The Unwelcome Warlock. Lawrence Watt-Evans

      He grimaced. He was assuming that Mavi would want to accompany him, but he had not actually asked her yet. He knew she was worried about the Call, but worried enough to give up her life in Ethshar of the Spices, the city that had always been her home? It wasn’t as if she was in any danger; he had invited her to become a warlock, to have that little adjustment made that would let her draw magical power from the Source, but she had never done it. She was content to leave the magic to him and the other warlocks while she attended to more mundane matters.

      But she loved him and wanted to be with him, so of course she would want to come with him. She wouldn’t need to stay; she could go back and forth at will, while he would need to remain in that other place once the Calling became too strong.

      That assumed, of course, that it wasn’t just as strong on the other side of the tapestry. He really would need to try it out someday, when the Call reached a dangerous level — maybe after he got back from Aldagmor…

      He closed his eyes and clenched his teeth and held his breath.

      He was not going to Aldagmor. He was not going to give in. The Call was obviously already dangerous. It was always there, every second, day and night, nagging at him, working insidiously to draw him away. Every time he used even the slightest bit of warlockry, or took a single step to the north, it grew a little stronger. Simply facing south was becoming difficult; his head kept turning involuntarily, and his neck was getting sore from his struggle to resist. He was leaking magic, he knew that; small objects tended to levitate around him without any conscious effort on his part. He needed a refuge.

      And now, just in time, he might have one. All he had to do was reach out…

      But the wizards didn’t know, didn’t really know, whether it was safe, or whether it would work. He should go home and discuss it with his wife before he did anything more. He should go home, to Warlock House, on High Street, just a mile north of this secret room on Wizard Street.

      A mile north. A mile closer to Aldagmor. He shuddered at the thought, and at the same time he felt a deep longing.

      It was very bad. He wasn’t going to be able to hold out much longer. He couldn’t sleep anymore; when he did, he dreamed of fire and of being cast down from the heavens and buried deep in the earth of Aldagmor, he dreamed of a need to go there and help, and he always awoke to find himself moving northward. He hadn’t dared to sleep at all for the last two nights, and he had made do with brief naps for a sixnight before that.

      He just had to reach out and touch the tapestry, but he couldn’t lift his hand. He was so tired, so weary of fighting the Call — not physically, no powerful warlock’s body ever tired, but mentally. If he gave in he could rest. He could fly, any warlock worthy of the name could fly, he could be in Aldagmor in no more than a day or two. He had been refusing to fly at all for about a month, so that he would not fly off to Aldagmor, but now that just seemed foolish. Why not get it over with?

      “Tell my wife I love her,” he said. “Tell her to wait for me in the attic of Warlock House. If this works, I’ll meet her there and let her know. If it doesn’t, well…”

      “Should we tell her any details? About the tapestries?”

      Hanner shook his head. “No,” he said. “I’ll tell her. She knows I was planning something, and I want to be the one to tell her what it was.” He paused, then added, “If it works. For all we know, the Call will be even stronger in there.”

      “I suppose it might be,” Arvagan admitted. “Though I don’t see why it would be. Wherever that place is, it’s not Aldagmor.”

      “But it could be near Aldagmor, somehow.”

      “I suppose.”

      Hanner turned to Arvagan. “You’ll tell her?”

      “The instant I see you enter the tapestry, I’ll send word for her to go to meet you.”

      “Good. Good.” He turned back to face that shining image of green fields and tried to step toward it, but his foot would not lift.

      Inspiration struck. “Arvagan, would you do me a favor?”

      “What sort of a favor?”

      “Would you move the tapestry to the north wall? Or just turn it so it faces south?”

      “Is it that bad, Chairman?”

      “Yes, it is,” Hanner said. “I didn’t know… It took so long…”

      “We told you when we started that it took a year or more to make a Transporting Tapestry.”

      “Yes, you did — but I hadn’t realized how close I was to being Called. A year ago it was nothing, just a little murmur in my head; now it’s…it’s everything, it’s constant, it’s so strong.”

      Arvagan nodded. Then he reached up and pushed at the rod supporting the tapestry, being careful not to let his hand come too close to the fabric. Like the sail of a ship clearing the breakwater, the tapestry swung slowly around.

      Hanner turned with it, and when it was due north, between him and Aldagmor, he found he could lift his arm and step forward, step northward. His finger touched the silky cloth.

      And the secret room was gone, the wizard’s house was gone, Wizard Street and the Wizards’ Quarter had vanished, the entire city of Ethshar of the Spices was gone. He was standing on a gentle, grassy slope sprinkled with white and gold flowers.

      He didn’t notice.

      A sun was shining warmly on his face, a sun that wasn’t quite the same color as the one he had seen every day in Ethshar, and a soft wind was blowing against his right cheek. He didn’t notice that, either.

      Sky and sun and wind and grass and flowers, a sound of splashing somewhere in the distance, a cluster of strange buildings — Hanner ignored them all.

      He was too busy listening to the silence in his head.

      The Call was gone. The constant nagging, the murmuring voice in his head, the wordless muttering that he had somehow been able to draw magic from, was gone. There was nothing in his head but him.

      He hadn’t experienced such total mental freedom since the Night of Madness, seventeen years before. Even before he had consciously noticed it, he had lived with the constant whisper of magic for so long that its absence was overwhelming. Now he simply stood, listening for it, for several minutes.

      At first he didn’t show any reaction; the change was too sudden, too complete, to comprehend. Then the rush of relief swept over him, and his knees gave way, and he tumbled onto the grass, trembling with the impact of his release from bondage — and trembling with terror as well. His magic was gone, and it had been central to his existence for so long that he barely knew who he was without it.

      He lay on the grass for several minutes and gradually began to notice his surroundings — the sun, the breeze, the grassy slope. He tried to stand up.

      It didn’t work.

      He took a moment to absorb that, and to realize that he had become so accustomed to levitating any time he stood up that trying to rise using only his own muscles was difficult, surprisingly difficult. He had forgotten how to do it.

      He had tried to spring directly to his feet — or really, since of late he had usually hung in the air with his feet an inch or so off the ground, “to his feet” wasn’t quite right. He had tried to fling himself upright, but without magic it hadn’t worked. Now he rolled onto his back and pushed himself up into a sitting position, then set his feet on the ground, one by one. Then he stood up, leaning forward and straightening his legs.

      That time it worked.

      He stood for a moment, taking in his surroundings and his situation.

      He had no magic. Wherever he was, he wasn’t a warlock here; probably nobody would be. All the little things he had done magically he either had to do with his own muscles or not at all.

      He