Shenda shook her head. “Not around here, anyway. We never see anyone but warlocks. But there are a lot of warlocks around here. I’ve heard that they’re more common in Aldagmor than anywhere else, that it’s easier to become one here than elsewhere.”
“I wouldn’t know,” Teneria said.
She was considering what to say next when the screaming started outside.
She leapt to her feet without thinking, and was surprised to find Shenda grabbing her arm, trying to hold her back.
“I’ve got to go,” she said, trying to shake the older woman off.
“No, you don’t,” Shenda said. “It’s dangerous.”
“Maybe I can help,” Teneria insisted. “I’m a witch, I can heal and calm.”
Shenda hesitated, but did not let go; Teneria used a subtle spell, loosening the other’s finger muscles and making her own sleeve smoother and more slippery, and pulled free. She hurried to the door.
It slammed open before she could reach it, and brilliant golden light poured in, blinding her momentarily. Artificially speeding the contraction of her pupils, Teneria shaded her eyes and peered out.
The warlock was hanging in the air above the crossroads, eight or nine feet up, spinning like a top and shrieking in agony, light pouring from him as if he were a living flame or a piece of the sun itself. A whirlwind surrounded him, carrying twigs and rotting leaves in circles about him; it was the wind that had flung open the door. The inn’s signboard was flapping wildly.
As Teneria watched, the warlock began to drift southward.
Wanting to help, or at least to understand, Teneria reached out with her witchcraft and touched his mind, as delicately as she could, and found a roiling mass of terror and confusion. Something was compelling him, something irresistible that whispered obscenely and unintelligibly directly into his mind; it was dragging him south, pulling at him, and he was fighting against it, hopelessly.
Part of him didn’t evenwant to resist, and that part was growing stronger-and he knew it.
That was why he was screaming. It wasn’t pain; it was terror and despair.
Teneria stepped forward and reached up with her own thoughts, calming him, pushing his fear back, trying to block off that overpowering lure, whatever it was.
It wasn’t easy. In fact, it wasn’t possible to close it off completely.
She was able to muffle it slightly, though, and the warlock’s own resistance strengthened. His spinning slowed, and he began to look down.
He spotted her, his eyes locked with hers, and then his head snapped away as he continued to rotate.
His gaze met hers again on the next rotation, though, and held for half a second.
His spin slowed further, and three turns later he had stopped.
He sank slowly to the ground, staring fixedly at her, trying to think of nothing else, trying not to think of thething that had been calling him, had been drawing him to it. He tried to think only of this mysterious girl who was somehow helping him fight back. Teneria sensed all this through her telepathic spells, though communication was made difficult by the fact that the warlock was doing all his thinking in his native Sardironese.
She could get the basics, though, and in fact was absorbing the language quickly.
As the warlock’s attention became unfocused from his internal conflicts, he became aware of the pain from his ribs and his wrist. Without really thinking about it he repaired the damage to the bones, reshaping the material with his magic as easily and casually as a potter works clay.
Teneria gasped, and her hold on the compulsion slipped for an instant; terror swept across the warlock’s face and through his mind, but then she recovered herself.
She had not known that warlocks could heal, and certainly not that they could do so nearly instantaneously. The bone-knitting he had done in seconds would have taken her three or four hours of careful concentration.
The warlock was as surprised at the situation as she was, but for an entirely different reason.
“I didn’t think the Calling could be fought,” he said, in Sardironese. “My master never taught me that. How do you do it?”
Teneria struggled with the unfamiliar words for a moment, then replied in the same language, “Witchcraft.” She concentrated for a moment, trying to find the right words in the unfamiliar tongue, and then asked, “How did you heal your wrist?”
He glanced down at his hand, startled. “Warlockry,” he said. He looked up again. “Aren’t you a warlock?”
“No,” Teneria said. “I’m a witch.”
The two of them stared at each other for a long moment.
“I’m afraid I don’t know very much about warlocks,” Teneria said at last.
“And I don’t know much about witches,” the warlock replied. “I don’t think any warlock does. We keep to ourselves, and avoid the other magicians-ever since the Night of Madness, I’m told.”
Teneria cocked her head to one side. “I’d heard that,” she said. “I wonder whether it might be a mistake, this avoidance?”
“If you can help us fight the Calling,” the warlock said, “then I think itis a mistake.”
Teneria nodded. “And if you can heal like that, I’d say we have a lot to talk about.”
The warlock nodded. “I think you’re right,” he said. He looked around.
He was standing at the crossroads, Teneria on the threshold of the inn; behind her, Shenda and the other serving woman were watching cautiously.
“May I come inside to talk?” the warlock asked.
“No!” Shenda shouted, immediately.
Startled, the warlock started to say something, but Teneria held up a hand.
“I’ll come out,” she said. “These people have had bad experiences with warlocks.”
The other serving woman called, “There are benches in the garden, out back.”
“Thank you,” Teneria replied. She looked around for the spriggan, but didn’t see it anywhere-the noise must have frightened it away, she decided.
That was just as well. She held a hand out to the warlock. “Shall we head for the garden, then?”
The warlock nodded, and his tortured face managed a weak smile as he took her hand in his.
Chapter Twenty-One
The first crossroads had almost fooled him; one branch was so small, nothing more than a trail, really, that at first Dumery thought there were only three roads at the intersection.
The man had been quite definite about the order, though-fork, fork, crossroads, crossroads, fork, fork.
There was an inn at the second crossroads, but Dumery didn’t stop; it was hardly past midday.
He also ignored various markers along the way; they were all written in Sardironese, which used similar runes to Ethsharitic, but which Dumery could not otherwise read. He recognized the name “Aldagmor” on most of them, now that the tavern girl had alerted him to where he was, but the rest was just gibberish as far as he was concerned.
He passed houses, as well, but didn’t stop to investigate any of them.
Since leaving the inn where he had breakfasted the road he followed had run more or less parallel to the ridges, rather than across them; that made traveling significantly easier.
The slopes were getting steeper, though-much steeper.
And the weather was growing steadily colder, which seemed almost unnatural. It was spring, after all-the weather was supposed to be warming up.
The hills undoubtedly had something to do with it, as well as the fact that he was well north of Ethshar.