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Authors: Lawrence Watt-Evans
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other people. Something had drawn the villagers in that direction, and now it was belatedly trying to draw her, and she wasnât going.
She turned and began marching determinedly northwest. She chose that direction simply because it was the opposite of the direction everyone else had taken, but she knew it was also taking her the first few steps toward Sardiron of the Waters, thirty leagues away, where the Council of Barons met. If nothing intervened, she intended to walk the entire way and ask the Council for succor.
It would take at least a sixnight to walk that far, but after all, she had no further obligations here.
*Â Â Â *Â Â Â *
And in Ethshar of the Rocks, the smallest, westernmost, and most northerly of the three great cities of the Hegemony of the Three Ethshars, a man named Shemder Parlâs son stood at the window of his rented room, watching the lunatics in the street below.
He had awakened from a nightmare, sweating and shaking, and when he reached for the pitcher beside his bed he discovered that he had somehow acquired magical abilities, that he could move things without touching them. He heard the commotion in the streets and went to the window to see what was happening.
He stood there, watching and listening and thinking, for some time.
There were others who had received the same magic, and they were out there running wild, stealing things and smashing windows and setting fires, shouting about the end of the World, many of them flying off to the east.
Shemder thought they were fools.
This wasnât the end of the World. The faint sensation in his head urging him to go east was a feeble annoyance, at most. Smashing and stealing was too loud, too obvious, too blatant. Sooner or later the overlordâs guards or the established magicians would organize, recover, and deal harshly with those idiots. The magic would surely passâthe spell would wear off, or some damnable high-ranking wizard would find a way to remove itâand then those rampaging morons would be rounded up and flogged or hanged. They would have wasted the opportunity of a lifetime.
Shemder was not about to waste his one unexpected chance at revenge.
He had been planning it all out, step by step. He would start with his landlady. He wouldnât touch her, but she would fall down the cellar stairs and crack her skull on the stone steps.
The magic would ensure that.
And then his brother Neran, who had gone from a childhood of bullying to an adulthood of rubbing Shemderâs nose in Neranâs success as a woodcarver and Shemderâs own failure to ever be anything more than a stevedore at the Bywater docks, poor Neran would fall on one of his own knives.
That witch Détha of Hillside who had refused to accept Shemder as an apprentice all those years ago, and who kept telling him he needed to find his own pathâ she would find her own path, right off the cliffs at the end of Fortress Street, onto the rocks at low tide.
Falissa and Kirris and Lura and all the other women who had refused him over the yearsâsome hearts would burst, some women would mysteriously choke to death.
The magistrate who had sentenced Shemder to three lashes for stealing that statuette from the Tintallionese ship last yearâ he was on the list, along with the ship captain who noticed the loss in the first place.
Shemder doubted the magic would last long enough to finish the list. It was a long list.
And, he decided, he had spent enough time just thinking about it. It was time to start doing it, to see just how far down the list he could get before the magic stopped.
The idea that he might be stopped before the magic was didnât occur to him; he wasnât a fool like those people running in the streets.
He was going to use his gift right, he told himself as he opened the door and called for the landlady.
Who could stop him?
Chapter Seven
Lord Hanner marched up the broad dimness of Arena Street with a
She turned and began marching determinedly northwest. She chose that direction simply because it was the opposite of the direction everyone else had taken, but she knew it was also taking her the first few steps toward Sardiron of the Waters, thirty leagues away, where the Council of Barons met. If nothing intervened, she intended to walk the entire way and ask the Council for succor.
It would take at least a sixnight to walk that far, but after all, she had no further obligations here.
*Â Â Â *Â Â Â *
And in Ethshar of the Rocks, the smallest, westernmost, and most northerly of the three great cities of the Hegemony of the Three Ethshars, a man named Shemder Parlâs son stood at the window of his rented room, watching the lunatics in the street below.
He had awakened from a nightmare, sweating and shaking, and when he reached for the pitcher beside his bed he discovered that he had somehow acquired magical abilities, that he could move things without touching them. He heard the commotion in the streets and went to the window to see what was happening.
He stood there, watching and listening and thinking, for some time.
There were others who had received the same magic, and they were out there running wild, stealing things and smashing windows and setting fires, shouting about the end of the World, many of them flying off to the east.
Shemder thought they were fools.
This wasnât the end of the World. The faint sensation in his head urging him to go east was a feeble annoyance, at most. Smashing and stealing was too loud, too obvious, too blatant. Sooner or later the overlordâs guards or the established magicians would organize, recover, and deal harshly with those idiots. The magic would surely passâthe spell would wear off, or some damnable high-ranking wizard would find a way to remove itâand then those rampaging morons would be rounded up and flogged or hanged. They would have wasted the opportunity of a lifetime.
Shemder was not about to waste his one unexpected chance at revenge.
He had been planning it all out, step by step. He would start with his landlady. He wouldnât touch her, but she would fall down the cellar stairs and crack her skull on the stone steps.
The magic would ensure that.
And then his brother Neran, who had gone from a childhood of bullying to an adulthood of rubbing Shemderâs nose in Neranâs success as a woodcarver and Shemderâs own failure to ever be anything more than a stevedore at the Bywater docks, poor Neran would fall on one of his own knives.
That witch Détha of Hillside who had refused to accept Shemder as an apprentice all those years ago, and who kept telling him he needed to find his own pathâ she would find her own path, right off the cliffs at the end of Fortress Street, onto the rocks at low tide.
Falissa and Kirris and Lura and all the other women who had refused him over the yearsâsome hearts would burst, some women would mysteriously choke to death.
The magistrate who had sentenced Shemder to three lashes for stealing that statuette from the Tintallionese ship last yearâ he was on the list, along with the ship captain who noticed the loss in the first place.
Shemder doubted the magic would last long enough to finish the list. It was a long list.
And, he decided, he had spent enough time just thinking about it. It was time to start doing it, to see just how far down the list he could get before the magic stopped.
The idea that he might be stopped before the magic was didnât occur to him; he wasnât a fool like those people running in the streets.
He was going to use his gift right, he told himself as he opened the door and called for the landlady.
Who could stop him?
Chapter Seven
Lord Hanner marched up the broad dimness of Arena Street with a
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