
no Semmat.


 "You know he is a warlock, a magician?"


 More nods.


 "He is also a man. He has brought you twelve here to choose women to..." 
Sterren paused, wishing he knew more Semmat; he could think of a hundred 
delicate ways to phrase this in Ethsharitic. "To warm his bed," he said at 
last.


 That elicited not nods, but startlement, anger, fear, and at least one 
crimson blush.


 Vond was watching all this, and, Sterren saw worriedly, looking bored.


 "Sterren," he said, "I take it you've just explained why I brought them 
here."


 Sterren nodded.


 "Tell them," Vond said, "that any who wish to leave are free to go, but 
that those who stay, and who please me, will be richly rewarded."


 Hesitantly, Sterren translated this speech into Semmat as best he could.


 The seven who understood looked at one another, clearly considering the 
offer. Kyrina looked at the warlock carefully for a long moment, then turned 
and strode for the exit.


 Vond waved a hand, and the great double doors swung wide to let her pass.


 Another woman, a noblewoman this time, hesitantly followed her.


 One of the five who did not understand Semmat seemed to catch on, and 
literally ran out the door.


 Others followed, each after her own fashion, until five remained, three 
of whom spoke Semmat. The five eyed each other warily.


 Sterren watched them, puzzled. Why had these five stayed? None of them 
was starving; in fact, two of the five were dressed very well indeed. They 
should not be so desperate as to choose slavery; and surely concubinage, in 
this case, was a form of slavery.


 Perhaps, he thought, they didn't trust Vond to keep his word and feared 
he would take revenge upon them if they left. Certainly, all five looked 
somewhat nervous.


 Or perhaps they didn't see it the way he did. They might see sharing 
Vond's bed as a route to power and wealth. If that was it, Sterren was sure 
they were wrong.


 Or perhaps it was just curiosity or a sexual interest in the warlock. 
Sterren hadn't really given the matter much thought, but he supposed Vond was 
attractive enough, and there were always stories about magicians. For himself, 
Sterren could see no reason a knowledge of arcane skills should imply a 



knowledge of erotic skills, but there were always stories.


 Most likely, he thought, it was a combination of all of these that kept 
the five of them in the audience chamber. He found that unappealing and 
decided he did not care to watch any further. He started to turn away.


 "Sterren," Vond said, "I need you to translate!"


 He had forgotten that. He turned back, reluctantly. "Couldn't one of your 
servants do that?"


 "You're here; they aren't. Besides, you speak Ethsharitic better than any 
of them."


 Sterren had to admit that this was true.


 "Let's start with their names," the warlock said, waving a hand at the 
women.


 Sterren did the best he could, given that only three of the women spoke 
Semmat; a fourth spoke Ophkaritic, the fifth Ksinallionese. One of the Semman 
women knew a few words of Ksinallionese, and the Ksinallionese spoke 
Ophkaritic, so that nobody was totally cut off.


 And of course, gestures and facial expressions conveyed plenty of 
information as well.


 After half an hour or so, Vond chose the Ksinallionese to take a stroll 
with him and become better acquainted, and Sterren escaped with a sigh of 
relief, while one of the palace servants, summoned by Vond's magic, escorted 
the other four to the apartments they were henceforth to share.


 Sterren made his way out the citadel's main gate and looked down Vond's 
artificial hill at the surrounding countryside. The land had turned green with 
spring, and the peasants were out in the fields, tending their crops. The sky 
was a radiant crystal blue, with a handful of soft white clouds sailing like 
white-robed wizards across it.


 A party of a dozen or so men was marching up the road toward the gate. 
Four of them were Vond's red-tunicked palace guards, and the rest were in 
rags.


 Sterren saw to his horror that the ragged ones were in chains. Most of 
them looked resigned, but two or three looked terrified.


 "Hai," he called, "What going on?"


 The foremost guard saw him, acknowledged his presence with a bow, and 
called back one word.


 Sterren did not catch it; the guard's accent distorted his Ethsharitic 
beyond easy comprehension.


 "What?" Sterren called back.


 "Slaves!" the soldiers repeated. "We bring slaves!"


 "What for?" Sterren asked, as he and the guard approached each other.


 The guard spread his hands in the Ksinallionese equivalent of a shrug. 
"The Great Vond ordered," he said.


 "Where did these people come from?" Sterren persisted.


 The guard hesitated; clearly, his Ethsharitic was not very good. "We go 
to Akalla, buy them, bring them back," he explained slowly.


 Sterren stopped and stepped aside as the party marched up past him. He 
watched them go without interfering.


 At least they had been slaves already, and not innocent peasants Vond had 
had enslaved.


 In fact, he supposed that it was perfectly reasonable for Vond to keep 
slaves, but Sterren found it a little hard to accept. For most of his life he 
had been far more likely to deal with slavers as merchandise than as a 
customer. He had never quite been reduced to sleeping on the city streets, 
which would have made him fair game for the slavers, and he had never been 
caught stealing, which could also put cuffs on a person, but those had always 
been closer than the sort of wealth that would include buying anyone.


 He had known a few slaves, either before or after their enslavement. He 
had never exchanged more than a few polite words with a slave-owner, except 
Vond. Or, he suddenly realized, perhaps King Phenvel; some of his castle 
servants might well be owned, rather than hired. 



 He watched the slaves march into the palace. Vond was buying slaves and 
acquiring a harem. Was this necessarily tyranny? After all, he bought his 
slaves on the market, and his chosen concubines were there voluntarily.


 No, Sterren decided, it wasn't tyranny, but it wasn't a good sign, 
either. 


CHAPTER 33


 Vond conquered Thanoria on the sixteenth of Green-growth, 5221. He took a 
sixnight or so to consolidate his conquest this time, taking care of details 
he had been rather haphazard about in dealing with Semma, Ksinallion, and 
Ophkar. He arranged for taxes to be paid into his imperial treasury, appointed 
provincial officials from the former royal government, selected candidates for 
his harem, and so forth.


 That done, he conquered Skaia on the twenty-fourth.


 Enmurinon went next, on the third of Longdays, followed by Akalla of the 
Diamond on the fourteenth. He took special care there, due to the presence of 
the port, and inquired after recent arrivals, hoping for word of immigrating 
warlocks.


 He was disappointed by the replies he received, and on the nineteenth he 
returned to his palace in a foul temper.


 He concentrated on other affairs for several days after that, building 
roads, tenements, and market halls, getting acquainted with his new 
concubines, and dealing with his subjects.


 Rather to his surprise, he found that he did not enjoy actually ruling 
his empire. Settling disputes, administering justice, appointing officials, 
and the other traditional duties of royalty were dull and time-consuming, and 
provided no opportunity for him to display his magic.


 Sterren had been expecting this realization. He had long ago concluded 
that kings were no happier than anybody else. Furthermore, he had noticed that 
for some time now, Vond had only seemed really comfortable and alert when 
using huge amounts of magic, as if warlockry were an addictive drug. When the 
warlock finally confessed his disappointment, late one night in a quiet 
torchlit arcade overlooking the palace courtyard, Sterren simply nodded and 
agreed, without comment. "You don't seem surprised," Vond said, irritably.


 "I'm not," Sterren said. "I never thought ruling looked like much fun."


 The warlock settled more deeply into the sling chair he sat upon. "It 
isn't," he growled, "but it should be."


 "Why?" Sterren asked.


 "Because I want it to be," Vond snapped.


 Sterren made no reply.


 After a moment of disgruntled silence, Vond said, "I just won't do it any 
more."


 "Won't do what?"


 "I won't deal with all these petty details, who owns what, how to punish 
this thief or reward that soldier, where to put the roads, how to collect the 
taxes, how much coin to mint, I won't do it."


 "Someone has to," Sterren pointed out, "or your empire will fall apart."


 "I don't have to. You do. You're my chancellor, aren't you? I just 
decided what that means, it's your job to take care of anything I don't want 
to be bothered with." Vond smiled an unusually unpleasant smile. "I'll 
announce it in the morning; you'll be in charge of the administration of the 
empire. I'll take care of what I'm good at, building and conquest."


 Sterren had hoped and feared this might happen. After all, he was the 
only person Vond trusted. To all the native inhabitants of his empire, the 
warlock was something of a monster, alien and inhumanly powerful, conquering 
entire kingdoms in a single day; none of them could speak to him without fear, 
and he dealt with them, in general, with contempt. Besides, very few were 
really fluent in Ethsharitic, and Vond had not yet bothered to learn any other 



tongues. Warlockry, unlike witchcraft, did nothing at all to enhance his 
linguistic abilities. Warlockry was a purely physical sort of magic; it could 
not teach.


 The other magicians were less contemptible than the ordinary citizens, 
but still did not provide very good company for the new emperor. From the 
start, both Annara and Ederd had held back visibly, refusing to speak openly 
with Vond, and he had noticed this reticence. Agor's Ethsharitic was an 
impediment, and his eccentric behavior, cultivated since childhood to add to 
an aura of mystery, was another.


 That left Sterren as Vond's only friend, the only person he could talk 
with as one human to another, and despite Vond's denials, Sterren was quite 
sure that the warlock was miserably lonely.


 He had expected other warlocks to come and join him, and was growing ever 
more confused and dismayed at their failure to materialize. This drove him, 
more and more, to talk away long hours with Sterren.


 Sterren was no warlock; he was unnaturally lucky with dice, but otherwise 
could barely stir a cat's whisker with his magic. Still, he had known Vond 
when Vond was powerless, he knew something about how warlockry functioned, and 
he was not cowed by the imperial might. That made him an invaluable companion.


 And Sterren had guessed that it might in time make him Vond's partner in 
empire, as well.


 Now that that guess had come true, he was ready. This was an opportunity 
far too good to miss. He could do far more to prevent tyranny if he were 
himself involved in governing.


 He had seen, over the last few months, that Vond's decisions, as emperor, 
tended to be quick and careless. He did not concern himself with right or 
wrong, with what would be best for those involved, but only with what was most 
expedient, what would settle matters most quickly, rather than most equitably.


 Now he could change that.


 He had no illusions about his own governing ability, however. He knew 
himself well enough to suspect that he, too, would opt for expediency after a 
few boring days.


 "I'll accent that on one condition," he said.


 Vond looked at him sharply. "Who are you, to be setting conditions?" he 
demanded.


 "I'm your Lord Chancellor, your Imperial Majesty," Sterren replied 
mildly.


 Vond could hardly deny that, but he was not so easily soothed. "What 
condition?" he demanded.


 "That I may delegate my authority as I please," Sterren said, "Because as 
I said, I never thought ruling looked like fun, and I don't want to be saddled 
with the job either. I don't mind doing a share, certainly, but I don't want 
to spend my days divvying up strayed cattle any more than you do."


 Vond considered this. "Fair enough," he said. The next morning Vond set 
out to conquer Hluroth, and Sterren set out to establish the Imperial Council. 


CHAPTER 34


 The Chancellor's Guard came in handy on occasion; it had saved Sterren a 
good deal of trouble to simply tell Alder, "Take as many men as you need, but 
I want Lady Kalira of Semma here in an hour."


 Then all he had to do was sit in his chosen room, a small study on the 
second floor of Semma Castle, and wait; an hour later, Lady Kalira glared at 
him across the table.


 "I'm here," she said without preamble. "What do you want?"


 Sterren noted, with hope and admiration, that she did not call him a 
traitor or otherwise insult him. "Your help," he said.


 Her angry glare softened to curiosity. "What sort of help?" she demanded 
warily. 



 "In running the empire."


 "Empire!" She snorted.


 Sterren shrugged, using both the Ethsharitic shoulder bob and the Semman 
gesture of spread fingers and a downturned palm. "Call it what you like," he 
said. "Like it or not, the warlock has united several kingdoms now, I can't 
say how many since he's in the process of adding at least one more even as we 
speak, and I think I can call it an empire." He had had plenty of time to 
improve his Semmat in recent months, and spoke it easily now. "I didn't come 
here to argue about names," he concluded.


 "Maybe I did, though," Lady Kalira retorted.


 "I hope not," Sterren said.


 For a moment neither spoke. Then Lady Kalira said, "All right, what's 
your offer?"


 "You know Vond named me chancellor," Sterren said.


 "Whatever that means," she answered, nodding.


 "He's just decided that it means I'm to take care of all the 
administrative details that he doesn't want to bother with," Sterren 
explained.


 Lady Kalira considered this, then smiled. "And I suppose," she said, 
"that you intend to palm the job off on me."


 "Not exactly," Sterren said. "But I admit you're close. I want you to 
tell me who I should pass it on to."


 "Should?"


 "Yes, should. Who could do the best job of it, and who would do the best 
job of it. I know I'd botch it."


 "You do?" She eyed him carefully.


 He nodded.


 "I think you'll need to tell me a little more of what you had in mind," 
she said.


 "What I had in mind," Sterren told her, "is an Imperial Council, a group 
of the best administrators we can find, who would actually run the empire. 
Vond isn't particularly interested in doing that, and neither am I. Besides, 
Vond isn't going to be around for all that long, and I don't suppose I'll be 
very welcome once he's gone. A group of well-respected natives would be able 
to keep things going smoothly, regardless of what Vond and I do."


 "Why isn't he going to be around very long?" Lady Kalira asked, staring 
at him.


 "I can't tell you that," Sterren replied uncomfortably.


 "You said the same thing months ago, and he's still here," she pointed 
out.


 Sterren shrugged again. "So far, yes," he said.


 "And you still say he won't be for long?"


 "He can't be," Sterren insisted.


 "Why not?"


 "I can't tell you that," Sterren said again.


 Lady Kalira considered this, then asked, "Can you tell me how long he'll 
be around?"


 "No. Maybe a month, maybe a year or two. I don't think he can possibly 
last five years."


 "Did you hire an assassin, or something?" she asked curiously. "The cult 
of Demerchan, perhaps?"


 "No," Sterren said. "Why would I do something stupid like that? He isn't 
doing me any harm. In fact, he isn't doing much of anybody else any harm, 
either. Look at the peasants out there, they're doing just fine! Nobody's 
complaining except the deposed nobles, and even you aren't really suffering 
much! And here I am, on top of it all, offering you a chance to get back into 
running the government!"


 Lady Kalira studied him closely and then shook her head. "I don't 
understand you, Sterren," she said, "I don't understand you at all."


 "I don't care if you understand me or not; I just want your help in 



putting together this council. I thought seven members would be about right, 
no ties in the voting that way. And I don't want it to be hereditary, exactly, 
since we can't afford to have any infants or incompetents on it; but perhaps 
members could have the right to appoint their heirs. I don't want any of the 
deposed kings on it, either, it wouldn't look right unless we included all of 
them, and I hope that you, as a Semman, will see why I don't want that."


 Lady Kalira smiled involuntarily at this reference to her former 
sovereign. Sterren took this as encouragement.


 "I suppose princes or princesses might be all right, but I'll leave that 
up to you," he continued. "I don't know much about any of the people around 
here; I never really got to know most of them. I'd like you to choose the 
people you think I really need to have, to start. You're welcome to take a 
seat on the Council yourself, if you like, and I thought maybe the steward, 
Algarven, would be a good choice, but I'll defer to your judgment." He 
hesitated, then said, "I think we probably don't want all seven to be Semman. 
In fact, I think a good mix of nationalities would be wise, but on the other 
hand, Semma is the capital province, so at least one or two... What do you 
think?"


 "I think," Lady Kalira said slowly, "that I need to know more about the 
duties of this proposed council."


 Sterren smiled and said, "What would you suggest? Vond has claimed 
building and conquest for himself and left everything else to me. I prefer to 
leave it to a council. What would you recommend?"


 "You're really serious about this?"


 "Oh, yes."


 She sighed.


 By the time Vond returned from the successful subjugation of Hluroth, 
they had selected four of the seven councillors and were discussing meeting 
schedules. 


CHAPTER 35


 It was the ninth of Harvest, in the Year of Human Speech 5221. The Empire 
of Vond extended from the deserts in the east to the ocean in the west and 
from the edge of the World in the south to the borders of Lumeth of the Towers 
in the north.


 Vond had turned back before attacking Lumeth and had returned to his 
citadel trembling.


 "I heard the whisper there, even over the power I draw on," he told 
Sterren. "I'd forgotten what it was like. Foul, dark muttering in my mind, 
awful!" He took a deep breath, then released it slowly.


 "I almost think I can still hear it," he said, "but I know it's just my 
mind playing tricks on me."


 Sterren hesitated, then said nothing.


 "Well," Vond went on, "I know where my limits are now, at any rate. I 
don't dare ever venture past the borders of Lumeth or Kalithon or Shassalla, 
but here on the south of them, I'm all-powerful."


 Sterren did not argue with Vond's claim. "It's too bad," he remarked 
instead. "I was curious about what would happen if you got really close to the 
towers themselves. Aren't they the source of your power?"


 Vond nodded. "I was curious, too, but I won't risk finding out. It's too 
bad; I'd have preferred to have control over the towers."


 That had been sixnights before, early in the month of Longdays, and that 
unexpected defeat had been followed by more than half a dozen quick victories 
over the tiny port nations of the South Coast west of Akalla, victories that 
had extended Vond's empire as far as it could safely go. Now, on the ninth of 
Harvest, Sterren stood on a balcony and looked out across the countryside.


 The land was a rich green from horizon to horizon, punctuated only by 
roads and buildings and the bright colors of flowers; thanks to Vond's control 



of the weather and reworking of the soil there were no barren spots, nowhere 
that the earth failed to yield generously.


 Straight, smooth roads paved with stone stretched out from the plaza 
below the citadel, leading directly to each of the towns and castles of the 
empire.


 The village that surrounded Semma Castle still stood, but was equalled in 
size and far outdone in splendor by the town growing up around Vond's palace, 
a town built of white and gold marble, roofed in red tile. Small fountains 
babbled in each corner of the plaza and at several intersections, providing 
drinking water for anyone who wanted it, and a much larger ornamental fountain 
sprayed upward at the center of the plaza. Smoke and intriguing odors rose 
from a dozen forges and ovens.


 The two villages were growing toward each other across the intervening 
valley, and it seemed likely that in time they would merge into a single 
entity. In time, Sterren thought, this might become a real city.


 Semma Castle itself still stood, but its population had dropped 
drastically. Over the months, as the royal treasury and the castle stores gave 
out, the nobility had drifted away, fleeing the empire or, in a few cases, 
finding honest work. The royal family itself was still sticking it out, but 
most of the others had left.


 The same thing, Sterren knew, had happened in all the former capitals, 
the castles and strongholds that had once ruled Ophkar, Ksinallion, Skaia, 
Thanoria, Hluroth, Akalla of the Diamond, Zhulura, Ghelua, Ansuon, Furnara, 
Kalshar, Quonshar, Dherimin, Karminora, Alboa,and Hend.


 So far, Vond had definitely been good for the Small Kingdoms. He had 
dispossessed a few hundred nobles, but he had enriched thousands of peasants. 
He had killed a few dozen people in his conquests, but he had probably saved 
at least as many from starvation.


 And he was doomed.


 Sterren still found it hard to believe that Vond did not realize he was 
doomed. It was really fairly obvious. After all, all warlocks were doomed. 
Just finding a new power source would not change that. Sterren thought Vond 
had been given enough hints when he established the northern borders of his 
empire, but still the warlock did not see it.


 It was not just that he was unwilling to admit it, either. If that were 
it, he would have cut back on his use of magic, but he hadn't. He continued to 
lay roads, erect buildings, manipulate the weather, and at times to light the 
night sky in sheer celebration of his might.


 Sterren had refrained from commenting, but after all these months, he was 
finally convinced that Vond deserved better. He deserved a warning, at the 
very least, a warning only Sterren could provide.


 And, Sterren promised himself, he would deliver that warning.


 The only catch was to figure out how to convince Vond that he, Sterren, 
had only recognized the danger now. If Vond knew that Sterren had withheld his 
certainty for so long he was likely to be very annoyed indeed.


 Sterren did not care to have Vond annoyed with him. He was puzzling out 
an approach when someone behind him cleared a throat.


 He turned and found a palace servant, a man named Ildirin who had once 
been a butcher's assistant in Ksinallion, standing in the balcony door.


 "Your pardon, my Lord Chancellor," he said apologetically, "but the 
Emperor is meeting with the Council and desires your presence."


 "Now?"


 "Yes, my lord," Ildirin replied.


 Sterren knew better than to argue or hesitate; Vond hated to be kept 
waiting. "Where?" he asked.


 "In the council chamber."


 Sterren nodded, stepped past Ildirin into the palace, and headed towards 
the marble stairs.


 Ildirin followed at a respectful distance. The council chamber had not 
been designed as such; after all, when Vond built his palace he had no idea 



that an Imperial Council would ever exist. He had intended the room to be an 
informal audience chamber, where he could meet with his cronies without the 
full pomp of the main audience hall, but still on a business basis rather than 
in his personal apartments.


 Save for Sterren, however, who was usually welcome even in Vond's private 
quarters, the warlock had no cronies. He had a council, instead, and so the 
informal audience chamber had become the council chamber.


 The councillors could hardly he considered cronies; none of the seven 
liked Vond or particularly wanted to see him remain in power. All seven, 
however, were willing to recognize that the Empire of Vond was a reality and 
that it needed governing; and all seven were very good at governing.


 Ordinarily, the Council went about its business, and Vond went about his 
business, and the two had as little to do with each other as possible, 
communicating with each other only through Sterren. For Vond to meet with the 
entire Council was unheard of.


 Sterren hurried down the stairs, the wide sleeves of his velvet tunic 
flapping at his sides, and marched across the broad hallway at the bottom. The 
great red doors at the inner end of the hallway led into the audience chamber; 
the black doors at the outer end led out to the plaza. He ignored them both 
and headed directly for the small rosewood door that nestled unobtrusively in 
one corner.


 His hand on the latch, he hesitated. He rapped lightly, then opened the 
door and walked in.


 The seven councillors were seated at the table where they carried out 
most of their deliberations, three to a side. Their chairwoman, Lady Kalira, 
usually sat at the head of the table; today she was at the foot, and the Great 
Vond floated cross-legged at the head. He was only slightly higher than if he 
had been using a chair; his knees were below the polished wood of the table 
top.


 "Ah, there you are!" Vond said when he saw Sterren step into the room.


 "Here I am," Sterren agreed. "What's happening?" He looked about for 
somewhere to sit, or even somewhere better to stand, and spotted an unused 
chair. He turned it to face the warlock emperor, and asked, "May I sit?"


 Vond waved permission. As he did, he caught sight of Ildirin peering in 
the doorway.


 "I see you found him," the warlock said. "Now go see if you can find us 
something appropriate to drink; I expect we'll be doing a lot of talking, and 
talking is thirsty work."


 Ildirin bowed and vanished, closing the door behind him.


 "Now," Vond said, "I suppose you all want to know why we're here, so I'll 
get right to the point, which is that am I not at all sure I like this 
'Imperial Council' of yours."


 Sterren did not like the sound of that and decided that perhaps Vond was 
not in a mood to hear bad news today. He wondered whether he could somehow 
convey an anonymous message to the warlock.


 The councillors glanced at one another, and some at Sterren, but after a 
second or two all eyes came to rest on Lady Kalira. She accepted her silent 
appointment as spokeswoman and rose. "Your Imperial Majesty," she said in her 
accented Ethsharitic, "we serve at your pleasure. If you wish us to stop, we 
will stop, we will be glad to stop."


 Two or three heads bobbed in agreement; nobody indicated by even the 
slightest gesture or sound that he might think otherwise.


 "Don't be so quick to resign, either," Vond snapped. "I know I need 
somebody to run things; I'm just not sure I want you. I'm not sure you've been 
running things the way I want them run."


 "We serve at your Imperial Majesty's pleasure," Lady Kalira repeated, 
bowing her head.


 Her Ethsharitic had improved greatly over the past several months, 
Sterren noticed. Recognizing that it was the new language of government had 
driven her to study it far more seriously than mere curiosity had before. 



 "That's what you say here," Vond said, "but I hear otherwise elsewhere. I 
hear whispers that you're plotting to overthrow me, to restore the old 
monarchies. After all, you're all aristocrats yourselves; why should you 
accept a commoner like me as your emperor?"


 Lady Kalira started to say something, but Vond held up his hand to stop 
her.


 Sterren wondered suddenly just what sort of whispers Vond had actually 
been hearing. Was it whispered rumors that had upset him, or was there another 
sort of whisper entirely that was getting on his nerves?


 Then he forgot about that, as Vond turned and addressed him directly. 
"So, my lord chancellor, why is it you chose only the old nobility for your 
council?"


 The question itself was easy to answer, so easy that Sterren wondered 
what Vond was really after.


 "Because, Your Majesty," Sterren said, "no one else in your empire has 
had any training or experience in governing."


 "And you did not see fit to train them?"


 "No, Your Majesty, I didn't; I was trying to set up something to handle 
governing now, not at some indefinite future time. Besides, I don't know any 
more about governing or training peasants to govern than you do."


 "It wouldn't have to be peasants; couldn't you find merchants or 
tradesmen? Running a country can't be that different from running a business."


 Sterren had some serious doubts about Vond's statement, but he ignored it 
and answered the question. "I didn't try to find tradesmen, because I didn't 
see anything wrong with using nobles who already know the job. Besides, there 
aren't that many tradesmen around here; it's not exactly Ethshar. I mean, in 
Semma, they had a Lord Trader, how much of a merchant class could there be, in 
a case like that?"


 "You didn't see anything wrong with using the nobles I threw out of 
power?"


 "No, I didn't!" Sterren answered. "What are they going to do? You'd kill 
anyone who got out of line, and they know it." He gestured at the councillors, 
reminding Vond that they were listening.


 "They could stir up discontent," the warlock suggested.


 "Why should they? Listen, Vond, I don't think you appreciate what these 
people have done here. I picked the most competent people I could, without 
worrying about where they came from. Each of them agreed to help run the 
empire because they could see that it was here to stay; and each one of them 
was labeled a traitor by his friends and family because of that! They put up 
with that because they want to see their people, nobles, peasants, merchants, 
everybody, ruled fairly and well. If your empire ever did fall, and the old 
kingdoms were restored, they'd probably all be hanged for treason for having 
helped you!"


 "You think so?" Vond said, his expression unreadable.


 "Yes, I think so!" Sterren snapped.


 At that point Ildirin entered quietly, bearing a tray that held a full 
decanter and a dozen wineglasses. He proceeded around the edge of the room to 
the emperor, who court etiquette required be served first.


 "And I don't suppose," Vond said, "that you might be trying to put the 
nobility back in power, leaving me just a figurehead!"


 "Why would I want to do that?" Sterren asked, genuinely puzzled.


 Vond accepted a glass of wine. "Because you're a noble yourself, of 
course, Sterren, Ninth Warlord!" He drank.


 Sterren's mouth fell open in astonishment. One of the councillors 
giggled, then quickly suppressed it. Ildirin silently poured wine.


 "Me?" Sterren said at last. "I'm an Ethsharitic merchant's brat! I'm no 
noble; my grandmother ran away from home, and I don't give a damn who her 
father and brother were. I'm no more a part of the old nobility here than you 
are!"


 Vond's expression stopped him, and he corrected himself, "Well, not much 



more. I didn't know I had any noble blood." He glanced at the councillors and 
said, "Besides if I were trying to restore the old nobility, wouldn't I have 
put kings and princes on the council, instead of these people?"


 "Kings would be a little obvious," Vond pointed out, "and you did put a 
few princes in here, didn't you?"


 "I did?" Sterren looked at the councillors again and recognized Prince 
Ferral of Enmurinon.


 "Oh," he said. Defensively, he added, "Only one. Out of seven."


 "So far," Vond said.


 Ildirin had served all the councillors, now, and approached Sterren with 
a filled glass. He waved it away; it appeared he needed his head clear if he 
was going to keep it.


 "So far," Sterren said, "and forever, I don't choose new councillors; I 
don't know who can handle the job and who can't. I let each councillor choose 
his own successor."


 Ildirin, still holding the glass he had intended for Sterren, looked 
around the room and noticed that the emperor's glass was empty. He stepped 
back and started gliding silently along the wall, back toward Vond's place at 
the head of the table.


 "Oh, I see!" the warlock said, sneering, "You won't put any kings on the 
council, but if these seven name kings as their heirs, then retire, there's 
nothing you can do to stop it!"


 "Don't be silly," Sterren said, and he heard someone gasp quietly at his 
audacity in addressing the warlock emperor thus. "The Imperial Council serves 
at my pleasure, as well as yours, your Majesty. I can dismiss any councillor 
any time I please. So can you, just as you can dismiss me as your chancellor. 
And I assure you, I'd dismiss any king or queen, and probably whatever fool 
named him as heir."


 "Ah, you would? Why?"


 "Because we don't want the old royalty back in power. We don't want one 
councillor, by virtue of his former station, to perhaps sway the rest of the 
council unduly. We don't want to confuse the peasants by restoring a king to 
any semblance of authority."


 "That's right," Vond said, accepting the full wineglass from Ildirin. "We 
don't want any of that. I'm sure the peasants resent me, consider me a 
usurper..."


 Algarven, once royal steward of Semma, coughed suddenly, choking on a sip 
of wine. Vond turned to glare at him between sips from his own fresh glass.


 "Excuse me, your Majesty," Algarven said, as soon as he could breathe and 
talk again, "but the peasants... why would you think the peasants resent you?"


 A flicker of uncertainty crossed Vond's face.


 "I've overthrown their kings," he said.


 "Forgive me, your Majesty," said Berakon Gerath's son, once royal 
treasurer of Akalla of the Diamond, "but so what? What did the old kings ever 
do for the peasantry? You've built roads and houses, put an end to wars, and 
even done what seemed impossible and regulated the weather. With all this, 
your taxes are no higher than the old. Believe me, your Majesty, the peasants 
don't mind at all that you've replaced the old kings, though they do worry a 
bit about the inevitable price for this bounty."


 Vond handed his empty glass to Ildirin, who struggled a moment to balance 
everything on the tray before he could accept it. Vond threw him an annoyed 
glance.


 "All right," Vond said. "Forget the peasants. You say nobody here wants 
the old kings restored, but you have a prince on the council; what happens 
when his father dies?"


 "Your Majesty," Prince Ferral said quietly, "my father has been dead for 
five years now. You deposed my elder brother, not my father."


 "All right, then," Vond said, as Ildirin fumbled with the decanter, "what 
happens when your brother dies?"


 "Nothing much, your Majesty. He has children and other brothers older 



than myself. I am eighth in the line of succession."


 Vond glared and reached for a glass of wine just as Ildirin started to 
hand him one. Their arms collided, and the wine spilled down the emperor's 
chest, staining the golden embroidery on his black robe an ugly shade of red.


 The warlock stared down at the spill for an instant, then shrieked, "You 
idiot!" He waved an arm, and Ildirin was flung hard against the marble wall. 
The crack as his spine broke was clearly audible to everyone in the room. Vond 
waved again, and the servant's head was crushed, the bones shattered, leaving 
the skin a limp sack. Blood gushed from his nose and mouth as he died. The 
corpse fell heavily to the floor and lay in a pool of gore.


 Sterren and the councillors stared in shocked silence.


 The tray that held the decanter still stood on the table. Vond smoothed 
his robe, but did not seem overly disturbed.


 Sterren knew, as he stared at the corpse, that he would not be warning 
Vond of anything. 


CHAPTER 36


 Little was accomplished in the remainder of the meeting. The presence of 
Ildirin's body cast a pall over the conversation, and Vond seemed to have 
spent his anger. In the end, he agreed to let the Imperial Council continue as 
it had been, with the understanding that it existed entirely by his 
sufferance, and that he had the right to dismiss any member at any time and to 
overrule any decision.


 None of this had ever been in any question, as far as Sterren and the 
councillors were concerned, but nobody was foolish enough to point this out.


 Afterward, Sterren took a long walk.


 It was obvious that Vond was losing control. The magnificent buildings, 
the prosperous empire, the thriving crops had all served to hide this; 
Ildirin's gruesome death had dragged it out into plain sight. Not only was any 
thought of a warning gone, Sterren was now convinced that he had to do all he 
could to destroy Vond quickly.


 That night Vond ate dinner in the Great Hall, with Sterren at his right 
hand. As often as not he ate in his private apartments, if he bothered to eat 
meals at all, but on this particular occasion he held a formal dinner, with 
himself, Sterren, and the Imperial Council at the high table and the rest of 
the imperial household arrayed along three lower tables.


 "You know, your Majesty," Sterren remarked as he chewed a bite of apple, 
"you haven't done any real spectacular magic lately."


 Vond looked at him. "Oh?"


 "I mean, early on, you conjured up that storm to rout the armies of 
Ophkar and Ksinallion, and you quarried and assembled the stone for this 
palace in a few days, and so forth; but lately you haven't done anything much 
more impressive than laying pavement stones. Oh, that's certainly useful, and 
so is regulating the weather, and all the rest, but you haven't done anything 
really showy in months."


 "You don't consider lighting the night sky showy?"


 Sterren pretended to consider that. "Well, I suppose," he admitted. "But 
it's not new. Everybody's used to it now."


 "And why should I want to be showy?" Vond asked.


 "To impress people, to remind everybody what their emperor is capable of. 
If you got the awe you're due, you wouldn't need to worry about disloyalty, 
and we could avoid unpleasantness like that meeting this morning."


 Vond nodded.


 "Besides," Sterren added, "I thought you liked using your magic as much 
as you could."


 "I do," he said. "In fact, I've been getting irritable lately, and 
nervous. I wonder if it might be because I haven't been doing enough. The 
power's there to be used, after all. It's always there in the back of my head, 



and I feel it so very clearly now..." His voice trailed off. Sterren nodded 


encouragingly.


 "What would you suggest?" Vond asked.


 "Oh, I don't know, move a mountain, maybe?"


 Vond snorted. "I'd need to build one, first; there are no mountains in 
the empire. Besides, where would I put it?"


 Sterren waved that away. "Not a mountain, then. Well, the edge of the 
World lies a few leagues to the south of here; could you do something with 
that?"


 "Like what?"


 "Oh, peel it back and see what's underneath, maybe. I've heard theorists 
argue about what holds the World up and keeps it from falling into the 
Nethervoid. Or maybe just go see what lies beyond the edge and bring back a 
piece."


 "There isn't anything beyond the edge, is there?" Vond asked.


 Sterren shrugged. "Nobody knows," he said.


 Vond considered that, clearly intrigued.


 Nothing more came of it that night, but the following morning, the tenth 
of Harvest, Sterren awoke not in his own bed, but hanging in mid-air, just 
outside the open window of his room.


 "Good morning!" Vond called from above him. "I thought you'd like to come 
along to the edge of the World and see what it's like!"


 Sterren looked up nervously. This was not really what he'd had in mind. 
"Good morning!" he called in reply. "I hope you slept well!"


 Vond frowned.


 "Actually," he said, "I didn't. I dreamt... well, I don't know exactly 
what I dreamt, but it wasn't pleasant, whatever it was." The frown faded. 
"Never mind that, though," he said. "We're off to the edge!"


 Sterren concealed his lack of enthusiasm for the venture, and rolled over 
in midair so that he could see where he was flying.


 They sailed quickly past Semma Castle and across the few leagues of 
farmland beyond, into the empty southern desert.


 Sterren would have watched the scenery, but there wasn't any below; and 
to either side he could see nothing but mile after mile of sand spattered with 
tough, patchy grass.


 Behind him he could see the towers of Semma Castle and the Imperial 
Palace gradually shrinking.


 And ahead he could see nothing. The edge of the World was wrapped in 
yellow haze.


 Sterren had seen that haze from the tower, but had assumed it was just 
windblown sand, or glare from sunlight reflecting off the edge itself. To his 
surprise, he could now see that it was neither, but a sort of very thin golden 
mist. It would have been almost invisible in any imaginable confined area, but 
here it seemed to go on forever. He could look through the golden mist, but 
all he saw beyond it was more golden mist, and still more golden mist, until 
eventually it added up to opacity. If there were anything beyond the mist, he 
could not see it.


 And of course, nobody had ever suggested that anything existed beyond the 
edge of the World, except perhaps Heaven, where the gods lived, and that was 
more usually thought to lie somewhere above the sky.


 He had nothing to provide him with any scale, but Sterren thought he must 
be seeing literally hundreds of miles of nothing but that yellow haze.


 Vond called down to him, "What is that stuff?"


 "How should I know?" Sterren called back. "Do you think we can get above 
it?"


 "I have no idea!"


 "I'm going to try." With that, Vond began to rise, pulling Sterren up 
with him.


 They ascended for what seemed like hours, and eventually the golden mist 
thinned still further, but so did the air about them. The blue sky above 



turned darker and darker, and grew steadily colder, until Sterren was 
shivering so badly that he could scarcely shout his protests to the warlock.


 They did, indeed, come to the top of the yellow fog, but they were unable 
to see over it or through it; all they saw was a seemingly infinite expanse of 
golden haze, stretching on before them forever, while behind them all the 
Small Kingdoms were laid out, the central mountain chain curving down between 
the rich-green coastal plain and the paler, drier eastern lands. The ocean 
appeared on the western horizon, the burning sands of the great deserts on the 
eastern, and still they saw nothing to the south but golden haze.


 When they could see the haze on the eastern horizon, beyond the desert, 
wrapping around the southeastern corner of the World, even Vond gave up.


 Sterren had been ready to give up long before; unlike Vond, he had no 
supernatural power source to warm him or gather in air. Frost had formed on 
his face and hands, and he was having serious trouble breathing by the time 
Vond finally began descending.


 When they had once again reached the warm, thick air of the everyday 
world, the warlock remarked, "I'd never gone that high before. It's quite 
something, isn't it?"


 Sterren's frozen muscles had not yet thawed; he could not answer.


 They landed, and Vond stepped forward to the edge while Sterren waited 
atop a small dune.


 The edge looked like an ordinary cliff; it was not particularly straight 
or even, but just a place where the dunes ended in a drop-off.


 What made it unique was that it extended as far as Sterren could see in 
both directions, and that he could see nothing at all on the other side except 
that infinite golden mist.


 Vond stood atop that cliff, looking down. "I can't see anything," he 
called back, disappointed. "Just that damned haze."


 Sterren stepped cautiously forward and peered over, still several feet 
back.


 Like Vond, he could see nothing but the yellow mist. "Wait here," the 
warlock said. He rose into the air and drifted forward.


 Almost immediately, he stopped and flew back to hang in the air near 
Sterren and said, amazed, "There's no air! I couldn't breathe. And that yellow 
stuff smells horrible and it burns your throat. And I still couldn't see any 
bottom. The mist just goes on forever!"


 Sterren looked up and down.


 "What holds it back, though? Why does the mist stay on that side, and the 
air on this side?"


 Vond looked up and down, as Sterren had, and then shrugged. "It must be 
magic," he said. "Wizardry, maybe."


 Sterren shrugged. "I never saw magic do anything this big."


 "The gods must have done it," Vond said, in sudden enlightenment. "The 
tales say they brought the World out of chaos, don't they? That yellow stuff 
must be chaos!"


 That did not sound right to Sterren. The story he had heard was that the 
World had been a bit that was left over, unnoticed, when the universe split 
into Heaven and Hell. The gods had found it later, and helped shape it, but 
they hadn't created it out of chaos.


 Besides, why would chaos be yellow? Why would it be any color at all?


 He didn't think that there were any explanations for the golden mist; it 
was just there, and they would have to accept it.


 "Now what?" he asked.


 Vond looked about, considering. "I don't think I want to fool around with 
that stuff," he said. "If it is chaos, it's dangerous."


 Sterren was not about to argue with that; he said nothing.


 "What if I were to fold back the edge, here? That might even be useful; 
if the magic that holds that stuff back ever fails, a wall here would be a 
good second line of defense."


 Again, Sterren was not inclined to argue, although he thought Vond was 



talking nonsense. He could not help balking at the immensity of the idea, 


however.


 "Fold it back," he said, his voice cracking.


 "Why not?" Vond said. "I'll need to see how thick it is,though."


 "How thick what is?"


 "The World, of course!" He bent over, peering down between his dangling 
feet, and Sterren watched as a narrow hole appeared in the sand before him.


 Sand slithered steadily up into a ring around the hole, and did not slide 
back down to fill it in again. Instead the surrounding ring grew and spread.


 Vond stared down into this unnatural opening for several minutes, and 
Sterren settled down to sit on a dune and watch. From where he sat he could 
not see into the hole at all, but he found he did not much care.


 At last, Vond straightened up. "I can't find the bottom," he said. "I 
went down well over a mile, I'm sure." He shrugged. "Well, I'll just peel back 
the top layer, then, and fold that up." He looked about, calculating, and his 
gaze fell on Sterren.


 "Oh," he said, "I'd better get you out of here. This may be messy."


 "All right," Sterren said, greatly relieved but trying not to show it. He 
stood up.


 In an instant, he had been swept up by that now-familiar magic and was 
airborne again, flying at a fantastic speed back toward Semma, moving so fast 
that once again, as he had at high altitude, he had trouble breathing.


 Breathless moments later, he landed, stumbling, on a village street, in 
the shadow of the walls of Semma Castle. 


CHAPTER 37


 Carried over the intervening distance, low rumblings occasionally reached 
the village. From his perch in the castle tower Sterren could see huge chunks 
of sand and rock shifting in the distance, but he could make out no details.


 After dark the noise continued, and an eerie orange glow lit the southern 
skies. The glow seemed to wax and wane erratically, and occasional sparkles of 
red or pale blue light rippled across it. Sterren was very glad he hadn't used 
another of his ideas and suggested that Vond go fetch the lesser moon out of 
the sky; folding back the edge of the World was quite terrifying enough.


 By noon on the eleventh of Harvest the job was complete; where once the 
edge of the World had been marked by a distant line of gold, now it was marked 
by a distant line of black that Sterren assumed to be stone, and a tiny black 
dot was approaching that could only be Vond, returning.


 Sterren decided that the tower of Semma Castle was not where he wanted 
Vond to find him; he headed for the stairs.


 He passed Shirrin in the sixth-floor hallway and almost stopped to talk 
to her. She stared at him for a moment while he hesitated, then turned and 
ran, and he continued down the stairs.


 When he got back to the Imperial Palace Vond was already there, sitting 
on air in the audience chamber with the great red doors opened wide.


 Sterren paused in the entryway, unsure whether to speak to the warlock, 
or to slip upstairs unnoticed. Vond settled the matter by calling, "Oh, there 
you are, Sterren!"


 Sterren strolled into the audience chamber, trying to look casual. "How 
did it go?" he asked.


 "Oh, well enough," Vond said, smiling. "The sand wouldn't hold together, 
of course, so I pulled up a sheet of bedrock. It's about fifty feet thick and 
fifty yards high, and only the gods know how long." He stretched and added, 
"It felt wonderful, using all that power!"


 Sterren smiled back, hoping the warlock would not see how false the smile 
was. "I could see the difference from the tower," he said.


 Vond nodded. "It doesn't look like much from this distance, though."


 "True enough, but it can be seen, and when people realize what it is, 



think how impressed they'll be. Their emperor has turned up the edge of the 
World itself! The concept is more powerful than the appearance on this one."


 Vond nodded. "But I'll want to do something flashy next time, something 
everybody will see. You think about what it might be, Sterren; I like your 
ideas." He paused and frowned. "Right now, though, I think I might take a nap. 
I didn't sleep at all last night, while I was working, and my head is buzzing, 
as if the walls themselves were talking to me." He waved an arm about vaguely.


 Sterren nodded and watched silently as Vond drifted off toward his 
private chamber.


 Vond still did not realize what was happening, Sterren thought. He 
wondered how long it would take and when Vond would catch on.


 He strolled aimlessly out of the audience chamber into the entrance hall, 
where the rosewood door of the council chamber caught his eye. He crossed to 
it, hesitated, and then opened the door and peered in.


 The chamber was empty. All sign of Ildirin's sudden demise had been 
scrubbed away.


 Sterren wondered how the other servants had received word of Ildirin's 
death. Who had told them, and what had they been told? How many had decided to 
leave?


 He closed the door and thought for a moment.


 The weather was beautiful, of course, as it always was in Vond's empire, 
but that might not last. He decided to enjoy it while he could. The courtyard 
held a magnificent flower garden.


 He was sitting on an iron bench, feeling the sunlight warm on his face, 
and letting the scent of roses fill his nostrils, when Vond screamed.


 The scream came not just from the warlock's throat, but from the air 
around him, from the palace walls, and from the stone of the earth itself; 
everything vibrated in rhythm. The stones groaned, so deeply that the sound 
was more felt than heard, while the air shrieked and even the leaves of the 
garden whistled piercingly.


 The scream had no words; it was shapeless terror given voice.


 The echoes were still fading, the air still humming, when the window of 
Vond's bedchamber exploded outward into the garden, spraying shattered glass 
in every direction; Sterren ducked and covered his head with his arms as 
shards rattled down on all sides.


 When the last tinkling fragment had settled, he looked up and saw Vond 
hanging in the air above him. The warlock wore only a white tunic, and his 
face was almost equally white. His eyes were wide and staring, his hands 
trembling.


 "Sterren!" he called. "Sterren!"


 Sterren said quietly, "I'm here."


 Vond heard him and looked down. He plummeted from the sky and landed 
roughly on the graveled path, falling to his knees and only catching himself 
from falling flat on his face with one outstretched hand.


 He looked up at Sterren and said, "The nightmares, Sterren, they're 
back!"


 Sterren nodded. "I thought so," he said.


 Vond's expression changed suddenly. Sterren's calm cut through his fear 
and released anger and uncertainty. "You thought so?" the warlock demanded.


 Sterren blinked and said nothing.


 Vond rose to his feet, using warlockry rather than hands and legs. "Just 
what did you think? I had a nightmare, how would you know anything about 
that?"


 Sterren hesitated, trying to phrase an answer, and Vond continued, "It 
was just a nightmare! It wasn't... wasn't that. It couldn't have been. It was 
just a nightmare, my mind playing tricks on me."


 "No," Sterren said, shaking his head and marveling that even now, Vond 
could not accept what was happening.


 "It was an ordinary nightmare," Vond insisted. "It must have been! That 
thing in Aldagmor is still out of range. It has to be! I haven't been using 



it! I've been getting power from Lumeth!"


 "No," Sterren repeated. He was horribly aware that Vond was on the verge 
of complete panic and could lash out wildly at any time and strike him dead 
instantly. "No, it almost certainly does come from Aldagmor."


 "It can't," Vond insisted.


 "Of course it can!" Sterren answered, annoyed at Vond's stubborn refusal 
to understand.


 "But how?" Vond insisted, "I'm out of range here!"


 Sterren shook his head. "Nowhere is really out of range; you know that. 
When you first came here, before you learned to use the Lumeth Source, you 
could still draw on Aldagmor. Not much, but a little. Don't you remember? You 
couldn't fly, but you could stop a man's heart."


 "But that's apprentice work! Apprentices don't get the nightmares!"


 "You're no apprentice any more. Don't you see? You've been drawing so 
much power from Lumeth, you've become so powerful, so receptive to warlockry, 
that the Aldagmor Source can reach you. Receptivity isn't that selective. 
After all, your receptivity to Aldagmor was what let you use Lumeth in the 
first place. They're the same thing; the more sensitive you are to one, the 
more sensitive you are to both. The Lumeth Source is closer, so you can draw 
far more power from it, but you still hear the Aldagmor Source, too."


 "But I cant!"


 "You do. You told me so yourself. You couldn't enter Lumeth of the Towers 
and you've been complaining for days about whisperings and buzzings in your 
head; didn't you realize what they were?"


 Vond paused, his expression shocked.


 "No," he said at last, "I didn't. But they... you're right, I was hearing 
Aldagmor. I wasn't listening, since I had Lumeth, but I was hearing it. Why 
listen for a whisper when you can use a shout?" He focused on Sterren again.


 "You knew he said accusingly. "You knew this was coming!"


 Sterren did not dare to reply.


 "Why didn't you warn me? I..." Realization dawned. "Gods, you encouraged 
me!" Vond exclaimed. "You, it was your idea to fold up the edge of the World!" 
Fury seethed in Vond's eyes, and Sterren expected to die then.


 He didn't.


 "Why didn't you warn me?" Vond screamed.


 "I was going to," Sterren answered, truthfully. "Really, I was. But then 
you killed Ildirin and hardly even noticed, and I... I thought you were 
becoming too dangerous. Besides--" He took a deep breath, and continued, 
"besides, would you have believed me?"


 Vond's face, though still pale, was calm as he forced himself to consider 
this question. He sat down on the bench beside Sterren.


 "No," he admitted at last. "No, I wouldn't have."


 "Besides," Sterren said, "I had no idea how much longer you had, how much 
power you would have to use before... before this."


 Vond nodded. "No other warlock ever came close to the power I had," he 
said wistfully. Sterren noted his use of the past tense. He had already 
resigned himself to the situation.


 "So," Vond said, "I'm back where I was when you found me in Shiphaven 
Market, back in Ethshar, I've had my first nightmare, passed the brink. I need 
to either get farther from Aldagmor, or to stop using my magic and live with 
the nightmares, or else I'll hear the Calling and... and do whatever the 
Calling makes one do."


 Sterren nodded.


 "I can't get any farther away, can I?"


 "We're not at the edge of the World," Sterren pointed out. "Not quite."


 "But from here to the corner there's nothing but sand and grass and 
desert. It's not worth it. I can't even build anything to live in; it would 
use too much power."


 "You could use your hands," Sterren suggested.


 Vond snorted derisively. "I don't know how," he said. 



 "You could just stay here, go on as you have, and go out in a blaze of 
glory. After all, the Calling isn't death, is it? It might not be so bad."


 "No," Vond said flatly. "I don't know what it is, but anything that sends 
those nightmares... No. I escaped it once, and that just makes it worse now." 
He shook himself, and said with sudden resolution, "I'll give up magic. I 
don't need it now; I'm an emperor. I can live as I please without it!"


 Sterren nodded. "Of course," he said.


 But he knew Vond could never do it. After using warlockry in such 
prodigious amounts for months, using it for his whims for years, could Vond 
really give it up?


 Sterren did not believe it for a minute. 


CHAPTER 38


 Vond walked into the audience chamber, climbed the dais, and settled 
uneasily onto the borrowed throne. He looked down at Sterren.


 "How do I look?" he asked.


 "Fine," Sterren said reassuringly.


 "It's not very comfortable," the warlock said, shifting slightly and 
looking down at the throne. "And it doesn't really go with this room."


 "Phenvel's bigger than you are and he leaned back more," Sterren pointed 
out. "As for the looks, maybe we can drape something over it later."


 Vond nodded. "What did the servants say when you told them to fetch it?"


 "I used some of the slaves you bought from Akalla, and they didn't say 
anything. It's not their place to question direct orders."


 The warlock nodded again. "That's good," he said, in a distracted way.


 After a moment of uncomfortable silence, during which Vond tried to find 
a more comfortable position and Sterren simply stood and waited, Vond asked, 
"What do you think they thought at the castle? Did anybody object?"


 Sterren shook his head. "I sent half a dozen of my guards along. Nobody 
objected. They may be wondering about it, but they can't do anything. You're 
the warlock emperor, remember, you're all-powerful. Nobody knows anything's 
changed except the two of us."


 Vond smiled, a twisted and bitter expression. "They know. Half of Semma 
must have heard my scream."


 "They don't know," Sterren insisted. "They don't know why you screamed. 
They don't know anything about warlockry. Nobody in the entire empire knows 
anything about warlockry except you, me, and maybe a few traders and 
expatriates from the north."


 "They'll guess, when they see me sitting in this thing."


 "They won't."


 Vond shook his head, but stopped arguing. "Should I open the doors, now?" 
Sterren asked. Vond waved a hand unhappily. "Go ahead," he said. Sterren 
marched down the length of the audience hall to the great red doors and rapped 
once on an enamelled panel.


 The doors swung in, propelled by two palace servants apiece, another 
reminder of Vond's unhappy condition, since he had always moved them magically 
before.


 In the hallway beyond waited a dozen or so petitioners. These were the 
ones who had been sent on by the Imperial Council or various servants and 
officials as being outside the council's purview, with valid reasons to see 
the Great Vond himself.


 There was no bailiff, usher, or doorkeeper to manage the presentations; 
Vond had always taken care of that himself, using his magically enhanced voice 
to direct people. As Sterren looked over the uneasy little knot of people he 
thought to himself that a great many things would have to change if the empire 
was to run smoothly.


 "All right," he said, "how many groups do we have here? Please, divide 
yourselves up, spread out, so I can see what the situation is." 



 The petitioners milled about in confusion; clearly, several had not 
understood his Ethsharitic. He repeated the instructions as best he could in 
Semmat and waited while the group sorted itself out into smaller groups.


 There were five petitions, it appeared, one group of four, a group of 
three, two pairs, and a single. "Who speaks Ethsharitic?" Sterren asked.


 One hand went up in each group; the single, unfortunately, just looked 
blank. Sterren asked him in Semmat, "Do you speak Semmat?"


 He nodded. "Yes, sir," he said.


 That, Sterren thought, would have to do.


 He decided to start with the largest group and work down; it seemed 
fairest to keep the fewest possible waiting.


 "All right," he said, pointing, "You four, come on in."


 The Ethsharitic-speaking spokesman for the foursome led his party into 
the audience chamber, down the rich red carpet as the doors swung shut behind 
them, to stand before the dais. Sterren watched them closely, to see if they 
seemed aware that anything was out of the ordinary.


 They did not. Apparently, either nobody had told them that the Great Vond 
had no throne and always conducted business floating in the air, or they had 
dismissed such tales as exaggerations.


 They went down on their knees before the emperor and bowed deeply.


 "Rise," Vond said.


 His unenhanced voice seemed horribly weak to Sterren, a thin little sound 
that was almost lost in the great stone chamber.


 The petitioners did not seem to notice anything odd. They rose.


 Their spokesman took a cautious step forward and waited.


 "Speak," Vond said.


 "Your Imperial Majesty," the petitioner said, "we have come here as 
representatives for many, many of your subjects who grow peaches. This year, 
thanks to the fine weather you have given us, we have a very large, very fine 
crop, and it is all ripening at once, so fast that we do not have time to 
harvest it. We..." He hesitated, glanced at Sterren, who looked encouraging, 
and then continued, "We have seen you light the sky at night. Could you do 
this again? If you could light the sky above our trees, we could harvest by 
night, as well as by day, and we would not leave fruit to ripen and rot on the 
tree before we can get to it. I... we understand that you have other concerns, 
but--"


 "No," Vond said flatly, interrupting the petitioner.


 The spokesman blinked. "No?" he said. "But your Majesty--"


 "No, I said!"


 "May I ask why--"


 "No!" Vond bellowed, rising from the throne, not by magic, but standing 
naturally upon his own feet. His voice echoed from the walls.


 A breeze stirred the warlock's robes, in a closed room where no natural 
breeze could reach. Vond felt it and looked down at the swaying fabric of his 
sleeve in horror.


 He turned to Sterren and said, "Get them out of here."


 Then he turned and ran from the room.


 The petitioners stared after him in astonishment. Sterren stepped forward 
and told them, "The Great Vond is ill. He had hoped that he would be able to 
hear petitions regardless, but it appears that the gods would have it 
otherwise." He hesitated, then continued, "And I'm afraid that's why he 
refused your petition; while his illness persists, his magic is somewhat 
limited, and to light the sky as you ask would be too great a strain upon his 
health."


 The petitioners looked at him uncertainly as he spoke, and he saw fear 
appear on the spokesman's face. Sterren thought he understood that; after all, 
when the king is sick, the kingdom is in danger. That old proverb would hold 
true all the more for an emperor, and a young emperor of a young and 
still-unsteady empire at that. Worst of all, Vond was an emperor without an 
heir. "Don't worry," Sterren said soothingly. "It's not that serious." 



 He hoped the lie would not be obvious.


 "What can we do?" the spokesman asked.


 "Go home, harvest your peaches as best you can, and don't worry unduly. 
If you know the names of any gods, you might pray to them on the emperor's 
behalf, and I'm sure healing charms won't hurt." He took the spokesman's arm 
and led the party back down the hall to the door.


 Once again, a single rap opened the doors, and Sterren escorted the 
little party out into the hall. There he raised his voice and called, "The 
Great Vond is ill, and all audiences for today are canceled!" He repeated it 
in Semmat. "If you wish to, you may stay in the area and check with the guards 
daily, and present your petitions when the Great Vond has recovered; or you 
may put them in writing and give them to any guard or servant with 
instructions that they be delivered to Chancellor Sterren, who will see that 
they are read by the Great Vond as soon as his health permits. If you cannot 
write, there are scribes for hire in the village."


 The little crowd milled about again, muttering uneasily.


 "That is all!" Sterren announced firmly. He turned to the four servants 
at the doors and dismissed them.


 That done, he turned and headed for the stairs. He kept his pace slow and 
dignified until he knew he was out of sight of the petitioners, then broke 
into a trot, heading directly for Vond's bedchamber.


 As he had expected, he found Vond there, sitting in a chair and staring 
at the gaping hole, edged with bits of glass and leading, that had once been 
the window overlooking the courtyard gardens.


 "I can't even fix the window," Vond said without preamble as Sterren 
entered.


 "I'll have the servants take care of it immediately," Sterren said.


 "Sterren," Vond wailed, "I can't even fix the damned window! I can't do 
anything. I can't afford to lose my temper; I was struggling as hard as I 
could to shut out the magic down there, but you heard my voice, you felt the 
wind. How can I live without magic?"


 "I didn't feel any wind," Sterren said truthfully. "I saw your clothes 
move, so I knew what happened, but it didn't reach me. You had it almost under 
control. It will take practice, that's all. Most people live their whole lives 
without magic. You ask how you can live without it; ask how long you can live 
with it."


 Vond turned and glared at him. "You did this to me," he said bitterly.


 "You did it to yourself," Sterren retorted. "And whoever did it, it's 
done now, isn't it?"


 "Oh, gods!" Vond burst out, throwing himself from the chair to the bed. 
"And the nightmares have already begun!


 "You've only had one so far," Sterren pointed out, "and that was right 
after working the mightiest magic any warlock has ever performed. Perhaps, if 
you use no more magic, you won't have any more nightmares." Oh, get out of 
here!" Vond shouted. Sterren retreated to the door. "I'll send the servants to 
fix the window," he said as he left. 


CHAPTER 39


 There were no nightmares that night, or the next, and Vond grew more 
optimistic. He stayed sequestered in his apartments, but spoke of venturing 
forth again and taking up his role as emperor, when he had adjusted to using 
no magic.


 Even the rain on the second day did not seriously dampen his spirits. If 
anything, this sign that he was no longer controlling the weather seemed to 
cheer the warlock.


 On the third night his screams woke the entire palace. Sterren took the 
stairs three steps at a time on his way to Vond's chamber.


 Two guards and Vond's valet were already there, staring in shocked 



silence as Vond, hanging a foot off the floor, beat on the north wall of the 


room with his fists.


 "Your Majesty," Sterren called. "Remember, use your feet!"


 Vond looked at him unseeingly and then seemed to emerge from a daze. He 
looked down, then dropped to the floor, and fell to his knees.


 He knelt there, shaking. Sterren crossed to him and put an arm around his 
shoulder.


 "You," he said, pointing to one guard, "go get brandy. And you, go get an 
herbalist." They hurried away.


 The valet asked, "Is there anything..."


 "Go find the theurgist, Agor," Sterren said.


 The valet vanished, leaving Sterren alone with the terrified warlock. He 
looked up at the wall, where a small smear of red showed that Vond had scraped 
his hand on the rough edge of a stone.


 "Why were you hitting the wall?" Sterren asked.


 "I don't know," Vond replied. "Was I?" He looked up, saw the streak of 
blood, then looked down at his injured hand, puzzled.


 "Was it the nightmares?" Sterren asked.


 Vond almost growled. "Of course it was, idiot!" He looked up at the blood 
again and asked, "Was I flying?"


 "Yes," Sterren said.


 "I used magic, then. No matter how careful I am, the nightmares can make 
me use magic. It's not fair!"


 "No," Sterren agreed. "It's not fair."


 The guard returned with the brandy, and Sterren helped steady the glass 
as Vond drank. When the warlock had caught his breath again, he asked, "Did I 
say anything?"


 "No," Sterren told him, "I don't think so." The guard cleared his throat.


 Sterren glanced at him. "Was there something before I got here?" he 
asked.


 "He was crying, my lord," the soldier said, "and saying something about 
needing to go somewhere. I couldn't make out all of it."


 Then the herbalist arrived.


 Half an hour later Vond was in bed again, feeling the effects of a 
sleeping potion the herbalist had brewed, and the little crowd of concerned 
subjects was breaking up, drifting out of the imperial bedchamber one by one.


 Sterren departed and headed back up for his own room.


 The incident had shaken his nerves. It had been easy enough to say that 
Vond had to go, but to watch him slowly being destroyed by the Calling was not 
easy at all.


 Sterren was not sure he could take it.


 Perhaps, he thought, it was time to go home to Ethshar. Vond could not 
follow him. The old Semman nobility was scattered and powerless, save for 
Kalira and Algarven, and they would have no particular reason to want him 
back. But no, he told himself, that was cowardice. Not that he was 
particularly brave, but it was worse than ordinary cowardice. He had created 
the whole situation; to run away and leave it for others to clean up the mess 
was despicable. It went beyond cowardice, into treachery.


 It would be cheating, and he was an honest gambler. He did not cheat. He 
did not welsh.


 He would stay and watch what he had wrought.


 He almost reconsidered two nights later, when another nightmare sent Vond 
blazing into the sky like a comet. He awoke and fell to earth a mile north of 
the palace; Sterren and a dozen guards marched out to fetch him back. 


CHAPTER 40


 On the twenty-fourth of Leaf color, 5221, Sterren awoke suddenly and was 
startled to see sunlight pouring in his bedroom window. It had been two 



sixnights since he had slept the night through, without being awakened by 
another of Vond's Calling nightmares.


 He sat up and realized that he was not alone in the room, that he had 
been awakened. He blinked, then recognized the man who had awakened him as 
Vond's valet.


 "What's happened?" he asked.


 "He's gone," the valet said.


 Sterren wasted no time with further questions; he rose and followed the 
servant at a trot through the palace passages, back to the warlock's 
bedchamber.


 The bed was empty and not particularly disturbed; the coverlet was thrown 
back on one side, as if Vond had gotten up for a moment, perhaps to use the 
chamberpot, and had not yet returned.


 The often-repaired window to the courtyard was open.


 Vond was gone.


 It was over; whatever it was that lurked in the hills of Aldagmor had 
taken another warlock.


 Sterren almost wanted to laugh with relief, but instead he found himself 
weeping.


 When he had regained control of himself, he asked the valet, "What time 
is it?"


 "I don't know, my lord; I awoke an hour or so after dawn, I think, and 
came in and found it like this. I went straight to fetch you."


 Sterren nodded. "All right," he said. "You go find whoever takes care of 
such matters and see to it that the Imperial Council is in the council chamber 
an hour from now. I need to speak to them."


 The valet hesitated. "What do I do here?" he asked.


 "Nothing," Sterren said. "Leave it just the way it is. The Great Vond 
might come back."


 With a shiver, Sterren realized that might even be true. Nobody knew what 
happened to warlocks who gave in to the Calling. None had ever returned.


 But Vond had been more powerful than any other warlock who ever lived, 
and warlocks had only existed, and therefore had only been vanishing, for 
twenty years. Nobody really knew whether Vond might come back.


 But quite frankly, Sterren doubted it.


 Back in his room, he had someone fetch him a tray of breakfast pastry, 
which he ate while bathing. When he was washed, fed, and dry, he took his time 
in dressing in his best tunic and breeches, combing his hair, brushing out his 
freshly grown mustache, he was almost, he thought as he looked at the mirror, 
ready to grow a proper beard. When he was thoroughly satisfied with his 
appearance, he headed for the council chamber.


 All seven councillors were there waiting for him; Lady Kalira, 
anticipating his arrival, was at the foot of the table, leaving room for him 
at the head. He marched in and took his place.


 "The Great Vond," he announced, "has moved on to a higher plane of 
existence."


 "You mean he's dead?" Prince Ferral asked. "No," Sterren said. "Or at 
least, I don't think so."


 "You'll have to explain that," Algarven remarked. Sterren did, not 
concerning himself with the truth. Warlocks, he explained, did not die the way 
ordinary people did. They vanished, transmogrified into pure magic. The 
nightmares and other ills that the Great Vond had been suffering were his 
mortal body's attempts to prevent this ascension.


 "He's gone, though?" Prince Ferral demanded.


 "He's gone," Sterren admitted. "But we don't know if it's permanent. It's 
only twenty years since warlockry was first discovered, and the Great Vond was 
the most powerful warlock the World has yet seen. We really don't know whether 
he might return or not."


 The councillors watched Sterren carefully, and he looked them over in 
return, trying to judge how many of them believed him. He couldn't tell. After 



all, these were all expert politicians. They could hide their opinions quite 
effectively.


 Then Lady Kalira asked the really important question, the one that 
Sterren had called this meeting to answer.


 "What now?" she said.


 "I don't know," Sterren admitted.


 "Well, what do you think?" Algarven asked.


 "I'm not sure," Sterren said. "We could just go on the way we have been. 
After all, nobody outside the palace has seen Vond in almost two months now. 
Nobody has to know that anything has changed."


 "I don't know about that," Algarven said. "I don't think we can keep it 
secret forever. The servants will know, and they'll talk."


 The others nodded in agreement.


 "We could take Lord Sterren's approach," Lady Kalira suggested, "and say 
that he's gone, but he'll be back."


 "Do we want to go on as we have?" asked Lady Arris of Ksinallion. "We 
could put everything back the way it was, couldn't we?"


 "Could we?" Algarven said. "What would we do with this palace?"


 Everyone began talking, and Sterren lost track of who was saying what.


 "Why should we go back to stupid little border wars?"


 "Why break up the strongest nation in the Small Kingdoms?"


 "What if the peasants don't want to switch back?"


 "What about all the roads he built?"


 "We could be beheaded for treason!"


 "How would we divide up the imperial treasury?"


 It was Lady Kalira who settled the matter by asking, "Do you really want 
someone like King Phenvel back on the throne?"


 That settled it; the Empire of Vond would continue.


 "What about a new emperor?" Prince Ferral asked.


 "Who?" Algarven asked in reply.


 "If we pick one of the deposed kings, we'll have rebellions in the other 
provinces," Lady Kalira pointed out.


 "What about Lord Sterren?" Lady Arris asked. Sterren thought he sensed a 
current of approval and he blocked it quickly. He had thought this all through 
once before, when Vond had appointed him to handle the details of government.


 "No," he said, "I'm not interested. I didn't want to be warlord of Semma, 
I didn't want to be Vond's chancellor, and I certainly don't want to be your 
emperor!" Lady Kalira started to speak, and Sterren cut her off. "You don't 
need an emperor," he said. "The Hegemony hasn't got an emperor. Sardiron 
hasn't got an emperor. They get along just fine."


 "What do they have?" Prince Ferral asked. "The Hegemony has a 
triumvirate, three overlords who form a sort of council. And Sardiron has a 
council of barons. We have a council here; we don't need an emperor."


 "You're suggesting, then, that the Imperial Council be the highest 
authority?" Algarven asked.


 Sterren nodded. "Exactly," he said.


 "And what of our chancellor?" Lady Kalira asked. "What will you do?"


 "Retire, if you'll let me," Sterren said. "I'd like to settle down 
quietly, find some sort of honest work -- though I certainly wouldn't mind if 
you want to vote me a pension, or maybe even an appointment of some sort."


 Lady Kalira rose and glanced at the other councillors. "I think," she 
said, "that we need to discuss this by ourselves."


 Sterren bowed. "As you wish, my lady," he said. "If you need me, I expect 
to be at Semma Castle." She bowed in return, and Sterren left the room. As he 
strolled down the hill on one of Vond's fine paved roads, he whistled quietly 
to himself.


 It was over. He had discharged his responsibilities. He had cleaned up 
the mess he had created. He had won Semma's war, but in the process of winning 
it he had unleashed Vond and destroyed Semma. Now he had removed Vond, but had 
kept his good works, his empire, intact. He could not be warlord of Semma, 



since Semma was gone, and now he was no longer chancellor of Vond.


 He was free, he could go home to Ethshar if he wanted, or he could stay 
where he was. He was crossing the market before the castle gate when a soldier 
spotted him and waved. He waved back.


 "Lord Sterren," the man called in Semmat. "What about a game of 
three-bone?" Sterren looked over, thinking of the feel of the dice in his 
fingers. At that thought, somewhere in the back of his mind, he thought he 
heard a faint silent buzz, or perhaps even a whisper.


 He shuddered.


 "No, thanks," he called. He turned his gaze away, up toward the castle.


 He saw Princess Shirrin standing on the battlements, watching him 
approach. He waved. She smiled, and waved back. Startled, he stumbled and 
almost fell, then caught himself and walked on.


 She must finally have forgiven him for allowing her father to be deposed, 
he realized. She could not possibly know yet that Vond was gone.


 He could explain it all to her now, explain how he had known Vond was 
doomed and that to resist him would only lead to disaster. She would welcome 
this explanation, he was sure. She would welcome him. He thought he just might 
stay in Semma after all. 


EPILOGUE


 Sterren lay on his bed, enjoying the view of warm afternoon sunlight and 
contemplating his future. Marriage to Princess Shirrin seemed delightfully 
inevitable. Nobody seemed disposed to evict him from his comfortable tower 
room in Semma Castle, and nobody objected to his presence at the table at 
meals, so he had free food and shelter and was in no great hurry to find 
another home, or any genuine occupation.


 Life was good.


 A polite knock sounded.


 He ignored it for a moment, too comfortable to want to move.


 A much less polite knock sounded.


 He sighed and sat up as the second knock was followed by someone pounding 
on his door and calling, "Lord Sterren! We must speak with you!"


 "I'm coming!" he shouted in reply.


 Reluctantly, he rolled off the bed and onto his feet, crossed the room, 
and opened the door.


 "What is it?" he demanded.


 Then he saw who was in the corridor beyond.


 The entire Imperial Council was standing there. For a moment he stared at 
them silently, and they stared back. "What is it?" he asked again. "What do 
you want?"


 Lady Kalira spoke, while the others remained grimly silent.


 "Lord Sterren," she said, "for the past two sixnights we have tried to do 
as you suggested, running the Empire ourselves. For the most part, I think we 
have succeeded. However, some problems have arisen that we find ourselves 
unable to deal with. We spend our time in pointless bickering over the most 
trivial issues, and when we try to vote, someone invariably abstains, and we 
find ourselves in a tie; and the arguments start all over again."


 Sterren blinked and said, "So what?"


 "So," Lady Kalira said, glaring balefully at him, "your system is not 
working."


 Sterren felt a sudden sinking feeling in his gut.


 She paused for a moment, then continued, "Furthermore, we have some 
doubts about the nature of our authority. We are all accustomed to living 
under monarchy, where one person holds the final say. We aren't comfortable 
having that power divided, particularly when it stays divided because our 
votes end in ties."


 "What does this have to do with me?" he asked, afraid that he knew. 



 "Lord Sterren," Lady Kalira said, "you brought the warlock here and in 
doing so you destroyed all the established hierarchies. You served as his 
chancellor, which gave you an authority nobody else in the Empire now 
possesses. We need an authority, a king or an emperor, who can settle these 
endless little disputes, and the only authority we can all agree on is yours."


 "But I don't want it!" Sterren protested.


 "That's exactly why we chose you as emperor," Lady Kalira explained. "How 
could we trust someone who hungered after power?"


 "I won't do it," Sterren said.


 "Lord Sterren," Lady Kalira said, "you have little choice. You arranged 
for your Imperial Council to have absolute power, did you not?"


 "Yes, I did," Sterren began, "and I--"


 "In that case. Your Majesty," she interrupted, "if the Council's power is 
absolute, you must yield to it, and it is the will of the Council, determined 
by unanimous vote, that you, Sterren of Semma, be named Emperor of Vond."


 Sterren stared at her. He realized what he had just done. In admitting 
that he had arranged for the Council to have absolute power, he had tacitly 
admitted that he, himself, had the authority to grant such power; he could 
hardly deny the Council's right to return it. He fumed for a moment, then 
burst out, "I am not going to be an emperor!"


 "As you wish, your Majesty," she said, bowing. "Tell us then what title 
you prefer."


 "Vond is the emperor," he pointed out. "I can't be emperor."


 "Vond is gone," Lady Kalira replied.


 He looked over the seven faces before him, all of them determined. "You 
all want me in charge?" he demanded.


 All seven nodded, but he thought one or two might have hesitated.


 "Suppose I refuse?"


 "If you refuse, your Majesty," Lady Kalira said, "I'm afraid that I will 
be forced to resign from the Council, and I believe several others will resign 
as well."


 He looked over the faces and saw no hint of yielding.


 Lady Kalira said, "Need I point out that if the Council resigns, the 
Empire will fall apart? I expect that the old kingdoms would revive, and that 
you would probably be considered a traitor by the nobility of Semma."


 That was true enough, and Princess Shirrin was one of those nobles.


 Besides, he thought the Empire was a good thing, he saw no point to all 
the petty little kingdoms it had replaced.


 "Oh, hell," he said. "You could appoint me regent, I suppose."


 Smiles of varying intensity appeared on four of the seven faces; the 
other three he couldn't read. "Lady Kalira will serve as my chancellor and 
vice-regent, of course," he said.


 Her smile had been an intermediate one; it vanished completely, and she 
opened her mouth to protest.


 Then she stopped as she saw the look of satisfaction on his face.


 "As your Majesty wishes," she said, reluctantly. She hesitated. "Will you 
be moving back into the Imperial Palace?"


 "Let me think it over," he said. He stepped back into the room and waved 
in dismissal. "You may go," he said.


 The councillors turned away, when a thought occurred to him. "Lady 
Kalira!" he called.


 She turned and waited as the others continued down the stairs.


 "That vote," he asked, "was it really unanimous?"


 She smiled. "On the second ballot," she said. Then she turned and headed 
for the stairs. 


ABOUT THE AUTHOR


 Lawrence Watt-Evans was born and raised in eastern Massachusetts, the 



fourth of six children. Both parents were longtime science fiction readers, so 
from an early age he read and enjoyed a variety of speculative fiction. He 
also tried writing it, starting at age seven, but with little immediate 
success.


 After getting through twelve years of public schooling in Bedford, 
Massachusetts, he tried to keep up family tradition by attending Princeton 
University, as had his father and grandfather. He was less successful than his 
ancestors and, after two attempts, left college without a degree.


 In between the two portions of his academic career, he lived in 
Pittsburgh, a city he considers one of the most underrated in the country. It 
was at this time that he began seriously trying to write for money, as it 
seemed easier than finding a real job (he had previously worked in a ladder 
factory, as a feature writer for a small-town newspaper, as a sandwich 
salesman on campus, in a supermarket, and at other trivial tasks). He sold one 
page of fiction in a year and a half.


 In 1977, after leaving Princeton for the second and final time, he 
married his longtime girlfriend and settled in Kentucky, where his wife had a 
job that would support them both while he again tried to write. He was more 
successful this time, producing a fantasy novel that sold readily, beginning 
his full-time career as a writer.


 He now lives in Gaithersburg, Maryland.