Ethshar - Night Of Madness Part 12

The difference, he thought to himself, was that his clothes were far more appropriate to these surroundings, and to daylight, than Rudhira's.

"Thereyou are!" she said. "We've been waiting!"

Hanner really didn't know how to answer that, so he didn't; instead he simply nodded and continued down the steps.

Rudhira met him at the foot of the staircase and took his arm to lead him into what he discovered to be the mansion's dining hall.

"My lord,"Bern said, appearing as Hanner stepped through the door. He bowed discreetly. "I have kept the head of the table for you-I a.s.sume your uncle will not be joining us?"

"So far as I know, he'll be staying in the Palace until further notice," Hanner agreed.

"And will your party be staying on?"

"I don't know," Hanner said. "We'll have to discuss that later."

"If I may say so, so large a group is really more than I can care for single-handed at even a minimal level.

If you do stay, I feel it would be advisable to call in more servants. Your uncle has a fine staff on call."

"I'll let you know what we decide," Hanner said, moving past and turning his attention to the others in the room-and to the room itself.

The dining hall was large-which was hardly surprising in a house this size. A splendid table of gleaming unfamiliar wood inlaid with ivory took up the center of the room, with a dozen oaken chairs s.p.a.ced along its sides and one larger chair at the far end. Four ornate cabinets were arranged along the east and west walls, each with various drawers and compartments glittering with bra.s.s and ivory inlay; three of the four included gla.s.s-fronted upper sections, and Hanner could see something moving behind one of those panels, but the gla.s.s was so elaborately cut and beveled that he could not tell what it was. Since that was hardly an appropriate place to keep a pet, he supposed Uncle Faran had indulged in some variety of magically animated tableware.

Mirrors hung on all four walls; the south wall was pierced by three generous multipaned windows partially obscured by lace curtains, looking out on the dooryard and High Street. At the north end a large sliding door was closed tightly, while two small doors to the east stood open. Seven people were seated around the table-three warlocks on either side, and his sister Lady Alris at the foot of the far side. Four more warlocks stood or leaned elsewhere around the room, not counting Rudhira, who was at his shoulder. They had obviously been talking earlier, when he had heard voices, but now they were all staring silently at him.

None of the four prisoners they had taken were present. "Where are the ..." he began.

"We locked the prisoners in their rooms," Rudhira said before he could finish the sentence. "The others are still asleep."

"I'll wake them if you like, my lord," Yorn said. He was standing to one side.

"It's not necessary," Hanner said. Hesitantly, uneasy under the silent scrutiny of a dozen watchers, he crossed the room and took his seat at the head of the table.

He had never been at the head of a table before, and wasn't entirely comfortable with the idea; this was properly his uncle's place. As a n.o.bleman Hanner had grown up giving orders to servants and soldiers and expecting a certain amount of deference, but he had also almost always been subordinate to someone else-his parents, his uncle, the overlord, the various other lords who ran the city. The only times he had been the highest-ranking person at a meal had been in the palace kitchens or in the city's inns-never in a formal dining room. It felt odd to sit in the big carved oak chair and look down the length of the table.

An empty plate lay ready for him, while half-empty platters of bread and ham and a pitcher of small beer stood close at hand. Hanner could see that the others had not waited for him to appear before eating;Bern had not yet cleared away the used plates and scattered crumbs.

Hanner speared a slice of ham with his belt knife and transferred it to his plate, then reached for the beer and a pewter mugBern had provided.

"My lord," Yorn said as Hanner poured, "I should return to my company."

Hanner looked up, startled. "Has the warlockry gone away?" he asked, putting down the pitcher.

He should have asked that sooner, he realized. It should have been the first thing he said when he came down the stairs and found Rudhira waiting. It was obviously the most important question, the single thing that would most affect what he did that day.

"No," Yorn said.

"No," Zarek agreed. He was seated on Hanner's left. "Look!"

Zarek's plate lifted into the air, then hovered and began to spin-which flung bread crumbs in all directions. One landed in Hanner's beer.

"Sorry," Zarek said as the plate dropped the foot or so to the table and landed with a ringing clatter.

"It's nothing," Hanner said, picking up the mug and staring at the floating crumb. He glanced up and noticedBern 's silent but intense disapproval of Zarek's action.

Well,Bern was the servant and Zarek the guest, despite Zarek's ragged attire;Bern would just have totolerate such behavior. With a grimace Hanner gulped beer, then set the mug down again.

"So the magic is still here," he said. "Hasanything changed since last night?"

The others looked at one another; no one spoke at first, then Zarek offered, "I've had the best night's sleep I've had in years, thanks to that lovely bed you let me use, but other than that, noth-ing."

"Has there been any word from the Palace?" He directed this at Alris, but she turned toBern .

"There have been no callers since your arrival, my lord,"Bern replied.

"Did anyone receive any messages by other means, then?" Hanner looked around the table and at the others beyond. "A wizard-sent dream, perhaps?"

A few empty hands turned up; no one spoke.

"Alris?"

"I haven't heard a thing," she said. "If I had any dreams I don't remember them."

"I had dreams," Rudhira volunteered. "Not messages, though- nightmares. Bad ones. Fire and falling and suffocation, all jumbled together, and something calling to me."

"So did I!"

"Me, too!"

Half a dozen voices chimed in, startled.

"But those werebefore," one young woman said, overriding the others. "That was what woke me up in the first place, when I first found out I could do magic. I dreamed I was flying but burning as I flew, and then I fell and fell and fell and dove into the earth as if it were a pond, but then it fell in on me and I was buried, I was trapped and smothered, and that was when I woke up and discovered my bedsheets were floating in midair."

Again, several voices spoke at once, but this time not all were agreeing-some were protesting that their dreams had been later, here in the mansion.

"Silence!" Hanner bellowed. He stood up and pointed at Ru-dhira. "When did you dream?"

"I was awake when the magic came," Rudhira said. "It was like a flash in my mind, and I could fly and ...

well, you all know about that. It was here, in this house, that I had dreams about burning and falling and strangling."

Hanner nodded and pointed to Yorn.

"I had no dreams," the soldier said. "I was awake when the screams came, and it was when I tried to help one of the others in my barracks that I found I could move things."

The next man, Alar Agor's son, had been asleep when the magic came and had been awakened by nightmares, and the nightmares had recurred, far less intensely, after going back to sleep in Lord Faran'smansion.

The next person, the young woman whose bedsheets had floated above her, had been awakened by the dreams, but they had not recurred. Hanner asked her name, which she gave as Artalda the Fair.

In the end, of the eleven warlocks in the room, four had been awake when the magic came, and all seven of the others had been awakened by the same nightmare of a fiery plunge into entrapment in the ground. Four of them-two who had originally been awake and two who had been asleep-had had milder nightmares afterward, here in the house on High Street.

Neither Hanner nor Alris norBern had dreamed at all, so far as they could recall.

"The later dreams were different," said Desset of Eastwark, a plump woman who was one of the two who had experienced both, and who was one of the three who had been flying steadily last night.

"Something wascalling me. I don't think it was the first time."

"Something was definitely calling me," Rudhira agreed.

"I think something called meboth times," said Varrin the Weaver, the last of the three flyers, the other who had dreamed twice, and the one whose initial experience, destroying his entire bedroom, had been the most violent.

Just then another warlock, newly arisen from his borrowed bed, wandered in, to be immediately confronted by Rudhira.

"Didyou have any strange dreams last night?" she demanded.

Startled, the warlock-a youth named Othisen Okko's son- said, "What?"

Rudhira repeated the question. The boy, a farmer's son who had been in the city consulting a theurgist when the new magic appeared, looked around at the crowd staring at him.

"Sort of," he said. "I don't really remember."

Rudhira looked ready to interrogate Othisen further, but Hanner interrupted.

"I don't think it matters," he said. "I think it's clear that there is some common phenomenon at work here, something that happened last night that caused these nightmares and that gave you all this strange magic.

And it's clear that it's affected different people differently, which is why some of you have much more powerful magic than others, some have more intense dreams, and so on. Finding out exactly which effect it's had on whom isn't important. Finding out what it was, and whether the effects are permanent, and whether there areother effects we don't know about,might be important. So we know that the magic hasn't gone away, and the dreams haven't gone away-but not everyone had the dreams, and they do seem to be a little less intense the second time around. Now, has anyone noticed anything else out of the ordinary? Has the magic faded at all?"

The warlocks looked at one another. Rudhira ventured, "There was a lot of screaming last night, when it all first started."

"That was because of the nightmares," Zarek said. "I woke up screaming. So did some of the people around me. I was terrified and thought for a moment I was going mad." "Maybe you did go mad," someone suggested. "Maybe wetill did, and we're just imagining this."

"I don't think so," Hanner said, dismissing the suggestion with a wave of his hand. "Anything else?"

No one had any other observations to report.

"Fine," Hanner said. "Then is the magic weakening with time?"

There was a sudden rustling, and a surreal flurry of motion as most of the warlocks began testing themselves by lifting up from the floor, levitating random objects, sliding furniture around, and so on.

Rudhira did not move, which Hanner found interesting; she merely watched.

Yorn rose gently from the floor until an upstretched arm reached the ceiling; he was the first to speak.

"If anything, my lord, it's stronger," he said.

There was a chorus of agreement.

Hanner nodded, considering what should be done next. He had no idea how long this warlockry would last or how widespread it was-and whether it was really his problem. He was here, rather than safely home in the Palace, because he had been outside when it all began and had taken it upon himself to try to do something, but was it really his responsibility?

"My lord," Yorn said urgently, "I should go now. I was due to report for duty hours ago."

"And I should go home," Othisen said. "Once I've eaten," he added hastily, eyeing the ham and bread.

"But you're warlocks," Hanner said.

"I'm a soldier," Yorn said.

"And magicians are forbidden to serve as common soldiers," Hanner said.

"But I'm not a magician," Yorn protested. "I served no apprenticeship, I'm not a wizard or a witch or a sorcerer, I don't summon G.o.ds or demons-I can just do a few things. Someone put a spell on me, but that doesn't make me a magician!"

"And I'm not a magicianor a soldier," Othisen said as he s.n.a.t.c.hed a chunk of bread and a slice of ham.

"Are we prisoners here?" Rudhira demanded.

"No, of course not," Hanner said. He had been thinking that the group he had gathered would stay together for as long as the warlockry and its mystery remained, but now he saw that was foolish-the magic mightnever go away, the mystery mightnever be solved. He had said the wrong thing again.

"You're right, and I'm sorry. You're free to go, all of you who choose to-and you're also free to stay, for now. Thank you all for your help last night, and if any of you want to stay and help me handle the prisoners and try to figure out more about what's happened, I would be glad of it. I promised those who aided me a reward, but since the overlord has refused us admission to the Palace, or any recognition of your efforts, all I can offer to fulfill that promise is food and lodging here." "Thank you, my lord, but I have food and lodging elsewhere," Yorn said. "If you have no objections, I'll leave at once." He suited his actions to his words and trotted out of the room; a moment later Hanner heard the front door open and close.

"I'll go when I've finished eating," Othisen said.

Hanner took a bite of ham, then a swig of beer, and looked around at the others.

"I'll stay," Rudhira said.

That was a comfort for Hanner; he had been beginning to worry that if all the warlocks left he would be unable to control the vandals they had captured the night before. He had a responsibility to keep them safe until they were properly delivered to a magistrate.

If not for the prisoners Hanner might have simply chased everyone butBern out, locked up the house, and gone home himself, but as long as those four were locked in upstairs and he had no instructions as to what should be done with them, he was stuck here. And he had to keep them secure. Yorn was the only trained guardsman in the group, and his absence would be felt if the prisoners were to attempt escape or otherwise cause trouble, but Rudhira appeared to be the most powerful warlock of them all- though Varrin might be close-and could almost certainly keep all four in line.

"And the rest of you?" Hanner asked.

Zarek laughed. "If you think I'm going back to the Hundred-Foot Field when I can sleep in a mansion, you're mad."

"I'm going back to the Palace as soon as they let me in," Alris said.

Hanner nodded. He a.s.sumed that Alris would be admitted, that the overlord's panicky edict had been revoked by now, but it would not have surprised him if warlocks were still banned from the Palace. That was why he couldn't just march the prisoners there.

"I'd appreciate it, Alris, if you could go see what's happening there, then come back and tell me,"

Manner said. "I need to know what to do with those four we have locked in upstairs, for one thing." The sooner they were out of his custody, the better, so far as he was concerned, and Rudhira might not want to stay around indefinitely.

"If I go," Desset said, "can I come back later? I don't want my family to worry, but I want to find out what's happened, and you people seem . .. well, you know."

"You can come back so long as I'm here," Hanner a.s.sured her. "If my uncle chases me out, or we all just get bored and go home, come to the Palace and see me there."

Desset nodded.

In the end, everyone but Rudhira and Zarek decided to go- but several promised to return.