by Rick Cook
The old wizard cackled. "Oh, I did take his skin afterwards. I needed it, you see. It is amazing what you can do with the skin of a wizard, even a wizard who set himself so much above his station. A wizard who was such an inexpert plotter as this one."
Atros looked around wildly, swinging his staff this way and that to try to ward off an attack.
"I tell you again Atros, the League is mine!" The skull-face image said. "You, all of you, exist to serve me. And serve me you shall—one way or the other. Meditate upon that, Atros. Meditate upon it while you sleep."
The image winked out, leaving Atros alone in the chamber cold and shaking. Did the old crow mean to spare his life? Or was this just some torture designed to shake his will before he too was killed?
Atros spent the rest of the night in sleepless suspense and confusion. Plots to replace Toth-Set-Ra were very far from his mind.
A woman waited to greet them at the stockade gate. She was beautiful, tall and stately as a ship under sail. She was not young, yet not as old as her long white hair proclaimed. As Wiz got closer he saw that the lines around her eyes and mouth were those of one who had lived hard, not long.
She wore a long gown of midnight blue velvet, caught with a silver cord at her waist. The dagged sleeves of her dress fitted her upper arms tightly and swept halfway to the ground at her wrists.
Her right hand rested on the shoulder of a bent, manlike creature with a long sharp nose and huge hairy ears. He was as ugly as she was beautiful, but the contrast was not incongruous.
"Merry met and well come," she said in a voice like ringing silver. "I am Shiara, the mistress of this place, and Heart's Ease is your home for as long as you care to stay."
"Thank you, Lady," said Moira, curtseying. Wiz hastened to bow.
"Not 'Lady,' " the woman told her. "Just plain Shiara."
"Not plain either," said Wiz, moved by her beauty.
Shiara smiled but did not look in his direction. She's blind!, he realized.
"Your companion is gallant," Shiara said to Moira.
"He has his moments," Moira sniffed.
"You are called Sparrow, are you not?"
"Yes, Lady. Ah, yes Shiara."
"Well, merry met at Heart's Ease, Sparrow," the lady said. "You must both be tired. Ugo will show you to your rooms."
The ugly little creature sniffed and shuffled through the stockade gate without a backwards glance.
The ground within covered perhaps two acres. There were six or eight small buildings, huts and storehouses and a large garden laid out behind. Attached to the base of the stone tower was a large building, also of peeled logs, roofed with shingles and chinked with moss.
"Is she a wizardess?" Wiz whispered to Moira as they came up the flagstone walkway.
"She was of the Mighty," Moira said and motioned him to silence.
Ugo led them into the building and Wiz saw it was a single large room, a great hall with a huge smoke-blackened fireplace in one side and a table big enough to seat twenty people down the center. In spite of its rude exterior, the hall was richly furnished with heavy velvet drapes on the walls and massively carved furniture placed carefully about. The whole effect reminded Wiz of a picture he had seen once of J.P. Morgan's hunting lodge.
Ugo took them down the hall without pausing and through a low stone door into the tower proper. There was a narrow stair twisting off to the right and climbing so steeply Wiz was afraid he would lose his balance. At the second floor landing Ugo opened a door for Moira and bowed her through. Wiz started to follow but Ugo blocked him with a rough hairy arm.
"Lady's room," he said gruffly. "Come." He led Wiz on up the stairs to the very top of the tower.
"Your room," Ugo grumbled as he opened the door.
The room was small and simply furnished with a narrow rope bed, a table and single chair. But there was a fire laid in the fireplace and a basin and pitcher of steaming water sat on the table. The bed was covered with a bright counterpane and a snow-white towel lay beside the basin. Against one wall, next to the fireplace, stood a full-length mirror.
"Dinner at sun's setting," the goblin told him. "Do not be late."
Dinner was simple but savory. Most of the dishes were vegetables and tubers from the castle garden, with wild mushrooms from the forest and forest fruits for dessert. There was very little meat, which suited Wiz.
"Moira has been telling me of your travels," Shiara said. She held a knife in one hand and extended the other hand, palm down and fingertips spread, over the table, finding her plate by the heat from the food.
"It was quite a trip," Wiz said. "Lady," he added hastily as Moira frowned.
"I understand you rescued Moira when you were beset by trolls."
"Well, kinda. Mostly she rescued me."
"Still, from what Moira tells me it was a bravely done deed." She smiled slightly. "Though perhaps charging a troll with a stick is not the wisest move."
"Thank you, Lady," said Wiz, ignoring the second sentence. "Uh, Lady, do you know if they are still looking for us?"
Shiara turned serious. "Somewhat, I understand. Although your guesting the night in an elf hill seems to have thrown them off the scent and dampened the ardor of many of the League's allies. There are few who would willingly try conclusions with any of the elven kind, much less an elf duke."
"Then are they likely to find us here?"
She considered. "Perchance. But in this quiet place it would be hard. We do not use magic at Heart's Ease, so they cannot find you directly. There is little magic here to reflect off us and show us those with the Sight. No, Sparrow, if they find you at all it will be by accident.
"Besides," she continued, "finding you and getting here are very different things. In a quiet zone such as this any attempt at magic would be seen instantly by the Watchers and countered. We are a hundred leagues or more from the shores of the Freshened Sea so they cannot come at us overland. The forest creatures are our friends, so they would find it difficult to sneak close.
"All things considered we are safe enough."
"That's a relief."
"Just do not get careless," Moira said sharply.
"True," their blind hostess said. "Safety is at best relative and we are deep in the Wild Wood. Do not wander off, and leave things you do not understand strictly alone."
There was silence for a bit while they ate.
"Lady, what do we do now?" Wiz asked at last.
"You remain here as my guests while the Mighty consider your situation."
"And Moira?" Wiz asked, dreading the answer.
"I am to remain as well," said the red-haired witch, in a tone that showed she didn't like it. "In their wisdom the Mighty have decreed that even here you need a keeper." She grimaced. "And I am chosen for the task."
"You don't have to stay on my account," Wiz protested.
"I stay because the Mighty would have it so."
"Peace, peace," said Shiara. "Lady, I think your quarrel is with those not present, not the Sparrow."
"True, Lady," Moira said contritely. She turned to Wiz. "I am sorry I spoke so."
They contrived to get through the rest of dinner without snapping at each other.
At first Wiz simply luxuriated in life at Heart's Ease. He had a bed to sleep in, a roof over his head, no one was chasing him and, best of all, he didn't have to walk all day.
But that palled quickly. There was nothing for him to do. Moira made herself useful, cooking and helping to clean, but Wiz had no domestic skills.
"Is there anything I can do?" he asked Ugo one day as the goblin was sweeping out the great hall.
"Do?" Ugo grunted.
"To help."
Ugo bent to his sweeping. "Don't need help. Take care of Lady by myself."
It wasn't that he was interested in doing housework, Wiz admitted to himself; he was bored and he felt completely useless.
He wandered out into the garden where Moira was on her hands and knees weeding an herb border.
"Can I help?"
Moira looked up and did not rise.
"How?" she asked suspiciously.
Wiz spread his arms. "I just want to make myself useful."
Moira snorted skeptically, as if she felt his offer was a ruse to get close to her. Since that was partially true, Wiz reddened.
"Very well, weed that section over there." She nodded her head toward a part of the border on the other side of the garden.
The border contained tall fennel plants, their feathery pale green foliage smelling strongly of licorice. Sprouting thickly around them were broad-leafed seedlings, each with two or three yellow-green leaves.
Even though the smell of licorice made Wiz slightly nauseous, he set to work with a will, pulling up the tiny plants without damaging the fennel. The summer sun beat strongly on his back and before he had weeded five feet he was sweating heavily. The border was wide and he had to reach to get the weeds at the far side. In ten feet his shoulders were twinging from the reaching and by the time he had done twenty feet his back was sore as well. He took to stopping frequently to rest his aching muscles and to watch Moira at work on the other side of the garden.
Moira worked steadily and mechanically, flicking the weeds out of the bed with a practiced twist of her wrist. Her long red hair hung down beside her face and every so often she would reach up and brush it out of the way, but she never broke the rhythm of her work. There was a smudge of dirt on her cheek and her skirt and blouse were grimed and stained, but she still took Wiz's breath away.
At last Wiz reached the end of the fennel and went to Moira for further instructions.
"It took you long enough," she said as he approached.
"There were a lot of weeds," said Wiz, bending over backwards in an effort to get he kinks out of his back. "I don't think that patch had been weeded in some time."
Moira looked up at him sharply. "I weeded it myself not three days ago."
"Well, weeds must come up quickly here. They were all over the place."
Moira got to her feet and went over to examine Wiz's handywork. At the sight of the clean bare earth under the fennel plants she sucked in her breath and clenched her teeth.
"What's wrong?"
"Those," she said pointing to Wiz's piles of "weeds," "were lettuces. They were planted there so the fennel could shade them." She sighed and stooped to gather the wilted plants into her apron. "I hope you like salad, Sparrow, because there is going to be a lot of it tonight."
"I'm sorry," he mumbled.
"It is not your fault, Sparrow," she said in a resigned voice. "I should have known better than to trust you with such a task."
That made Wiz feel even worse.
"Go back inside. I will finish up here."
"Lady, I'm really sorry."
"I know you are, Sparrow. Now go."
* * *
Finally, by appealing to Shiara, Wiz got a regular job. Under a shed roof against the palisade was a woodpile and next to the woodpile stood an old tree stump with an axe in it. Wiz's job was to chop firewood for Hart's Ease.
The axe was shaped like a giant tomahawk with no poll and a perfectly round straight haft. The design made it hard to handle and it took Wiz two or three hours a day to chop enough wood for the hearths and kitchen fires. He didn't see how Ugo had been able to get the wood chopped with all his other work. Except, Wiz thought glumly, he's probably a lot more efficient at it, than I am.
The goblin servant came by the wood pile several times to check Wiz's progress and sniffed disapprovingly at what he saw. He also very ostentatiously examined the axe for damage each time and strictly forbade Wiz to sharpen it.
Worse than the boredom, Moira avoided him. She wasn't obvious about it and she was always distantly polite when they met, but she contrived to spend as little time in his company as she could. Wiz took to standing on the batlements of the keep and watching her as she worked in the garden far below. From the occasional glance she threw his way he knew she saw him, but she never asked him to stop.
He had been closer to her when they were on the run, Wiz thought miserably. About the only time he could count on seeing her was when they sat down to dinner.
But the worst thing of all was that there were no computers. Because of the magical changes that let him speak the local language, Wiz couldn't even write out programs. He took to running over algorithms mentally, or sitting and sorting piles of things algorithmatically. At night his dreams of Moira alternated with dreams of working at a keyboard again and watching the glowing golden lines of ASCII characters march across the screen.
One morning Moira found him sitting at the table in the hall practicing with broomstraws.
"What are you doing, Sparrow?" she asked, eyeing the row of different length straws on the table before him.
"I'm working a variation on the shell sort."
"Those aren't shells," Moira pointed out.
"No, the algorithm—the method—was named for the man who invented it. His name was Shell."
"Is this magic?" she demanded.
"No. It's just a procedure for sorting things. You see, you set up two empty piles . . ."
"How can piles be empty?"
"Well, actually you establish storage space for two empty piles. then you . . ."
"Wait a minute. Why don't you just put things in order?"
"This is a way of putting them in order."
"You don't need two piles to lay out straws in order."
"No, look. Suppose you needed to tell someone to lay out straws in order."
"Then I would just tell them to lay them out in order. I don't need two piles for that either."
"Yeah, but suppose the person didn't know how to order something."
"Sparrow, I don't think anyone is that stupid."
"Well, just suppose, okay?"
She sighed. "All right, I am working with someone who is very stupid. Now what?"
"Well, you want a method, a recipe, that you can give this person that will let them sort things no matter how many there are to be sorted. It should be simple, fast and infallible.
"Now suppose the person who is going to be doing the sorting can compare straws and say that one is longer than another one, okay?"
"Hold on," Moira cut in. "You want to do this as quickly as possible, correct?"
"Right."
"And your very-stupid person can tell when one straw is longer than another one, correct?"
"Right."
"Then why not just lay the straws down on the table one by one and put them in the right order as you do so? Look at the straws and put each one in its proper place."
"Because you can't always do that," Wiz said a little desperately. "You can only compare one pair of straws at a time."
"That's stupid! You can see all the straws on the table can't you?"
"You just don't understand," Wiz said despairingly.
"You're right," the red-headed witch agreed. "I don't understand why a grown man would waste his time on this foolishness. Or why you would want to sort straws at all." With that she turned away and went about her business.
"It's not foolishness," Wiz said to her back. "It's . . ." Oh hell, maybe it is foolishness here. He slumped back in the chair. After all, what good is an algorithm without a computer to execute it on?
But dammit, these people were so damn literal-minded! It wasn't that Moira didn't understand the algorithm—although that was a big part of it, he admitted. To Moira the method was just a way to sort straws. She didn't seem to generalize, to see the universality of the technique.
Come to that, most of the people here didn't generalize the way he did. They didn't think mathematically and they almost never went looking for underlying common factors or processes. This is what it must have been like back in the Middle Ages, before the rise of mathematics revolutionized Western thought.
Well, he thought, looking around the great hall with its fireplace and tapestries, this isn't exactly Cupertino. This is the Mid
dle Ages, pretty much.
So here I am, a Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. Full of all kinds of modern knowledge. And that and a quarter—or whatever they use here for quarters—will get me a cup of coffee—or whatever they drink here for coffee.
If he had been a civil engineer or something he could have put his knowledge to use. He might at least have shown people how to build better bridges or catapults or whatever. But he wasn't even a hardware type. Strictly software. And the only thing his knowledge was good for was sorting straws.
With a disgusted motion Wiz swept the half-sorted straws onto the floor. He dragged the heavy carved chair from the table to a place by the window and sat with his feet propped on the window ledge staring out.
Back home he could look out over the freeway and housetops to rolling golden hills marked with dark slashes where clumps of oaks and eucalyptus grew. Here all he could see was trees and off in the distance mountains covered with more trees. He missed that combination of open vistas and people close by. He even missed the rivers of automobiles that poured down the freeway.
He did a quick calculation and realized they were coming down to the wire on the project at work. Probably cursing him for disappearing at a critical point. I wonder who they got to replace me? The thought of a stranger working at his terminal, rearranging his carefully piled stacks of printouts made him ache. He got up and started to pace the length of the hall.
He had left half a box of fried chicken in his desk drawer, he remembered. Will they find that before it starts to stink up the office? And what about my apartment? The rent should be due by now. The bills will be piling up in the mailbox. How do they handle stuff like that when someone disappears? Wiz didn't have a cat because the apartment didn't allow pets. For the first time he was glad of it. At least there was no one who was really dependent on me.
Ugo came in with a load of wood for the evening's fire. As he dropped it by the fireplace, he saw the chair against the window.
"You move?" he demanded.
"Yes."
He scowled and pointed at the chair. "Do not move things. It would confuse the Lady." He shifted it back to its place by the table.