He also remained on board in hopes of getting to know the warlock and perhaps even learning a little of this strange new school of magic that required none of the rituals and paraphernalia of wizardry. After all, a career in any sort of magic might well be profitable; simply because he had been initiated into the Wizards’ Guild, he saw no reason not to pursue studies in the other varieties of arcane skill.
Of course, the ship had had another magician aboard all along; the white-robed woman who had stood beside the captain when Tobas first came aboard was a priestess, an expert theurgist, Tobas had learned, and was the magician charged with defending the vessel against pirates or other perils.
Theurgy, however, was not a form of magic that appealed to Tobas, since he understood it to call for a great deal of hard study and abstinence from many of life’s little pleasures, while still being less than perfectly reliable and predictable in its effects. Besides, the priestess refused to associate with anyone aboard other than the captain.
Tobas thought warlockry sounded far more appealing.
However, one sight of the warlock’s dark and forbidding face convinced him not to press the issue. This was obviously not a person eager to make friends.
No one else seemed to know the warlock any better than Tobas did; even Captain Istram, who treated the theurgist as just another crew member, seemed slightly wary of him. As with the priestess, no one spoke of him by name; he was simply the warlock. Tobas was not entirely sure he had a name; for all he knew, warlocks were not even human.
This warlock slept in a hammock slung down in the hold, close to the meat he was there to preserve; he had his meals brought to him there. As the cook’s assistant, Tobas was responsible for their delivery.
Once settled in his place, the warlock spoke to no one; he accepted his meals in silence and never emerged from the hold for any reason. Tobas guessed that maintaining the spell, for the hold was always very definitely chilly, despite the summer sun glaring on the sea on every side, took all his concentration and energy.
The journey passed uneventfully, for the most part, and Tobas was reasonably content with his lot. He was fed and housed. His clothing left something to be desired, as he still had only the one outfit, but he was able to wash it twice a sixnight in the communal tub. Still, shipboard life, with its crowding, hard work, and poor food, was far from his idea of the ideal life, and Golden Gull would never be home.
On the last night of the voyage, after the ship had rounded the great peninsula and begun beating its way northwestward up the Gulf of the East, the entire crew was awakened by the warlock screaming as if he were being gruesomely murdered, perhaps skinned alive, or, one imaginative crewman suggested, eaten by rats. Tobas, as the one who had the most contact with him and the purported magician in their midst, was selected by acclamation to go and investigate.
The screams had stopped by the time he made his way down into the hold. He stood at the foot of the ladder for a moment, his lantern flickering, before he found the nerve to go on.
The candle in the lantern had not been very well lit or was perhaps clogged with wax; he considered using Thrindle’s Combustion to brighten it, but, upon remembering the explosion in Roggit’s cottage, decided against it. Using the spell on something already burning was dangerous, and he had no intention of blowing even this feeble flame out while he stood surrounded by unknown horrors.
When he finally gathered his courage and made his way back to the meat storage area, he found the warlock sitting up in his hammock, leaning back against the bulkhead with his head in his hands. His long, thin legs thrust up pale bare knees that gleamed white as bone in the lantern light; his elbows rested upon his knees, and his face upon trembling fingers.
“Sir?” Tobas ventured, trying to keep his voice and hands steady despite his terror and the unnatural chill in the air.
The warlock looked up. “My apologies if I disturbed you, child. I had an unpleasant dream.” His voice was deep and mellow, and he spoke with an accent very slightly different from the Ethsharitic of the crew.
Tobas could not believe he had heard the warlock’s words correctly. “A dream? Just a dream?”
The warlock smiled bitterly. “Yes, just a dream. A drawback of my craft, child, warlocks are prone to nightmares of a very special variety. They arrive when we attempt to overextend our abilities, as I have on this journey, and they can lead to... well, we do not know what they lead to, but warlocks for whom the nightmares have become a regular occurrence tend to disappear. I may well have doomed myself for the sake of fresh meat for the aristocrats of Ethshar of the Spices. Don’t let it concern you, it’s not your problem. Go back to sleep. I promise that I will not sleep, and that you need fear no further disturbance.”
This was by far the longest speech anyone on board had ever heard the warlock make, and Tobas was almost overwhelmed by it, but curiosity stirred; after a few seconds’ hesitation he asked, “Do they always come again, these nightmares, if you’ve had them once?”
“I wish I knew,” the warlock replied. “This is the first time I have had them in any strength since the Night of Madness, in 5202, when warlockry first came to the World, before you were born, I’m sure.” His smile twisted. “I never needed an apprenticeship, child; the gods, or demons, or whatever power it was that brought us our craft gave it to me whole, when I was a boy. Had you been born, you might have received it yourself, even in the cradle, you might well have been carried away by the dreams yourself by now. You were born too late, fortunately. I was not. Go, now, dream your own harmless little dreams and leave me to mine.”
Tobas obeyed, backing out to the ladder and departing the hold, glad to get away from the cool air, the smell of the hanging meat, and the warlock’s pale, haggard face.
There were no further disturbances, as the warlock had promised, but Tobas was quite convinced now, as he settled back in his hammock, that he would not be pursuing warlockry as a career, whatever happened. He would stick to wizardry; it seemed much safer, despite the occasional risk of spells backfiring or getting out of hand, as the combination of the protective rune and Thrindle’s Combustion had. He was, after all, already an initiate into the art, with his ritual dagger prepared and charged, a member, however minor, of the mighty Wizards’ Guild. All he had to do was learn more spells in order to be a real wizard; becoming a warlock apparently involved a good many mysteries and dangers of its own that he had never heard of before, and he did not care to investigate them further.
He was also now convinced that he was having a real, genuine adventure, of the sort stories are told about. Telven had had no excitement to compare to screaming warlocks or cities like Ethshar of the Sands, and the busy, crowded life of the ship was far more interesting than life on the village farms. Not better, but more interesting.
Not, he reminded himself, that he wanted to spend his whole life at sea or go about having adventures; that was not the way to become rich and reach a comfortable old age. Storytellers’ heroes notwithstanding, adventures were dangerous things that could easily get a person killed. At Ethshar of the Spices, he promised himself, he would go ashore and look for an easier, safer, and more promising career. He knew he would not be able to get another wizard to take him on as an apprentice, but perhaps he could somehow pay one to teach him a few more spells. That would be all he needed to begin a quiet career in wizardry. Once he had earned a little money, he would find himself a home somewhere.