by Rick Cook
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With Bal-Simba and Arianne in tow, Bronwyn led them up the winding stone stairs to the door of Mikey’s cell. The door was open and the two guards outside were clearly uneasy.
Once Mikey had been a skilled programmer and, as “Panda,” one of the best system breakers in Silicon Valley. But the shock of his final battle against Wiz and his elven allies had left him with the mind of a four-year-old. Now he spent his days playing with blocks and toy soldiers in a prison-cell cum-playroom in one of the Keep’s towers. He was fed, cared for and guarded, but otherwise ignored.
Now he was slumped in the corner, surrounded by a scattering of blocks. His eyes were closed, his head sunk on his chest and his breathing deep and regular.
Bronwyn knelt and pulled open an eyelid. Mikey did not stir. She looked up at Bal-Simba. “An empty shell, Lord. There is nothing left here at all.”
“When did this happen?”
“Sometime in the last two days. He sat in a corner all that time, but that was not unusual for him. The guards were becoming worried because he had not eaten.” She rose and looked down at him. “Before, he had the mind of a child. Now he has—nothing.”
Bal-Simba frowned “Did he still have his knowledge? Before this happened, I mean.”
Bronwyn shrugged. “Since we never knew just what was wrong with him I cannot tell you. Certainly he did not have the mind to use it. But as to the knowledge itself . . .” She shrugged again.
“I think we can assume he still had at least some of it.” Bal-Simba rubbed his chin.
“And now we can assume the Enemy has that knowledge,” Arianne added.
Bal-Simba nodded and looked down at the not-quite-human thing at his feet. “Come, Lady, we have work to do.”
“And him?” Arianne asked.
“I will make him comfortable,” Bronwyn said grimly. “He will not last long like that.”
###
Malkin stopped and touched Wiz’s arm. “It’s getting light up ahead again,” she whispered.
Wiz strained to see beyond the magic light’s glow. “More bugs?”
The thief shook her head. “The light’s not as blue and the shadows are sharper.”
Now what? Wiz thought. He looked over at Danny. The younger programmer checked his magic detector. “A lot of magic, but it’s not immediately dangerous.”
It wasn’t the most reassuring report Wiz had ever heard but he motioned the group on and they crept down the tunnel.
Ahead of them the tunnel grew brighter and the air around them grew warmer. Suddenly they turned the corner and found themselves staring into the mouth of Hell.
The very walls of the tunnel glowed incandescent. Orange and red, yellow and white, churned and roiled on every side. Instinctively the party flinched back as if from a blast furnace and retreated around the corner.
“No heat,” Wiz said wonderingly as soon as they were back around the corner. He stuck his hand around to make sure. “There’s no heat.”
“It’s magically blocked,” Danny said, checking his magic detector. “That tunnel must run right through the heart of the volcano, but magic keeps the heat away.” He looked at the magic detector again. “Tunnels, I mean. There’s a whole pile of them out there.”
“Another maze.”
“A hotter-than-hell maze,” Danny agreed.
“Well, we’ve got an answer to that,” Wiz said as he fished in his pouch. “I have here the granddaddy of all maze solvers.” He held up a demon that looked remarkably like a white rat.
“Put that away,” Malkin said firmly.
Wiz frowned. Malkin had her faults, including kleptomania, but squeamishness wasn’t one of them.
“It’s not a real rat,” he explained, “it just looks that way because . . .”
“I know what it is,” the tall thief said. “There is a trap here and that thing may trigger it.”
“What land of trap?”
“Magical. Beyond that . . .” She shrugged.
“How do you know?” Danny asked.
“Because I know. It is my business to know and this is not the place for magic.”
Wiz looked at the rat demon, which twitched its whiskers. He put it back in his pouch. “Okay, let’s take a break while Danny and I see what we can learn.”
Half an hour later a grim-faced Wiz and Danny called the others to gather around them.
“This is the cutest thing yet,” Wiz told them. “All these tunnels are kept open by magic, very carefully balanced magic. Too much additional magic will upset the spell and they’ll collapse.”
Even Glandurg looked uneasily at the glowing red magma beyond. “Better it were that we use no magic then.”
“We won’t, mostly. Danny and I have a spell running to strengthen the tunnels, so it’s not quite the trap it was when we came in, but any large expenditure of magical energy is still likely to bring the place down.”
“So we feel our way through magicless,” Malkin said.
“Not exactly. With the tunnels reinforced Danny and I can use a real low-power spell to narrow our choices.”
“You say that as if there is a problem.”
Wiz frowned. “Not a problem exactly, but there is a consideration. The spell is sensitive and people throw it off. It will work best if Danny and I go ahead alone while the rest of you wait here.”
Malkin’s face didn’t move a muscle. “Is that wise?” she asked neutrally.
“About as wise as a lot of the rest of this expedition,” Wiz told her. “Anyway people, stay close and we’ll be back as soon as we can. Above all, use no magic you don’t absolutely have to use.”
It took several minutes to get the details sorted out and somewhat longer to convince June she had to stay behind and not go with Danny. That done, the two wizard programmers started off down a likely tunnel.
It wasn’t a pleasant experience. The heat from the walls beat in on them and soaked up through the soles of their boots until Wiz was reminded of bread in an oven. There was no noise through the insubstantial walls, but there was a low vibration as if hundreds of tons of melted rock around them was flowing and shifting under some unimaginable pressure. Sweat streaked their faces and soaked into their clothing. Even Wiz’s socks soaked until he squished in his boots with every step he took. Here and there a trick of the light turned a patch of wall into a mirror that threw back a distorted funhouse reflection of the pair.
Nor was the maze easy to unravel. It was mostly on one level, but it twisted and turned and divided and rejoined in a way that was not only confusing, it was downright unpleasant. For all that, Wiz and Danny made good progress. Their spell allowed them to eliminate first large chunks of the maze and then successively smaller sections. Once or twice Wiz got an uneasy feeling they were being followed, but they saw no one and they heard nothing.
Of course, because the spell was so weak it was not infallible. Tune and again, they found themselves headed in the wrong direction or caught up against a dead end.
“The exit should be right up ahead here,” Wiz said at last as they moved down a twisty, glowing corridor. They turned another corner and found themselves face to face with a rock wall.
“Dead end,” Danny observed needlessly.
Wiz shrugged and turned to start back down the way they had come. There was a noise down the tunnel. A noise like heavy footfalls. A lot of them. Wiz motioned Danny to silence and peeked around the corner to see what was ahead.
What was ahead was goblins. Big, hairy, nasty goblins armed to the fangs. The tunnel was packed three deep with them. The light from the molten rock reflected redly off the creatures’ armor and made their little pig eyes seem even redder. They were still some ways off and they apparently hadn’t seen the humans yet, but there was no place for them to go wrong.
“Oh boy,” Danny said quietly. “Oh boy.”
The breath caught in Wiz’s throat. He had plenty of spells that would deal with a mere pack of goblins, but the more magic they used, the
more chance the tunnels would collapse and engulf them in molten rock. But without magic both Wiz and Danny together probably weren’t a match for just one of the oncoming goblins.
Wiz raised his staff and prepared to fight. “Well, we can’t delay the inevitable.”
“Let me try something first, okay?” Danny said. Wiz raised his eyebrows and nodded. Out of the corner of his eye Wiz saw Danny gesture with his staff as he said something unintelligible. Wiz took a tighter grip on his own staff and both stepped out to face the oncoming monsters.
Only the goblins weren’t coming any more. They stopped dead in the center of the tunnel. Then they huddled together. Then they turned and ran screaming from the two humans.
Wiz lowered his staff and looked after the fleeing monsters.
“What the heck was that all about?”
Danny looked smug. “A little something I cooked up. Look at yourself in the wall there.”
Wiz moved over to the stretch of reflecting wall Danny had indicated. Staring back at him was a Thing. It was big and amorphous and tentacled, and clawed and fanged and looking at him with hundreds of beady red eyes. It had pincers, and stingers and hair and scales and fins and teeth. Lots and lots of teeth. After several years in this World, Wiz knew Things. This was an E-flat, full-bore, world-class Thing.
“Holy . . .” Wiz jumped back.
“That’s what they thought,” Danny said smugly. “Oh relax, it’s just a seeming, a minimum-magic disguise you might say.”
“A nightmare you might say,” his friend corrected shakily. “Where did you come up with that thing?”
Danny smirked. “My imagination.”
Wiz looked at the younger programmer and frowned. “You know, there are times I really wonder about you. Now let’s find the exit and get back to the others before something wanders by that doesn’t frighten so easily.”
Nine
Killer Vees
It took another hour to get through the magma maze. Beyond were more tunnels, and beyond them a series of natural caves variously modified. They made their way without incident until they came to a crudely hacked-out tunnel connecting the second and third caves.
“Wait a minute guys,” Danny whispered, “I think I’ve got something—or nothing.”
The party clustered around as Danny checked his magic detector.
“Well, which is it?” Malkin asked.
Danny looked up. “Both. The whole area up ahead is magically dead,” Danny reported. “I mean not a spark anywhere that I can see.”
“Not even the normal background magic?” Wiz asked.
The young programmer shook his head. “Not a sign.”
Wiz noticed Malkin make sure her rapier was loose in its sheath.
“Okay then. Let’s take the hint and move slow and careful.”
Again the tunnel widened out into a cavern and again the party moved ahead by the light of a single magical globe. Strain as they might they could hear nothing but their own footfalls and what sounded like rushing water faint and far ahead of them.
Halfway across the room they found the source of the sound. A chasm divided the cavern and from the bottom, faint and far away, came the sound of the water.
“How deep do you think that is?” Danny asked as he squinted down into the blackness.
“Too deep,” Wiz said.
“Too wide besides,” Malkin added as she looked across the gap. “I don’t think our ropes will reach, even if we could find something on the other side to secure them to.”
Wiz thought of crossing the dizzying blackness on a rope and got a distinctly queasy feeling in the pit of his stomach.
“Let’s assume ropes are a non-option,” he said.
“Well, I’ve got something for this,” Danny said. “Watch.” He lifted his staff and pointed.
The hair on Wiz’s neck stood up and he started to protest, but he was too late.
Rocks and boulders on both sides of the gap glowed blue, then rocked in their places and rose gently into the air. Danny waved his staff like a conductor’s baton. Waves of magic twisted and congealed into invisible forms as the rocks floated out into empty space and settled in place according to some unseen plan. More waves of magic as the rocks locked together and a great arched bridge began to take shape. More magic and smaller stones rushed to fill in the gaps. A final burst of magic and a bridge sat in place, glowing from the unnatural forces that held it together.
“There!” Danny said proudly.
“Come on then,” Wiz said unhappily. “Let’s get over this as fast as we can.”
The bridge was solid enough beneath their feet as the party started over.
“Beats a rope, doesn’t it?” Danny said gaily. “It’s a variation of a spell I worked out for Ian’s toy blocks. Just scale it up, and hey . . .”
“Takes a lot of magic,” Wiz said.
“So? We’ve got power to spare here.”
The magic globe lighting their passage flickered, then flickered again. Wiz saw something like a moth flit around it. Then another and another and another.
Something stung Wiz on the back of his neck. He slapped at the spot and felt something small and furry under his fingers. He jerked his hand away and shook his fingers and a scrap of black fluttered out of them.
“Get off the bridge!” he yelled and charged ahead. Caution forgotten, the rest of the party charged after him, swatting at the things around them.
As soon as they were on the other side, Danny gestured and the rocks went thundering into the canyon. But by that time the entire party was under attack.
In swarms and hordes and legions the tiny black things came on, diving mindlessly to the attack and sticking where they landed to bite and chew. Each of them was no larger than a mouse, but they struck with blind ferocity.
Wiz laid about him with his staff, striking great swaths of the creatures down by magic. Malkin turned out to be a surprisingly good swordswoman. Her long arms gave her reach and her wrists were like iron. She used her reach to keep the things off and the edge of her rapier to take out several at once. June was a whirling dervish with her knife, slicing in a dozen directions at once. Danny also struck out with magic. Glandurg flailed about him with Blind Fury. He never hit what he was aiming at, but there were so many of the things that each stroke felled half a score. Along the way he also brought down two good-sized boulders and a stalactite, but he barely noticed.
The light in the cavern dimmed as the creatures mobbed the magic globe, like a pack of enraged moths. Wiz struck out desperately again and again. Caught in the open as they were the things could attack from any direction, including driving straight down. Even the ones who had been knocked from the air crawled toward them to continue the attack.
A fireball whizzed past Wiz’s ear and singed the hair on the left side of his head. He turned his head to glare at Danny and the thing that was diving on him missed his eyes and latched onto his ear instead. Danny shrugged and went back to throwing fireballs.
The little things were so thick in the tunnel there was really no place to aim at, but it didn’t matter. As soon as each fireball emerged from Danny’s staff it was surrounded by a horde of suicidal batlets who dived to their destruction in it. Wiz, seeing what was happening, began dividing his time between beating off attackers and throwing fireballs. The cavern filled with rank smoke and the reek of ozone and burned flesh. Gradually the attackers became fewer and fewer and finally there were none.
The party found themselves standing back to back in the cavern, surrounded by a haze of stinking smoke and a carpet of dead creatures. Wiz realized he had been bitten in a dozen places or more. He could feel the blood oozing down both cheeks and a wound in his forehead was trickling blood into his eyebrows. Most of the others appeared wounded in several places as well.
“What where those things?” Danny panted, as he wiped blood from his eyes. June was instantly at his side with a cloth, cleaning the wounds on his face and ignoring her own.
Wiz bent down to examine the litter of corpses around them. Each of the things had the form of a tiny bat, perhaps half as long as his little finger. The mouths sported a pair of outsized fangs and even in death the little eyes showed a glazed malevolence. He picked one up and showed it to the others.
“Little vampire bats,” Danny said. “I wonder if these things carry rabies.”
“Rabies we can handle,” Wiz reminded him. “Healing magic, remember?”
“Speaking of which . . .” Malkin said, looking at the bloody wounds on the back of her hand.
As one person, the party sank to the ground where they were and started rummaging through their packs for what Wiz persisted in thinking of as “first-aid kits.”
On an impulse Wiz tried a listing and scowled at the result.
“More weird code,” Danny said and then winced as June dabbed a healing salve on a wound on his neck.
“So the Enemy sent these things against us,” Malkin said.
“If I had to guess I’d say they weren’t exactly sent,” Wiz said. “This part here looks like another variation on the Watcher spell and there doesn’t seem to be a lot of code for remote control.”
“Meaning?” Danny studied that section of the listing.
“Meaning I think these things operate independently. If I had to guess, and that’s pretty much what it is at this point, I’d say this part here is a magic detector and they home in on magic. What’s more, magic seems to rouse them to a rage. You’ll notice Malkin wasn’t the focus of an attack and they didn’t go after Glandurg until he got Blind Fury into action.”
“Kinda like leaving hives of killer bees around as guards,” Danny said. “Cute.”
“Ugly,” Wiz corrected. “Especially since the same principle could be applied to other critters. Nastier ones.”
Danny nodded. “Let’s get out of here then. There may be more on the way and I’m not sure I’d want to face a horde of maddened dragons.”