Bernwas merely the chief caretaker; other servants came in sometimes during the day to clean and maintain the place, and when Faran was in residence a full staff was on call.
Hanner had been about to ask about Bern ’s cooking skills, but now he thought better of it.
“Just something simple,” he said. “Cold salt ham and small beer, perhaps. Or fruit and bread, if any is on hand, but you needn’t light the oven.”
“Thank you, my lord,” Bern said. He bowed and departed— Hanner stepped into the room, out of Bern ’s way, when the servant reached the doorway.
Bernclosed the door softly behind him, leaving Hanner staring at his uncle’s private bedchamber.
Hanner had never realized that Faran wouldwant a place like this. He had known his uncle pursued women whenever he had the time free from his work, and affected expensive tastes, but somehow Hanner had still thought of Faran as a frugal and com-mon-sensical man, not the sort of sybarite who would maintain so elaborate a hideaway.
He wondered how, after a dozen years living with his uncle, he could have understood him so little. It was somehow the biggest surprise of the entire long, strange night.
And a very long, very strange night it had been. Walking Mavi home had been only very slightly out of the ordinary, a natural progression in a normal relationship, but from then on the night had grown ever more bizarre. Strange new magic erupting all over the city, people running amok with it, the magicians of the Wizards’ Quarter confounded, Hanner making himself the leader of a posse set upon restoring order, being refused admission to his home in the overlord’s palace, being sent here instead-and rinding that his uncle was not the man Hanner had thought him, all these years.
Hanner let out a long, shuddering sigh, then headed for the bed, pulling off his tunic.
Perhaps in the morning everything would be back to normal. Perhaps this strange new magic would pass with the dawn, perhaps the overlord’s orders would have changed, perhaps everyone could go back to their own proper homes...
But, Hanner realized, as he pulled off his boots, Uncle Faran would still be capable of having maintained this amazing secret retreat.That wasn’t going to go away.
But it might not seem to matter by daylight. Hanner crawled under the coverlet, straightened the pillow under his head, blew out the lamp, and fell instantly asleep.
Chapter Twelve
Ulpen of North Herris arose early from a night of troubled dreams, while the sun was still red in the east. Half-asleep, he stumbled to the kitchen to stir up the fire and get his master’s breakfast.
He felt strange and awkward as he moved through the familiar rooms of the wizard’s house in the slanting orange light, and the walls seemed almost to close in on him, suffocating him-an image he knew came from one particular nightmare that still haunted him.
He used the poker to spread out the banked coals in the bottom of the stove, then returned it to its hook and fetched wood and tinder from the bin. He threw a handful of tinder onto the coals, but when it flared up suddenly he started back involuntarily; the fire was too much like one of his dreams. He backed unthinkingly away from the stove, blinking mazily, rather than adding the sticks he held to the fire.
His foot hit an obstruction-Deathbringer, the wizard’s cat. Deathbringer yowled in protest. Trying desperately not to hurt the cat, trying not to drop the firewood, Ulpen lost his balance and began to fall backward. The sticks tumbled from his arms as he belatedly flung out his hands to catch himself.
“Augh!” he said as he and the wood stopped falling.
Then he realized that he hadn’t hit the plank floor, and that the sticks hadn’t, either. The little stack of wood had somehow reformed, balanced impossibly on his chest as he rested on one leg, one palm, and empty air.
Magic had broken his fall.
“Thank you, Master,” he said, carefully lowering himself and the wood to the floor and turning to the doorway. Since he had hardly been in a position to cast a spell even had he thought quickly enough, he assumed his master had stopped his fall.
Sure enough, the wizard Abdaran stood in the kitchen doorway, staring down at his apprentice and frowning. The frown deepened as he said, “It was none ofmy doing.” Ulpen blinked. He gathered up the wood and set it on the floor, then sat up, turning to face his master.
“Until you spoke I had intended to ask you what spell you used,” Abdaran said. “I didn’t recognize it and thought perhaps you had been meddling in things best left alone.”
“I haven’t, Master,” Ulpen protested. “I didn’t do anything!”
“Yet you stopped falling in midair, and the wood did not scatter.”
“It’s definitely magic, Master, but it’s notmine.”
“Nor is it mine.”
“But...” Ulpen looked around uneasily. “We’re the only wizards in North Herris, aren’t we?”
“To the best of my knowledge, we are,” Abdaran agreed. “Nor are there any in South or East Herris. But are we sure that it was wizardry that stopped your fall?”
“No,” Ulpen admitted. “But what, then?”
“You tell me, apprentice,” Abdaran said, switching to his lecturing tone.
Ulpen chewed on his lower lip thoughtfully as he got to his feet and brushed off his breeches. Then he looked at his master. “It might be gods, demons, witchcraft, sorcery, some unknown natural phenomenon, or... well, or something we don’t know about.”
Abdaran smothered a smile. “I would say that covers the possibilities,” he acknowledged. “That last category is perhaps a bit over-inclusive, though.”
Ulpen did not bother responding to that; instead he said, “There aren’t any sorcerers left around here, are there?”
“Not so far as I’m aware. There are four witches in East Herris, but no known sorcerers.”
“Why would the witches have kept me from falling?”
“I can’t imagine how they would know, or why they would bother,” Abdaran replied. “We could ask them.”
That idea did not appeal to Ulpen. Witches could read people’s emotions, sometimes even their thoughts, and that made the apprentice nervous. “I’m sure they meant no harm,” he said.
“And why do you assume it was the witches?” Abdaran asked. “You haven’t eliminated all the other possibilities on your list.”
“Well, we eliminated sorcery...”
“No, we did not,” Abdaran interrupted. “We eliminatedknown sorcerers. There could be someone new in the area, using this as a rather unorthodox introduction, or perhaps a sorcerer has been hiding here all along, or perhaps this was some leftover bit of sorcery from some long-ago spell.” Ulpen considered that as he gathered up the wood. He tossed the first stick into the fire-just barely in time, as the tinder had all but burned away-and said, “But in that case, couldn’t it just as well be some side effect of wizardry? A spell cast a hundred years ago, or a hundred leagues away?”
“Or to be cast at some time in the future,” Abdaran agreed approvingly.
Ulpen threw another stick of wood on the fire as he absorbed that. The idea that a spell that hadn’t been performed yet could somehow affect them was new to him, and he found it hard to think about.
“And gods or demons?” Abdaran prompted.
“Can’t be demons unless there’s a demonologist,” Ulpen said. “The demons were shut out of the World after the Great War, and can’t interfere in human affairs uninvited.”
“There are demonologists in the World, though,” Abdaran said.
“Not aroundhere, are there?” He glanced at his master and saw the satisfied expression of a teacher about to reiterate a favorite point, and quickly added, “That we know of?”