“I think so,” the woman answered.
“Can you move?”
There was another scraping, and she inhaled sharply. “It hurts when I try,” she said. “I think something’s broken.”
Then she wasn’t a warlock; even if for some reason her magic had not protected her from the fall, a warlock could mend broken bones. For that matter, Kelder had heard that witches could block pain and do some healing, so she probably wasn’t a witch, either. He didn’t see a flying carpet or any other devices, but if she was a wizard, a failing levitation spell might explain her presence. Still, it didn’t seem the most likely possibility. “Are you a demonologist?” he called, looking around for anything that might be flying near. “Did a demon drop you here?” He did not want to climb out there and find some horror from the Nethervoid waiting.
“No. I’m a warlock,” she said.
“But…” Kelder was confused. “But then how… Why can’t you move? Why can’t you heal yourself?”
“I don’t know!” she said miserably. “I was flying, and then I wasn’t – it was as if my magic just disappeared.”
Kelder had never heard of anything like that. Magic didn’t just disappear unless a magician wanted it to. Oh, there were stories about places where wizardry didn’t work – there were rumors that the overlord’s palace in Ethshar of the Sands was such a place, ever since that madwoman Tabaea, the self-proclaimed empress, had died there – but warlockry wasn’t like that. The only places it might not work were out at the edges of the World, too far from the source in Aldagmor. Here in Ethshar of the Spices, it worked just fine.
He looked at the injured woman, lying helpless on the roof tiles, and then looked down at the street four stories below. There was no way to get her in through his window safely, not if she was really hurt, and there was no door or trap opening onto the roof.
“I’ll go get help,” he said. “Is there some other warlock I should ask to come get you?”
“Maybe. Where am I?”
“You’re on the roof of a boarding house on Old Market Street, in Hempfield.”
“Hempfield? I don’t know anyone in Hempfield.”
“That’s unfortunate. Let me see if I can find someone. I’ll be back as quickly as I can.”
She made a noise that he didn’t think was intended to be words, and he carefully lowered himself back into his room. Then he paused to think.
The obvious solution would be to find a ladder and get a couple of people up there to carry her down, but Kelder didn’t know anyone with a ladder long enough. No, they needed a magician.
Hempfield was not exactly the Wizards’ Quarter. There were three herbalists in the neighborhood, if one defined “neighborhood” broadly, and a few blocks to the north lived a witch of dubious reputation by the name of Kyrina of Newmarket, but the nearest warlock Kelder knew of was a journeyman calling himself Berakon the Black, who had a place on Locksmith Alley in Allston. Kelder was not at all sure Berakon could even fly – he had located his shop in Locksmith Alley because he earned most of his living working with locks and other small hardware – but he was a warlock and only about a dozen blocks away.
Kelder pulled on his tunic and boots, grabbed a jacket, and headed out the door.
He called a brief explanation to the landlady on his way, but did not take the time for more. The sooner he found help for that poor woman, the better.
Ten minutes later he was at Berakon’s tiny shop – or really, his stall; it was a single room, barely wider than its double doors and perhaps ten feet deep. Kelder had wandered past it several times and looked it over, so he was familiar with its appearance. He knew he had the right place.
But it was closed. The doors were shut and secured by a large brass padlock.
Kelder frowned. Locksmiths usually worked late, since people found themselves locked out at all hours, but Berakon’s stall was definitely closed. He hurried to the much larger but non-magical locksmith’s shop next door.
A bell jingled as he opened the door, and the proprietor looked up from a disassembled mechanism.
“Where’s the warlock?” Kelder asked. “There’s an emergency.”
“He closed up a few minutes ago,” the locksmith said. “Said he wasn’t feeling well. He asked if I knew a good healer witch.”
Kelder blinked. That didn’t make sense. “A warlock not feeling well?”
The locksmith grimaced. “I know, but that’s what he said.”
Kelder shook his head. “What did you tell him?”
“I sent him to Alasha of the Long Nose, up on Superstition Street.”
Superstition Street was another four long blocks to the south, toward the Arena. Kelder was not eager to range that far from home.
“Thank you,” he said. “Do you know of any other warlocks around here?”
“Around here?” The locksmith shook his head. “No.” He hesitated, then asked, “What’s going on? Why do you need a warlock?”
“One fell out of the sky and is stuck on my roof,” Kelder said. “She says her magic stopped working. I thought another warlock could get her down and maybe figure out what was wrong.”
The shopkeeper studied him for a moment, then said, “Berakon borrowed a padlock.”
Kelder had been trying to decide whether to head for Superstition Street, or back to the boarding house, or maybe to Warlock Street in the Wizards’ Quarter, so he had not really been listening.
“What?” he said.
“Berakon borrowed a padlock,” the locksmith repeated.
“I’m sorry, I don’t see…” Kelder let the question trail off.
“He never needed a padlock before,” the locksmith explained. “If he went out, he used his magic to weld the doors shut, and then undid it when he got back. I didn’t think he really needed to lock it at all, because who would be stupid enough to steal from a warlock? But he did it anyway, every time. Until tonight, when he asked me if I knew where he could find a witch, and then borrowed that lock from me.”
Kelder stared at him.
“You think they both lost their magic,” he said. He tried to think how that could happen. Might there be some contagious disease that stole a warlock’s magic? He had never heard of such a thing, but that didn’t mean it couldn’t happen.
“Maybe,” the locksmith said. “Maybe they did. And maybe it’s not just the two of them. I mean, warlockry just appeared out of nowhere on the Night of Madness, didn’t it? That’s what my mother told me. I was just a baby, so I don’t remember it myself.”
“I wasn’t even born,” Kelder said, “but yes, that’s what I always heard.”
“Well, maybe tonight it just stopped, as suddenly as it started.”
Kelder started to protest, then hesitated.
Why not? Maybe it had just stopped.
If so, then there wasn’t any point in looking for other warlocks. He needed some other way to get that poor woman off the roof. What other magic might work?
Well, wizards had various ways to fly or otherwise reach inaccessible places, but wizardry was expensive. A demonologist could probably get her down, but they were dangerous. Kelder wasn’t about to hire a demonologist without a much better reason than this. He had no idea whether a theurgist, or a witch, or a sorcerer, or some other sort of magician could do anything to help.
Maybe he had been hasty in deciding magic was called for in the first place. He had never seen a ladder tall enough to reach that high from the ground, but couldn’t it be set on the roof next door?
“Thank you,” he said. He dropped a copper bit on the counter, then turned to go.
Rander the house-carpenter had some good ladders. Maybe he could help.
Lador the Black was leaning over the girl’s sickbed, systematically sweeping the poisons from her blood, when suddenly he could no longer sense anything beneath her skin at all. He could still see her face, her brow slick with perspiration, and the soft green blanket tucked up to her chin. He could hear her labored breathing, smell the foul odor of illness, but everything below the surface had vanished.