Sterren decided to stop looking for flaws. For one thing, he had not even mentioned what he saw as the most likely long-term problem, but seeing how easily Vond had hauled him out of the window, he had a certain uneasiness about the warlock’s new power and he thought he might someday want Vond to have problems.
Not that he had any intention of telling the warlock that. “And so here you are with this new source of magic,” he said, smiling. “Congratulations!”
“Yes, isn’t it wonderful? I was straining hard, trying to listen to the old Source, to draw enough power to crack that beam, and I was ignoring the buzz. Then I thought about what you said and tried to listen to the buzz, too, and then it wasn’t a buzz anymore, it was something entirely different, something that I could draw power from, and it was close and strong and I was more powerful than I ever was back in Ethshar!”
“It’s close?” Sterren asked. He had somehow assumed that the buzz came from somewhere beyond the edge of the World, and was a good distance away.
“I think so, in that direction.” He pointed off vaguely northwest, but then, Sterren thought, almost the entire World lay to the northwest of Semma. This new source was not beyond the edge of the World, but that didn’t really narrow it down much.
The two men looked at each other, glanced around at the storm-blasted plain, and then simultaneously started to speak. They stopped, and Sterren gestured for Vond to speak first.
“I’d say the war is won,” the warlock said. “Now what do we do?”
“I’d say,” Sterren replied, “that we go to the castle and collect our rewards.”
Vond nodded. “Sounds good to me,” he said.
“We’ll want to get the others,” Sterren pointed out.
“That’s no problem,” Vond said, “I’ll bring them.” With that, he rose again into the air and began soaring toward Semma Castle.
Sterren, quite without any action on his part, sailed along close behind and he glanced back to see other figures being swept up and carried along in similar fashion — he spotted Annara by her distinctive purple robe, and Lady Kalira by her red gown, and Adier and Dogal by their size and armament. The other five were just black dots at first.
A moment later they were all standing at the castle gate, ranged in two neat rows, Sterren and Vond in the front row center. An unearthly glow of Vond’s making played across them all and lit the area a pale gold.
A sentry peered timidly over the ramparts above. “Hai,” Sterren shouted, remembering at the last minute to use Semmat. “It’s I, Sterren, Ninth Warlord, and my comrades! Open the gate!”
The soldier hesitated. “But, my lord,” he said, “the invaders...”
“The invaders are gone,” Sterren replied. “The war is over!”
The sentry glanced uneasily out across the ruins of the village, where Vond’s storm had indeed ripped away every trace of the sappers’ shelters and most of the other buildings as well. “They’re really gone?” he asked.
“All of them,” Sterren assured him. “The war is over. We won.”
“Sterren,” Vond said, speaking Ethsharitic, “I can open the gates.” “I know,” Sterren replied in the same tongue, “but let’s be polite about it. Give them another five minutes.”
“Five minutes, then.”
Sterren switched back to Semmat and said, “The magician who made the storm is becoming impatient. He says in five minutes, if the gate is still closed, he’ll smash it to pieces.”
The sentry immediately said, “Yes, my lord. I’ll have it open in a moment.”
It took about a minute and a half before the gate swung wide, and Sterren thought he saw disappointment on Vond’s face as the whole party marched in.
PART THREE
Warlock
CHAPTER 24
Sterren was uneasy even before he led his victorious little squad into the throne room. They had been kept waiting in the antechamber considerably longer than he had expected. Most of the party had taken it well, after all, the Semmans were used to their king’s foibles, and the others had not known what to expect, but Vond seemed noticeably impatient.
Sterren found that he really did not tike the idea of being around someone as powerful as Vond when he got impatient.
He marched into the throne room neither meekly nor belligerently, but with the best approximation of calm assurance that he could manage, and found Vond on his right hand, sweeping forward a few inches off the floor, while the others straggled along behind rather haphazardly.
As he marched in, while he kept his face turned straight forward toward the king, as protocol demanded, his eyes were flickering back and forth, taking in as much as he could of the people gathered there.
The soldiers who stood in ragged lines on either side mostly looked either bewildered or bored; Sterren suspected that not a one of them really knew what was going on. Behind them, he could see a significant percentage of the castle’s noble population and he tried to read their expressions without letting his own interest show.
He saw a wide variety of emotions, puzzlement, delight, anger, but the dominant reaction to the arrival of Semma’s warlord and his party appeared to be poorly suppressed fear.
That did not bode well.
Remembering the violence of the warlock’s storm, however, Sterren could not say it was an unreasonable reaction.
He spotted the king’s children huddled to the left of the throne; the faces of Lura and Dereth were alight with excitement. Nissitha’s mouth was drawn up in her usual expression of polite distaste.
Shirrin’s expression was unmistakably wide-eyed adoration.
Sterren stopped at the appropriate distance from the throne and bowed.
Vond stopped beside him and condescended to dip his head slightly. Sterren saw this from the corner of his eye and was relieved; it was not a bow, but at least it was something. He had worried that Vond would go out of his way to antagonize Phenvel, with Sterren caught in the middle. Given how frightened most of the Semmans looked, and how easily fear might turn to anger, he very much wanted to avoid any open antagonism.
“So you’re finally back!” the king said, and Sterren’s hope for peace and amity faded.
“We returned as quickly as we could, your Majesty,” he said, his tone as ingratiating as he could manage — which was quite ingratiating indeed — as he had acquired years of practice with creditors and innkeepers. “The wind was not in our favor.” “You had magicians with you, didn’t you?” King Phenvel demanded.
“Only on the way back, your Majesty, and none of them could... could turn the wind,” Sterren explained.
The king stared at him, then snapped, “Are you trying to tell me that little breeze we had today was natural?”
Sterren blinked. “Oh, no, your Majesty,” he said, “That was the... the work of Vond the Warlock.” Sterren gestured at the warlock. “However, it’s a spell he... it’s new, a spell he had not... um, not learned yet during our journey.” He wished he knew Semmat better.
Even what he did know was somewhat rusty, since he had mostly been using Ethsharitic for the last few six-nights, talking far more to the magicians than to Lady Kalira and the three soldiers.
Furthermore, the obvious hostility was making him nervous, so that he was forgetting some of what he did know.
Vond recognized his name and bowed slightly in acknowledgment.
“Ah,” the king said, “so he found some way to study the arcane arts while hiding from the invaders, rather than fighting?”