Sarai ignored the murmurs and did not wait for the room to empty; she slipped out the back door as quickly as she could and headed down the passageway toward the southeast wing, where her family’s rooms were.
It was all those wizards, she thought, the Guild and its stupid rules. If her father were a wealthy commoner, they could buy a healing spell—but because he was a member of the nobility, because he held a post in the government, the Wizards’ Guild forbade the use of magic to prolong his life.
And it didn’t matter whether the spell was a simple disinfectant or perfect immortality—anything that prolonged life, in any degree, was forbidden to the nobility, as far as wizards were concerned.
What’s more, the Wizards’ Guild actively discouraged other magicians from healing the nobility, as well. Sarai had had to argue to get other magicians even to look at her father.
Not that it had done much good.
In fact, it was really quite startling how little worthwhile healing magic was out there. As she reached the first flight of steps up, Sarai began counting off the different schools of magic and how they had failed her.
Demonology was inherently destructive; it was no great surprise that demons couldn’t heal. The demonologists had all agreed on that.
The sorcerers swore that with the right artifacts, they could heal diseases, even the sort of slow, lingering weakness mat was gradually killing Lord Kalthon, or the illness of the lungs that was crippling his son—but the right artifacts could no longer be found. None existed in Ethshar of the Sands.
Sarai had paid a large fee to have a search begun throughout all the World, from the wastes of Kerroa to the Empire of Vond, but so far nothing had come of it, and she doubted anything ever would.
The warlocks were apologetic, but couldn’t work on anything that small. Patching up an opened vein, repairing a ruptured heart, welding a broken bone—those warlockry could at least attempt, though success was not always certain. But whatever was wrong with her father, they said, attacked the individual nerves, operating on a scale they could not perceive, and therefore could not affect.
Witchcraft held out some promise at first; the half-dozen witches Sarai had summoned to the palace had tried, at least. They had fed father and son strength, drawing it from their own bodies—but to no avail. When the spell was broken, the weakness returned within hours. Witchcraft could, at great cost to the witch, put the elder Kalthon back on his feet for a day or two, but could do nothing permanent.
“His own body has given up,” the eldest, Shirith of Ethshar, explained. “We can’t heal it without its help.”
But all of those Sarai had tried only when she became desperate. She had begun with the theurgists—after all, didn’t everyone pray to the gods for good health? She reached the second floor and started up the next flight. Okko had refused to handle the job—although he acknowledged that he was a top-ranked theurgist, a high priest, in fact; his specialties were truth and information. Healing was not his province. He had instead recommended her to Anna the Elder. Anna had summoned gods, had spoken with them, and had reported back to Kalthon and Sarai.
“We know of three gods of health and healing,” Anna had explained. “There are the siblings Blusheld and Blukros and their father, Mekdor. Blusheld involves herself only with the maintenance of health and thus will not concern herself with this case—it’s too late to ask her aid. Mekdor concerns himself with great wounds and catastrophes, with plagues and epidemics; anything as slow as this wasting disease, attacking only one or two people, is beneath his notice. Thus, this is clearly the province of Blukros.”
At that point Anna had hesitated, and Lord Kalthon had tried to save him the embarrassment of explaining, saying that he understood.
Sarai would have none of it; she had demanded that Anna summon Blukros and beseech him to heal her father.
“No,” Kalthon had said, “he can’t. Not on my behalf.” “Why nor?” Sarai had demanded.
“Because seven years ago, after having summoned him to help your mother, I offended the god Blukros,” Kalthon had explained. “I refused him a silver coin I had promised, and he forever withdrew his protection from me, and from my family.” Sarai had stared at her father and demanded, “But why?” “Because I was angry—your mother had died.” And so, because of her father’s long-ago pique, there was no help to be had from the gods. Anna had tried, and he had promised to attempt to call upon Luzro, god of the dead, to see if, once dead, Kalthon could be restored to life—but nothing had come of it.
So theurgy was no help. And that left wizardry.
And the wizards had healing spells and youth spells and strength spells; they had transformation spells, and if all else failed they could transform Kalthon to some other, healthier form.
But they wouldn’t.
She reached the top of the stairs and stamped down the corridor. They wouldn’t, because the Wizards’ Guild forbade it, and to oppose the will of the Guild was to die. And the Guild forbade it because they refused to meddle in politics. It was strictly forbidden for any wizard to be a member of the nobility in his or her own right; a century ago, they had even been forbidden to marry into the nobility, but that rule had been relaxed. They could hold office only if the office was one that required a magician—a post such as Okko’s, for example. No wizard could kill a king in the Small Kingdoms, or a baron in Sardiron, or an overlord or a minister or any other high official of the Hegemony, save in self-defense or to enforce Guild rules; the direct heirs of the nobility were similarly off-limits. Wizards were forbidden to use any magical compulsion on any official above the rank of lieutenant in the city guard without written consent from three Guildniasters. And anyone they could not kill, they were forbidden to heal, as well. “That’s stupid,” Sarai had said.
Algarin of Longwall, her father’s chief wizardry consultant, had turned up an empty palm. “It’s the Guild law,” he said. “Why?” Algarin had had no answer, and Sarai had demanded to see a more highly placed wizard, so it was the city’s senior Guild-master, Serem the Wise, who finally explained it.
“Magic, Lady Sarai,” the old man had said, “is power, but of a different sort than the power you and your father wield.”
“I can see that for myself,” Sarai had snapped in reply.
“And power,” Serem had continued, untroubled by her interruption, “must be kept in balance. If it is not, the World will be plunged into chaos.”
“Says who?”
“It’s self-evident,” Serem had replied, with mild surprise. “Imagine, if you will, that a wizard were to become overlord of Ethshar of the Sands.”
Sarai had glowered at him, and Serem had revised his suggestion. “Suppose,” he said, “that Lord Ederd the Heir had apprenticed to a wizard in his youth. Suppose that he decided he was tired of waiting for his father to die and cast a spell that slew the overlord.”
“Then he’d be guilty of treason, and he would be executed,” Sarai had replied. “That’s easy enough. My father would see to it.”
“But how?” Serem had asked. “Suppose this evil wizard were to use his spells to guard himself, and you could not appeal to the Wizards’ Guild, because there are, in our hypothetical case, no Guild rules forbidding his actions, no matter what other laws he may have broken.”