by Rick Cook
Table of Contents
Part I: Queen of the Fair One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Part II: Queen of the Strip Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Part III: Queen of the Night Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty-One
Twenty-Two
Twenty-Three
Twenty-Four
Twenty-Five
Twenty-Six
Twenty-Seven
Twenty-Eight
NOW YOU SEE THEM . . .
“There!” Jerry yelled in Charlie’s ear, pointing past his head to an utterly unremarkable spot in the desert. Charlie nodded, kicked the pedals to bring them around and gunned the plane’s engine for one last burst of speed. Then he stood on the brakes, chopped the throttles and the Kuznetzov radial died in ear-shattering silence.
“Everyone out, folks,” Charlie called back into the cabin. “We’re gonna have company in just a couple of minutes.”
The dragon, wizard, programmer, pilot and Russians all piled out onto the dusty lakebed. “Is this the place?” Gilligan asked. “If so, do it quick.”
Coming over the lakebed were three Blackhawk helicopters. Squinting, Gilligan thought he could make out door gunners. Two more columns of dust marked vehicles speeding toward them across the desert.
“Stay where you are!” the loudspeaker on the first helicopter blared. “Put your hands up and stay where you are.”
As the helicopters flared for a landing, Bal-Simba raised his hands and began to chant.
The security forces, mistaking the wizard’s gesture for surrender, barreled in. When the air around the group began to twist and shimmer, it looked like heat rising from the desert floor. As they landed, the helicopters kicked up clouds of fine, powdery dust. Even before the wheels touched, the combat-equipped Air Police were jumping from the ships to secure their prisoners.
But by the time the dust cleared, there was nothing in the desert but a dozen bewildered Air Policemen with M-16s at ready . . .
THE WIZARDRY QUESTED
RICK COOK
BAEN
Preparing to protect a twenty-foot dragon from the wrath of his own wife, Wiz joins forces with his eccentric companions in an adventure filled with Soviet ex-spies, a band of dwarves, zombie dragon riders, and a fluffy pink mechanical rabbit.
The Wizardry Quested
This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.
Copyright © 1996 by Rick Cook
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form.
A Baen Books Original
Baen Publishing Enterprises
P.O. Box 1403
Riverdale, NY 10471
ISBN: 0-671-87708-9
eISBN: 978-1-62579-483-3
Cover art by Newell Convers & John Pierrard
First printing, March 1996
Distributed by Simon & Schuster
1230 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10020
Typeset by Windhaven Press, Auburn, NH
Printed in the United States of America
BAEN BOOKS by RICK COOK
Wizard’s Bane
The Wizardry Compiled
The Wizardry Cursed
The Wizardry Consulted
The Wizardry Quested
Mall Purchase Night
Part I:
Queen of the Fair
One
Winter Fair
It was high winter and beyond the town the world lay under a blanket of white. Wiz and Moira stood outside the outer gate of the castle and looked down the long sloping High Street to the scene beyond.
“Oh Wiz! Look at the fresh snow! Isn’t it beautiful?”
“If you say so,” Wiz Zumwalt told his wife. “I’m a California boy and this isn’t my style.”
“Oh you just don’t like snow.”
“It’s not that I don’t like snow. But I hate slush.”
“Still,” Moira said firmly, “it’s beautiful.”
Wiz reached out and circled her waist with his arm. “You’re beautiful.”
Even an objective observer—which Wiz most definitely was not—would have agreed. Moira was wearing a heavy cloak of dark green wool lined and trimmed with dark fur. Her red hair, sparkled by diamond drops of melted snowflakes, hung down over the collar. The cold brought roses to her pale cheeks and her green eyes were bright under lashes the color of brushed copper.
He had loved her from the first moment he had seen her, but that had been a magic spell. What had grown between them since then needed no spells.
She clung to him for an instant and then broke away. “Oh, come on,” she said breathlessly, “I want to see my domain.”
Wiz sketched a mock bow. “Lead on, Your Majesty.”
Moira struck a regal pose. “Not until tomorrow. After Our coronation you may address Us as Your Majesty. Meanwhile you may give Us your arm.”
Ever since the fair committee had announced its choice, it had been a joke between them. When the fair officially opened tomorrow Moira would be crowned with holly and mistletoe and proclaimed Winter Queen to reign over the fair. Normally the queen was one of the women of the town, but this year the townsfolk had chosen Moira. If the truth be known this was due to a deadlock between the two logical candidates, but Wiz and Moira had chosen to ignore the politics and concentrate on the honor.
“What? You don’t want the rest of me?”
Moira opened her green eyes wide and gave him one of her patented ten-thousand-volt looks. “There are other parts of you that are useful,” she said, “but let us leave that for later.” Side by side they started down the icy street toward the fair.
The Wizards’ Keep stood on a great bluff that jutted up at the joining of two rivers. The town known simply as the Capital trailed down the sloping back of the rock to the flatlands below. From where they stood they could see over the roofs and walls of the Capital down to the fairgrounds.
Two days ago the water meadows beside the rivers had been as plain and white as the fields beyond. Now, as if by magic, a city had sprung up. Brightly colored canopies spilled carelessly against the fields of white. Along the dark river, boats lay ashore. Here and there campfires burned against the midwinter’s chill and everywhere people bustled like ants, erecting tents and stalls, unloading and setting up to display their wares.
Merchants had come from all over the human lands to trade at the Winter Fair. Wizards, townsfolk, farmers and villagers for miles around came to buy, barter, gossip and just gawk at the spectacle.
“Have you ever seen the like?” Moira asked excitedly.
“In my world we call them trade shows,” Wiz said. “Remind me to tell you about Comdex some time.”
Side by side they strolled down the Capital’s main street, greeting townsfolk and acknowledging greetings. Thanks to his magic, Wiz was a member of the Council of the North, the wizards who ruled and watched over the human lands. With his combination of magic and computer programming he was perhaps the mightiest of the Mighty who sat upon the Council. But most of the hellos were for Moira. Before they met she had been a hedge witch in a village near the borders of the Wild Wood, sharing the lives of the villagers, healing, advising and helping them in their day-to-day concerns. Her magical abil
ity would never be above moderate, but she had a warmth and genuine liking for people that none of the Mighty could match.
There were few enough folk out as they made their way down the cobbled streets. The cold kept as many who could stay inside and as it was midmorning most of the residents were hard at work. Wiz could hear the ring of a blacksmith s anvil carried from some side street in the frosty air. From another street came the steady rhythmic clanging of a coppersmith beating out a vessel on a stake. The women of the Capital liked to do their marketing early and anyone who had free time and didn’t mind the cold would be down at the water meadows watching the fair go up.
Wiz and Moira were perhaps halfway through the town when Moira slowed and clutched Wiz’s arm more tightly. Wiz turned to look at her and saw she had gone white, making her freckles stand out starkly against her skin.
“Darling are you all right?”
“Fine,” Moira gasped. “Be fine. Just let me sit for a minute.”
Wiz guided his wife to a wooden bench by a nearby doorstep. She sank down on it and leaned forward until her head was nearly between her knees. She gasped for breath a couple of times and then held the air in. Wiz stood with his hand on her shoulder, feeling helpless.
“Can you make it back all right?”
“I do not want to go back,” Moira said, staring at her toes. “I will be all right and we can go on.”
“Nuts. You’re going back to the castle.”
Moira breathed deeply again and straightened up. Wiz could see the color coming back to her cheeks.
“I am fine,” she said in a stronger voice. “It was just a momentary dizziness.”
“You’re trying to do too much and you know you haven’t been feeling well. You need to slow down, or at least let Bronwyn have a look at you.”
She smiled up at him and patted his hand. “I will. After the fair, I promise.”
Wiz started to protest, then smiled back. “Why is it I never seem to win these arguments?”
Moira’s smile grew even brighter and she squeezed his hand in hers. “Because I am always right.”
###
Cold. Black, bitter, eternal cold and forever-frozen silence. They lay heaped where they fell, as they would lie until the primal forces of weather and earth moved them. Some had lived once, others had lived never. Immaterial. Now the living were as lifeless as the never-living, all mixed together in the dark and endless, freezing cold.
Somewhere in the chill mass a thing stirred.
###
As they got lower into town more people appeared on the street, all going in the same direction. By the time they reached the main gate at the foot of the bluff they were part of a small crowd.
The fair started just outside the gate. The road was lined with a double row of booths and pavilions in various stages of erection. Behind those rows Wiz could glimpse other tents, all brightly colored, all erected without the least regard for the appearance of their neighbors, yet all of them swirling together into an oddly harmonious whole.
The place was a cheerful babble of excited voices chattering, calling, crying wares, and shouting. Here, there was a cheer as a pavilion was raised to its full height, followed immediately by a groan as the center pole slipped on the frozen earth and the tent billowed to the ground again. There, children chased one another between the tents and through the crowds, shrieking their excitement. Over yonder a horse whinnied and a bull bellowed. Somewhere else musicians played on pipe and drum and tambourine. From the river bank came the chant of boatmen pulling in unison to bring then-boat ashore.
The frosty air was rich with the smell of roasting chestnuts and mulled spiced wine. It smelled of horses and people, garlic and new leather. Of faraway places and pine smoke. It was a wonderful odor and Wiz drank it in eagerly as they let the crowd carry them along.
###
Ice film strained and cracked from motion where no motion should be. Another jerk, and another and another until the ice flaked away from what had once been a human hand. The skeletal fingers convulsed and tightened to form a parody of a fist.
###
“Wiz look out!” Moira’s words brought him out of his reverie as her hand on his bicep guided him away from a large and uninviting mud puddle. Every morning fresh straw and tanbark was spread to keep mud from fairgoers’ boots, but in short order it was trampled, crushed and dragged into the slushy dirt.
Moira’s eyes were laughing. “I believe the expression is ‘wake up and die right’.”
“Sorry,” he mumbled. “I got distracted” Moira’s smile and resigned sigh told him she was all too familiar with her husband’s absent-mindedness. Looking at her like that he was reminded once again of how much he loved her. “Let’s go check out the jeweler’s row,” he suggested. “Perhaps they will have something fit for a queen.”
Moira inclined her head regally. “Very well. You may proceed Us to guard Us from the mud.”
###
Rocks shifted, clods of frozen earth fell free and the once-living sat erect in his icy grave. The misshapen head turned neither right nor left but the eyelids lifted on still-frozen eyeballs. Moving in uncoordinated jerks and broad swipes it began to clear the rest of the rubble from its form.
A massive wound left the brain half-exposed to the freezing air, but scraps and shards began to return. Of true consciousness there was none, nor soul nor spirit, nor coherent memories. But there were reflexes, and skills learned long and well at very fundamental levels. For the animating intelligence that was sufficient.
###
There was snow drifted against the windows, but the room in the Wizards’ Keep was warm and cozy. A wood fire crackled and danced in the stone fireplace, perfuming the air with cedar. With its carved furniture of dark oak, stone walls, and diamond-paned windows, the place looked positively medieval. With its overflowing litter of scrolls, wooden tablets, and a large crystal ball on a stand, it looked like a magician’s study. With the letters of glowing fire hanging above the two occupied worktables, the remains of sandwiches beneath the “displays,” the pot of industrial-strength tea in a corner and the flowcharts scrawled in charcoal on one whitewashed wall, it looked like a programmer’s workroom. In fact it was both, and the effect managed to be oddly harmonious in spite of the contrasts.
Wiz’s desk was deserted, but Danny and Jerry were hard at work. Actually Danny was surfing the Internet and Jerry was just doodling, but they were both doing it with the fierce concentration which is the hallmark of a good programmer and the bane of a good programmer’s Significant Other.
“Going to the fair tomorrow?” the younger, slighter, man asked over his shoulder when he reached a pausing place.
Jerry Andrews shrugged his massive shoulders. He was a big man and if he was somewhat soft, he was definitely not fat. “I dunno. Hadn’t really thought about it.”
Danny spun his chair around and grinned. “That’s the advantage of having lads. You gotta think about things like the fair.”
“I’m not sure I see that as an advantage,” Jerry said slowly. “If Malkin were here I’m sure she’d want to go.” He paused. “But then that’s why Malkin’s not here. It’s bad enough having to return the stuff she’s lifted and make explanations here and in town. At the fair . . .” He shuddered.
“Yeah. At least June keeps Ian out of trouble rather than encouraging him. Just wait until you have kids.”
“That may be quite a wait,” Jerry said dryly. “Malkin and I have talked about it and we’re not sure we will.”
Danny just smirked.
“Oh, speaking of kids,” Jerry said, “take a look at this, will you?”
Danny got up and crossed over to look at the work on Jerry’s “screen”—actually a glowing rectangle of fiery letters floating in the air above his desk.
“It’s something kind of silly, really,” Jerry went on, “but I wanted to see what would happen. Anyway, Ian’s birthday is coming up and I thought maybe I could adapt it into something fo
r him.”
Danny frowned.
“It’s a screen saver. Here, let me.”
Jerry gestured with the mouse, clicked twice (producing two squeaks from the rodentlike demon) and sat back. After a few seconds a fluffy, pink mechanical rabbit wearing sunglasses and beating a bass drum marched back and forth through the lines of code.
“Pretty neat,” Danny agreed, watching the bunny rub out the letters with its passage. Then the rabbit hopped down off the worktable and made for the door, still banging his drum. It was out the door and down the corridor before either programmer could react. It had almost reached the corner when Jerry reached the door and gestured at the runaway bunny. It disappeared with a soft pop.
“I didn’t expect that.”
“Yeah. It just kept going, and going, and . . .”
Jerry shot his colleague a dirty look. “You and Wiz.”
“Sorry, it was too good to pass up. Anyway, you’re gonna need a way to keep that rabbit within bounds.”
Jerry rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “I’ve got just the solution.”
###
The frozen thing tottered erect. Now the half-crushed head swiveled left and right in a ghastly parody of a hunting dog seeking a scent. Finding what it sought, it jerked and stumbled off down an unlit corridor half-choked with rubble.