“Your Majesty,” Sterren called. “Remember, use your feet!”
Vond looked at him unseeingly and then seemed to emerge from a daze. He looked down, then dropped to the floor, and fell to his knees.
He knelt there, shaking. Sterren crossed to him and put an arm around his shoulder.
“You,” he said, pointing to one guard, “go get brandy. And you, go get an herbalist.” They hurried away.
The valet asked, “Is there anything...”
“Go find the theurgist, Agor,” Sterren said.
The valet vanished, leaving Sterren alone with the terrified warlock. He looked up at the wall, where a small smear of red showed that Vond had scraped his hand on the rough edge of a stone.
“Why were you hitting the wall?” Sterren asked.
“I don’t know,” Vond replied. “Was I?” He looked up, saw the streak of blood, then looked down at his injured hand, puzzled.
“Was it the nightmares?” Sterren asked.
Vond almost growled. “Of course it was, idiot!” He looked up at the blood again and asked, “Was I flying?”
“Yes,” Sterren said.
“I used magic, then. No matter how careful I am, the nightmares can make me use magic. It’s not fair!”
“No,” Sterren agreed. “It’s not fair.”
The guard returned with the brandy, and Sterren helped steady the glass as Vond drank. When the warlock had caught his breath again, he asked, “Did I say anything?”
“No,” Sterren told him, “I don’t think so.” The guard cleared his throat.
Sterren glanced at him. “Was there something before I got here?” he asked.
“He was crying, my lord,” the soldier said, “and saying something about needing to go somewhere. I couldn’t make out all of it.”
Then the herbalist arrived.
Half an hour later Vond was in bed again, feeling the effects of a sleeping potion the herbalist had brewed, and the little crowd of concerned subjects was breaking up, drifting out of the imperial bedchamber one by one.
Sterren departed and headed back up for his own room.
The incident had shaken his nerves. It had been easy enough to say that Vond had to go, but to watch him slowly being destroyed by the Calling was not easy at all.
Sterren was not sure he could take it.
Perhaps, he thought, it was time to go home to Ethshar. Vond could not follow him. The old Semman nobility was scattered and powerless, save for Kalira and Algarven, and they would have no particular reason to want him back. But no, he told himself, that was cowardice. Not that he was particularly brave, but it was worse than ordinary cowardice. He had created the whole situation; to run away and leave it for others to clean up the mess was despicable. It went beyond cowardice, into treachery.
It would be cheating, and he was an honest gambler. He did not cheat. He did not welsh.
He would stay and watch what he had wrought.
He almost reconsidered two nights later, when another nightmare sent Vond blazing into the sky like a comet. He awoke and fell to earth a mile north of the palace; Sterren and a dozen guards marched out to fetch him back.
CHAPTER 40
On the twenty-fourth of Leaf color, 5221, Sterren awoke suddenly and was startled to see sunlight pouring in his bedroom window. It had been two sixnights since he had slept the night through, without being awakened by another of Vond’s Calling nightmares.
He sat up and realized that he was not alone in the room, that he had been awakened. He blinked, then recognized the man who had awakened him as Vond’s valet.
“What’s happened?” he asked.
“He’s gone,” the valet said.
Sterren wasted no time with further questions; he rose and followed the servant at a trot through the palace passages, back to the warlock’s bedchamber.
The bed was empty and not particularly disturbed; the coverlet was thrown back on one side, as if Vond had gotten up for a moment, perhaps to use the chamberpot, and had not yet returned.
The often-repaired window to the courtyard was open.
Vond was gone.
It was over; whatever it was that lurked in the hills of Aldagmor had taken another warlock.
Sterren almost wanted to laugh with relief, but instead he found himself weeping.
When he had regained control of himself, he asked the valet, “What time is it?”
“I don’t know, my lord; I awoke an hour or so after dawn, I think, and came in and found it like this. I went straight to fetch you.”
Sterren nodded. “All right,” he said. “You go find whoever takes care of such matters and see to it that the Imperial Council is in the council chamber an hour from now. I need to speak to them.”
The valet hesitated. “What do I do here?” he asked.
“Nothing,” Sterren said. “Leave it just the way it is. The Great Vond might come back.”
With a shiver, Sterren realized that might even be true. Nobody knew what happened to warlocks who gave in to the Calling. None had ever returned.
But Vond had been more powerful than any other warlock who ever lived, and warlocks had only existed, and therefore had only been vanishing, for twenty years. Nobody really knew whether Vond might come back.
But quite frankly, Sterren doubted it.
Back in his room, he had someone fetch him a tray of breakfast pastry, which he ate while bathing. When he was washed, fed, and dry, he took his time in dressing in his best tunic and breeches, combing his hair, brushing out his freshly grown mustache, he was almost, he thought as he looked at the mirror, ready to grow a proper beard. When he was thoroughly satisfied with his appearance, he headed for the council chamber.
All seven councillors were there waiting for him; Lady Kalira, anticipating his arrival, was at the foot of the table, leaving room for him at the head. He marched in and took his place.
“The Great Vond,” he announced, “has moved on to a higher plane of existence.”
“You mean he’s dead?” Prince Ferral asked. “No,” Sterren said. “Or at least, I don’t think so.”
“You’ll have to explain that,” Algarven remarked. Sterren did, not concerning himself with the truth. Warlocks, he explained, did not die the way ordinary people did. They vanished, transmogrified into pure magic. The nightmares and other ills that the Great Vond had been suffering were his mortal body’s attempts to prevent this ascension.
“He’s gone, though?” Prince Ferral demanded.
“He’s gone,” Sterren admitted. “But we don’t know if it’s permanent. It’s only twenty years since warlockry was first discovered, and the Great Vond was the most powerful warlock the World has yet seen. We really don’t know whether he might return or not.”
The councillors watched Sterren carefully, and he looked them over in return, trying to judge how many of them believed him. He couldn’t tell. After all, these were all expert politicians. They could hide their opinions quite effectively.
Then Lady Kalira asked the really important question, the one that Sterren had called this meeting to answer.
“What now?” she said.
“I don’t know,” Sterren admitted.
“Well, what do you think?” Algarven asked.
“I’m not sure,” Sterren said. “We could just go on the way we have been. After all, nobody outside the palace has seen Vond in almost two months now. Nobody has to know that anything has changed.”
“I don’t know about that,” Algarven said. “I don’t think we can keep it secret forever. The servants will know, and they’ll talk.”