by Rick Cook
The illusionist hissed like a frightened snake and wrenched away from Wiz. His hand darted out of his sleeve and instinctively Wiz twisted away so the hand struck his wizard’s staff instead of his arm. There was a flash of blue lightning and a report like a rifle shot as magic met magic. That seemed to break his hold on the crowd and suddenly people were running and screaming, stampeding away from the booth.
Wiz stumbled back, his staff held before him. From down the row of booths came a shout and a flash of magic. Out of the corner of his eye Wiz saw Malus raise his staff to launch another attack.
The thing looked at Malus, back at Wiz and over Wiz’s shoulder where Moira was standing. Without a word it whirled, gathering up the hem of its robe. Black smoke reeking of brimstone poured from the robe and rose in a whirlwind above Wiz’s head. Malus fired another magic bolt at the growing black cloud, but it disappeared into the smoke without a trace.
Tall as a tree the black cloud grew, and the wind of its turning whipped and tore at the booths and the robes of the wizards. Then the cloud separated from the earth and darted into the sky, pursued by magical bolts from Malus and lightning bolts hurled by Wiz.
It climbed faster and faster until it was no larger than a hand, then a finger. Then it moved away to the south.
“What? Who?” Malus came rushing up oblivious to the commotion spreading throughout the fair. Then he seemed to realize he would not get answers to his questions and settled for indignation. “To think that they would try it here! Of all places! Why, why the sheer effrontery of it!” Wiz noticed he didn’t specify who “they” were.
“Get help,” Moira said tightly. “Quickly.” Her words brought Wiz and Malus back to themselves and both fumbled for the communications crystals they wore around their necks.
“Are you all right?” Wiz asked his wife.
“I think so.” She clung to him fiercely and let out a deep breath. “It was like being pulled along by a strong current, or sliding down a slope of loose earth. I’ve . . .”
Before she could continue there was a soft pop of displaced air and Arianne, Bal-Simba’s assistant, appeared before them. Arianne’s eyes were unfocused and her lips moved silently as she spoke to the communications crystal about her neck. Off behind her, Wiz could see a flight of three dragons soaring away from their cavern aerie in the cliffs below the Wizards’ Keep. The Watchers had launched the ready patrol.
“We sensed a flare of magic even before your call,” she told the two wizards. “Now, what was this all about?”
“I don’t know,” Wiz said, “but I don’t like it.”
“A magical invasion of the fair,” Malus added. “A creature posing as a man.”
Moira was pale and shaking. “It was magic indeed. Like no magic I have ever felt before.”
“Programmer magic?” Arianne asked.
Moira bit her lip. “Not exactly. Something like it, but different—colder. Does that make any sense?”
Since Wiz lacked the natural talent needed to sense magic of any sort he could only nod. He had heard his kind of magic described as “feeling” like a horde of ants as the tiny spells that made up the words of the magic programming language operated, but he’d never felt it.
Arianne, however, had. “Colder?”
Moira hesitated. “Not cold, exactly. Rather, not-alive.”
Wiz had an image of zombie army ants. He didn’t like the picture at all.
###
“. . . so whatever that thing was it had a special attraction for people who are sensitive to magic,” Wiz summed up.
Around the table in the programmers’ office Jerry, Danny, Bal-Simba and Arianne all listened intently. After more than an hour’s rehashing of events, Moira wasn’t paying much attention.
“Which explains why it didn’t affect you,” Danny put in. “Like the rest of us you haven’t got any magical talent to speak of. But Moira probably had more than anyone else in the crowd so it really worked on her.”
“All it did was make me dizzy,” Wiz added. Moira looked down at her hands and said nothing.
“None of the other Mighty have ever seen or heard of the like,” Arianne told them. “This is something completely new. Worse, the magic is so different we did not detect it until the Sparrow confronted the thing.”
“Where did it come from?” Jerry asked.
“It arrived at the fairgrounds early this morning and set up its pavilion like any other merchant or entertainer,” Arianne said. “None of the other merchants had ever seen the thing before but none took special notice of it until the whirlwind began. It so well concealed its nature that Malus walked by the booth several times without seeing anything amiss.” She nodded at Wiz and Moira. “He apologizes most abjectly for not discovering it sooner.”
“I cannot blame him,” Moira said weakly.
“This thing is also,” Wiz added, “immune to lightning bolts, and whatever spell Malus was throwing at it. But we still don’t know what it is or what it was after.”
“We can hazard a guess on the last, I think,” rumbled Bal-Simba from his oversized chair at the head of the table. Although he had been physically present for the whole conference he had spent most of it receiving reports and communing magically with others of the Mighty.
“An attack?” Arianne asked.
“More likely a scout,” the great black wizard said slowly. “Something sent ahead to spy us out and discover our defenses.”
“So you don’t think it was alone?”
“It seems unlikely. What we know now seems to suggest a being controlled or commanded from elsewhere, not an independent entity.”
“Any idea who or where?”
Bal-Simba shrugged. “That is as yet unknown. Perhaps we can discover more when the Council of the North meets this evening.” He heaved himself erect. “Now if you will excuse me, I must consult directly with the Watchers. My Lords, My Ladies.” He sketched a bow and left.
“Are you sure you’re all right? Do you want to go lie down?”
“No, I am fine.”
“You don’t look it,” Danny put in. “You’re white as a sheet and you look awful.”
Moira looked up. “A fine thing to tell a woman, I am sure.”
“Well, you do,” Danny said defensively.
“Perhaps you had better go lie down, darling. You really don’t look well.”
Moira reached out and patted Wiz’s hand. “Perhaps I will. Dealing with strange magics seems to take a lot out of me.”
“Well,” came a female voice from the door, “all alive I see.”
Wiz looked up and saw a stout woman standing at the door. A boy and girl were peeking around her from either side and a dragon was looking over her shoulder.
“Oh, hello Shauna,” Wiz said. “Any reason why we shouldn’t be?”
Shauna was nurse to Ian, Danny and June’s son, and mother of Ian’s playmate, Caitlin. In addition to looking after the children and mothering June as needed, she provided a strong dose of common sense for the programming team.
“Fortuna, but you should hear the stories being bandied about in the town!” She looked at Moira. “Do you know you and Wiz both are dead a dozen times over? And each death grislier than the last?”
In spite of himself Wiz grinned. “And there are a dozen eyewitnesses to each death, no doubt.” He took a pull on his mug of tea.
“Folk are bolting their doors strong tonight,” the stocky woman agreed. “Fact is, I’ve never seen them so frightened. It will put a damper on this year’s fair, I’ll tell you.”
Moira stood up suddenly. “Then I am going back to the fair.”
Wiz spewed tea all over the table. “What?”
Moira reached for her cloak. “I said I am going back. The people need reassurance.”
“You’re sick and you’re going to bed.”
“People need my help and I am well enough for that.”
Wiz started to protest, realized this was another one of those arguments he wasn
’t going to win and changed course.
“Then I’m going with you,” he said grimly.
“How much reassurance is there if I am in the company of the mightiest wizard of the North? No, if this is to be effective you must not come.”
“Look, we don’t know what that thing was or what it can do. I’m not going to let you go down there alone.”
Moira put her cloak down on the table and turned to face him. “That ‘thing’ is gone.”
“And what happens if you nearly pass out like you did this morning? That’ll be a lot of reassurance for everyone.”
“I will manage.”
“You’ll manage better with the proper company, My Lady,” Shauna said, looking closely at Moira. “No, not you,” she added before Wiz could open his mouth. “I’m the one to go with her.”
Wiz had the feeling he’d just missed something important and an even stronger feeling that the situation was getting out of control.
“Still, I’m not sure it’s safe.”
“As safe as anywhere,” Moira retorted.
Arianne nodded. “Three of the Mighty have examined the rest of the fair and found nothing more. This thing harmed no one and I have alerted the Watchers in the castle. With them on guard it will not be able to sneak close again. Meanwhile, Bal-Simba has summoned the Council of the North to meet to consider what more is to be done.”
“Besides, Fluffy will protect us!” Ian said.
Wiz raised his eyebrows and looked past the boy at the twenty-foot dragon standing behind him. The dragon’s tongue was lolling out and he was panting like a particularly dumb dog.
Fluffy was a very young dragon, hardly older than Ian. Like all immature dragons he was not very smart. But unlike most of them he was more or less a house pet—a circumstance that aroused considerable comment in the Wizards’ Keep and even more among the townsfolk.
Fluffy had attached himself to the programmers as a housecat-sized hatchling. When Ian was born, the two became inseparable. Originally the programmers had called him Little Red Dragon, or LRD for short. But Ian insisted his name was Fluffy and, wildly inappropriate as the monicker was, it stuck.
If there was trouble the dragon was only likely to make it worse, but separating Ian and Fluffy made them both mope, so if Ian went to the fair it was a foregone conclusion that Fluffy was going too. The prospect did nothing to raise Wiz’s enthusiasm for the expedition.
Danny, meanwhile, had grasped the critical point. “Us?” he demanded of his son. “Who said anything about you going?”
“Shauna’s going,” Ian said. “You always said we should stay close to Shauna, especially if there’s trouble.”
While Danny was at a loss over the eight-year-old’s logic, Shauna’s daughter saw her opportunity and moved in for the kill. Caitlin was a couple of years older than Ian, with a mop of jet-black hair, apple cheeks and great dark eyes. She had her Ph.D. in cute with advanced graduate work in wheedling.
“We want to go to the fair,” Caitlin protested.
Danny tried for a compromise. “You can go to the fair tomorrow when it’s open.”
“Tomorrow’s too late,” Ian protested. “Everything will be up by then.”
Wiz wasn’t sure why it was more interesting to watch the booths go up than to see them once they were up and open, but that was clearly the general opinion. Even Fluffy managed to droop sadly at what he’d be missing.
“All right, then I’m going too,” Danny said.
“You would be almost as bad as Wiz,” Moira told him. “You had best stay here as well.”
June stood close behind her son with a hand on his shoulder. “I go too.” Which figured, since June was as protective of Ian as a mother tiger is of her cub.
Danny looked over at June and Ian and scowled, but he nodded.
“Well, all right but you stay close, you hear?” And then, as Caitlin and Ian cheered, Shauna added: “And keep that creature on the leash!”
Ian had obviously been anticipating victory because he had the dragon’s collar and braided leather leash tucked in his belt.
Fluffy drooped his head so Ian could attach his collar. In fact the leash was strictly for show. Fluffy wouldn’t allow anyone but Ian to lead him and there was no way the boy could have held the dragon against his will. As it was Fluffy had a tendency to jerk Ian off his feet with a casual toss of his head. But the sight of the leash made townsfolk slightly more comfortable around the dragon and Fluffy seemed to understand that the leash meant he was to be on his best behavior. Besides, Ian was inordinately proud of his job “controlling” Fluffy.
“Okay,” Wiz said to his wife. “You won’t take me and you won’t take Danny. What about Jerry?”
Moira raised an eyebrow and looked over at Arianne. The tall woman stroked her chin in thought. “Appropriate enough,” she said finally.
“I dunno,” the big programmer demurred. “I’ve got this homicidal screen saver I’m working on.”
Caitlin tugged on his arm and looked up at him with enormous dark eyes.
“Please, Unca Jerry. It won’t be any fun without you. Please come.”
Jerry suddenly found he was not at all immune to the wiles of a little girl. In fact, like most men without children of their own, he could be twisted around a tiny pinky almost without effort.
“Sure,” he sighed. “I’ll go back with you. That way the lads can see what’s going on.”
Wiz looked down at the dark stain of spilled tea on his shirt. “Well, darling,” he sighed, “at least keep your eyes open and yell at the first sign of trouble. I think that thing was after you.”
Arianne looked at him closely. “Can you be sure it is aimed at Moira?”
“I don’t like the way it looked at her.”
“You said it seemed to be surveying the crowd.”
“Yeah, but . . .” Wiz lapsed into an unhappy silence.
“Oh, don’t brood love,” Moira said. “It is perfectly safe and I will have Jerry with me should need arise.”
“Plus two lads,” Wiz added. There was an insistent whuff over his shoulder. “And a dragon.”
“Shauna and June will be along as well,” Moira countered.
That carried some weight, Wiz had to admit. Shauna could keep the kids under control and June was likely to be at least some help. Danny’s wife was strange and half-wild from growing up in an elf hill, but she was no one to trifle with. On one memorable occasion Wiz had seen her take out three fully armed hobgoblins with the knife she always carried.
“Well, I still don’t like it.”
Moira reached out and put her hand on his arm. “Pooh. You heard Arianne. There is no danger now. But the townsfolk must be reassured, so it needs to be done.”
“We’ve got to do something about this Calvinist sense of duty of yours,” Wiz said as Moira picked up her cloak.
“Who is Calvin?”
“He designed genes,” Wiz said absently, “and he gave you the heavy-duty kind.”
Moira did what she usually did when she didn’t understand her husband, which was to change the subject.
“You’re a fine one to talk about duty. All a dragon has to do is show up and make some threats and you go off with him and we don’t hear from you for weeks.”
“That was different,” Wiz said with some dignity—hoping reverently Moira wouldn’t ask him how it was different. She settled for cocking a coppery eyebrow and fastening the cloak at her throat.
Then, seeing his expression, Moira reached out and took his hand. “Please, Wiz.”
Wiz hesitated and then relented. “As long as it’s safe.”
She kissed him on the cheek. “Oh, we’ll be fine,” she told him. “You worry too much.”
###
Far and far away, in a place below the earth, a thing considered.
It was enough. It had found what it needed. Now there was only the harvest.
###
Danny and Wiz stood at a window and watched the group cross t
he courtyard and pass out the castle gate.
“I guess they’re right,” Wiz said, as much for his own reassurance as Danny’s. “It’s perfectly safe.” He sighed. “I wonder if I’m getting paranoid in my old age.”
“I know I’m paranoid,” Danny said grimly. “I just don’t know if I’m paranoid enough.”
Three
The Fair Again
The fair was very different in the afternoon than it had been that morning. Intermittent clouds hid the sun and the air that had been crisp and invigorating in the morning was now chill and damp. Even the mud seemed deeper.
All of which could have been her imagination, Moira admitted, but there were other changes which clearly were not.
The crowds of gawkers were gone, leaving only the fair workers, merchants and here and there a knot of guardsmen, armed and alert. There was less shouting and no laughter as people struggled to get their goods unloaded and their tents up.
None of which mattered to the children. Ian and Caitlin went whooping and shouting among the booths, avoiding most of the uninteresting mud puddles and seeming to be everywhere at once. Fluffy trotted along with them, head high like a show dog in the ring. Shauna puffed along behind, calling out admonishments and generally trying to keep them under control. June floated along near Ian, close and silent as always.
It would have been a perfectly normal scene, Moira thought, if June didn’t keep one hand always on her knife.
She dug Jerry in the ribs with her elbow. “Smile,” she commanded out of the side of her mouth. Then, putting on her best beauty-pageant smile, she and Jerry began to stroll among the booths. Moira paused frequently to admire goods on display or to chat with someone she knew. Jerry contented himself with smiling until his jaw ached and responding to any pleasantries directed to him.
Ian and Caitlin were disappointed at the pace, especially since June and Shauna would not let them get too far ahead of the others. Still they managed to find all sorts of interesting things to look at and interesting questions to ask. They even cajoled a chestnut vendor into blowing up his fire to roast some nuts for them.