“How?”
She gave him a sideways glance, then said, “Do you really want to know?”
Zallin hesitated, but curiosity triumphed. “Yes, I do,” he said.
Leth nodded. “All right, then. About ten years ago, when I was a little girl, I got sick – seriously sick, to the point my mother expected me to die. She hired a wizard named Orzavar the Seer to advise her – in fact, she sold our house on Pawnbroker Lane to pay him, and to pay the healer he sent her to. I hope she thought it was worth it – she said she did, but you know how parents are.”
“Of course,” Zallin lied. He knew his parents wouldn’t have sold their house to pay a magician to help him. “But I don’t see the connection.”
“Well, since she was already giving up everything to pay the seer and the healer, she wanted to be sure it would work, and she asked a few other questions. Orzavar informed her that I was going to die peacefully in my sleep at the age of eighty-one. He swore it, by several gods and by his magic – he wasn’t just trying to comfort her. So I don’t worry about getting killed.”
“Oh,” Zallin said.
“I can still get hurt, of course,” Leth said conversationally. “But Vond didn’t look interested in hurting people just for the sake of hurting them – I’ve known men like that, and he didn’t seem to be one of them. If he did throw me around – well, I knew I’d survive.”
They walked on in silence for a moment as Zallin absorbed this, and then he asked, “What happened to your mother?”
“She was murdered a sixnight later,” Leth said. “With the house gone, we were sleeping in the Hundred-Foot Field, and she didn’t hide what was left of her money well enough. That’s why I’ve been walking the streets in Camptown.”
That matter-of-fact little biography horrified Zallin. He remembered his own mother, who was still alive – or at least, she had been a month ago.
“What about your father?” he asked.
“I have no idea who he is. My mother never said. Well, when I was very little she said he was a sailor by the name of Kelder who was lost at sea, and maybe he really was, but I don’t know.”
“No other family?”
“No other family. What about you?”
“I grew up in Westwark, with three older brothers,” Zallin said. “Everyone thought I was magical because of my eyes, so I decided I might as well be magical, and apprenticed myself to old Feregris the Warlock. I haven’t seen my family much since, and after Feregris was Called…” He stopped in mid-sentence, blinking.
“Feregris was Called?” Leth prompted, after they had gone another half-dozen paces in silence. “You were saying?”
“He must be back now,” Zallin said. “Feregris, I mean. It’s been almost twenty years, but he must be back. All the Called came back.”
“You think so?” Leth asked.
Zallin stopped walking. They were in the short block of High Street between Arena Street and Fishertown Street, just across the line from the New City into Allston, and the tall houses on either side gleamed golden in the early morning sun. “We’re going the wrong way,” he said.
“Not if we’re headed to Eastgate,” Leth said.
“I’m going to Crookwall,” Zallin said. “I want to see if Feregris is back.”
“He lived in Crookwall? Not the Wizards’ Quarter?”
“In Crookwall,” Zallin said. “On Incidental Street. When I was twelve I didn’t dare go as far as the Wizards’ Quarter, and Feregris was the only magician in Crookwall or Westwark.”
“You said it’s been twenty years,” Leth pointed out. “Would he still have a place there?”
“He had a daughter.”
Leth nodded. “If she’s still there it’s worth asking her, anyway.”
“If Feregris is there – he was good to me. I want to be sure he’s all right.”
“That’s kind of you.”
Zallin blinked. No one had called him “kind” for as long as he could remember. No one had been kind to him, either, that he could recall.
But then, he hadn’t done much to deserve kindness. Ever since he lost his magic he had been so focused on getting it back that he had not given much thought to anything else. He had followed Vond around, begging for his magic like a puppy hoping for a treat. He had ignored or argued with Hanner, who had merely tried to talk sense to him. He had treated all the other Called warlocks as a nuisance, something to be pushed aside as much as possible.
He remembered Feregris smiling patiently at him, surprising him with candies every so often, showing him clever little things a warlock could do, ways to accomplish his goals with a minimum of power, so as not to hasten the Calling. Those tricks hadn’t been enough to save his master, though. By the time Zallin completed his apprenticeship, Feregris was having nightmares almost every night, and had a tendency to turn his face northward whenever he wasn’t paying attention. Two months later he was gone.
That had hurt, losing his master. Feregris’ daughter Virris had wanted no reminders of her father’s magic, and had asked Zallin to stop visiting, and he had complied. He did not particularly want to be reminded of his loss, either; he had stopped visiting anywhere in Westwark or Crookwall.
Then he had set out to be the best warlock he could be, to prove himself worthy of his master’s memory, and he had worked his way up until he became Chairman of the Council of Warlocks. He had used Feregris’ old tricks to avoid using too much magic, so he had never been Called.
But then he had lost his magic, and he had tried to find a new master, in the form of the Great Vond.
Zallin mentally compared Feregris with Vond, and then his own behavior with both. He did not think he fared well against Feregris at all, but at least he wasn’t as bad as Vond.
Not quite as bad as Vond, anyway.
His magic was gone; he had finally accepted that. Now he had to think about what he was going to do without it – not just how he might earn a living, but who he was going to be.
Being more like Feregris would be a good start, and finding Feregris, offering to help him, was the first step of that start. He looked at Leth, and held out a hand. “It was a pleasure talking to you,” he said, “but I’m going the other direction.”
“Oh, I don’t have any business in Eastgate if you aren’t going there,” Leth said. “I’ll come along, if you don’t mind.”
Zallin was startled. “You don’t want to get home to Camptown?”
“Not particularly. Meeting this Feregris and your family sounds much more interesting.”
“I wasn’t…I mean, I didn’t say anything about my family.”
“If you’re going to Crookwall, Westwark’s just a few blocks farther.”
Zallin hesitated, looking down at the bright red skirt showing beneath her coat that indicated Leth’s occupation. Then he smiled.
Being more like his old master didn’t mean he had to be the obedient little boy his mother and brother had tried to make him be. “You’ll like my mother,” he said.
“I will?”
“Oh, yes. Everyone does. But she’ll hate you.”
Leth grinned. “Sounds like fun,” she said. “Let’s go.”
They turned and walked west.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Hanner had been expecting the dream, so when he found himself in Ithinia’s parlor, facing Rothiel of Wizard Street, rather than on his makeshift mattress in the village beyond the tapestry, he was not surprised.
“What’s going on, Hanner?” Rothiel demanded. “Where are you?”
“Hello, Rothiel,” Hanner said. “I’m in the refuge beyond the tapestry.”
“You are? Is Vond… We had reports that he followed you through the tapestry, but since he’d be powerless there, we don’t…Is he there? Where is Vond? Do you know?”
“I do,” Hanner said. “He did come here after me.”
“He’s there? But he doesn’t have his magic there, does he?”