If they did kill him, someone had better be ready to bring that palace down safely, and she only knew one spell she would trust to do the job – the structure was too big for the usual restoratives and stasis spells. She glanced around, looking for the orange glow of the greater moon – Varrin’s Greater Propulsion could only be completed when both moons were full, and while the lesser moon ran through its cycle in less than a day, the greater moon would only be in the correct phase once a month. She hoped that Demerchan would not be hasty, as she thought the necessary occasion was still a sixnight or so away.
She would also need seven pure white stones, iron that had fallen from the sky, a peacock plume, a thick black candle, a blue glass bottle, a dagger carved from rock crystal and sharpened with a feather, and of course several pounds of seawater-scented incense, with a silver censer to burn it in. Her set of stones was in her workshop drawer, and there was a suitable bottle holding a few flowers in the southwest guest room, but she was not sure exactly where the other components were; she might need to buy or borrow some of them. She had a vague recollection of selling her crystal knife to one of her former apprentices a century or so back.
She wondered whether the overlord might want to keep his palace airborne for awhile once this was all over. Flying castles, never common, had been considered quite prestigious during the Great War. That assumed, of course, that it would someday be all over, and that Lord Azrad, or at least one of his heirs, would survive that long.
At least Vond wasn’t actively malevolent, just greedy and stupid – and at that, she didn’t think he was as stupid as that silly thief Tabaea, who had declared herself an empress in Ethshar of the Sands a decade back.
Ithinia grimaced at the memory of how badly Telurinon and the others had handled the problems Tabaea created. She liked to think she would have done far better. But then she looked up at the overlord’s palace, hanging in the air three hundred feet above her head, and decided she had nothing to brag about, either.
Chapter Thirty-One
Hanner tried to be modest, but he really thought he had been rather clever in telling the former warlocks who chose to leave Warlock House, rather than serve Vond, that they should claim to have fled homes on Lower Street, or in the surrounding neighborhood. The overlord had ordered the city guard to find space for all such refugees in the city’s defenses – in the towers by the various gates, in the barracks in Camptown, or in the wall itself. There was no way for the guards to know who really lived in the threatened houses, and who had spent the last twenty years frozen in Aldagmor, so Hanner had passed the word among the Called to go to the guards and claim to have been displaced from the houses beneath the palace.
Of course, that only applied to the Called who had been using the guest rooms; the ones who had vanished into the tapestry had stayed where they were. That other-worldly village was probably the safest place anyone could be, as far as any threat Vond might pose was concerned; his magic could not reach it at all, and Vond himself, Hanner assumed, would never dare set foot there.
Or at least so Hanner thought, as he wearily climbed the stairs. Vond could be unpredictable.
Hanner had finally done everything useful he could think of, and he was exhausted, eager to get some sleep. He had worked the night through, directing the evacuation of Lower Street, helping get people and possessions safely down from the palace, and making sure that all his guests in Warlock House understood the situation and knew they were volunteering themselves for Vond’s service if they stayed.
About three-fourths of them had left, but a dozen or so seemed to like the idea of becoming underlings to the apparent ruler of the World. Hanner had told them he didn’t think Vond would ever carry through on making anyone else back into a warlock, but some of them didn’t believe him, and others didn’t seem to care – they preferred the security of Vond’s service to the uncertainty of the streets.
Hanner was almost to the second floor, lifting a foot toward the landing, when the door of Vond’s chamber opened and the warlock drifted out.
“Oh, there you are!” he said. “I’ve been waiting.”
Hanner lowered his foot and blinked stupidly at Vond from the top step. “What?”
“You were going to show me that tapestry,” Vond said impatiently. “You should have been back here hours ago!”
Hanner glanced back down the stairs, and along the corridor, hoping to find someone else who might distract the emperor, but no one else was in sight. “My apologies, your Majesty,” he said. “I’m afraid I was so distracted by your…your demonstration that I completely forgot.”
“Demonstration? Oh, you mean the overlord’s palace?” Vond grinned happily. “Isn’t it magnificent? I’m holding it up right now, and it’s no more trouble than wearing a hat.”
Hanner stared dumbly at the warlock, trying to comprehend what it would be like to possess that level of magical power.
“I told you to bring Zallin,” Vond said, the grin vanishing.
“I…I did try to, but then I went out…”
Vond waved a hand. “Don’t worry about it. I talked to him earlier. He claims to know nothing about your magical picture, but he agreed to serve as my aide.”
“He…he never saw the tapestry, your Majesty. It was my own project, not anything the Council did.”
“That’s fine. Show me.”
Hanner wanted nothing more than to fall into bed and sleep for a day or two, but he could think of no way to safely refuse the emperor. Perhaps if he were not so muddled by exhaustion, he thought, he might have managed to talk his way out of it, but as it was he simply said, “Yes, your Majesty. This way.”
His legs did not want to carry him up the two additional flights, but he managed it, with Vond sailing happily along at his heels, until the two of them stood in the fourth-floor bedroom, looking at the tapestry.
“How does it work?” Vond asked. “Is there some ritual, or a magic word?”
For a moment Hanner considered lying, and luring the warlock into touching the tapestry. Then he could run up to the attic and do something to block the exit, trapping Vond in the other world, and putting an end to the threat he posed.
But if he did that, the palace would fall out of the sky and smash several blocks of the New City. People might die, and even if everyone had been safely evacuated, which Hanner did not believe to be the case, the property damage would be immense.
It might be worth it. It might be. But Hanner did not feel he had the right to decide that, and in his current bone-weary state he did not trust himself to make so important a choice. Perhaps later there would be a time when tricking Vond into the golden village would be a good idea, but right now – no.
“No,” Hanner said. “The spell is active – if you touch it, you’ll instantly be transported to the place in the picture. And if you do that, your Majesty, the overlord’s palace will fall, so please be very careful to stay well clear.”
“Ah,” Vond said. He nodded, and moved back a few inches. “So anyone can just step through into that place?”
“Yes, your Majesty. I’ve sent fifty or sixty people there.”
Vond turned. “You mean they’re in there now?”
Startled, Hanner stepped back, blinking. “Yes, of course, your Majesty. That’s why it’s here.”
“And they can come back out whenever they want?”
“Ah…yes, your Majesty.” Hanner did not see any reason to explain the existence and nature of the return tapestry.
“Here in my house?” Vond demanded.
Hanner swallowed his resentment at Vond’s casual appropriation of the house Uncle Faran had built. “Yes, your Majesty.”