That didn’t mean he knew what to do about them. “Is there some way we can burn them all?” he asked. The witches looked at each other, while Annara and Emner blinked and shrugged.
“What sort of wood are they?” Hamder asked. “Um... ironwood, I think. Maybe oak. Something very hard and strong,” Emner replied.
“I can’t kindle that,” Shenna said. “Sorry.”
“Not me,” Ederd said.
Hamder shook his head.
Sterren looked at Annara.
“I don’t think so,” she said. “All I have that can burn things is the Explosive Seal, and that generally won’t set anything more than paper or oilcloth on fire. And besides, I meant to tell you, I only have enough dragon’s blood left for one more seal, and not a very big one, either.”
That was unpleasant news; the Explosive Seal had been one of their best resources. He turned to the four Semmans, who were huddled against one wall, looking bored.
“Does anyone in the castle,” he said in Semmat, “have... ah... from an animal that makes fire...” As he spoke, he was vaguely aware that the witches were whispering with Emner about something.
“A dragon?” Lady Kalira asked. “There are dragons in the mountains north of Lumeth of the Towers, but they’ve never come this far south.”
“Not the whole dragon, just the... the stuff. Red stuff. From inside.” Sterren knew he had heard the Semmat word for “blood,” but he could not think of it.
“Blood? Dragon’s blood?” Alder asked.
“Yes! Blood. Dragon’s blood.”
“I never heard of anybody who had any,” Lady Kalira replied. “Why? Is it good for something?”
“Annara needs it for her magic.”
The four Semmans looked at one another, then back at Sterren. “Sorry,” Alder said.
Sterren sighed and switched back to Ethsharitic. “About these catapults...”
“From Emner’s description, they’re too big for us to move,” Hamder said. “Especially if it’s really ironwood.”
“It takes ten men to move one, even with the wheels,” Emner explained.
“And witches may use magic instead of arms and legs and backs, but they aren’t any stronger than Ophkarite or Ksinallionese soldiers, even so,” Shenna said.
“Can you break them, somehow?”
Shenna and Hamder started to glance at each other, but Ederd flatly stated, “No. Not if they’re as strongly made as Emner says.”
Emner shrugged apologetically. “They need to be strong to heave rocks that big,” he said.
“All right,” Sterren said, “the witches can’t do anything. What about you, Emner?”
“I can make them whistle or sing, but that’s all. I’m sorry.” He spread his hands in a gesture of helplessness.
Sterren turned to Annara, but before he could speak, she said, “Not without more dragon’s blood, and probably not then.”
That left the warlock.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I can’t burn the frames, nor break them outright, not in my present condition, but I might be able to break some of the ropes, or do some other damage. I don’t have the straight lifting power these witches have here, but I believe I can do subtler things, crackings and frayings and twistings, that they cannot.”
“Crackings?” Emner looked thoughtful, and said, “If you could crack the main crosspiece, the lever, while they were preparing to fire, the whole machine would probably come apart under the strain.”
“That would be perfect,” Sterren said.
The warlock shrugged. “I can try,” he said.
“Good,” Sterren replied. “And you will.”
CHAPTER 22
“Will this do?” Sterren asked, pointing. The warlock crept up beside him and peered over the ridgepole. “I think so,” he said. “I can see the structure from here, anyway.”
Sterren nodded. “Good,” he said, “Because we can’t find anywhere better that’s half this safe.”
The warlock glanced at him. “Why did you come with me, then, if it’s dangerous?” he asked.
Sterren was not really sure himself. He shrugged and said, “I get tired of just hearing reports. I wanted to see some of the action for myself.” He did not really want to think about that any more; it only reminded him just how dangerous his situation actually was, perched on a rooftop a hundred yards from an enemy camp. He changed the subject.
“How’s your head today?”
“Better, or at least different,” the warlock said.
“Different? How is it different?”
The warlock hesitated, then said, “Maybe I’m just getting used to it.”
It seemed to Sterren that his mysterious black-clad companion was being unusually talkative today, and he decided to try to take advantage of that to get a few answers to mysteries that had been bothering him.
“You know,” he said, “I never heard of warlocks having headaches like yours. That’s not what the stories say happens when you move south.”
“I never heard of it, either,” the warlock said. “I don’t understand it.”
“It is somehow related to your magic, isn’t it?” Sterren asked.
“Oh, I would say so.” He hesitated, then continued, “You’re a warlock yourself, aren’t you? I thought I could see that, before we got so far south and I lost my finer perceptions.”
“Not really,” Sterren admitted, “I failed my apprenticeship.”
“Ah, that would explain it entirely! It took me a long time, you know, to decide that you were one, you didn’t act like one, but you seemed to know the art, and I could feel something in your mind. I thought you were just keeping it secret for some reason.”
“No,” Sterren said, “I might have a trace of the Power, but I’m not really a warlock. I won more than I should at dice, back in Ethshar, but that’s all.”
The warlock nodded. “Then you wouldn’t know,” he said.
“Know what?”
“What it feels like to use the Power.”
“No,” Sterren agreed, “I don’t know. What is it like?”
“Well, it’s hard to explain. It’s as if something, not someone, because it clearly isn’t human, but something, perhaps a god or a demon or something we don’t have a name for, is whispering in your mind, and you can’t understand anything it’s saying, you can’t be sure it’s words at all, but you can pull strength from it all the same. You can take the sound of the whisper and reshape it and use it to feel and shape and change the world around you. Do you understand?”
Sterren almost thought he did. He nodded, but said nothing.
“And after you’ve used warlockry a lot, the whisper is always there, always, whether you’re listening or not, using the Power or not, awake or asleep. It’s a constant background and it gets a little louder each time you draw on it. And it’s trying to tell you something, but you don’t know what.” He paused, then said, “You know about the night-” It was not a question, but Sterren nodded again.
“The nightmares are when the whisper begins to make sense. You still can’t make out the words, still can’t tell what it’s trying to tell you, or what’s whispering, but you catch bits of it, little bits and pieces of images. And you can’t shut them out; the whisper is always there, it won’t go away, and those images seep into your mind little by little.” He shivered. “And when you came south?” Sterren prompted. “When I came south,” the warlock said, “the whispering faded away. It was wonderful at first; I could forget the little glimmers of meaning I’d been catching, and the nightmares stopped. I couldn’t hear the whisper at all. But then, when we headed inland, I started to hear buzzing.”