“Speak,” she said.
Chapter Forty-two
“Where are we?” Hanner asked as he struggled to regain his composure.
“I quite literally cannot answer that completely, even if I wanted to,” Ithinia said. “You are in a meeting place that is accessible only to the Wizards’ Guild; that’s all you need to know.” Hanner tried to reach out with his magic, and felt nothing at all. He was as powerless as if the Night of Madness had never happened.
“You’ve removed my warlockry,” he said. “I didn’t know that was possible.”
That changed everything. If warlocks could be turned back to ordinary people, then the Calling could be averted, and Lord Azrad’s fears assuaged, and order restored...
Ithinia’s next words dashed that hope. “Itisn’t possible, so far as we know,” she said. “Warlockry doesn’t work here, but when you return to the World it will return, and you will be a warlock once again, at the same level as before.”
“Oh.”
That was different, and less encouraging-but still interesting. Perhaps the wizards could provide a refuge for warlocks who had reached the nightmare threshold and begun to hear the Calling.
“Have youtried to turn warlocks back?” Hanner asked.
“Of course we have,” Ithinia said, visibly annoyed. “We’ve been doing intensive research on that question since the Night of Madness itself. We tried the Spell of Reversal, Javan’s Restorative, the Ethereal Entrapment, healing spells, hypnotic spells, cleansings, holdings, rectifications, instrumental, extractives, transformations, and regressions-multiple trials of each, some of them in slowed or stopped time. We’ve consulted with other magicians; herbalists and theurgists and sorcerers and demonologists couldn’t even do as well as we did. Witches seem to have come nearest to success, and the Brotherhood’s experiments are still continuing, but so far, it appears that once someone becomes a warlock, nothing will change him back. A large part of the difficulty lies in the way warlockry interferes with other magic. We thought we had the answer when we discovered that if a warlock is transformed into something else, such as an ape or cat, he is no longer a warlock— but we discovered that when returned to human form he is as powerful a magician as ever; we can’t transform him into a human who isnot a warlock by any method we’ve tried. Reversible petrifaction did no better. We thought of using Fendel’s Lesser Transformation to turn a warlock into a human being who is identical save for not being a warlock, but we discovered that the spell did not affect the one portion that mattered-the core of warlockry in the subject’s brain. Wizardry simply can’t affect it-not to transform it, nor remove it, nor alter it in any way. The only reason a transformed warlock can’t use his magic is that whatever causes it only operates in human beings; the core always remains present, dormant but as untouchable as ever, in the subject of a transformation. In short, if you’ve come here hoping we can return you and your fellow warlocks to your former state, you’ve wasted your time and ours.”
Hanner waved that idea away. “No, that wasn’t my intent,” he said. He had, as usual, said the wrong thing.
He couldn’t afford to do that again. The time had come to say theright thing. His life, and the lives of all the other warlocks, might well depend upon it.
“I was distracted by the loss of my magic, that’s all,” he said. “I came for two reasons. Firstly, to ask what arrangements, if any, the Guild would like made regarding the remains of Manrin the Mage, and secondly, far more importantly, to offer information that I hope will help you decide the Guild’s attitude toward warlocks.” He looked over the assembled wizards, awaiting some comment.
A red-robed wizard at the far end of the table said, “We will see that Manrin’s remains are transported to his family in Ethshar of the Sands for a proper funeral. You need not worry about that further.”
That was a small relief. “And the information about warlocks?” he said.
None of them moved or spoke but Ithinia. “What information might that be?” she asked.
“I don’t know how much you have already learned,” he said. “Forgive me if I repeat what you already knew.”
“Go on.”
“Do you know about the Calling?”
“The summons to the source-point of warlockry, in southeastern Aldagmor? We are aware of it. We saw Varrin the Weaver and Rudhira of Camptown drawn away, and have observed dozens of others departing, though usually under less dramatic circumstances.”
“Southeastern Aldagmor?”
Ithinia sighed. “It would seem thatwe are the ones providing information, not you!”
“An exchange is certainly welcome,” Hanner said, smiling— he desperately needed to keep this discussion on friendly terms. “We only knew that they were going north; we didn’t know their destination.”
“Aldagmor. The phenomenon that began on the Night of Madness is centered there, and the closer one goes to that point, the more powerful it is, even now. Most of the Barony of Aldagmor has been depopulated, in fact-themajority of the population there vanished on the Night of Madness, and another large percentage has become warlocks, many of whom have since been summoned. That land is in chaos, and the only comfort we find in the situation there is that it was thinly populated to begin with. We do not wish to see anywhere else similarly transformed.”
Hanner shuddered. “Neither do we,” he said. “We have ereated a Council of Warlocks, and one purpose of our Council is to control the spread of warlockry and to stave off any further Callings.” He hesitated, then asked, “Do you know where these warlocks are going? I mean, what’s in Aldagmor that’s attracting them?”
“No, we don’t know,” Ithinia said. “The Aldagmor source is like the core in a warlock’s brain-wizardry cannot affect it, cannot see into it. Anyone who ventures too close-anyone, wizard, warlock, or otherwise-is drawn into it, and does not emerge.”
Hanner nodded. He had pessimistically assumed as much. This confirmation was no surprise.
“You presumably came here to convince us not to destroy you all,” Ithinia said. “I think you might do well to stop asking questions and start making your case.”
“Yes, I know.” Hanner took a deep breath, then said, “You’re concerned with warlocks because you fear we’re going to cause trouble. You think we might disrupt everything. The Guild exists to prevent magic from spreading chaos-you created it to keep yourselves from doing that.” He suddenly realized that since wizardry could extend life or restore youth, that “you” might be more literal than he had thought-the very wizards who had created the Guild two hundred years before might well still be alive and seated before him. The idea staggered him for a moment, and he paused in his speech. “Go on,” Ithinia said.
“You had to put an artificial limit on your own power,” Hanner said, “because there is no natural limit-wizards can live forever, learning more and more magic. If two of your mightiest members went to war, you could probably lay waste to the entire World.”
“As the demons did to the eastern provinces, and the gods did to the Northern Empire’s heartland,” a gray-robed man said, startling Hanner. “They, too, have bound themselves now.”
“Yes,” Hanner said. “Yes, exactly. So you want warlocks removed, lest we become equally dangerous. But wecan’t. Wedo have a natural limit.”
“The Calling, as you’ve named it,” Ithinia said.
“Yes,” Hanner said. “Exactly.”
A white-haired man stirred in his seat and said, “We do not bother ourselves about witches, whose magic is limited to the energy of their own bodies, nor with sorcerers, whose talismans are not sufficiently powerful or long-lasting to seriously concern us. You warlocks, though, can reach a frightening level of power before the Calling takes you. Your Rudhira demonstrated that.”