by Rick Cook
She motioned with her staff and the villagers fell back, Wiz and Philomen with them. Then she turned to face the rock, struck a dramatic pose and thrust her staff skyward.
"demon_debug BEGONE exe!" she bawled.
At first nothing seemed to happen. Wiz could feel the tension rising in the crowd and knotting up in his stomach. He took a firmer grip on his staff and began to review the spells he might use if this only roused the creature.
Maybe it won’t work, he thought to himself, half-afraid and half-hopeful. Maybe the spell will crash.
Then the rock moaned.
The sound was so low it sent shivers through Wiz’s bones, as if someone was playing the lowest possible note on the biggest bass fiddle in the world. It started low and then built and rose until it threatened to drown out all other sound.
There was something else there besides sound, Wiz realized. Some sort of mental influence, as if…
Wiz went white. "That thing’s alive," he shouted to Philomen. "It’s alive and intelligent!"
"Such things often are in their own way," the wizard agreed, keeping his eyes on the mass before them.
"But you can’t kill it, it’s intelligent!"
"Can we not? Watch."
Still groaning, the stone reared above them, heaving itself free of the earth and towering above them as if it would slam down on them and crush them like bugs. The villagers gasped and shrank back, but the thing slammed to earth in its own bed. The ground shook so hard Wiz nearly lost his balance. The creature reared again, not so high this time, and pounded to the earth once more. It tried to rear a third time, but could only quiver.
"Stop it!" Wiz yelled. "Stop it! Can’t you see it can’t hurt you?"
" ’Tis magic," Andrew replied. " ’Tis magic and must be burned from the land.
"Too long we trembled under the magical ones. Now let them tremble." His voice rose to a shout over the windy moans of the dying stone. "Let them know fear!"
The crowd behind him growled agreement.
The thing thinned, its stony gray turning opalescent and gradually lightening until Wiz could dimly see the outline of the hills through it. Then the creature’s body went foggy and he could see that the hills were cloaked in summer’s green. The outline blurred and became indistinct and finally, at last, the mist dissipated, leaving nothing but a hole in the ground with tendrils of smoke rising from it.
Wiz stood shocked and numb, oblivious to the cheers of the villagers. Someone was pounding him on the back and shouting in his ear, but he couldn’t make out the words.
Alaina left in the midst of an excited knot of villagers, talking and cheering and doing everything but hoisting her on their shoulders in triumph. Some of the others remained behind to gape at the huge pit where the rock creature had stood. Then by ones and twos they began to drift back toward the village square.
"A waste, I calls it," one old gaffer said to his younger companion as they passed by where Wiz stood. "They should have pounded it into gravel stead of just making it disappear. We needs gravel for our roads, we does."
Finally only Wiz remained, standing at the edge of the pit and looking down.
He didn’t know what the thing was that had died here today. He had never heard of such a creature and it may well have been the only one of its kind. But whatever it was it didn’t deserve what had been done to it.
His cheeks were wet and he realized he was crying.
There was a footstep behind him. Wiz didn’t turn around.
"Are you coming, My Lord?" Philomen asked. "There will be a feast tonight in honor of slaying the monster."
Wiz turned to face the wizard. "No thanks. Right now I don’t think my stomach could stand a feast."
"Our presence is expected."
"Vomiting on your hosts is probably bad form, even in this bunch."
Philomen’s face froze and he bowed formally. "As you will, My Lord. I will see you at the mayor’s house then."
"Maybe." Wiz strode off toward Leafmarsh Brook and the bridge into the Fringe beyond.
"My Lord, where are you going?"
"Into the Wild Wood," Wiz flung back over his shoulder. "Right now I want some civilized company. Weasels maybe, or snakes."
Eight: Side Effects
You can’t do just one thing.
Campbell’s Law of everything
Sitting under a flowering bush on a hillside, Wiz called up an Emac and studied the code for demon_debug again.
It was obvious what had happened, he thought as he traced the glowing lines. Somewhere out in one of the villages, some bright person with a knack for magic and a little knowledge of his programming language had taken ddt apart and found a way to make it more effective. What he or she had done was related to the magic-absorbing worms Wiz had invented for his attack on the City of Night. The new spell, demon_debug, sucked the magical energy right out of its victim. It was crude, it was dangerous and it was absolutely deadly.
Without one hell of a protection spell there was no way that anything magical could survive demon_debug. Idly he picked up a water-worn pebble and ran his thumb across it while he thought about the implications.
This must be what Einrich meant when he said he could destroy any magic he met in the Wild Wood. That, and the way Alaina talked, made Wiz pretty sure the spell was spread far and wide through the Fringe.
Wiz flung the stone into the weeds. He had screwed this up more thoroughly than he had ever messed up anything in his life. Before he had just affected himself, and perhaps the lives of a few people around him. Now he had managed to meddle in the lives of an entire world; to meddle destructively.
He wasn’t sorry he had invented the magic compiler. He thought of the last time he had come this way. He and Moira had stumbled over the burned ruins of a farm shortly after the trolls had raided it. He had dug the grave in the cabbage patch to bury the remains of the people the trolls hadn’t eaten after roasting them in the flames of their own homestead. He still had nightmares about that.
He didn’t want to go back to the way things had been. But looking down at the village and the scar where the rock creature had stood for time out of mind, he wasn’t at all sure what was replacing it was much better.
He stood up and looked down on the village. The evening breeze bore the faint sounds of drunken revelry up the hill to him. In the center of the village people were piling wood head high for a bonfire. Ding dong the witch is dead! Never mind that the "witch" had stood harmlessly for longer than the village had been there. Never mind that the people who killed it behaved like a wolf pack with the blood lust up. The witch was dead so let’s have a party. And if it’s a good party, maybe we can go out tomorrow and find some more witches to murder.
He couldn’t go back there. But he didn’t want to go back to the Capital with its packs of wizards and no Moira. All he really wanted was to be alone for a while. Say a couple of centuries.
Well, he decided, there really wasn’t any reason to go back. He had come to the village with only his cloak, staff, and a pouch containing a few magical necessities. He had his staff and pouch and the weather was warm enough that he doubted he would miss his cloak.
Turning his back on the village, Wiz headed down the other side of the hill, toward the Wild Wood.
He very quickly lost any sense of where he was. He might be wandering in circles for all he knew—or cared. If he wanted to go somewhere he could take the Wizard’s Way. What he needed was to be alone and to try to sort out the mess.
Once he stopped to munch handfuls of blackberries plucked from a stand of thorny canes. Another time he stopped to drink from a clear rivulet. Most of the time he just walked.
The evening deepened and the shadows grew denser but Wiz barely noticed. Finally, the second time he almost ran into a tree he sat down to think some more. As he sat the dusk darkened to full night. The last vestiges of light faded from the sky and the moon rose over the treetops. The night insects took up their chorus and the night bloom
ing plants of the Wild Wood opened their blossoms, adding just a hint of perfume to the earth-and-grass smell of the night. Wiz fell asleep under the tree that night. He dreamed uneasily of Moira.
"You step more spritely this morning," Shiara observed as her guest came into the great hall.
"Thank you, Lady, I feel better." She joined Shiara at the trestle table beneath the diamond-paned window and began to help herself to the breakfast spread out there.
"You found a solution then?"
Moira frowned. "Part of a solution, I think."
She heaped berries into an earthenware bowl and poured cream over them. She took an oat cake from the platter and drizzled honey on it. "Wiz always said that when you could not meet a problem straight forward you should come at it straight backwards."
Shiara nibbled reflectively on an oat cake. "That sounds like the kind of thing the Sparrow would say."
Moira nodded. "Once he told me something about a mountain that could move but wouldn’t and a wizard named Mohammed." She wrinkled her nose. "I never understood that, but it gave me an idea."
Shiara chuckled. "Now that truly sounds like our Sparrow. And from this obstinate mountain and a straight backwards approach, you have discovered something to help you?"
"To help Wiz. But Lady, I need your advice."
"I know nothing about going straight backwards or moving mountains."
"No, but you know Bal-Simba. He will have to aid me in this."
The sun was high in the sky before it worked its way under the tree where Wiz lay. Twice he wrinkled his nose and shifted his position to keep the beams out of his eyes, but still he slept on.
Wiz was about to shift for the third time when something ran across his chest.
"Wha…" Wiz made a brushing motion with his arm. Something small and manlike hurdled his legs, squealing like a frightened rabbit. Wiz sat upright and shook his head to clear the sleep fog. He heard something else moving through the brush. Something—no, several somethings—large and heavy. He clambered to his feet and faced the noise just as a troll crashed through the undergrowth and into the clearing.
Fortuna!
Behind the first came two more, and then a fourth. All of them were more than eight feet high, hairy, filthy and stinking. They wore skins and rags and carried clubs the size of Wiz’s leg.
He threw back his arms and raised his staff. Frantically he sought a spell he could use against four trolls.
The trolls stopped short, bunched up in a tight clump.
Wiz braced himself for their charge, but there was no charge. There was fear in their eyes. As one they turned and vanished into the forest.
Wiz let out his breath in a long sigh.
"Okay," he called over his shoulder, keeping his eyes on the place where the trolls had disappeared, "you can come out now."
"Thank you, Lord," said a small voice behind him.
There were five of them, all formed as humans and none of them more than a foot high. One of the women had a child no longer than Wiz’s forefinger in her arms.
As soon as they came into the open Wiz knew what they were. Moira called them Little Folk. Wiz always thought of them as brownies.
"Thank you, Lord," the one in the lead said again. "We owe you our lives. I am called Lannach." He turned to his companions. "These are called Fleagh, Laoghaire, Breachean and she Meoan." At the mention of their names each bowed or curtsied in turn.
"Glad I could help," he said uncomfortably. Then he frowned. "You’re a little far from home aren’t you? I thought you always lived with humans?"
"No more, Lord," the little man said sadly. "Mortals will not have us."
"We lived in the place mortals call Leafmarsh Meadow," Lannach explained. "We were always the friends of mortals. We helped them as best we could, especially with the animals and the household work."
"We asked little enough," the small creature said. "A bowl of milk now and again. A bit of bread on Midsummer’s Day as a sign of respect."
"But now mortals have their own magic and they need us no more."
"Need us no more," the little one crooned. "Need us no more. Need us no more. Need us no more." His mother hushed him and he trailed off into babbling.
"You mean they chased you out?" Wiz asked incredulously. Dangerous magic was one thing, but he’d never heard anyone accuse brownies of anything worse than mischief. People were supposed to be glad for the help brownies provided with the chores.
"Chased us out?" Meoan hissed. "They kill us if they can." The little woman was white and shaking with fury. "Look at us, mortal! We are all that are left of the Little Folk of our village."
"She was handfast to one who is no more," Lannach said. "The father of the child."
"They laid in wait for my Dairmuirgh," she said. "When he came to the stable to groom their horses, they set their demon upon him and made him no more." She was crying openly, the tears trickling down her tiny cheeks, and rocking back and forth. "Ay, they murdered him as he sought to help them."
Back in Silicon Valley Wiz had known a few programmers who refused to work on weapons systems or any other kind of military job. He’d always thought that was a little peculiar. The programmer’s job was to deliver software on time, in spec and functional. It was the job of the designers and managers to worry about what would be done with it. Now he was confronted by the results of his work and those people didn’t seem peculiar at all.
"Oh shit. Look, I’m really sorry." He stopped. "I’m, well I’m responsible in a way," he confessed miserably. "It was my spell they took and hacked up to make that thing."
"We know," Lannach said. "We also heard what happened when that bitch from the village destroyed the Stone." He placed a tiny hand on Wiz’s forearm. "Lord, you cannot be responsible for the uses mortals choose to make of your magic."
That made him feel even worse. "Thanks, Lannach. Where will you go now?"
The brownie shrugged. "We do not know. Unlike dryads and some other creatures, we are not tied to one place. But it was our home." He looked up and his limpid brown eyes gazed into Wiz’s. "It is hard to lose the place which has been your home for so long."
"I know," Wiz said miserably, thinking of smoggy sunsets over Silicon Valley.
"We would not leave even now save for the little one," he nodded to Meoan’s baby. "He must be protected."
Wiz understood. Children were rare among the manlike immortals. An infant was a cause for great rejoicing and such children as there were were carefully protected. The adults might be willing to stay and die in a place they loved, but they would not risk the baby.
"Lord," said the little man tentatively, "Lord, could we impose upon you further and travel with you?"
"I’m not really sure where I’m going."
The brownie shrugged. "Neither are we, Lord."
The Wild Wood was still a tangle of ancient forest that abounded with dangerous magic, but Wiz wasn’t afraid. His own magic was potent and very frankly he wasn’t sure how much he cared.
"Sure," he said, "come on."
They spent the rest of the morning travelling. In spite of their size, the brownies moved quickly and had no trouble keeping up with Wiz. They found berries to eat along the way and once the brownies located a tree bearing small wild plums, just going ripe.
It was shortly after noon when they topped a rise and looked down into the heavily forested valley beyond. Six or eight thin curls of smoke arose from scattered locations on the valley’s floor and merged to form a thin haze over the whole valley.
Wiz remembered the last time he had come into the Wild wood. The forest valleys had been an unbroken sea of green. Mortals were not welcome in the Wild Wood and the few who came were not gently treated.
"I didn’t know there were so many people out here," Wiz said, looking down on the scene.
"Mortals, spread quickly," Lannach observed.
"Aye," agreed Breachean in a rusty voice. "Give them a few harvests and they’ll carpet this valley like fl
ies on meat."
"I don’t think we want to go that way," Wiz said. "Let’s follow the ridge and skirt that place."
It was harder going along the ridge and they used game trails rather than the well-trod footpath that led down into the valley, but it was more pleasant for all of them. The trees here were huge and old, unscarred by woodsman’s axe. The birds sang and the squirrels dashed about as they had for centuries. Most of the time there was neither sight of a clearing nor smell of wood smoke to remind them of what was going on in the valley.
Still, it was slower going. It was almost evening when they came down off the ridge and into the next valley.
They made their way down the trail in the deepening twilight, looking for a place to camp.
"What’s that?" Wiz asked pointing to a strange glow moving though the woods ahead of them.
"Off the trail," Lannach whispered. "Quickly!"
Wiz took a firmer grip on his staff. "Hide?"
"No, just do not stand in their way."
The light came clearer and brighter through the wood, like sky glow at dawn. Then the first of the procession rounded the bend and Wiz saw the light emanated from figures on horseback.
Elves, he thought, a trooping of elves.
They came by ones and twos, riding immaculately groomed horses of chestnut, roan and blood bay. They were tall and fair of skin, as all elven kind, and dressed with the kind of subdued magnificence Wiz had come to associate with elves.
They passed Wiz and the brownies by as if they were not there, looking straight ahead toward a distant goal or talking softly among themselves in their own liquid tongue.
Last of all came the lord and the lady of the hold.
The man wore green and blue satin with an embroidered white undertunic. Instead of a simple filet to hold his long cornsilk hair, he wore a silver coronet. He had a hawk on his wrist, unhooded.
The woman was as fair and near as tall as her lord, with hair the same cornsilk color flowing free of her coronet and down her back to almost touch her saddle. She wore a long gown of deep, deep purple with a train that flowed over her saddle and her horse’s rump.