The Unwelcome Warlock. Lawrence Watt-Evans

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      She had been toying with a carving knife, wondering whether suicide might be preferable to the Calling, and wondering whether suicide was even possible for a warlock, when the Call stopped.

      It was like a physical blow; she rocked back in her chair, her eyes wide, and the knife fell from her hand and clattered on the floor. She fell half an inch onto her chair as the magic that she had been unconsciously using vanished.

      The kitchen was suddenly all there was. The whispering, the barely-glimpsed images in her head, the awareness of the composition of everything around her, had all disappeared. Only the real, solid, everyday world remained. The hard seat of her chair, the lingering scent of garlic left from supper, the lamplight reflecting from the brightly-glazed bowls on the shelf, were all newly intense because everything she had sensed through her magic was no longer distracting her.

      “Oh,” she gasped.

      She sat for several minutes simply taking in the silence, the clarity. Then she finally allowed herself to think about what it might mean.

      It meant she was no longer a warlock; she found that out quickly enough. Everything she attempted failed. Her magic was completely, utterly gone.

      That assumed, of course, that this was real. For the last sixnight, she had often been unsure what was real and what was not, as the voices and images in her head crowded out her natural senses. Could this be some new, different illusion? Perhaps this was all just her imagination, and she was actually flying to Aldagmor even now, only thinking she was still safe in her own kitchen. After all, she had never heard of a warlock who had gone past the nightmare threshold to the very brink of being Called suddenly recovering like this.

      She rapped her knuckles on the table. It certainly felt real, and the sound was clear and distinct.

      But if it was real, why?

      This was beyond her understanding. She wanted to talk to someone, someone who might be able to explain this.

      The only place she could think of where she thought she might find answers was Warlock House, on High Street in the New City. She had only been there once, when she completed her apprenticeship and formally joined the Council, but of course she remembered where it was.

      She stood up and found herself slightly unsteady on her feet without magic to support her; she caught herself on the table, regained her balance, and smiled.

      “It must be real,” she murmured. “Why would I imagine that?”

      She wondered what the people at Warlock House would have to say about this. Had it ever happened before? Might there be dozens of ex-warlocks living in secret in the city?

      Moving slowly and carefully, she turned and headed for the door.

      Little Sammel focused all his attention on the coin, as he had a dozen times that day, but something felt wrong. He could not sense it — he could see it, but could not feel it, and the coin refused to move. The power seemed to have failed him.

      “Something’s wrong, Master,” he said.

      His master did not reply immediately, and the apprentice turned to see whether the elder warlock was angry, or merely distracted.

      He did not appear to be either one; he looked frightened.

      But that was silly; what could frighten a powerful warlock like Dabran the Pale?

      “Master?” Sammel asked, uncertainly.

      “Sammel,” Dabran said, his own voice unsteady. “Do you feel it?”

      “Feel what, Master?”

      “The…the quiet.”

      “I don’t feel anything, Master. I can’t…my magic seems to be gone.”

      A crooked smile appeared on Dabran’s face.

      “Mine is, too, apprentice,” he said. “Mine is, too.”

      Over and over, in shops and homes, streets and skies, all through the Hegemony of the Three Ethshars and in a dozen other lands, similar scenes played out. A few warlocks died when their magic failed; so did a few of their customers, and a handful of bystanders. A few more people were injured. Some former warlocks bemoaned their loss of power; others delighted in knowing they were free of the Call. Some thought they were alone and tried to conceal their vulnerability; others gathered to compare notes on what might have happened.

      In the Baronies of Sardiron warlocks were almost unknown; that realm was too close to Aldagmor for comfort, the Calling too strong. In the more northerly Small Kingdoms, warlocks were scarce because they were not welcome; in the southernmost Small Kingdoms, warlocks were nonexistent, by edict of the Wizards’ Guild, which had banned them from the area in 5224. Word was therefore slow to spread in those regions.

      In most of the towns and cities of the World, though, it was well known by morning that there were no more warlocks, and no more Call.

      What was not yet widely known was why.

      Chapter Five

      Hanner looked out at the torchlit thousands of people sitting huddled on the grass, stretching out hundreds of yards in every direction, most of them shivering from the cold — as yet, no one had gathered fuel for proper campfires.

      “Water is probably the most urgent need,” he said, “but if we don’t get some sort of shelter, some of the older people may freeze.”

      “It’s too bad there isn’t any snow,” Sensella said. “We could use that for water and shelter.”

      “We can’t stay here, either,” Hanner added. “There’s no food.”

      “That’s true.” She looked around at the dark surrounding hills. “There were farms here once, I believe.”

      “There were,” a young man said from just behind her elbow, speaking Ethsharitic with a thick Sardironese accent. “My family’s farm was just over there.” He pointed. “We grew wheat and beans, mostly.”

      Hanner said, “You’re from Aldagmor?”

      “Yes,” the young man said. “I’m Rayel Roggit’s son.”

      “It must be a shock, waking up to find your home gone,” Hanner said.

      Rayel shuddered. “My home, and more than thirty years, gone in the blink of an eye! I was in bed, and I had this strange nightmare, and I thought I heard something like thunder but I wasn’t sure because I was still asleep, and then the next thing I know I’m jammed in among my family and my neighbors down at the bottom of a pit in the dark, and everyone’s screaming and crying and we can’t breathe, and when we get out — those of us who did; I’m pretty sure my brother died in there — we find this.”

      “I’m sorry about your brother,” Sensella said.

      Rayel shook his head. “It doesn’t seem real. He can’t be dead, but I didn’t see him get out.”

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