Lawrence Watt-Evans - The Unwelcome Warlock

Maybe he had been hasty in deciding magic was called for in the first place. He had never seen a ladder tall enough to reach that high from the ground, but couldn’t it be set on the roof next door?

“Thank you,” he said. He dropped a copper bit on the counter, then turned to go.

Rander the house-carpenter had some good ladders. Maybe he could help.

Lador the Black was leaning over the girl’s sickbed, systematically sweeping the poisons from her blood, when suddenly he could no longer sense anything beneath her skin at all. He could still see her face, her brow slick with perspiration, and the soft green blanket tucked up to her chin. He could hear her labored breathing, smell the foul odor of illness, but everything below the surface had vanished.

His head felt strange, almost empty. All the things he normally perceived that ordinary people could not were gone – including that nasty, insistent murmuring that he knew would someday have drawn him away to Aldagmor. His hand, which he had been holding over her chest for dramatic effect, was no longer glowing; the only light came from the oil lamp on the shelf over the bed.

He blinked and straightened up, confused.

“Something’s wrong,” he said.

“What?” the girl’s mother asked. “What is it?”

“I don’t know,” Lador said.

“Is she worsening?”

Lador shook his head. “No,” he said. “No, something’s wrong with me .” He looked down at the girl, who seemed to be breathing a little easier. “She’s no worse. I think I helped her a bit. But…something is wrong . I can’t do any more. I’m sorry; you’ll need to find someone else.”

“But you said you could cure her!”

“I thought I could,” Lador said. “I’ve seen this kind of fever before, and I’ve cured it, but this time…” He frowned. “I’ll return your fee, of course.”

“But what about Larsi?”

“You’ll need to find another magician,” he said. “Perhaps a witch would do better.”

As he spoke, he had been trying several little experiments – trying to extinguish the lamp, trying to move the blanket, trying to lift himself off the floor, trying to warm his hand.

None of them had worked. His magic was gone. All of it. It had simply ceased to exist.

He was no longer a warlock.

That raised a thousand questions – was his magic gone forever? Would it return in a few minutes, a few hours, a few years? Were other warlocks affected? Did this mean he would never be Called?

That last question brought another – if there was a way to get his magic back, did he want to?

Thira the Warlock had been sitting in her kitchen, trying to decide whether wine made the nagging in her head better or worse, and wondering whether oushka might make it stop, or might overcome her resistance entirely. She had been dreading the night ahead; if she slept she knew she would have nightmares, and she knew she might wake up in mid-air on her way to Aldagmor, but if she didn’t sleep, she would weaken as she grew wearier, and might doze off and find herself as badly off as if she had just gone to bed. Maybe worse.

She had been toying with a carving knife, wondering whether suicide might be preferable to the Calling, and wondering whether suicide was even possible for a warlock, when the Call stopped.

It was like a physical blow; she rocked back in her chair, her eyes wide, and the knife fell from her hand and clattered on the floor. She fell half an inch onto her chair as the magic that she had been unconsciously using vanished.

The kitchen was suddenly all there was. The whispering, the barely-glimpsed images in her head, the awareness of the composition of everything around her, had all disappeared. Only the real, solid, everyday world remained. The hard seat of her chair, the lingering scent of garlic left from supper, the lamplight reflecting from the brightly-glazed bowls on the shelf, were all newly intense because everything she had sensed through her magic was no longer distracting her.

“ Oh ,” she gasped.

She sat for several minutes simply taking in the silence, the clarity . Then she finally allowed herself to think about what it might mean.

It meant she was no longer a warlock; she found that out quickly enough. Everything she attempted failed. Her magic was completely, utterly gone.

That assumed, of course, that this was real. For the last sixnight, she had often been unsure what was real and what was not, as the voices and images in her head crowded out her natural senses. Could this be some new, different illusion? Perhaps this was all just her imagination, and she was actually flying to Aldagmor even now, only thinking she was still safe in her own kitchen. After all, she had never heard of a warlock who had gone past the nightmare threshold to the very brink of being Called suddenly recovering like this.

She rapped her knuckles on the table. It certainly felt real, and the sound was clear and distinct.

But if it was real, why ?

This was beyond her understanding. She wanted to talk to someone, someone who might be able to explain this.

The only place she could think of where she thought she might find answers was Warlock House, on High Street in the New City. She had only been there once, when she completed her apprenticeship and formally joined the Council, but of course she remembered where it was.

She stood up and found herself slightly unsteady on her feet without magic to support her; she caught herself on the table, regained her balance, and smiled.

“It must be real,” she murmured. “Why would I imagine that ?”

She wondered what the people at Warlock House would have to say about this. Had it ever happened before? Might there be dozens of ex-warlocks living in secret in the city?

Moving slowly and carefully, she turned and headed for the door.

Little Sammel focused all his attention on the coin, as he had a dozen times that day, but something felt wrong. He could not sense it – he could see it, but could not feel it, and the coin refused to move. The power seemed to have failed him.

“Something’s wrong, Master,” he said.

His master did not reply immediately, and the apprentice turned to see whether the elder warlock was angry, or merely distracted.

He did not appear to be either one; he looked frightened .

But that was silly; what could frighten a powerful warlock like Dabran the Pale?

“Master?” Sammel asked, uncertainly.

“Sammel,” Dabran said, his own voice unsteady. “Do you feel it?”

“Feel what, Master?”

“The…the quiet .”

“I don’t feel anything , Master. I can’t…my magic seems to be gone.”

A crooked smile appeared on Dabran’s face.

“Mine is, too, apprentice,” he said. “Mine is, too.”

Over and over, in shops and homes, streets and skies, all through the Hegemony of the Three Ethshars and in a dozen other lands, similar scenes played out. A few warlocks died when their magic failed; so did a few of their customers, and a handful of bystanders. A few more people were injured. Some former warlocks bemoaned their loss of power; others delighted in knowing they were free of the Call. Some thought they were alone and tried to conceal their vulnerability; others gathered to compare notes on what might have happened.

In the Baronies of Sardiron warlocks were almost unknown; that realm was too close to Aldagmor for comfort, the Calling too strong. In the more northerly Small Kingdoms, warlocks were scarce because they were not welcome; in the southernmost Small Kingdoms, warlocks were nonexistent, by edict of the Wizards’ Guild, which had banned them from the area in 5224. Word was therefore slow to spread in those regions.