by Rick Cook
The woman turned her head to look at Wiz where he stood beside the trail. The combination of beauty and sadness clutched at his heart.
Wiz stood open-mouthed in awe long after the party had disappeared.
"They go East," Lannach said. "Beyond the lands of men."
"I didn’t think the elves would be bothered," Wiz said numbly. "They’re too powerful."
"Not all the Fair Folk are as powerful as your friend Duke Aelric. Oh, doubtless they could protect their hills and a few other spots most dear to them. But what then? The lands they called their own would be changed utterly by the mortals.
"As all the land changes," he added sadly.
Pryddian came into the room a trifle uncertainly.
"You sent for me, Lord?"
Bal-Simba ignored him for a moment and then looked up from the scroll on his desk.
"I did," the great black wizard said. "We have no further need of you here. You are released from your apprenticeship."
Pryddian started. "What?"
"Your presence here is no longer required," Bal-Simba said blandly. "You may go."
"That is a decision for my master!"
"You have no master, nor will any of the wizards here have you." He turned his attention back to the scroll.
Pryddian stood pale and shaking with rage, his lips pressed into a bloodless line.
"So. Because I am the victim of an attack by magic I am to be punished."
"You are not being punished, you are being released."
"And what of the Sparrow, the one who attacked me? What happens to him?"
The giant wizard regarded Pryddian as if he had just crawled out from beneath a damp log. "The affairs of the Mighty are none of your concern, boy. You have until the sun’s setting to be gone from this place." He turned his attention back to the scroll.
"Ebrion will have something to say of this."
"Ebrion is not here."
Pryddian frowned. "Well, when he comes back then."
Bal-Simba looked up. "If Ebrion or any of the other wizards wish to speak for you they may do so. But until they do you are no longer required here."
"I will wait then."
"You may wait. Outside the walls of the Keep."
"I…"
"Do you wish to provoke me now?" Bal -Simba rumbled. "I warn you, you would find me harder sport than the Sparrow and perhaps not as forebearing." He smiled, showing off his pointed teeth.
Pryddian snapped his mouth shut, spun on his heel and stalked from the room.
What would Ebrion have to do with that one? Bal-Simba wondered as he listened to the ex-apprentice slam down the corridor. He made a mental note to ask him when he returned.
The clouds rolled in during the morning, light and fleecy at first, but growing grayer and more threatening as the day wore on. Wiz and his companions trudged onward.
At last, just as the threat of rain became overwhelming, they found a rock shelter, a place beneath an overhanging cliff where the rain could not reach. They were barely inside when the skies opened and the summer rain poured down in torrents.
It was still so warm they did not need a fire and Wiz didn’t feel like dashing in to the rain without a cloak to gather the wood for one. He and the brownies settled down with their backs to the cliff and watched the rain drape traceries of gray over the forest and the hills beyond.
Scant comfort," Lannach said as they settled themselves among the rocks.
"At least we’re dry," Wiz told the brownie. "The last time I came this way I got soaked in one of these storms." He thought of the trek through the dripping forest and the peasant who had sheltered them that night. The one who had gained a farm in the Wild Wood at the cost of his wife and three children dead and a daughter given as a servant to the elves.
Meoan plopped herself down on one of the rocks and yanked at the ties of her bodice.
"We must be grateful for small comforts," she said bitterly. "Those who are driven from their homes had best take what they can find and be happy with it." She pulled down her bodice and offered a breast no larger than the first joint of Wiz’s thumb to her baby.
"I’m sorry for what happened to you," he said tentatively.
The little woman looked up at him. "I know you are, Lord. But sorry does not heal what it hurts." Then she sighed deeply. "And I apologize to you. Since we met you have shown us nothing but kindness. I should not blame you for what those others did."
"We’re not all like that, you know. Where I come from we learned the hard way that you’ve got to protect non-human things, to try to live with them."
"Would that the mortals of this world were so wise," Meoan said.
"Maybe they can be. It’s just that they’ve been oppressed by magic for so long they’re afraid of it and they want to exterminate it."
"Whether it hurts them or not," the brownie woman sniffed.
"When you’re afraid of something it’s hard to make fine distinctions. Humans suffered a lot because they had no protection against magic."
Meoan nodded. "I have heard the mothers lamenting for their children, struck down or stolen away by magic." She held her infant to her breast. "Life has been hard for mortals."
Wiz looked out at the rain. The sun had broken through at the horizon to paint the bottom of the clouds red and purple with its dying rays. The trees of the forest were tinged a glowing gold above, shading to deeper green out of the light. Already the shadows were beginning to thicken and take on substance.
"It’s going to be too dark to travel soon," Wiz said. "It looks like we stay here tonight."
He looked around ruefully. The ground was hard and full of sharp rocks fallen from the ceiling with almost no drifted leaves which could be used to make a bed. There were leaves aplenty out on the slope, but they were soaked.
"Well, it won’t be our most comfortable night, that’s for certain."
"Unless you would care to share other quarters," said a musical voice behind them. "Welcome, Sparrow."
Nine: Meeting by Moonlight
Friends come and go, but enemies accumulate.
Murphy’s law #1024
…and sometimes the real trick is telling the difference.
Murphy’s law #1024a
Wiz whirled and saw an elf standing in the gloaming at the edge of the overhang.
He was tall and straight as a forest pine. His skin was the color of fresh milk. His white long hair was caught back in a circlet of silver set with pale blue opals. Although the forest was dripping and the rain still fell in a light mist, he was completely dry.
"Duke Aelric?"
The elf duke nodded. "The same." Then he smiled and stepped aside to reveal another elf standing behind him.
"And this is Lisella."
She was nearly as tall as Aelric and her skin as milk-fair. But her hair was black and glossy as a raven’s wing where Aelric’s was snow white and her eyes were green as emeralds rather than icy blue. Her gown was old rose with a subtle embroidery of deeper red. Her figure was slender and elegant.
Wiz gulped and bowed clumsily.
"I discovered you were in the area and thought you might do us the honor of dining with us this evening," Aelric said. He looked around the rock shelter. "Perhaps you would care to guest the night with me as well."
"Why, uh, yes," Wiz said, managing to tear his eyes away from the elf duke’s companion. "Thank you, Lord."
"Well, then," Aelric said. "If you would care to accompany us. And your friends, of course."
The brownies had dived for cover as soon as Aelric appeared. Now they poked their heads out from behind rocks or from the crevices where they had gone to earth.
"Come on," Wiz said. "He won’t hurt you."
Reluctantly the brownies came out and gathered tight around Wiz. Lannach wasn’t clinging to his pant leg, but Wiz got the feeling he wanted to.
"Shall we go?"
Aelric and Lisella strode to the back of the shelter and the elf duke made a gesture t
o the blank stone. Soundlessly the rock dissolved and there was an oak door, magnificently carved and bound with silver. The door swung open and warm golden light flooded out.
Wiz had no idea where he was in the Wild Wood, but he was pretty sure he was a long way from where he and Moira had entered the elf duke’s hold the first time they met.
Time and space run strangely in places the elves make their own, Moira had told him then. He shrugged and followed Aelric and Lisella into the hill with a gaggle of brownies close on his heels.
Once again Wiz sat in Aelric’s great dining hall. The magical globes floating above the table cast the same warm light onto the scene. The food was as superb as it had been before and the soft music in the background was as enchanting.
But there were differences. The last time he and Moira had been fugitives, snatched from the pursuing army of the Dark League by Aelric’s whim. Now Moira was somewhere else and Wiz was… what?
And beyond that there was Lisella.
In the warm glow of the magic lights she was even more beautiful than she had been beneath the moon. Her presence reminded Wiz that before he met Moira he had been attracted to tall slender brunettes.
From time to time their eyes met across the table. Lisella looked at Wiz with a kind of intent interest that both stirred him and reminded him uncomfortably of the way a cat regards a baby bird it can’t decide if it wants to play with or eat immediately.
Although Aelric and Lisella were careful to include Wiz in the conversation, he had the distinct feeling that he was missing most of what was actually being said. They were playing some kind of game, he decided, some elaborate elven game with malice at its heart. Whatever these two were they were definitely not lovers.
Throughout dinner Aelric had kept up an easy conversation on inconsequential topics. Wiz had sensed that his host did not want to discuss serious matters, and still in awe of the elf duke, he had likewise avoided them. Finally, as light-footed servants placed bowls of nuts and decanters of wine on the damask-covered table, Lisella rose.
"Alas, My Lords, the hour grows late." She curtseyed to Aelric. "If you will excuse me?"
Aelric stood up and Wiz followed suit. "Of course, My Lady." He bowed and kissed her extended hand.
Then she turned to Wiz and fixed her green eyes on his. "Perhaps we shall meet again," she said softly and with a rustle of her brocaded gown she was gone.
"Remarkable, is she not?" Duke Aelric said. Wiz realized he was gaping and made a determined effort to shut his mouth. Aelric sat down and Wiz followed suit.
"I thought it would amuse you to meet her." He picked up his wine glass and again Wiz followed his lead.
"Uh, why? I mean aside from the fact that she’s beautiful."
Aelric cocked an eyebrow. "My dear boy, she has been trying to kill you for months."
Wiz choked, spewing wine across Duke Aelric’s fine damask table cloth.
The elf duke dabbed the wine drops from his sleeve. "You mean you did not know? Dear me, and I was about to comment you for your insouciance."
"How… I mean why? I mean I’ve never seen her before."
"That is immaterial, Sparrow. As to the how, she has been arranging little accidents’ for you for some time. So far you have been lucky enough to avoid them."
Wiz remembered the falling stone and the toppled viewing stand and felt sick. Then he looked closely at the elf duke. "Somehow I don’t think it’s been entirely luck."
Aelric smiled. "Your escapes were at least as much luck as your accidents were mischance."
Wiz absorbed that in silence. All of a sudden he felt like a piece on someone else’s chess board. He didn’t like it much.
"Thanks, I think. But why is she trying to kill me?"
"Oh, many reasons, I expect. The technical challenge for one. Penetrating a place so thick with magic as your Capital undetected and laying such subtle traps. That required superb skill, I can assure you."
He smiled reminiscently. "So did countering them. You’ve provided quite a diverting experience."
"And if I had missed that handhold on the parapet? Or hadn’t jumped the right way when the stand collapsed?"
Aelric looked at him levelly. "Then the game would have been over."
Wiz was silent again. "You said there were many reasons Lisella wanted to kill me," he said at last. "What are some of the others?"
Duke Aelric poured more of the ruby wine into a crystal glass with an elaborately wrought and delicately tinted stem. "Surely you can guess. When last we met, I said I would follow your career with interest, Sparrow." He smiled wryly. "I admit I did not expect it to be quite this interesting."
"I didn’t either, Lord."
"It is not often a mortal is sufficiently interesting to hold the attention of one of us. You have become interesting enough to fix the attention of quite a number of the never-dying."
The elf duke looked at his guest speculatively. "You have made yourself much hated, you know."
"Yeah," said Wiz miserably. "It wasn’t supposed to work this way. Things kind of got out of hand."
"Not unusual when mortals dabble in magic," Aelric said. "Lisella is a minor difficulty. You would do well to dismiss her from your mind—after taking proper precautions, of course. What you have done has deeper consequences."
"You mean the destruction of magic along the Fringe?"
"I mean the destruction of mortals everywhere," the elf duke said. "You mortals make this new magic and in the process you raise forces against yourselves you do not understand. For the first time in memory there is talk of a grand coalition of magic wielders, a coalition aimed at the mortals."
"That’s crazy!"
"That is mortal logic, Sparrow. None of these are mortals and many of them are not logical in any sense."
"But, I mean a war."
"They would not think of it as a war. Rather the extermination of a particularly repulsive class of vermin who have made themselves too obvious."
Wiz stared straight into the depths of the elf duke’s eyes. "Do you think you could beat us?"
Aelric shrugged gracefully. "I really do not know." Then he caught and held Wiz’s gaze. "But I tell you this, Sparrow. Whoever wins, the outcome is likely to be the utter destruction of the World."
Wiz dropped his eyes. "Yeah. But does it have to happen? I mean, can’t we prevent it?"
"It would be difficult at best," Aelric said. "That is not a consequence all of us wish to avoid. There are some who hunger for death and destruction on the widest possible scale. There are some who by their very natures cannot comprehend or appreciate the threat. And there are some who would find the end of the World merely diverting. A new experience, so to speak."
"What can I do?"
Aelric shrugged. "Remove the cause. The magical forces of the world make uneasy allies. If the threat were gone, the coalition would dissolve in an eye blink."
Wiz thought about that, long and hard. Aelric sipped his wine and said nothing more.
He didn’t know what the chances of heading this thing off were, but he didn’t think they were very good. Given the feelings of the people of the Fringe about magic, and given the power of the tools he had put in their hands, it wasn’t going to be easy to get them to quit wiping out magic wherever they found it. Keeping them from pushing into the Wild Wood in search of land would be harder yet.
And he was going to have to have a hand in finding a solution. Not only because he helped create the problem, but because he was the only one who really understood the new kind of magic that lay at the root of it.
Wiz was even less confident of his ability to solve those problems than he was of his capacity as a politician or a teacher, but dammit! he had to try.
"I’m going back to the Capital," he announced. "Maybe I can undo some of this mess."
"A wise decision," Aelric said. "When do you propose to return?"
"I should go back tonight, but I’m beat and there’s not much I could do there. First
thing in the morning, then."
The elf duke nodded.
Wiz reached for his wine goblet. Then he froze in horror.
"Wait a minute! If Lisella wanted to kill me, she just had the perfect opportunity to poison me or something!" He stared at his goblet as if it had sprouted poison fangs and tried desperately to remember if Lisella’s hands had ever been near it.
Duke Aelric chuckled. "Oh no. Murdering you while you sat together at dinner would be gauche. The fair Lisella is never gauche."
Wiz considered that and decided the elf duke was probably right. But he didn’t drink any more wine.
"Oh, one other thing. The Little Folk who came with me. Could you, well, could you take care of them for me?"
Aelric looked startled.
"Are they so important?"
"Not important, no. But I kind of feel responsible for them and I can’t take them with me."
The elf duke’s brow creased and for a second Wiz was afraid he was angry. Then he relaxed and rubbed his chin.
"I doubt they would be happy within my hold," Aelric said finally. "But I could send them on to Heart’s Ease under my protection. I do not think those who dwell there would mind their presence."
"Thank you, Lord. I really appreciate it."
Aelric made a throw-away gesture. "You are most welcome." Then he smiled wryly. "Sparrow, it is always a pleasure to share your company. One never knows what you will do next." He sighed. "Or what one is likely to do under your influence."
Lisella was not in evidence the next morning when Wiz bade Aelric farewell. The elf duke and the brownies accompanied him to a clearing outside one of the elf hill’s many doors. It seemed impolite to walk the Wizard’s Way from inside the hill—something like parking your motorcycle in your host’s living room.
"Good luck, Sparrow," Aelric said as Wiz faced in his chosen direction.
"Merry part, Lord."
Aelric looked at him and Wiz flushed, remembering that the elves did not use the human formula.
"Merry meet again," Aelric said finally.