“You’d better,” Shanelle said. She glared at the naked woman. “Who are you, anyway, and who turned you to stone?”
“My name is Vweeton,” she said. “I assume it was the wizard Ballensyagga who petrified me — he objected to having to compete with a witch for business.”
Shanelle looked dubious. “What kind of a name is Vweeton?” she demanded. She turned to Manolo. “You know, I don’t think she was petrified at all; I think your magic brought a real statue to life.”
“Oh, no,” Manolo said. “Javan’s Restorative won’t do that. Here, look.” He dipped the dagger in the pot again and flung a few drops at the beast statue. “Pyrzqxgl,” he said.
The air flickered, and the white surface began to dissolve, revealing tawny fur; Manolo’s mouth fell open in astonishment. “But it can’t!” he said. “That’s an imaginary monster!”
“What, the lion?” Vweeton said, stepping down from her pedestal. “No, it’s not imaginary; why would you think that?” She walked toward the emerging beast and reached out a calming hand. “You might want to find some way to restrain him, though. I can keep him happy with my witchcraft for awhile, but I’m eventually going to get tired, and he’s going to get hungry, and yes, he’ll happily eat people.”
“Augh!” Manolo said, backing away.
“You might also find me some clothes,” the witch said, as she petted the lion’s head. “I suppose Ballensyagga caught me in my bath — at least, the last thing I remember is hearing a noise as I got out of the tub.”
Manolo looked around and saw the gown draped on Shanelle’s arm. “What’s that?” he asked.
“That,” Shanelle said, “is why I’m here. It’s hideous! Your magic wardrobe is turning out the ugliest clothes I’ve ever seen!”
“It’s still better than nothing,” Vweeton said. “Toss it here.”
Shanelle obeyed. “Go ahead and put it on, if you want,” she said, “but don’t blame me if you look like a clown.”
Vweeton stepped away from the lion and untangled the dress, then pulled it over her head, tugged it down, and settled it on her hips. She looked down at it critically.
Shanelle, Deyor, Armani, and Manolo stared. The chartreuse that had looked so ghastly in Shanelle’s bedroom went surprisingly well with the witch’s brown skin, and the absurd single shoulder was oddly fetching.
“You know,” Deyor said, after a long moment of silence, “on you, it looks good.”
Notes
All the characters who appear in the story are named for fashion icons:
Shanelle = Chanel
Deyor = Dior
Guchi = Gucci
Manolo the Blank = Manolo Blahnik
Armani = Armani
Vweeton = Vuitton
Ballensyagga = Balenciaga
General Gor, Lord Wulran, Javan, and Piskor the Generous are established figures in Ethshar’s history, and the geography (this is set in Ethshar of the Rocks) is accurate and consistent with all other Ethshar stories.
In case you didn’t pick up on it, the “blue breeches” are a pair of jeans.
“Timsez mekkitwerk” = “Tim says, make it work,” a reference to Tim Gunn’s signature line on TV’s “Project Runway.”
“Pyrzqxgl” is the magic word used by Kiki Aru to transform himself and others in L. Frank Baum’s The Magic of Oz.
Armani’s initial refusal to admit the visitors to see the wizard is modeled on a scene in MGM’s 1939 film of “The Wizard of Oz.”
And I trust the presence of a lion, a witch, and a wardrobe requires no explanation.
About “The Warlock’s Refuge”
Back in the 1990s I wrote Night of Madness, describing how warlockry first arrived in the World, and how an accommodation was reached between these new magicians and the existing society. That story introduced Lord (later Chairman) Hanner, and established how the Calling worked. It also showed how there might be an obvious way to avoid the Calling. Clearly, I needed to explain why warlocks never exploited this, so I plotted “The Warlock’s Refuge.” I didn’t actually get around to writing it for a decade or so, though. I only finally did so because I needed readers to be familiar with it before tackling the novel that eventually became The Unwelcome Warlock. I had been planning that story (then called The Final Calling) since the 1980s, but kept putting it off, as there were all these other pieces that I thought should be done first, such as The Vondish Ambassador and “The Warlock’s Refuge.”
I did get to it eventually. “The Warlock’s Refuge” was published on my website in April of 2010, and then republished as Chapter One of The Unwelcome Warlock, and here it is again.
The Warlock’s Refuge
Hanner the Warlock looked at the tapestry without really seeing it; that constant nagging whisper was distracting him. He closed his eyes for a moment to clear his thoughts, but that seemed to make it worse. He clenched his jaw, shook his head, and balled his hands into fists.
“Is this not what you had in mind, Chairman?”
The wizard’s voice brought Hanner back to reality for a moment. He opened his eyes and forced himself to focus on the tapestry.
The silky fabric hardly seemed to be there at all; the image woven into the cloth was so detailed, so perfect, that he seemed to be looking through the tapestry into a world beyond, rather than at the material itself.
In that world gentle golden sunlight washed across a green hillside strewn with wild flowers beneath a clear blue sky above. In the distance he could make out a cluster of handsome golden-tan buildings, though details were vague.
“Does it work?” he asked.
The wizard beside him glanced at the tapestry. “It does,” Arvagan said. “My apprentice tested it before I sent for you. The tapestry that can return you to Ethshar is hanging in that house there, on the right.” He pointed, but was careful to keep his finger well back from the cloth — the slightest contact would trigger the tapestry’s magic and pull him into that other world.
“The tapestry that comes out in the attic of Warlock House?”
“Precisely.”
“And these tapestries will work for warlocks?”
The wizard hesitated. “I think so,” he said at last. “You understand, without a warlock’s cooperation we have no way of testing it. Divinations are unreliable where warlocks are concerned. We know some tapestries work for warlocks, and I don’t see any reason these wouldn’t, but magic is tricky.”
That brief hesitation had been enough for the Calling to once again start to work on Hanner; he had turned his head away from the tapestry as if to listen to the wizard’s reply, but then the motion had continued, and now he was staring over the wizard’s left shoulder, to the north, toward Aldagmor.
He needed to go there, and soon. He needed to forget about all this Council business, forget about the wizards and their tapestries, forget about schemes to avoid the Calling. He needed to forget about Mavi and their children, and about his sisters and his friends, and about the other members of the Council of Warlocks, and just go. Whatever was up there in Aldagmor, it needed him, and he needed to go to it...