Forbidding the crew to speak Ethsharitic, or refusing to use it himself, would not have made much difference, since the six magicians had each other to talk to. Besides, he hadn’t noticed the problem until after they reached Akalla of the Diamond. Once he had noticed, he had thought he could safely leave it until the party reached Semma Castle.
And now, of course, it was too late, and they might never reach the castle at all.
He had just said that breaking the siege, if siege it actually was, was up to the magicians. Shenna’s outburst, however, had not been followed by any suggestions from any of the others. They were all waiting for him to tell them what to do.
He suppressed a sigh. What had he done, he wondered, to deserve this? Why did he have to be in charge?
Sterren observed the witches silently for a moment, then beckoned to Hamder.
The young witch clambered over the side of the wagon, dropped to the mud, and splashed over to the shelter of the farmhouse eaves. Sterren joined him there.
“Witches can read minds, can’t they?” Sterren asked.
Hamder hesitated. “Sometimes,” he admitted.
“Well, right there two leagues ahead of us are a few hundred minds, I’d say, and I’d like to know what some of them are thinking and planning. I’d like to be sure just who we’re facing, for one thing; is that both Ophkar and Ksinallion there, or did one of them decide to get the jump on the other? If one of them tried a sneak attack, then maybe we can swing the other over to our side after all, despite King Phenvel.”
Hamder looked distinctly unhappy. “My lord Sterren-” he began.
“Oh, forget the ’lord’ stuff, when we’re speaking Ethsharitic!” Sterren interrupted. He had grown accustomed to hearing the title in Semmat, but it still sounded silly in Ethsharitic.
“Yes, my... yes, sir. As I was saying, I doubt I’ll be able to learn much. None of those people out there are going to be thinking in Ethsharitic.”
Sterren stared at him. “Thinking in Ethsharitic?”
“Yes, sir. After all, people do tend to think in words, or at least the same concepts that we use words for, and those are different in different languages.”
“So you can’t read minds unless you know the right language?”
Hamder nodded, then stopped himself. “Well, there are exceptions. If you’re up close to someone and paying close attention, you can usually start to pick up the underlying concepts after a while. In fact, that’s how we witches learn other languages so quickly...”
“You learn other languages quickly?”
“Of course! Witches are famous for the gift of tongues!”
“I haven’t heard you speaking Semmat.”
Hamder’s mouth opened, then closed. “Oh,” he said. After a moment’s pause, he asked, “Were we supposed to? I didn’t think there was any hurry.”
“It might have been nice,” Sterren pointed out. “I don’t particularly enjoy translating back and forth for everybody, especially when I don’t know Semmat all that well myself, yet.”
“Oh.” Hamder was obviously embarrassed. “I’m sorry, sir.”
“Never mind that.” Sterren brushed it away. “Can you tell me anything about whoever’s around all those campfires, or can’t you?”
“I... I... I don’t know, sir. Probably not, from this distance.”
“You have my permission to go closer, witch.”
Hamder glanced at the distant campfires, then back at Sterren. “Ah... could it wait until morning? They’re liable to be a bit nervous at night...”
Sterren sighed. “They’re presumably fighting a war; they’re liable to be a bit nervous any time. But never mind, at least for now.” He started to turn away, then paused.
“The other witches, I assume that they would give me the same answers?”
“I think so, sir, but I can’t be certain. We do have our specialties.”
Sterren nodded and waved in dismissal. Hamder sloshed away, back to the wagon; Sterren stayed where he was and gestured for Emner, his second wizard, to join him.
Emner slid from the wagon and slogged up beside him.
“You’re a wizard, right?”
Emner nodded, cautiously.
“Wizardry can do just about anything, right?”
“Given the right conditions, the right materials, and the right spell,” Emner replied judiciously, “wizardry appears to be capable of almost anything.”
“But you, yourself, are limited in what you can do, I suppose.”
“Yes,” Emner answered immediately, “very limited.”
Sterren nodded. “Over there,” he said, waving an arm in the direction of Semma Castle, “It appears that there is a hostile army besieging the castle that I hired you to defend. I don’t know what the situation is, but that’s how it appears. Is there anything you can do about it?”
Emner considered this carefully. He gazed thoughtfully at the distant campfires, then looked up at the sky. He moistened a finger and held it up to check the wind, then scanned the eastern horizon.
“I don’t know,” he said, finally. “I know a few spells I thought would be useful in a war, but I don’t see how any would help in the present situation. If the wind were behind us, I could levitate and drift over that way, with a magical shield under me in case I were spotted, to see what’s happening, but the wind’s awfully light and from the north, and I’d need to go east. I don’t have a spell for directional flight. I know a spell that can stun a man and make him somewhat suggestible, so that if we could catch someone alone I might well coax truth from even a reluctant tongue, but I can’t think... Hmm...” His voice trailed off.
Sterren waited patiently, and after a pause Emner continued, “I have another spell. I never thought it would be any help, but it might serve here, after all. I can make a stone or a stick whistle, from a distance, hardly a valuable talent, I’d have said, and I certainly chafed at being forced to practice it as an apprentice. Now, though, perhaps I can lure someone over with a whistle, stun him, and question him.”
Sterren nodded, considering. “You’re sure you can do that?”
Emner hesitated, then said, “Reasonably sure.”
“Could Annara do it?”
“No.” Emner did not hesitate at all this time.
“Why not?” Sterren asked, genuinely curious.
Emner blinked, then slowly replied, “I am not sure it’s my place to say.”
“Oh, go ahead,” Sterren said, annoyed.
Emner paused, as if thinking out his words in advance, and then said, “I suppose you know that Annara had been sleeping out in the Hundred-Foot Field and hadn’t eaten for two or three days when you found her.”
“I suspected as much,” Sterren acknowledged.
“Well, it’s so,” Emner said. “She told me, as a fellow Guild member. Naturally, I was curious about how she came to be reduced to that, and she was glad to have a chance to discuss her situation with a fellow wizard. It seems that although she is a true wizard, served the full apprenticeship required by the Guild, and was initiated into the Guild’s mysteries, she never managed to master more than a handful of simple spells. Her master only knew a dozen or so, and she found herself unable to manage some of those, including the ones that provided most of his small income. The spells she did learn, well, they’re real enough, and they have their places, but they aren’t exactly marketable. There isn’t any demand for them, as a rule. And I can’t see how they could be of any use at all in the present situation.”
“You didn’t think your own could help, at first. Perhaps I should ask Annara directly; after all, she’s surely more familiar with the possibilities of her magic than you are.”