That was not really a surprise. She had not known such a thing was possible, but given that it was possible, Vond was exactly the sort of person who would have made such an arrangement. He had probably done it long ago, before he was Called, when he thought the kings he had deposed in creating his empire were plotting against him.
She couldn’t take his magic away. Her own private plan was not going to work.
She had feared that might be the case. It would have been too easy if she could simply turn off his power supply, or block it somehow. She had not even bothered to tell Ithinia and the others she intended to try.
That protective spell meant she would have to try the plan that she had discussed with Ithinia. She let out a soundless sigh, gathered her reserves of energy, and dug down into her own memory of those long-ago experiments she and Teneria had conducted.
The images were still there, burned indelibly into her mind when she had shared the experience of the Call. She gathered and shaped them.
This was taking a lot of energy, she knew. To all appearances she was sitting quietly in a closet, but in fact she was using more witchcraft in this hour or so than she would normally use in a sixnight. She was going to be tired, hungry, and shaky when this was done – but it had to be done, and the sooner the better.
She could feel herself trembling, and she forced herself to stop, to focus on the magic, the memories, the images, the sensations, and the feel of Vond’s sleeping mind on the far side of the bedroom wall. She reached out, and began to filter the remembered images into his thoughts as a dream – a dream of falling, and burning, of ferocious inhuman need, of a demand and a direction, of being buried deep in ash and mud, smothered and trapped.
And then Vond was awake, awake and screaming as he tore upward from his bed, through the canopy and the ceiling above, as shredded fabric and shards of plaster spattered down across his companion, startled from her own exhausted slumber.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Hanner had ushered the last of the new arrivals through the tapestry, and was walking down the stairs from the fourth floor to the third, a candle in his hand, when the entire house suddenly shook, and unearthly screams sounded somewhere nearby, accompanied by crashing. He picked up his pace, and when he reached the third floor he ran in the direction of the sound.
He could hear a dozen voices now as various people called questions, trying to understand what was happening. He ignored them all as he dashed toward the back of the house. He could see an orange glow under one of the bedroom doors; he snatched at the knob and flung that door open.
As he had expected, Vond was hanging in mid-air in the room beyond, glowing orange, hair drifting out in a nimbus around his head. As Hanner had not expected, the emperor was stark naked, his skin pale and slick with sweat. Two women were cowering in beds on either side of the room, sheets pulled up – they were probably naked, as well.
The floor between the two beds had been smashed upward, leaving a hole about six feet across directly below the hovering warlock. Bits of wood and plaster were scattered on all sides.
Vond had stopped screaming, and as Hanner stepped in, his gaze focused on Hanner’s face.
“You,” he said. “Did you do that?” Vond did not look frightened, even though he had been screaming in terror a moment before. He looked angry.
“Do what, your Majesty?” Hanner asked. “What happened?”
Vond did not answer. Instead he looked first to one side, then the other, then demanded, “Who are you?”
“Anra the Warl…Anra of Southwark, your Majesty,” one of the terrified women replied.
“My…my name is…is Pirra,” the other stammered.
“They’re my guests,” Hanner said. “They were Called warlocks with nowhere else to go.”
The warlock looked down, past his own feet, and called, “Leth! Are you there?”
“Yes, your Majesty,” a woman’s voice called from below.
“Are you all right?”
“I think so. I’m…sore, though.”
“Hanner,” Vond said, looking up again. “Where’s Zallin? And Sterren?”
“Zallin was downstairs with a bottle of oushka last I saw,” Hanner replied. “Sterren’s gone; no one’s seen him since early this afternoon, and most of his luggage is gone.”
“Gone? Still? Gone where?”
“I have no idea.”
“He should have…his luggage is gone?”
“Yes.”
“That sneaky little traitor – he must be behind this. Wants my empire for himself, probably.”
“Behind what, your Majesty?”
“I had…I dreamed…” He looked baffled and furious. “Someone put a spell on me, Hanner.”
“What kind of a spell?”
“A dream. A Calling nightmare.”
Hanner blinked. “Why do you think that’s a spell?”
Vond had been looking around the room; now he turned to glare at Hanner. “Because the Calling is gone, idiot.”
“How do you -”
“You think it’s another Calling? That my power has its own Call?” He shook his head. “I went and took a good close look at the source of my magic, Hanner. I flew right up to it, and all around it. There’s a powerful protective spell, so I didn’t actually touch it – maybe I could have gotten through that spell if I wanted to, but why should I? I might damage something. I might have destroyed my own magic. So I didn’t force it, and I didn’t need to – I was right there, less than fifty feet from the source. I could feel it all through me. I could see its power all around me. I saw and heard everything there was to see and hear, and I know that there wasn’t any Calling. It wasn’t alive. It didn’t have any more consciousness than a rock – and I don’t mean some wizard’s gargoyles, I mean an ordinary rock. There was no Calling. None. And if I couldn’t hear any right there, fifty feet away, I don’t believe for an instant that I could be hearing it now, on the far side of the Gulf of the East.”
This was interesting. Hanner hadn’t realized that Vond knew exactly where his power came from, let alone that he had visited the source. “Maybe it was asleep when you were there, and now it’s woken up?”
“It wasn’t asleep. It was dead. It was never alive, any more than the Tower of Flame is alive. It’s a construction, a device, a big magical device, and it isn’t Calling anyone.”
“Then maybe your dream was just an ordinary nightmare, dredging up your memories of the Calling.”
That stopped the warlock for a moment; he cocked his head in thought. His lips thinned.
Then he shook his head. “I don’t think so,” he said. “I think it was a wizard trying to trick me. Isn’t there some spell they use to send dreams?”
“The Spell of Invaded Dreams,” Anra volunteered. Hanner glanced at her, startled; her face looked strange in the orange light.
“There, you see?” Vond said triumphantly.
“That a wizard could have sent the dream doesn’t mean one did,” Hanner replied.
“Well, it certainly doesn’t mean one didn’t.”
“Why would a wizard send you a Calling dream?”
“To frighten me, of course! To make me afraid of using my power.”
Hanner had to admit to himself that Vond’s theory was not completely absurd, but he was not about to say it aloud. “How realistic was it? The dream, I mean. Was it like a real Calling nightmare?”