"And them?" Emmis paused in his counting and gestured at the Lumethans, who were digging into their own purses for their share.

"Oh, they showed up later this morning, and started asking everyone stupid questions in Trader's Tongue or Lumethan or Gajamorish, and I'm sure you can guess how helpful that was. You'd think Lumeth could have found someone who spoke Ethsharitic! Anyway, I talked them into joining me so that they wouldn't alert the entire city with their babbling."

Emmis nodded, and watched the Lumethans push forward a stack of coins.

"So how did you meet the Vondishman, and why did he hire you?"

Emmis took a swig of beer, and began describing how he had met Lar Samber's son, and what had happened thereafter.

It didn't take long, since after all, most of their time together had been spent in Emmis teaching Lar a few things about Ethshar, rather than Lar saying or doing anything that would interest the Prince of Ashthasa, or that might concern whoever was in charge of things in Lumeth of the Towers. He had barely finished his first beer when he ran out of things to say.

He glanced at the Lumethans, who had listened to all this without giving any indication they understood a word of it. They were being very patient, Emmis thought. They probably trusted Annis to relay the important parts after Emmis had left.

"Ambassador," Annis said, leaning back in her chair and staring at him.

"Yes," Emmis said. "Ambassador plenipotentiary."

"But he's interested in magicians."

"Warlocks in particular."

"How do warlocks concern an ambassador?"

"I have no idea. Didn't you say, though, that the Empire of Vond was created by a warlock?"

"It was. By Vond the Great. That's where the name comes from."

"What happened to him? Is he still running things?"

Annis shook her head. "No. He flew away to the north and never came back – but he might return someday, which is why the empire has a regent instead of an emperor."

"Flew off to…? Oh." Suddenly the history of the Empire of Vond made sense.

Emmis didn't know much about magic, and what he did know mostly came from idle conversation with sailors and dockworkers, so he knew more about wind elementals and propulsion spells than he did about love charms or any of the more usual enchantments – not that he could be sure any of what he knew was accurate; seafarers' gossip was not exactly famous for its reliability. He knew sailors didn't think witchcraft was good for anything but healing, that wizardry was the best way to help a vessel cross the sea, that ships passing near the Pirate Towns often carried demonologists to defend themselves.

He knew that sometimes warlocks would take ship heading south, bound for anywhere in the World that was farther away from Aldagmor.

There was something in the mountains of Aldagmor, sixty leagues north of Ethshar, that gave warlocks their power – and after they had used a certain amount of that power, demanded they pay for it with their lives. The warlocks named it the Calling, and any warlock who heard it felt an irresistible compulsion to go to Aldagmor. Some walked, some rode, but most flew. Nothing could hold them, once they heard the Calling; they would use their magic to shatter locks or chains, burst any bonds, in their desperation to make that journey to Aldagmor.

And none of them ever came back.

No one knew what was out there in the mountains; no one had ever come back from there, not since the Night of Madness when warlockry first appeared, a few months before Emmis was born.

Sane warlocks resisted the Calling as long as they could, and the farther they were from Aldagmor, the longer they could hold out. Every old sailor had a tale or two about warlocks who had fled to the Small Kingdoms or the western coasts, trying to put more distance between himself and whatever it was that was summoning them.

The Empire of Vond, if Emmis understood the geography correctly, was at the far end of the Small Kingdoms, on the southern edge of the World and the edge of the Great Eastern Desert. It was, in fact, as far from Aldagmor as it was possible to get in that direction.

This Vond the Great Warlock must have gone there trying to escape the Calling, and built himself an empire for some reason, perhaps just as a distraction, but then the Calling had gotten him anyway. He had gone to Aldagmor, and would never come back – but the people he left in charge of his empire didn't want to admit that, so this Sterren of Semma person called himself "regent" instead of "emperor."

Annis didn't seem to realize that. She had said that Vond might return someday, but as Emmis understood it, that wasn't going to happen. Warlocks didn't come back.

"If the ambassador is looking for warlocks here in Ethshar, do you think it might be Vond himself that he's looking for?" Annis asked. "Could the Great Warlock be hiding in the Wizards' Quarter?"

"Um?" Emmis had been lost in his own thoughts, and had to think a moment to realize what the Ashthasan was asking him. "Oh. No, I don't think so."

"He was from Ethshar."

"Yes, but I don't think he came back here." If she didn't know about the Calling, or thought it was reversible, he didn't see any reason to explain it to her. It wasn't any great secret in Ethshar, and if the news had never reached Ashthasa – well, in that case they clearly didn't have any warlocks there, so she didn't need to know.

But Emmis now had an idea what Lar's secret mission might be. If the Empire of Vond had been created by a warlock, and that warlock was gone, maybe the ambassador was here looking for a new warlock. There were certainly plenty of them in the city, and any who had reached the nightmare threshold, the point when the Calling had started to trouble their dreams but had not yet affected them when they were awake, would probably be very interested in a trip to the southern edge of the World.

What did the empire need a warlock for, really?

Annis had apparently followed a similar line of reasoning, because at that point in his thoughts she said, "Do you think the Vondishman might be looking for another warlock?"

"I don't know," Emmis said. "He might be. Is there some important magic that they need done?"

Annis turned up both palms. "Who knows?" she said. "The Imperial Council does not exactly send bulletins to all its neighbors."

One of the Lumethans asked her a question in Trader's Tongue before Emmis could think of anything more to say. Annis replied, giving Emmis time to mull over his theory.

If the empire had sent Lar to fetch them a new warlock because Vond had been Called, they presumably had some use for a warlock. Their first, Vond himself, had apparently used his magic to conquer the seventeen kingdoms that now made up the empire named for him.

So did this mean they wanted a new warlock so they could expand the empire further? That was probably what Annis and the Lumethans would think; they were already worried about a new wave of Vondish conquest.

Emmis thought that if he were going to embark on a career of magical conquest, he wouldn't use a warlock. Yes, the Calling meant that eventually he would go away and you would have the empire to yourself, but what happened if the Calling got to him in the middle of a battle? Your magical support might suddenly fly away on you, which would probably not do anything to increase your chances of living a long and happy life as emperor.

Witches weren't powerful enough to be conquerors, and generally had fairly strict rules about what they would and wouldn't do, in any case. Theurgists couldn't do anything the gods considered evil, and while the gods' standards sometimes seemed arbitrary, conquering other countries would almost certainly involve violating them. Demonologists – well, demonologists were scary. You couldn't trust demonologists, or the demons they more or less controlled. A demonologist might decide that he'd make a better emperor without you, or one of the demons might decide you looked tasty. Scientists and herbalists and ritual dancers and all the other minor schools of magic – well, people considered them "minor" for a reason.