The Unwelcome Warlock. Lawrence Watt-Evans

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СКАЧАТЬ they began to feel the Call.

      He needed to get clear, to see what was happening. Ordinarily he would have gone up, but that great glowing thing that filled the sky worried him. Instead, he veered sideways.

      That glowing thing — was that the source of the Calling, the source of warlockry?

      No, he could sense that it wasn’t. The Calling came from below; the answer to it came from the glowing thing. He flew sideways, slipping through narrow gaps in the tangle of limbs around him, looking for clear air.

      And then the Call stopped, and his magic disappeared, and he found himself falling. He stretched out his arms to catch himself, and collided with a woman, but she was falling, too; he bounced from her to someone else, and then to other people, but they were all falling, they had all lost their magic.

      He landed heavily on a pile of bodies, and someone else immediately landed on top of him, knocking the breath from his lungs. Hanner flung up his hands to shield his head.

      The Calling was gone, just as it had been in the refuge the wizards had made for him. Could something have transported them all into another world?

      People were still screaming, and he could feel the people around him writhing and struggling to get free of the immense heap of fallen bodies, but the volume of sound was less now — Hanner no longer heard or felt the thump of more people landing atop him.

      But then there was a new sound, and a vibration, a shaking, like nothing he had ever felt before. He tried to turn, to see what was happening, and someone slid aside just in time to give him a view of the sky, and of that huge glowing thing that hung above them all. Thus he saw the other thing as it rose up from below, pulled up out of the ground by its airborne companion.

      He recognized it. He had seen it in his dreams, and especially in his nightmares, for years, though he could never have described it or put a name to it. This was the thing that had fallen out of the sky on the Night of Madness, the thing that had plunged, fiery and screaming, down into the earth, blasting a great pit into the heart of Aldagmor. The pit had fallen in on it, the fire had damaged it, and it had been trapped there.

      It had called for help. It had sent out a magical shout that kept repeating endlessly. Hanner knew that — he had been Called, and now that the Calling had stopped and he could think clearly again, he understood what he had heard. It had never been clear so long as he was able to resist its pull, but once he had come here and heard it clearly, close up, he understood, even though the message had not been in words, nor even really in human concepts. He was able to interpret it, translate it into images and ideas he understood; they might not be exactly right, but they were close.

      The thing had called for help, and because it was not from the World, not from this entire universe, it had needed to call so very loudly that its call resonated in certain human minds. Some of those humans had immediately obeyed, their will overwhelmed by the demand that whoever heard the Call must come and help; others had been able to take the sheer power of the Call and shape it with their own will, using it to perform magic.

      But the more they had used that power, the more they had become attuned to it, until at last they received the message and had to obey.

      The message wasn’t meant for humans, though, and humans could do nothing to help the trapped thing. Instead, they ran into the defenses it had set up to protect itself while it waited. The thing had not wanted to stay awake down there, trapped, frightened, and alone, until rescue came; it had cast a protective spell, put itself into a timeless, dreamless sleep, and anything that came too close to it was trapped in the same spell, frozen into unconsciousness and immobility.

      Now help had finally come, the help it had been calling for all along. The protective spell was broken, and the signal the trapped creature had been sending had stopped.

      What’s more, it was no longer trapped; its rescuer had pulled it free, scattering the warlocks that had covered it in all directions. As Hanner watched, the thing that had been the source of all warlockry was pulled up to join its rescuer, and then both of them rose, ascending and accelerating, until they dwindled amid the stars.

      Behind them, strewn across this valley in southeastern Aldagmor, they left thousands of people who had once been warlocks.

      Hanner watched the two monstrous things vanish, then realized he was kneeling on somebody. His first instinctive response was to try to fly, to get off whoever it was, but of course he couldn’t — the Call had ended, and the source of warlockry was gone.

      The warlocks remained, though, and Hanner could hear them calling, groaning, and crying on all sides. He turned, and tried to see where he was, where the shortest route to the ground might be.

      “This way!” someone called — a woman, not a voice he recognized. “There’s room over here!”

      Hanner scrambled in the direction of the voice, mumbling, “Excuse me, I’m sorry, please, I’m sorry,” as he clambered over the bodies of his fallen comrades, many of whom were now trying to free themselves, as well.

      So far every body he had put a hand or foot or knee on had felt warm and alive, but Hanner was beginning to realize that some people must have died, must have dashed their brains out or broken their necks when they hit the ground, or been smothered or crushed by the people on top of them. There were hundreds of people here; he couldn’t tell how many, really, but from what he saw and heard it had to be at least hundreds.

      There might be more deaths to come, as well. As he moved out of the press of bodies he could feel the night air, and it was cold, cold enough, Hanner thought, for unprotected people to die of exposure.

      They were somewhere in Aldagmor, in a valley in the mountains of Sardiron; how cold did it get here? What time of year was it? He had been Called in early summer, and this was definitely not early summer. He looked up, but all he could tell from that was that it was night. The greater moon was a half-circle in the western sky, but other than providing a little light that didn’t help.

      He couldn’t really see much of anything in the dimness; his eyes had not yet adjusted after the glowing thing’s departure. He was crawling on all fours, finding his way by feel more than by sight, and his left hand finally came down not on cloth or flesh, but on cold, damp grass — not the soft grass of a lawn, but the rough, scratchy grass of the wilderness. He pulled himself onto it, then got to his feet and looked around.

      He was surrounded by shadowy forms — people were standing, or kneeling, or crawling on all sides. He wished he could hold up his hand and make light, as he had so often in the past, but his magic was gone. It had vanished with the Calling, and the source had flown away, gone forever. The World had once again changed suddenly, without warning, just as it had on the Night of Madness, when warlockry had first come into being, and just as it had then, the change had brought chaos.

      Someone needed to take charge here. If no one brought some order out of this chaos, more people would die needlessly.

      “Hai!” he shouted. “I am Hanner, Chairman of the Council of Warlocks! If you’re unhurt, please get to clear ground and stand up, and then help those who aren’t so fortunate!” He glanced around. “Does anyone have a tinderbox, by any chance, or some other way to make a light?”

      This was greeted by a chorus of questions. “Hanner?”

      “Who?”

      “Lord Hanner?”

      Hanner grimaced; at least some of them recognized his СКАЧАТЬ