Dumery began to feel a little better. Dragon-farming might not be so bad.
And hunting or farming, if he had a supply of dragon’s blood, it didn’t matter how he got it; he could still lord it over Thetheran and the other wizards who had rejected him.
And most importantly of all, if he didn’t get something to eat soon he would never make it back down out of these mountains, he’d die up here, of cold or hunger or something.
Still shocked, he forced himself to march onward, over the rocky shoulder and down toward the farmhouse.
Dumery was in worse shape than he realized; he had barely managed to knock on the door before his legs gave out, and he collapsed heavily on the doorstep.
His cheek was pressed against the cold stone of the threshold, one hand underneath, the other out to the side, his feet off some other direction, and he didn’t care about any of it any more. He didn’t want to move, and in fact he didn’t think hecould move any more. His determination had finally run out.
He just lay there, dazed and unable to move, and even when the door swung open he didn’t react. It took too much effort.
In fact, everything took too much effort. Even staying conscious took too much effort.
So he didn’t.
Chapter Twenty-Two
The warlock’s name was Adar Dagon’s son, he told Teneria, and he had grown up a farmer’s son in the Passes. On the Night of Madness, in 5202, as a boy of ten, he had woken up with screaming nightmares, and afterward he had found that he could move things without touching them, could sense what lay beneath the surfaces of things, could create heat and light from nothing-had, in short, become one of the original warlocks.
He had had no idea what to do, and had at first treated his new gifts as a toy.
At age twelve an older warlock had taken charge of him and seen to his training and upbringing. This older warlock, Gennar of Tazmor, had told him about the Calling, which had taken hundreds of people on the Night of Madness, and more since.
As Adar explained to Teneria, the Calling was something that came from the same source as a warlock’s power. The more magic a warlock used, the more powerful he became-warlocks improved with practice, like anyone else, only more so-and the more powerful a warlock became, the stronger the Call was for him.
The Calling, and the warlocks’ power, came from somewhere in southeastern Aldagmor, and when the Calling became too strong to resist warlocks were drawn to the Source, whatever and wherever it was.
Some people referred to the Source as the Warlock Stone, but Adar didn’t know why; no one really knew what it was, because nobody who saw it ever came back.
Warlocks who were drawn to it, who gave in to the Calling, were never heard from again.
No onecame back. Even non-warlocks didn’t come back. People who got too close to the Sourcebecame warlocks-and most were quickly overpowered by the Calling.
The closer to the Source a warlock got, the more powerful he became-and the stronger the Calling became for him.
Adar had known all this for years, and had taken precautions. He had been careful, or at least he thought he had. He had thought he still had a respectable margin of safety, at least in his native village.
Then he had ventured south from the Passes on an errand for a friend. He had known he shouldn’t go south, of course, but it wasn’t really that far, and Aldagmor and the Warlock Stone were a long way off, so he had thought it was safe. Oh, he expected a nightmare or two, perhaps, but nothing more than that.
But as he went about his business he felt something slip, and before he knew what was happening he had found himself flying off, destination unknown, out of control of his own mind and powers.
When he realized what was happening he tried to resist, he struggled, and although it had seemed hopeless, he had fought the Calling to a momentary standstill, there over the forest.
Then he had passed out from the strain, and when he had come to and resumed the struggle, there Teneria was, helping him.
And here he was beside her, astonished and relieved, even though he knew the reprieve might be only temporary.
Temporary or not, it was quite a surprise. “We didn’t know witches could help,” he said.
“Neither did we witches,” Teneria replied, smiling. “I’m as surprised as you are.”
He nodded, and then asked, jokingly, “If you didn’t come just to save me, then what are you doing in Aldagmor?”
“Oh, I came to save somebody else entirely,” Teneria said.
He raised an eyebrow in inquiry.
She told him about Dumery; he listened, but quickly lost interest.
Teneria, herself, was not really terribly concerned about the boy at this point. She realized that his trail was growing cold, and that she could be in serious trouble with her mistress if she lost him, but somehow she couldn’t bring herself to worry too much about that when she had something as mysterious and important as the warlock’s problem to worry about. Dumery surely knew where he was going; he couldn’t have wandered this far into the wilds of Aldagmor just by chance. After all, if he had been seeking his fortune, with nothing in particular in mind, wouldn’t he have gone to Sardiron of the Waters, rather than Aldagmor?
And thanks to the psychic traces she had been following, she knew he was traveling alone, so he wasn’t being kidnapped. What she could sense of his state of mind didn’t seem to indicate any particular distress; he was all right, at least so far, even if she didn’t know what he was doing.
Whatever he was up to, it could wait. All this new information about warlockry and the Calling was much more intriguing. For one thing, the possibilities of an alliance between witches and warlocks were obvious to both Teneria and Adar.
The two schools of magic used roughly similar magical skills-the sensing from afar, the levitation, and the rest-but in radically different ways. Witches, with the limits imposed by the finite energy of their bodies, had devoted themselves to subtlety, to the crucial fine adjustment, the touch in the right spot. Warlocks, with seemingly-infinite power not just available, but pressing upon them andasking to be used, while at the same time they knew that to use too much power could mean the unknown doom of the Calling, had developed a different style-avoiding the actual use of magic much of the time, but then turning raw brute force onto the matter at hand when called for.
As an example, had Teneria healed Adar’s wrist, she would have encouraged the bone to grow back together cell by cell and fiber by fiber. Adar had simply forced the pieces back together and fused them in a single operation. That would have exhausted a witch for hours, but was nothing at all for a warlock.
And another difference was that warlocks lacked the ability to sense, interpret, and manipulate the minds and emotions of others-the talent that was the very heart of witchcraft.
It was those skills at mental manipulation that had made it possible for Teneria to partially block the Calling, and that block was what let Adar resist it.
Teneria’s account of her pursuit of Dumery was cut short when Adar asked impatiently, “So which way did this kid go?”
“South,” Teneria answered, pointing.
She sensed the worm of fear that stirred in his mind as Adar asked, “Are you going to follow him?”
She hesitated, remembering that south was where the Source was, and then said, “No. At least, not right away.”
Adar sighed with relief.
“What, then?” he asked. “Whatare you going to do?”
Teneria blinked, and looked around at the night-shrouded garden. Torches burned at the rear door of the inn, and the greater moon was in the sky. For a moment she thought she might have seen the spriggan peeping around a rock, but then it was gone, and she was too busy with Adar’s mind to probe for the little creature’s.