“The riverfront’s not... everything’s named for the person who owns it, usually Baron somebody-or-other. Are you sure Dumery said ’Blue’?”
“Yes, I’m sure,” Faléa said. “Areyou sure about the names? Or is there a Baron Blue, perhaps? Or a baron who uses blue as his colors?”
“I never heard of any. And you said Dumery was supposed to meet this man there in a sixnight?”
Faléa nodded.
“A sixnight isn’t much time to get to Sardiron, either,” Doran pointed out.
“It took me eleven days; you’d almost need magic to get there from here in a sixnight. Or did he mean a sixnight from where he is now?”
“I don’t know,” Faléa said, worried.
“There’s something wrong here,” Doran said.
“Do you think Dumery lied to us?”
“Maybe,” Doran said. “Or maybe Thetheran did.” He turned and said, “Come on, we’re going back.”
Together they marched back to Wizard Street.
Thetheran listened to their worries in polite silence. When at last both of them had said all they wished, the mage said, “I assure you, to the best of my knowledge the spell worked perfectly, and if it did, then I did in fact speak to your son Dumery. If he did lie about where he is and what he’s doing, I have no way of knowing-the spell does not force the truth. At least you know that he is alive and well, and that he is not in any immediate danger. Had he wanted help, he would have said so; one hardly need worry about being overheard in a dream!”
Doran grumbled an uneasy wordless agreement.
Faléa was not so easily swayed. “I want him back,” she said. “Something is wrong!”
Thetheran sighed. “Lady,” he said, “nothing was wrong with my spell. If you wish to pay an additional fee and stay here again tonight, I can perform the spell again, and you will be free to argue with your son all you like-or at any rate, up to half an hour or so; I doubt I can sustain the contact much longer than that.”
“I don’t want to justtalk to him,” Faléa snapped, “I want him brought back here!”
“And what does that have to do with me?” Thetheran asked.
“I want you to fetch him!”
Thetheran blinked at her. “Lady,” he said, “while I may be able to find a spell that would transport your son back here, consider carefully. It would be very costly, I make no pretenses about that. Furthermore, if your son does indeed have a legitimate appointment in Sardiron of the Waters a few nights from now, fetching him back here would almost certainly cost him the apprenticeship he has gone to so much trouble to arrange. I doubt he would thank you for that.”
“Then you can go and find him and see if his story is true, and bring him back if it’s not!” Faléa shouted.
Thetheran stared at her in astonishment. “Lady,” he said, “I sincerely doubt that your husband has enough gold to pay me to do that. If he does have that much, I’m sure he has more sense than to waste it so. I am not interested in leaving the city. If you’re determined to send someone after your son, find someone else.”
“You won’t do it?”
“Not willingly.”
“Why not?”
Exasperated, Thetheran looked at Doran, who merely shrugged. The mage turned back to Faléa and explained, “I, lady, am a wizard. I make my living from wizardry, not by traveling hither and yon about the countryside. I have a shop here; if I were to go gallivanting off after your son I would need to close it down for a few days, which would undoubtedly hurt my regular business. Furthermore, there is no telling what sort of hazards I might encounter out there, and I would be hard pressed to know which spells I would need to prepare, which ingredients I would want to take with me. Wizards do not travel well; we are too dependent upon our books and supplies. Or at least, I am. I am not desperate for work; I make a comfortable living here in Ethshar, and see no reason to face hardship and danger elsewhere.”
Faléa glared at him for a long moment.
“Then you won’t go after him, and you won’t send a spell to fetch him back?”
“Lady, I will do either one if you pay me enough,” Thetheran said mildly. “I merely state that I think it would be a very, very bad investment to hire me, in this case. Why don’t you go after your boy yourself, or hire someone else to do it? I’m not the only one who has magic for sale that can locate him.”
Faléa started to say something, but Doran cut her off.
“The wizard has a point,” he said. “If he’s not interested, we’ll find someone who is. Thetheran, is there anyone you’d recommend?”
Thetheran frowned, considering. “Not offhand,” he said. “There are wizards who specialize in information, and who could find out exactly what the boy is doing and where he is, but they can be very expensive, and they wouldn’t be interested in fetching him back if you did decide on that. You might try another school of magic-they aren’tall charlatans.”
Doran nodded. “Is there a theurgist around here?” he asked.
“Dozens of them,” Thetheran replied. “And you might also consider a witch-some of them have a knack for finding lost things, I understand. Or a warlock. I’d stay away from sorcerers, though-they make big claims, but half the time their spells don’t work. And of course demonology is dangerous, but it might serve, if you want to risk it. I can’t see much use for most of the lesser varieties of magic in a case like this...”
“We’ll try a theurgist,” Doran said.
They tried a theurgist. In fact, they tried three theurgists.
Two of the three said they could find Dumery; one of them even did so, for a fairly modest fee, and reported that the boy was on a cattle barge on the Great River, a good many leagues northwest of the city.
None of the three, however, was willing to go after the boy, nor to fetch him home by magic.
They tried a warlock next.
She claimed she had no way of finding the boy except to go out looking for him. She was perfectly willing to do that, if they could give her rough directions and would pay her rather exorbitant fee.
Or at least, she said she was perfectly willing, right up until they told her about the barge.
“North?” she said. “How far north?”
Faléa and Doran looked at each other.
“We don’t know,” Doran said. “The theurgist just said it was a long way to the northwest, he didn’t say exactly how far.”
She looked uneasily about, then down at the ornate carpet that covered most of the floor of her shop.
“I’m sorry,” she said, “but I can’t go far to the north. It’s too... well, it’s risky, for a warlock.”
“Why?” Faléa demanded. “I never heard of anything that made the north any more dangerous than any other direction!”
“You aren’t a warlock,” the warlock told her. “I don’t dare go too near to Aldagmor.”
“Why not?” Doran asked. “What’s in Aldagmor?”
“I don’t know,” she said, “but I won’t go near it.”
Dumery’s parents argued for another twenty minutes before they gave up and went elsewhere.
The next shop they tried bore a sign reading, “Sella the Witch, Diviner & Seer.”
Sella was a smiling, rosy-cheeked woman of fifty or so; Faléa found herself rather resenting the existence of so much bounce and cheerfulness in a woman older than she was. The moment the two of them stepped into the shop, Sella was there, bustling them to a pair of overstuffed chairs and fetching them over-sweetened herb tea. They were so caught up in this whirlwind of domesticity that neither of them had time to spare a thought for the thin, sad-looking girl standing in a shadowy corner of the room.
Once Faléa and Doran were seated, and before either of them could get out a word, the witch said, “You’re worried about your son? Well, I’m afraid that I can’t tell you very much; he’s too far away. He’s alive, though, and tired, but healthy.”