Summer 15: not at all
Dearest Zann,
The bald wizard–Knarrett called him Fornan–led us to a nearby door and said. “Wait here. Don’t come in until I bring you in, or I’ll set fire to your spleen.” Knarrett grinned and leaned against the wall.
Fornan bustled through the door. I couldn’t get much of a view of what was inside, but I heard a lot of voices. I heard Fornan say, “The wizard Knarrett, my notables, with a matter of some import,” in a commanding voice. Then there were more other voices that I couldn’t pick anything out of.
The door opened and Fornan beckoned us in. The room was a… small round theatre, with four rings of seats ascending around a central stage at the bottom, where we were entering. It smelled of old wood and old wax. About half the seats were empty, and the others were filled by a fascinating collection of people.
The wizards here were men and women and other things, with skin pale and dark and green and silver. Some were normal-looking townspeople and some could have been ambassadors from alien worlds. I saw one wizard who was a human-shaped cloud of black-burning candles, and another who looked like a column of ash covered with peacock-feather eyes. Half of them tried to hoot Knarrett down as we entered, and the other half were bored.
A moderator sat at a slowly revolving table in the centre, a man wearing a purple visor. He called out to the other wizards, “Recognize the wizard Knarrett!”
Other wizards yelled down, “Get him out of here!” “The wizard Knarrett can sniff my piss!” and “I only see a traitor to wizardkind!” The moderator made annoyed patting gestures in the air to try to calm them down. “Where’s that robber Ladal? Isn’t he holding your leash?” “Go back to your banditti! You stinking renunciate!”
Knarrett raised his voice to be heard above the shouts. “I never renounced this council! I was only trying to make a living, as is my right as a wizard of the third rank, and I came back here, didn’t I? With something you stupidheads want!”
“The only thing I want from you is the smoke from your remains!” “What do you know about what a wizard wants? You couldn’t even spell it!”
“Ambe!” Knarrett said.
I was watching the wizards’ reactions. Some of them leaned forward, interested. Others threw up their hands in exasperation.
One wizard, her red hair long enough to almost obscure her well-tailored green suit, said, “This council has more important things to worry about than Ambe. Frankly, we always did. But now, with the city in chaos? We need to concentrate on the problem of Lord Clear.”
“Not so!” said a pale-blue coconut crab. “We must always emphasize the unity of our community! I refer to the fool Knarrett as much as the intolerable Ambe.”
“Notables, please,” said a gilded clock. “You backward children are continuing in your usual patterns of flawed ideas. The great benefit of a council such as ours is that we have many minds, some of them almost sentient, that we can set to different problems. Surely there are some among our lot capable of independently interpreting Knarrett’s infantile babblings and discerning Ambe’s whereabouts from them.”
“An excellent suggestion,” said the moderator. “Notables Sandavin and Rheux? You’ve been pressing for us to do something about Ambe and some of our other renegades. Will you take this on?” I didn’t see which ones responded, but they must have agreed silently, because the moderator said, “Very good. Fornan, who is this other?”
“He’s mine,” Knarrett said. “He’s Ambe’s friend, and I found him.”
“Yes, yes, thank you, Knarrett,” the moderator said. “If we have him, do we need you?”
“Not at all,” I said.
Knarrett raised his hand to shut me up, and the moderator gestured. Knarrett disappeared soundlessly. A couple of wizards applauded.
“Your name, sir?” the moderator said.
“It’s Ybel.”
“Notable Rheux? Please escort Master Ybel from this chamber and begin your inquiries…”
Love,
Ybel
