Wizardry Compiled w-2

by Rick Cook

  "As far as we know there’s no limit at all on memory," Jerry said. It’s just that addressing it is kind of convoluted."

  Moira didn’t understand the last part, but her experience with Wiz had taught her the best thing to do was to ignore the parts she didn’t understand. To do otherwise invited an even more incomprehensible "explanation."

  "I’m sure Wiz would be honored to have this named after him," she said.

  The tea arrived already brewed. Moira, who had used it when she was standing vigil as part of her training, thought it smelled nasty. Jerry didn’t seem to notice. Moira poured out a small amount of the swamp-water-brown brew. Dubiously, she extended the cup. Jerry sniffed it, then sipped. Then he drained the cup and smacked his lips. "Not bad," he said appraisingly. "A little weak, but not bad. Can we arrange to have a big pot of this stuff in the Bull Pen while we’re working?"

  "Of course, My Lord, I’ll have the kitchen send up a pot."

  "I mean a big pot," Jerry said. "Say thirty or sixty cups."

  Moira, remembering the effect that even a cup of blackmoss tea had on her, stared at him.

  "Well, there are more than a dozen of us," he said apologetically.

  Moira nodded, wondering if there was enough blackmoss in the castle to supply this crew for even a week.

  Fifteen: War Warning

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

  programmer’s 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 tow
ers 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 pos
t, 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.