Fifteen : War Warning

A jump gone awry is one of the hardest bugs to locate.   

—programmers' saying

 

Bal-Simba was walking in the castle garden when his deputy found him.

"Lord," Arianne said strangely. "Someone wishes to speak to you."

"Who?" the black wizard asked, catching her mood.

"Aelric, the elf duke."

Duke Aelric, or rather his image, was waiting for him in the

Watcher's room. The Watchers, who kept magical watch on the entire world, shifted uneasily at their communications crystals in the elf's presence.

Bal-Simba studied the apparition as he mounted the dais overlooking the sunken floor where the Watchers worked. The elf duke was wearing a simple tunic of dark-brown velvet that set off his milk-white complexion. His long hair was caught back in a golden filet set with small yellow gems at his temples. His face was serene and untroubled, not that that meant anything. Elves were inhumanly good at hiding their feelings and in any event their emotions were not those of mortals.

Bal-Simba had heard Wiz and Moira's story of their rescue by Duke Aelric and their dinner with him, but this was the first time Bal-Simba had ever seen him. Come to that, it is the first time I have ever seen any elf this close, he thought as he seated himself in his chair.

Duke Aelric seemed not to notice Bal-Simba until he was properly settled to receive his guest.

"I seek the Sparrow, but I am told he is not available," Aelric said.

"He is not here."

"Do you know when he will return?"

Bal-Simba considered the question before answering.

"I do not. He is off in the Wild Wood, I believe."

Aelric raised a silver eyebrow. "Indeed? Forgive me if I pry, but when did he leave?"

"Forgive my curiosity, but why do you wish to know?"

"Because he was on business of some urgency when he left my hold to return to your city a fortnight hence," Aelric said.

Bal-Simba frowned mightily. "He was coming straight back?"

Aelric waved a hand. "That was his plan. He left upon the Wizard's Way to return here immediately." He looked sharply at the black Wizard.

"I swear to you he did not arrive here," Bal-Simba told him. He struck his chest. "Upon my life I swear it."

"I believe you, oath or no," the image said.

"I will also tell you that we have been trying to contact him for several days without success. Frankly, we are becoming worried."

Elf and mortal fell silent, contemplating the implications.

"It occurs to me," the elf duke said slowly, "that someone may have transgressed upon my hospitality. I do not appreciate interference with those traveling to and from my abode."

"It occurs to me that Wiz may be in dire danger," Bal-Simba said, a trifle sharply.

"I hope not," Aelric told him. "For all our sakes."

It was Bal-Simba's turn to raise an eyebrow.  

"A matter of forestalling a war between humans and other users of magic, I think," Duke Aelric explained.

"War?"

"Did you expect your drive to exterminate magical creatures along the Fringe would go unremarked? Or that your expansion deep into the Wild Wood would pass unnoticed?"

"I think that there is a great deal going on out on the Fringe that I and the Council are unaware of."

Aelric waved a languid hand. "That is as it may be. The Sparrow seemed to feel he could turn this human tide before it came to that." Then he sobered and power seemed to radiate out of him like a nimbus.

"But I tell you this, wizard. If you cannot find your Sparrow—and soon—then you may have lost your only chance to forestall a war which would rend the World asunder."

He nodded gravely. "Merry part."

Bal-Simba's eyes widened at the usage, but he nodded in reply. "Merry meet again." And the elf duke's image was gone.

Bal-Simba heaved a great sigh. "When an elf uses human courtesies you know you are in trouble," he remarked to no one in particular. Then the giant black wizard turned to the gaping Watchers in the pit.

"I want every Watcher we have scanning the World for our Sparrow." He turned to Arianne. "Set up a schedule so we may search day and night." Then to one of the wizards with a communication crystal. "Send the word out to all the villages and habitations at once. Wiz must be found. And order the dragon cavalry out to search as well."

"Lord, do you think he meant what he said about war?" Arianne asked.

"Have you ever known an elf to joke?" Bal-Simba said. "He was concerned enough to come to us. That is more than sufficient proof that something very dangerous is in the air."

 

"Jerry, I think you'd better look at this."

Judith was standing at the entrance to Jerry's stall with an odd look on her face.

"We got the voting module working and, well, I think you'd better see the result."

Jerry followed her over to her own stall where Karl was looking bemused at three small demons standing together on the table.

"We know that any spell above a certain level of complexity generates a demon as its physical manifestation," Judith explained. "So we expected this thing would produce demons. But watch what happens when we feed it correct code.

"emac." An Emac popped up on the desk next to the trio of demons.

"backslash test1 exe." Judith said and the Emac gabbled at the demons. The demons stood motionless and then the one on the left hummed.

"Okayyy," it sang in a vibrant bass.

"Okayyy," the middle one chimed in a rich baritone.

"Okayyyy," said the third demon in a fine clear tenor.

"Okaayyyyyy," the three demon voices blended in perfect harmony. Then the sound died away and they fell silent.

For a moment none of the programmers said anything.

"The question is, is that a bug or a feature?" Karl asked.

"I guess that depends on how you feel about music," Jerry said. "Anyway, we don't have time to fix it, so we'll call it a feature."

Judith looked at the demons and shook her head. "I'm glad we didn't build four processors. I'm not sure I could take a barbershop quartet."

"I don't thing you'd get a barbershop quartet," Jerry said judiciously. "A gospel group seems more likely."

"Worse."

 

By nature and training Danny needed a lot of time to himself. It had always been his refuge in times of trouble and his joy in times of special happiness.

The castle was too crowded for him to be really alone. But he had found a place on the rooftops where he could look down on the Bull Pen and the courtyards. From here he was hidden from view by any of the wizard's towers and could see out beyond the Wizards' Lodge, over the tile and slate rooftops of the town and off into the rolling blue distance.

Nearly every morning before he settled down to work, Danny would climb the narrow stairs to the attic and then go up the wooden ladder and out through the trap door that took him to his favorite place on the roof. He was not experienced enough in the ways of this World to know that the scuff-marks on the slates meant someone else came here too.

Today Danny had changed his pattern. It was late afternoon, normally a time when he would be settled in the Bull Pen and hard at work. But today his code had turned to shit and Cindy Naismith got on his case for something he said. So he left and came back up here for a while.

He wouldn't be missed, he knew. Not for some little time. Programmers set their own hours and besides, the rest of the team didn't like him very much.

Well, fuck 'em. That wasn't anything new to Danny.

Besides, he told himself, it wasn't like he was goofing off. He was still thinking about the problem, and he needed to clear his head, didn't he?

There was a soft scrabbling noise on the slate roof behind him.

Danny turned and there was a thin brown-haired girl with enormous doe eyes.

"Hi," Danny said, half-resenting the interruption.

The girl moved back up the roof, away from him.

"Don't worry, I won't hurt you." The girl froze.

"You okay?"

No response. If he moved toward her she would have fled, but he kept his place. She sat down on the roof behind and above him and looked out over the city.

Well, if she didn't want to talk . . . Danny turned back to watch the clouds himself. It wasn't as good as being completely alone, but it wasn't bad either.

Danny had taken to computers as a way to shut out the endless arguments that raged through his home. Later, after the divorce, the computer had become a way out of the loneliness, a friend who never turned its back on you or put you down.

At first he hadn't cared for programming, just racking up scores on video games. He had taken out his frustrations destroying aliens and monsters by the thousands and scoring points by the millions. Then he found out you could gimmick some of the games by editing character files. From that it was one small step to cracking copy protection to get games he couldn't afford to buy and one thing led to another. By the time he was sixteen, Danny was a very competent, if unsystematic, programmer.

He was also very, very lonely.

Now here he was in a world something like the one those games were based on. Full of monsters and where magic worked. And he was still just as alone and just as cut off as he ever had been. Well, fuck 'em. He'd get by, just like he always had.

Without thinking, he reached into his pocket and pulled out the sandwich he had stashed there—smoked meat and sharp cheese on a long roll.

Danny heard the girl shift on the roof behind him.

"Want some?" She obviously did, but she was afraid to approach him.

"Here." He broke off half the sandwich and held it out to her. She looked at him intently but didn't move. He considered tossing the sandwich up to her, but realized it would probably come apart in the air. He settled for reaching back and stretching out his hand.

"Come on, I won't hurt you."

Slowly, cautiously, the girl crept down the roof toward him. Finally she was close enough to stretch out and snatch the sandwich from him. Then she scrabbled quickly back up the roof. The entire performance reminded Danny feeding a particularly shy squirrel.

"What's your name?" he asked.

"June," the girl said around a mouthful of sandwich. "I am June."

 

"This is just like being at fighter practice."

Karl, Judith and several of the other team members were sitting on a low wall by the drill field watching the guardsmen practice. Under the arches of the colonnade Jerry was sitting on a bench watching girls.

Just then a flight of dragon cavalry swept over the castle.

"Okay," Karl amended, "it's almost like being at fighter practice."

Out on the field Donal was practicing spear work against multiple opponents.

"Tricky move with the spear," Karl said to no one in particular as Donal dodged and spun between two opposing swordsmen.

"Why does he keep the butt low like that?" Judith asked.

"He is trying to keep the point directed at his opponent's eyes," a guardsman who was lounging nearby said. "That makes it hard to judge the length of the spear."

Karl nodded. "And it sets him up to make a quick jab to the face, which will make almost anyone flinch."

The guardsman, a sandy-haired older man, looked closely at Karl. "You sound as if you know something of the art, My Lord."

"I'm a fighter. Well, an SCA fighter," he amended quickly. "We used to fight with rattan weapons. For sport."

"Would not your magic gain you more than weapons skill in war?"

"We don't use swords and spears in war any more," Karl told him. "No, we do it strictly for fun."

The guardsman's seamed face crinkled into a frown. "A most peculiar sport, if you do not mind my saying so, Lord."

"That's what a lot of people in my world thought," Karl sighed. "By the way, I'm Karl Dershowitz." He extended his hand and the other man clasped it.

"I am called Shamus MacMurragh. I command the guardsmen of the castle."

"Pleased to meet you."

"Tell me," Shamus said, "how does our weapons play compare to your world?"

"Very well. We do some things a lot differently and I think we've spent more time on the theory than you have, but on the whole you compare very well with our methods."

"I am very glad to hear it, My Lord," Shamus said mildly. "Could you perhaps show us how you do these things."

Karl wasn't quite sure, but he suspected he had just been trapped. "Be glad to," he said with a casualness he did not feel.

It took a few minutes to outfit Karl in the padded cloth hauberk, greaves, vambraces and helm the guardsmen used for practice. The shield they brought him was a target somewhat over two feet in diameter. Karl whose SCA fighting style depended in large part on using the points of a heater shield, felt he was at a disadvantage, but he didn't say anything.

The sword they gave him was wood, not rattan, and a good deal heavier than what Karl was used to. Still, the balance was very good and it moved comfortably as he took practice swings.

"Remember to pull your blows, Lord," Shamus said as they faced off. "I do not want to be injured."

Karl nodded and licked his lips. Shamus moved with a catlike grace that suggested the guardsman wasn't the one who should be worried.

Karl came in in his standard fighting stance, shield in front, sword hilt over his head with the blade forward and down, resting on his shield.

Shamus looked at him quizzically for a moment and then stepped in with two cuts to the head. Karl was strong, but his wrist could not absorb or stop the blows. His blade was knocked casually aside and Shamus's sword rang off his helmet. Karl staggered back and nearly dropped the sword.

Shamus grasped his elbow to help support him. "Are you all right, My Lord?"

"Yeah, fine. Uh, in our system if you hit the other guy's sword, the blow is considered blocked."

"Matters are somewhat different in our world," Shamus said dryly. "But tell me, how can you strike anyone with your sword in that position?"

"You mean down in front of the head like that? Easy. You twist your hips, drive your elbow down and throw the forearm out." He demonstrated. "Like that."

"Interesting, but is it strong enough?"

"Well, I can make someone's helm ring pretty good with it."

"Try it on the pell," Shamus invited.

At the far end of the drill field was a row of head-high posts set in the earth. Each was about six inches thick and the dirt around them was freshly dug.

Karl stepped up to the nearest post, assumed his position and struck, overhead and slanting down and into the post. The blade turned in his hand, so the first cut only skimmed the post, scraping along the surface and taking a shaving with it. The second cut drove the sword edge perhaps two inches into the pine.

"Surprisingly strong, My Lord," Shamus commented as Karl stepped back, massaging his wrist from the shock. Then he stepped up, assumed his guard stance and sheared the post off cleanly with a single mighty swing.

"Such blows win battles," he said, stepping back.

"How did you do that?"

"Years of practice," Shamus said with a smile. "Of course there are one or two small tricks. But mostly an hour or two practice every day for, oh, six or seven years and you would be a creditable swordsman." He laughed and clapped the younger man on the shoulder.

"I think I just made a raging fool of myself," Karl muttered to Judith as he came off the field.

"I think it's called hubris,'" Judith told him. "How's your head?"

Karl rubbed his wrist. "It's my arm more than any my head and it will heal quicker than my pride." He looked back out at the practicing guardsmen. "You know what the worst of it is? I can't use any of this stuff in our combat back home. Our rules are so unrealistic that the techniques that really work won't work for us."

 

" . . . so anyway, we're working on a user interface. It's going to be really neat when we get it done."

June watched Danny and said nothing.

They sat side by side on the roof, looking out over the Capital to where the late afternoon sun turned puffy clouds into a symphony of pale golds and blush pinks.

They had met up on the roof nearly every day since their first encounter. Sometimes one or both of them brought food and they had an impromptu picnic. Sometimes they just sat and talked. Or rather Danny talked and June listened. June hadn't said a dozen words since that first day, but now they sat together on the slates. Sometimes they held hands.

"You ought to come and see the place sometime. It's really pretty interesting."

June smiled and shook her head.

"Well, look, I gotta get down there or they're gonna start asking questions. I'll see you tomorrow, okay?"

Danny started to rise, but June took hold of his arm and pulled him close. She kissed him full on the mouth and before Danny could respond she skittered away over the roof ridge.

Danny sat there for a moment longer, tasting her on his lips and trying to understand what had happened. One thing he was sure of. He liked it.

 

Even by the standards of the City of Night, this place was strange. The windows about the tower gave good light, else he never would have dared to approach the eerie blue glow issuing through the open doorway.

At this level the tower was divided into two rooms. The one beyond the carved black portal must be by far the larger, but the one was substantial as well. Looking at the layout, Wiz had the odd feeling that this level was larger inside than it was on the outside.

This was obviously a wizard's tower and judging by the effects a very powerful wizard at that. Through the inner door Wiz could see forms writhing in the smoky red dark. It might just be fumes from the ever-burning braziers, but he had no intention of crossing the threshold to find out.

This room must have been an adjunct to the workroom. There were shelves along one wall which had obviously held scrolls. Pegs and hooks on another wall had perhaps held ceremonial robes and other magical apparatus.

But none of that was left. The small room had been thoroughly ransacked. Hangings had been pulled off the walls and lay rotting in a heap on the floor. The shelves were empty and broken. The floor was littered with broken glass, smashed crockery and bits of less savory items that might once have been in pots and jars. In one corner an armoire leaned crazily against the wall, its doors torn half off their hinges and showing the scars where someone had hastily chopped them open.

Wiz walked over to the cabinet and looked inside. The shelves were askew and the drawers were ripped apart. Like the room itself the armoire had been looted.

On an impulse, he stuck his hand into the cabinet. He struck the back much sooner than he expected and jammed his fingers painfully.

That wasn't right, he thought as he flexed the aching digits. The back was closer than it should be. He put his hand back in the cabinet and reached around to feel the back from the outside. Yes, there was definitely a space there. There was a good eight-inch difference between the inside and outside back.

A careful examination of the inside back and the sides showed him nothing. The wood was plain and the grain straight and simple. He pressed and twisted, but the back remained in place.

Well, he thought hefting his halberd, there's always the field engineering approach. 

Three quick blows from the halberd splintered the thin wood of the back. On the third blow the armoire gave a despairing "sproing" and the remains of the back fell toward him. Eagerly Wiz reached inside.

At first he thought the compartment was empty. But when he thrust his hand into the dark recess, his fingers touched cloth. He lifted the garment off the peg on the side of the recess and brought it out into the light.

It wasn't much, just a brown wool travelling cloak, frayed and slightly moth eaten. The kind of thing a wizard might wear for a disguise, or because he was too engrossed in his magic to worry about appearances. It doesn't even look very warm, Wiz thought as he fingered the thin cloth. For the hundredth time Wiz thought of the fine gray and red cloak with the fur trim he had left in the village.

Well, anything was better than nothing and that's what I've got now. He threw the cloak over his shoulders and pulled it tightly about him. He was right, it wasn't very warm. Still it was comforting to have something to wrap around himself.

 

"I saw Moira today, My Lord," Arianne said as she and Bal-Simba finished the day's business in his study. "She asked if there was any news of Wiz."

"If there was news, she would be the first to know," the giant wizard told his deputy. "No, so far our search has turned up nothing." He frowned. "We know an accident did not befall him in the Wild Wood. If he started out on the Wizard's Way and did not return to the Capital, we may assume some magical agency intervened."

"Human?" Arianne asked.

"Perhaps. Although it appears that Sparrow has an unusual number of non-human enemies as well. Powerful ones." He paused for a second and frowned.

"And Lady . . ."

Arianne bent close at his gesture. "Yes, Lord?"

"Inquire—discreetly—into the activities of our own wizards over the last fourteen days. Especially any who have absented themselves from the Capital."

Arianne looked shocked. "Do you think . . ."

"I think," Bal-Simba said, cutting her off, "that we would be remiss if we did not explore every possibility to get our Sparrow back here as quickly as we can."

Arianne turned away to execute his command. "Oh, and Lady . . ."

Arianne turned back. "Yes, Lord?"

"Find that ex-apprentice, Pryddian, and ask him what he knows about this."

"Pryddian?"

"Just a thought. A direct attack on Wiz in the Capital would be difficult. It would be easier if he were outside our walls. Pryddian was the cause of our Sparrow's journey." He shrugged his mountainous shoulders. "Unlikely, but we have to start somewhere."

 

Pryddian was sweating as he came over the last rise before his destination and not just from the noon sun. Before him the road curved to the left around the base of a hill, actually a large limestone outcropping. To the right, away from the road and along the outcropping, was a wild jumble of small trees, laurel bushes and boulders. The former apprentice started down the road, his feet kicking up powdery white dust fine as flour as he walked.

When he reached the place where the road curved away he paused for an instant and scanned the bushes on the roadside. The dusty weeds beside the road showed no sign of disturbance, but there was a path there, leading off the road and in among the undergrowth. Pryddian patted the breast of his tunic for reassurance and then stepped off the road and onto the little-used path.

He breasted his way through the bushes, dodged around trees and boulders and followed the meandering path deeper into the woodland. The thick brush and second-growth trees showed that once this place had been logged. But that had obviously been long ago. Getting felled trees out of such a place would be backbreaking and not worth it so close to the Fringe of the Wild Wood. It had been done once and then the wilderness had been allowed to reclaim this place.

Finally the trail took a sharp turn and a dip and Pryddian stumbled through into an opening. He was against the flank of the hill now, in a little hollow hard against sheer rock face. All around him like grotesque sentries stood boulders twice as high as he was. Directly in front of him was a single table-high stone in the midst of a patch of beaten earth. There were dark splotches on the stone, as if something had been spilled there and allowed to dry.

Pryddian walked hesitatingly into the place. Suddenly an arm like iron clamped across his windpipe and he felt cold steel against his neck.

Instinctively he twisted his head and out of the corner of his eye saw that his captor was clad in the close fitting black of the Dark League's dread Shadow Warriors.

The Shadow Warrior pressed the edge to his throat and Pryddian ceased struggling.

"No move, no sound if you value your life," a voice grated behind him.

Pryddian licked his lips and remained silent.

"Better," the voice said at last. "Now, why are you here?"

"I am called Pryddian. I am . . . URK." The Shadow Warrior's grip tightened on his windpipe.

"I did not ask who you were, but why you had come," his unseen questioner said sharply. "Answer only those questions I ask you, apprentice, or you will wish you had never been born."

"I came seeking the Dark League," Pryddian said when the pressure on his throat relaxed.

"And why should the dark League be interested in the likes of you?"

"I have talent. I desire to become a wizard and I bring you something." He reached toward his tunic, but the Shadow Warrior drew the blade perhaps a quarter of an inch along his skin. He felt the burning sting of the cut and then the warm wetness of blood trickling down his throat.

Pryddian froze, but the Shadow Warrior, reacting to an unseen signal, slackened his grip and moved the knife away from his throat. Slowly he extended his trembling hand and reached into his tunic. Equally slowly he withdrew his hand, holding a roll of parchment.

"I give you the Sparrow's magic," he said.

"Lord, Moira asked again today about Sparrow," Arianne said.

Bal-Simba turned away from his window to face his deputy.

"Today as every day, eh?" He shook his head. "The answer is still the same. We can find no trace of him, in all the World."

"Is he dead then?" Arianne asked.

Bal-Simba shook his head. "Moira does not think so. I trust her judgment in this."

"Moira was away in his world when he left Aelric's hold," Arianne pointed out.

"Still, I think she would know if he had died."

"Then where could he be?"

"There are many possibilities. He might be in a place where he is shielded by magic. He might have been sent beyond the World. He might be held in a state of undeath.

"One thing I think we can safely venture. He is not where he is voluntarily and wherever he is, he needs any aid we can give him." He returned to his desk an sat down again. "On that subject, have you learned more in the matter you were pursuing?"

"You mean the actions of the Mighty? There is one thing new. Ebrion is missing for near three weeks."

"Ebrion?"

Arianne nodded. "There is more. We cannot be sure, but it appears that he may well be dead."

"Dead? How?"

Arianne shrugged. "We do not know. We are not even certain that he is dead."

Bal-Simba sucked his lip against his sharpened teeth thoughtfully. "Ebrion, eh?"

He twisted in his chair to face her. "This should be explored. Investigate closely."

"But discreetly," Arianne agreed. "I am already doing so, Lord."

 

Just like all the rest, Wiz thought as he surveyed the room in the failing light. Nothing to eat, just more piles of junk. The wind whistled through the broken windows and he shivered as he pulled the worn brown cloak tighter around himself.

Outside the setting sun poked fitfully through the layer of lead-gray clouds. By now Wiz knew the signs of a storm moving in, perhaps with snow. It was going to be another cold, miserable night. Too cold for foraging.

Since his encounter with the flying wizard, Wiz had stayed out of the open, at least in daylight. Every day, unless the winds were too high, one or more wizards of the Dark League floated over the ruined city looking for a sign of him. Now he tried to move from building to building only at night.

Well, none of that this evening. Storms in the Southern Land were nothing to take lightly. He needed a place to hole up. And food, of course.

He made one more survey of the room. Broken furniture, bits of smashed crockery and junk, and piles of what had probably once been wall hangings or drapes.

He poked at the largest pile, over against the far wall with his broken halberd. Nothing but cloth.

Then he stopped in mid-poke. Maybe he could use this after all. There was a lot more of it here than normal and it was pretty dry. More than enough to make a nest for a human.

Wiz burrowed into the pile of cloth and rolled himself in the rags. He pulled up the hood of his cloak and drew another layer of cloth over him. The material was none too clean. It had been soaked repeatedly and Wiz was not the first creature to nest in it, but it kept out the chill and as his body heat warmed the cloth, Wiz stopped being cold for the first time since he had arrived. As the wind whistled and howled outside, his breathing steadied and he fell deeply asleep for the first time in days.

 

Voices woke him the next morning. Human voices in the same room.

Beneath the hood of the cloak he could see two men had entered the chamber—men who wore the black robes of the Dark League.

"He is here," the older one protested, "I can smell him!" He cast about like a hunting dog, his head turning this way and that as if he actually was smelling Wiz out.

"He was here," the other one corrected. "Do you see him in the room? Or do you think he has acquired a cloak of invisibility?"

Wiz dared not breathe.

The balding wizard straightened up. "This is foolishness anyway. Why not use spells to find this Sparrow? I have stood in his presence and I could locate him in minutes, even if Dzhir Kar could not."

The other waved a hand airily. "Oh, but that would not be sporting. Our Dread Master desires to have his amusement with this alien wizard before he dies. Think of it as a little something to pay him back for all that he has cost us." He smacked his lips and his eyes sparkled. "And would it not be delicious to have this one slain by magic, unable to use magic in his own defense? You have to admit, Seklos, it has a certain piquancy to it."

"Piquancy be damned! That—creature is dangerous and should be destroyed immediately. Do you play with a louse before you crack it between your fingers?" He looked narrowly at his companion. "Well, you might. And so might he. But it is still foolishness."

The younger wizard shook his head. "No sporting blood. That's your problem, Seklos, you've got no sporting blood at all."

"What I've got," the older wizard said, "is a cold from tramping all over this pest-bedamned city. If it weren't for that, I could smell him even more sharply. Now come on. Let's see if we can track him down and end this charade."

He strode out through the other door with his companion still trailing behind, smiling tolerantly.

It was several minutes after they left that Wiz could even shiver.

Thank God I don't snore! Wiz thought numbly.

For a long time after they left, Wiz stayed huddled in the rags. His bladder was full to bursting, but he did not abandon his shelter for nearly an hour after the wizards left.

They still should have seen me, he thought as he wiggled out of his cocoon. He had been snuggled into the pile of cloth, but he hadn't been completely hidden. The storm had passed during the night and light in the room had been bright enough. But still the wizards had missed him completely.

He paused and listened at the door. The hall was empty and there was no sign or sound of the wizards who had come so close to him. It was full daylight now so he looked around one more time. The only thing he had missed was a cracked and broken mirror hanging askew on the wall. Most of the glass was missing, but the piece that remained reflected back the empty room.

Only it's not empty! I'm here. He looked closely at the mirror. The mirror fragment showed the room, but there was no sign of Wiz. It was as if he was not there.

A cloak of invisibility! That was why the magicians hadn't seen him. He looked in the mirror again, turning this way and that and admiring his lack of reflection.

He'd heard about cloaks of invisibility, but he had never seen one. What was it Moira called it? A tarncape. That was what he had found. He laughed aloud and spun in a full circle, the cloak standing out from his body from the speed.

Then he froze. Magic! Wiz thought, his heart pounding, I've been using magic! But the demon hadn't come for him. He hadn't even felt the quiver he felt when he tried to frame a spell.

Wiz slumped into the corner, his back against the cold stone wall, and tried to think. What was it the wizard had said?

Of course! The demon wasn't looking for him, it was looking for the kind of magic he made. He knew that the output of his spell compiler "felt" different from normal magic, probably because each of his large spells was built up on many smaller spells—the "words" in his magic language.

But the tarncape wasn't magic he had made. It was someone else's magic he had found. It didn't register with the demon even when he used it. And that meant that he could use magic after all! Provided it was magic not of his making.

Wiz thought about it, but he didn't see how that helped much. Obviously most of the magical items in the City of Night had been carried off in the chaos that followed the Dark League's defeat. There were undoubtedly some things left, but he didn't know how to use them and magical implements did not come with users manuals. Worse, he wasn't a wizard in the conventional sense. He had no training in the usual forms of magic so he probably wouldn't recognize a magical object unless it bit him on the ankle.

Still, he thought, fingering the cloak, there ought to be something I can do with this. 

 

The garden was beautiful this early, Moira thought. The sun painted the towers of the Wizards' Keep golden and made the colors of the pennons leap out against the blue of the sky. The dew still filmed the plants and made diamond sparkles on the grass and the occasional spider web. The air was cool and perfumed with the fragrance of roses.

Moira plucked a yellow one off the bush. Wiz had liked yellow roses on her. He thought they looked good against her red hair and fair skin and he especially liked her to wear them in her hair.

What was it he had told her? Some custom in his world where a woman wore a rose over the left ear to show she was taken and the right ear to show she was available. Or was it the other way around?

Moira smiled at the memory and bit her lip to keep from crying.

A shadow fell over her. She gasped and whirled to see Bal-Simba.

"Oh, Lord, you startled me. Merry met."

"Merry met, Lady."

"Is there any news?"

"None, I am afraid, but it is a related errand that brings me to you. Do you recall the three-demon searching spell Wiz created to seek news of you? I mentioned it to Jerry today and he says they have found no trace of such a spell in Wiz's notes."

Moira frowned. "None? I could have sworn he had something, at least the copies on parchment of the wooden slabs he wrote on at Heart's Ease when he created the spell."

"Jerry says there is nothing in the material he has. Is there anything they missed?"

The hedge witch shook her head.

"Nothing." Then she brightened. "But Lord, what about the searching system Wiz set up to find me? Could we not direct the searching demons to seek out Wiz?"

"We thought of that," Bal-Simba told her. "But it appears that the spell requires constant attention. The small searchers, the ones like wisps of dirty fog, are easily blown about by the wind. The larger ones drift as well, given time. A year's storms have scattered the demons beyond recall."

"And without the spell we cannot recreate the work." Unconsciously she crushed the rose in her grasp.

"Wait a minute! Lord, what about the spell Wiz used to find me in the dungeon?" Moira asked. "The Rapid Reconnaissance Direction Demon?"

Bal-Simba slapped his thigh and the sound rang off the walls. "Of course! It could search the entire World in hours."

A quick survey of the notes in the Bull Pen turned up the spell. With Jerry and several of the other programmers who hadn't yet turned in at their heels, Moira and Bal-Simba went out into the courtyard to put the spell in operation.

"Now then," Bal-Simba said to himself as he flipped between the pages where the spell was written, alternate lines on each page to prevent activating the spell by writing it down. "Hmmm, ah. Yes, very well." He faced into the courtyard, squinted into the morning sun and raised one hand.

"class drone grep wiz," he commanded in a ringing voice. There was soft "pop" and a squat demon appeared in the courtyard. Its cylindrical body was white, its domed top was blue and it supported itself on three stubby legs. "exe!" commanded Bal-Simba.

The demon emitted a despairing honk and fell forward on its face. A thin trickle of smoke curled out of its innards.

"Let me see that spell again," Bal-Simba said to Moira.

Three repetitions produced no better results. Once the demon simply froze, once it flashed off never to return and once it ran around in tight little circles emitting little beeps and squawks. At last Jerry listed out the spell to see if he could discover the difficulty.

"I think I see what's wrong," Jerry said finally. "But it's not going to be easy to fix."

"What is the problem?" Bal-Simba asked.

"The problem is that this code wasn't written for anyone else to use."

"You mean this spell is protected by magic?" Moira frowned. Such protections were not unknown on powerful spells.

"Worse," Jerry said glumly. "This code is protected by being write-only."

"Eh?" said Bal-Simba.

"Wiz hacked this thing together to do a specific job, right? From the looks of it he was in a tremendous hurry when he did it."

"I was a prisoner of the Dark League," Moira said in a small voice. "He wrote the spell to find me."

"Okay, he needed it fast. He never expected that anyone else would use it, he used the quickest, dirtiest methods he could find, he didn't worry about conforming to his language specification and he didn't bother commenting on it at all." Jerry looked at the glowing letters again and shook his head. "I don't think he could have understood this stuff a month after he wrote it and I don't have the faintest idea what is going on here."

"This," he said pointing to a single line of half a dozen symbols, "apparently does about four different things. Either that or it's some kind of weird jump instruction." He scowled at the code for a minute. "Anyway, the whole program is like that. I don't see three lines in a row any place in this that I understand."

"We do not need to understand the spell," Bal-Simba rumbled. "We only need to use it this once."

Jerry shook his head. "It's not that simple. What are the commands? What are the options you can use? How is it all supposed to work? You already tried this and it failed. Until we understand it we won't know why it failed."

"How long will it take you to find out?"

Jerry shrugged.

"I don't know. The hardest part of a job like this is always getting your head cranked around to see the other guy's way of doing things. Once you do that, sometimes it just falls right into place." He frowned. "And sometimes not. Anyway, I'll put a couple of people on it. I wouldn't count on being able to use this any time soon, though."

"Hopes raised and dashed before breakfast," Bal-Simba said as they walked across the courtyard. "I am sorry, My Lady. I thought surely we had found the answer."

Moira clenched her jaw and held her head high. Bal-Simba saw she was crying. "There is still one thing we may try," she said tightly. "I will go to Duke Aelric and plead for his help."

Bal-Simba stopped dead. "What?"

"Elven magic is much more powerful than human. Surely they can find him."

"I was under the impression that duke Aelric was already looking for Wiz."

"Then we can share what we know."

"Dealing with elves is dangerous," Bal-Simba said neutrally.

Moira flicked a grim little smile. "Madness, you mean. But Aelric seems to have a fondness for Wiz and I think he might listen to me."

"I ought to forbid you to do this."

Moira resumed walked. "Forbid away. But do not expect me to heed you."

 

The hill managed to be peaceful and foreboding at the same time. The moonlight played down on the wooded knoll, silvering the leaves of the trees and the grassy clearing before them.

But the moon also caught the megalith standing at the base of the hill where woods met grass. Three great stones, two upright and one laid across them like the lintel of a door. Was it only a trick of the moonlight that made the shadows within stir?

Moira licked her lips and pressed them firmly together. In spite of her cloak she was chill and she did not think the warm summer night had much to do with it. She took a firmer grip on her staff and strode boldly into the clearing.

"I wish to speak to Duke Aelric," she said loudly.

There was no response, no movement. The hill lay in the moonlight exactly as it had. Moira thought of repeating her request and decided against it. Elves were a touchy breed and much consumed with politeness. A human thought pushy or demanding would be in dire trouble.

"My Lady."

Moira jumped. Duke Aelric was standing in the moonlight in front of her. He wore a white doublet and hose embroidered with silver that glinted in the moonlight and a hip-length cloak of pale blue.

He regarded her with interest but without the warmth he had showed the last time they had met. Nor did it escape her notice that the elf duke had not welcomed her, merely acknowledged her presence.

She licked her lips. "My Lord, we need your help in finding Wiz."

Aelric arched a silver brow. "An elf helping mortals? An odd notion, Lady."

"It has been known to happen."

He gestured languidly. "So it has, when it is sufficiently amusing. I fail to see the amusement here."

That was the end of it then, Moira acknowledged as a cold lump congealed in her stomach. When Wiz and Moira had first met Aelric, she had told him that elves acted for their own reasons and no mortal was ever likely to untangle them. Standing here in the moonlight with the elf duke she began to appreciate how true that was.

Moira took a deep breath and gathered all her courage. "Lord, forgive me for mentioning this, but is it not true that your honor is involved as well? Wiz did disappear while travelling from your hold."

Aelric gave her a look that made her go weak in the knees. For a horrible instant she thought she had offended the elf.

"My honor is my own concern," he said coldly, "and not a matter for discussion with mortals. I know who kidnapped him and at the proper time they will feel the weight of my displeasure."

"But you will not help us find Wiz."

Again the chilling, haughty gaze. "Child, do you presume to instruct me?"

"No, Lord."

"Then guard your tongue more carefully." Duke Aelric softened slightly. "Besides, I cannot find him."

He smiled frostily. "That surprises you? It surprises me as well—and tells me that others besides mortals had a hand in this." He motioned fluidly, as if brushing away a fly. "However that is my concern, not yours."

"But you know who kidnapped him?"

"That too is my concern. Little one, among the ever-living revenge is artifice most carefully constructed and sprung only at the proper moment. These ones have offended me and they shall feel the weight of my displeasure at the proper time."

With a sinking feeling Moira realized that to an elf, "the proper time" could mean years—or centuries.

"Now if you will excuse me." He sketched a bow and Moira dropped a curtsey. When she looked up she was alone in the clearing.

 

Dzhir Kar eyed the man in front of him skeptically.

"So you bring us the Sparrow's magic?" he said coldly.

"Yes, Lord," Pryddian said. One of the wizards holding him jabbed him sharply in the kidney with his staff. Pryddian gasped and jerked under the influence of the pain spell.

"Yes, master," he corrected himself. "I stole it from the Sparrow himself."

Pryddian was very much the worse for wear. Once he had been passed on to the Dark League's hidden lair he had been questioned. Since the questioning had been merely "rigorous" rather than "severe" he still had all his body parts and could still function. But his back was bruised and bloody, one eye was swollen shut and he was missing a few teeth. It had taken nearly three days before the wizards who had remained behind were convinced he was worth passing on to their master. His trip south had been expeditious rather than comfortable. Now he waited in the arms of his captors for the misshapen creature before him to decide his fate.

Dzhir Kar considered. It was not unknown for apprentices to decide the Dark League offered them more scope than the Northern wizards—rare, but not unheard of. Still, this was neither the time nor the place to add apprentices, especially ones so recently allied with the North. A quiet dagger between the ribs would have been the normal response to such presumption.

But still, a spell of the Sparrow's . . .

"What is this thing?" he asked, flipping through the parchments.

"It is a searching spell. The Sparrow used it to scan the world. It involves three kinds of demons, you see, and . . ." Pryddian gasped again as the wizard prodded him with the pain spell.

"Confine yourself to answering my questions," Dzhir Kar said.

"A searching spell," Pryddian gasped out. "It can search the whole World in a single day."

Dzhir Kar thought quickly. This just might be the answer to his problem. A host of demons could search the City of Night far better than his wizards could. He had a limited ability to train his demon to ignore specific instances of Sparrow's magic. If it could be trained to ignore these demons, then the combination of the Sparrow's own magic and his demon could do in a single day what his wizards had been unable to do in a matter of weeks.

He waved his hands and the guards released Pryddian and stood away. The ex-apprentice slumped to the floor, his legs unable to support him.

"Very well," Dzhir Kar said. "It amuses me to use the Sparrow's magic to track him down. If you can produce these demons as you say then I will give you your life. Moreover, if they can find the Sparrow, you will be accepted as a novice by the Dark League.

"If you cannot do these things, I will see to it that you suffer for your presumption." He looked up at the wizards. "Take him away."

He nodded to the guards and they half-carried, half-dragged Pryddian out.

 

They gave Pryddian a cell just off the main workroom and he set out to duplicate Wiz's searching system. It was not a simple matter for an untutored ex-apprentice to unravel the notes he had stolen. Nor was it easy to cast the spells once he learned them. The Sparrow seemed to delight in alternate choices at every step of the spell and the wrong choices did little or nothing. But Pryddian worked until he dropped. His black-robed jailers saw to that with their pain spells.

It might have amused him to know he was not the only person having trouble with the Sparrow's spells.

 

"This guy was a real hacker," Mike said, leaning over his wife's shoulder to study their latest task.

Nancy nodded and looked back at the code above her desk. "You don't have to tell me that. Jesus! I've seen better commented programs in BASIC." She took another look at the runes glowing blue before her. "And I've seen clearer comments in the London Times crossword puzzle!" She jabbed her finger at one line.

"What the hell is this monstrosity? And why the hell did he name it corned__beef?"

"Jerry says the name is probably some kind of rotten pun. What does it do?"

"Basically it takes the value of the characters of a demon's name, multiplies them by a number, adds another number and then divides the result by 65,353. Then it uses that result as a subscript in some kind of an array." She shook her head again. "Why 65,353? Jesus! You know, if this guy doesn't come back we may never understand some of this stuff."

The man sighed. "Well, let's get to it. This is going to take a while." He nodded to Wiz's book of notes on his magic compiler. "Hand me the Dragon Book, will you?"

 

Ghost-gray and insubstantial, the searching demons began to pour from the ruined tower and blanket the City of Night.

Each demon had very little power. It could only absorb impressions from the world around it and forward them to a larger demon which would catalog them. The final step in the process was a demon formed like a weird crystal construct that perched atop the tower. It did the final sorting and alerted the wizards if it found anything that looked worthwhile.

Wiz had endowed the demons with all the mortal senses, but no magical ones. Of those senses, sight was the most important to an airborne creature. Since Wiz wore his tarncape constantly there was little visible sign of him. Demons by the thousands searched every nook and cranny of the city, but they saw nothing of Wiz.

Dzhir Kar ground his teeth in fury at the news and ordered Pryddian beaten to make him fix the spell. But Pryddian could not repair what he did not understand and in spite of the demons Wiz eluded the Dark League.