The two men waited, and a moment later the lock rattled, the latch lifted, and the door opened.

"Come in, come in!" said the young man inside, swinging the door wide and standing aside.

Cautiously, Lar and Emmis stepped in.

"Have a seat, please!" their host said, gesturing toward a maroon-upholstered couch.

"You're Kolar the Sage?" Emmis asked.

The wizard looked down at himself, then smiled at them. "Yes, I am," he said. "I hope you'll pardon my appearance; I was just helping my wife put the twins to bed."

Emmis supposed that did explain why he was wearing an ancient homespun tunic with an impressive collection of stains on it, rather than any sort of wizardly robe, as well as why his hair was a tangled mess, and why he had been slow to answer the door. It was perfectly reasonable, really. Still, Emmis would have had far more faith in the man's ability if he had been waiting at the door, in a proper robe – or if he were a decade older; the man wasn't much older than Emmis himself.

"Twins?" Lar asked.

"A boy and a girl," Kolar said with obvious pride. "A year and a half old."

Lar nodded, and settled onto the couch.

Emmis did not sit, but took up a position beside the couch, instead.

Kolar pulled a chair up and sat down facing them across a small, dark wooden table. "Now, what can I do for you?"

"I have a question I want answered," Lar said. "Well, several, really, but we'll start with one."

"Yes?"

"Can you answer it?"

"Almost certainly," Kolar said. "At a price, of course. The exact means used, and the exact price, will depend on the nature of the question."

Lar hesitated, then said, "This is the question: What made the hum that Vond the Warlock heard when he came to Semma, and exactly where is it?"

Emmis glanced at Lar. He had no idea what that meant.

Kolar stroked his close-trimmed beard. "That may be two questions," he said. "And the answers to both of them may be ambiguous. Where and what is Semma?"

Lar grimaced. "Semma was one of the southernmost of the Small Kingdoms, the one that Vond conquered and used as his base in creating the Empire of Vond. The empire's capital is still there."

That answered some questions Emmis had had. He had wondered why Lar had told Ishta he was from Semma, rather than Vond; presumably he was simply being more precise.

"Ah, I see," Kolar said. "And that answers my next question, as well, about who Vond was. Now, about the hum…"

"I can't tell you that," Lar said, cutting him off.

"Nothing? Not even whether you know whether there was only one?"

"There was a hum that Vond heard in Semma that no one else heard, and he heard it for almost his entire stay there. That's the hum I mean."

"That only he heard? Interesting."

"You would do better not to ask much more," Lar said. "Can you answer the question?"

Kolar frowned. "Vond the Warlock, you said? Has he been Called?"

"Yes."

"Then we can't use necromancy; Called warlocks don't leave ghosts. And we can't ask him as if he were alive, so all the dream spells and compulsions are out of the question. I can't quite see how the Spell of Omniscient Vision would help, either. That just leaves Fendel's Divination – well, of the spells I know; there may be others I'm not aware of. Hmm."

"Fendel's Divination?" Emmis asked.

Kolar nodded, still stroking his beard. "I have the ingredients, and the spell itself only takes a little over an hour, but the exact wording of the question is crucial. I'll want to work on it overnight. Can you both read?"

Lar and Emmis exchanged glances. "Yes," Lar said.

"Forgive me, but – you read Ethsharitic? I can't help noticing your accent."

"Yes, I read Ethsharitic. Not very fast, but I can read it. It's the official tongue of the Empire of Vond, you know, even if none of us grew up with it."

"Good. Then you might want to be here for the spell itself – the answer will be written in smoke, in mid-air, and it'll be easier for me if you read it yourself, and I don't need to worry about writing it down before I forget."

"You're sure it will be written in Ethsharitic?" Emmis asked. "Lar, here, speaks Semmat as his milk tongue."

Kolar blinked. "Well, it always has been before," he said. "I believe it depends on what language I used in my book of spells, not what the client knows."

"And you're sure that it will work?" Lar asked. "It will answer the question?"

"If the spell works properly, and the question has an answer, and there's nothing interfering, then it will answer the question."

"And will the answer be useful?" Emmis asked.

"Oh, that I can't say," Kolar said, spreading his hands. "I have no idea what this is about. Your master here says Vond heard a hum, but I don't know whether he really did, or whether it's significant. If the spell says the hum came from an insect lodged in Vond's left ear, will that be useful?"

"It would be an answer," Lar said. "Better than nothing."

"All right, then. For a round of gold, I will devise as foolproof a phrasing of your question as possible tonight, and perform Fendel's Divination in your presence tomorrow to give you an answer."

"A round of gold?" Lar stood up. "No."

"Six bits."

"Two rounds of silver."

"Seven."

"Four."

"Six."

"Five."

"Done. Five rounds of silver. Three in advance, two on completion."

"One in advance."

Kolar sighed. "All right. One in advance."

"It may not be both of us who come," Lar said, as he reached for his purse. "One of us may have business elsewhere."

"As you please."

"You understand that I am not asking about the nature of the hum, but about its exact source, and I will not pay for information about its nature."

Kolar nodded. "You want to know the nature and location of the source, not of the hum itself. Yes." He hesitated. "Do you want to know about its duration? Might it still be going?"

Lar blinked. "Oh, it's still going. We know that. We just want to know the source."

"Ah. I see."

"I hope not. It would be better to not ask more than necessary about this."

With that, Lar and Emmis took their leave.

"That went well," Lar said, as the wizard's door closed behind them.

"I suppose," Emmis said. "You did bargain him down by half."

"I meant that we were fortunate to find someone who could perform the spell I need."

"You're assuming he actually can," Emmis said.

"So is he," Lar said, "or he wouldn't have agreed so quickly to only one round in advance. He's so sure it will work and he'll get the whole payment that a day's delay doesn't matter."

"Or he just wants us to think that."

Lar looked annoyed.

"So some time tomorrow, if Hagai is following us again, we'll split up?" Emmis asked. "And whoever he doesn't follow will come back here for the spell."

"Yes."

"And if no one's following us, we'll both…"

"No," Lar cut him off. "Then I'll come alone. There are some other questions I may want to ask."

"Oh." Emmis nodded. "I need to talk to my contact at the Palace tomorrow, in any case."

"You can do that first. We have all day."

"Oh," Emmis said again. "Are we going back to the house now?"

"Yes."

"Good."

It had been a very long, wearing day, and Emmis was looking forward to putting it behind him – not that tomorrow would be entirely free of problems, he was sure, what with the divination spell and talking to the guardsman. For the next several minutes he walked quietly beside his employer, pointing out the correct direction when they reached Arena Street.

The streets of the Wizards' Quarter were mostly empty now; the few stragglers were hurrying along, most of them wrapped in their cloaks against the fresh breeze blowing from the northeast. Emmis had no cloak or coat, but the wind was not so very cold, really – just enough to keep them walking briskly, not dawdling. Emmis folded his arms across his chest for warmth, hugging his woolen tunic to himself.