Wizard's Bane

by Rick Cook

  "I'm sorry," Wiz said contritely.

  "Do not move things," the goblin said sternly and continued on his way.

  "Damn!" Wiz said to the empty air.

  "Do not curse, Sparrow."

  Wiz turned and saw Moira had come back into the hall.

  "Sorry," he muttered.

  "Is something wrong?"

  "No, just a little homesick."

  "I am sorry, Sparrow. I, too, wish to go home."

  "At least you can get there from here," he said sullenly.

  Moira compressed her lips. "Not while the Mighty bid me here to watch over you."

  "You don't do much watching. The only time I see you is at meals."

  "Oh? Do you feel the need for a nursemaid, Sparrow?"

  "I'm in love with you. I want to be close to you. Is that so hard to understand?"

  Moira dropped her eyes. "That was none of my doing."

  "All right, you don't love me," Wiz said bitterly. "Then take this damn spell off me!"

  "Do not use language like that." Moira said sharply.

  "Sorry," Wiz snapped, "but that's what it is."

  The red-headed witch sighed. "Sparrow, if I had my way you never would have been bound to me in the first place. If it were in my power to remove the spell I would do so in an instant. But I cannot.

  "I did not put the spell on you, Patrius did. It is not an infatuation spell I know and I do not have the faintest idea how to release you. Bal-Simba or one of the other Mighty could perhaps remove it. When Bal-Simba comes here I will ask him to take the spell off. More, I will beg him to take it off."

  She softened. "I am sorry, Sparrow, but that is the best that I can do."

  "Great," Wiz said. "In the meantime I've got a case of terminal puppy love combined with the moby hots for you. I've got to live under the same roof with you and have nothing to do with you. Da . . . darnit, before this happened you weren't even my type! I like willowy brunettes."

  Moira reddened. "I suppose you think this is easy for me! To have you trailing after me like a puppy dog, or a bull and me a cow in season? To have to stay here when there are people elsewhere who need me? To have to tiptoe around avoiding you for both our sakes? Do you think I enjoy any of it?" she shouted, her freckles vivid against her flushed skin, her bosom heaving and her green eyes flashing like emeralds in candlelight. Wiz could only stare, but Moira didn't notice.

  "Sparrow, believe me when I tell you I want nothing so much as to be rid of you and gone from this place." She turned on her heel and slammed out the door.

  "Damn that old wizard anyway!" Wiz said viciously in his teeth. Then he went off to the woodpile to turn logs into kindling.

  Moira didn't exactly apologize and neither did Wiz. But the outburst seemed to clear the air slightly and for a while things at Heart's Ease were a little less strained.

  Other than that, life went on as before. Wiz chopped wood and moped about, Moira stayed out of his way, Shiara was as beautiful and gracious as ever and Ugo grumbled.

  In addition to cutting firewood and sighing after Moira, Wiz did try to learn more about his new world and his new home.

  "Ugo, why is Heart's Ease so special?" Wiz asked one morning when the little wood goblin came out to the wood pile to collect his work.

  "Because the Lady live here," said Ugo in a tone that indicated only an idiot would ask such a question.

  Wiz put the axe down and wiped his brow. "I mean besides that. Moira said there was something about the way it was built."

  "No magic," Ugo told him. "Every stone raised by hand. Every board and beam felled by axe and shaped by adze. All joined with pegs and nails. No magic anywhere in the building."

  "Why not?"

  "The Lady does not like magic," the goblin servant said, gathering in an armload of wood. "It hurts her now." With that he turned away to his duties.

  Pumping Ugo for information was never very satisfactory, Wiz thought as he washed and changed for dinner. But then damn little around here is.

  Wiz pulled a clean shirt out of his chest and paused in front of the mirror before putting it on. The days at the woodpile had put muscle on his frame and the sun had darkened his normally pasty torso. He still wasn't going to win any bodybuilding contests, but he had to admit he looked a lot better than he normally did.

  "Pretty good for someone who's totally useless," he told himself.

  "Are you sure?" the mirror asked soundlessly.

  Wiz jumped and gasped. Then he stared. The mirror was angled so it did not catch the full brightness of the sun. It's surface was dark and cloudy as always.

  "Are you sure you're so useless?" the mirror repeated. The words formed in Wiz's mind.

  "Well, yeah I'm sure," Wiz said aloud.

  "You shouldn't be," the mirror said. "You were brought from a long way at the cost of a man's life. There are a lot of people who are looking very hard for you. I'd say that makes you pretty important."

  Great! Wiz thought. Now I'm getting a pep talk from a Goddamn mirror.

  "You need it from someone, bub. You've been sulking like a twelve-year-old ever since you got to Heart's Ease. You need to pull out of it."

  "What's the use? I don't fit in here and I never will."

  "With that attitude you're damn straight you never will," the mirror told him. "This isn't the first time you've been a fish out of water. You're the guy who spent two years doing software maintenance in a COBOL shop and managed to fit in pretty well."

  "Well yeah, but that was different."

  "Not that different. Wiz, old son, you've never exactly been a fount of social graces, but you've always gotten by. And you have never, never, given up before."

  "So I should beat my head against a stone wall?"

  "How do you know it's a stone wall? Face it, you haven't tried all that hard. There's got to be something here for you. All you have to do is find it."

  "I'm not so sure."

  "Patrius was. He must have had a reason to bring you here."

  "Moira says Patrius made a mistake."

  "Moira may be beautiful, but she's not always right."

  "Well . . ."

  "Moira is a consideration, though. If you were someone here, it might change her attitude."

  "If you're going to offer to play me a game, I refuse," Wiz told the mirror.

  "No offer," the mirror told him. "Only the observation."

  "Okay, but what could make me special here?"

  The mirror was silent.

  "Well?" Wiz demanded.

  "I don't know the answer to that."

  "Great. Then why the hell bring it up?"

  "Because you have two choices," the mirror bored on inexorably. "You can believe you will never amount to anything here, never fit in, and dissolve in your own bile. Or you can believe you have a place here and try to find it. Which do you prefer?"

  "All right. But how? What do I have to do?"

  "You'll think of something," the mirror told him.

  "You'll think of something," Wiz mimicked. "Thanks a lot!"

  "Sparrow?" Wiz turned and there was Shiara standing in the open door.

  "Who are you talking to?" she asked. Wiz flushed and opened his mouth to deny it. Then he changed his mind. After all, magic worked here.

  "I was talking to the mirror, Lady."

  Shiara frowned. "The mirror?"

  "Well, it talked to me first," he said defensively.

  Frowning, the mistress of Hart's Ease swept into the room, her long black gown swishing on the uneven floor. "This mirror?" she asked, putting out a hand to brush her fingertips across its silvery surface.

  "Yes, Lady. That mirror."

  Shiara smiled and shook her head.

  "I'm sorry, Lady, I know you don't allow magic in the castle, but . . ."

  "Sparrow, I think you have been brooding overmuch," Shiara told him gently.

  "Lady?"

  "There is no magic here. This is an ordinary mirror."

  "No magic?" Wiz
repeated dumbly.

  "No magic at all. Just a mirror."

  Wiz felt himself turning crimson to his hair roots. "But it talked to me! I heard it."

  "It talked to you or you talked to you?" she asked gently. "Sometimes it is easier to hear things about ourselves if they appear to come from outside us."

  Wiz looked back at the mirror, but the mirror remained mute.

  Late one afternoon Wiz happened to pass Moira in the great hall.

  "Moira," he asked, as she went by with a nod, "what happened to Shiara?"

  The hedge witch stopped. "Eh?"

  "She was a wizardess, wasn't she? But Ugo told me magic hurts her."

  "It does. To be in the presence of even tiny magics causes her pain. That is why she lives here in the quietest of the Quiet Zones in a keep built without the least magic."

  "How?"

  "What happened?"

  "By carpenters, masons and other workers who built without magic. Isn't that the way you build things in your world?"

  "No, I mean how did it happen to her?"

  Moira hesitated. "She lost her sight, her magic and her love all in one day. It is a famous tale, but of course you would never have heard it." She sighed. "Shiara the Silver they called her. With her warrior lover, Cormac the Gold, she ranged the World recovering dangerous magical objects that they might be held safely in the Council's vaults.

  "Not only was she of the Mighty, but she was a picklock of unusual skill. No matter what wards and traps protected a thing, she could penetrate them. No matter how fierce the guards set over a thing, Cormac could defeat them. With him to guard her back, she removed magic from the grasp of the League itself."

  "What happened?"

  "We went to the well once too often," Shiara said drily from the doorway.

  They both whirled and blushed. "Your pardon, Lady," Moira stammered. "I did not know . . ."

  "Granted willingly." Shiara swept into the hall, moving unerringly to them. "So you have not heard my story, Sparrow?"

  "No, Lady. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to talk about you behind your back."

  "There is no need to be sorry." Her mouth quirked up at the corner. "The bards sing the tale in every tavern in the North, I understand. The price of fame is having your story told over and over by strangers."

  "I'm sorry," Wiz said again.

  "Perhaps you would like to hear the story as it happened?"

  "We do not wish to pain you, Lady." Moira said.

  Shiara chuckled, a harsh, brittle sound. "My child, the pain is in the loss. There is little enough ain in the telling." She seated herself in her chair by the fireplace. "Sometimes it even helps to repeat it."

  Moira sat down on the bench. "Then yes, Lady, we would like to hear the story, if you do not mind."

  "I've never heard it, Lady," Wiz said, sitting down as close to Moira as he could without being too obvious about it. Moira shifted slightly but did not get up.

  "Well then," Shiara smoothed out the folds in her skirt and settled back. "We were powerful in those days," she said reminiscently. "My hair was white even then and Cormac, ah, Cormac's hair was as yellow as fine gold."

  "And he was strong," Moira put in breathlessly. "The strongest man who ever lived and the best, bravest swordsman in all the North."

  "Not as strong as the storytellers say," Shiara said. "But yes, he was strong."

  "And handsome? As handsome as they say?"

  Shiara smiled. "No one could be that handsome. But he was handsome. I called him my sun, you know."

  Ugo entered unnoticed with a bundle of wood and set about kindling a fire.

  Seven

  Shiara's Story

  Shiara sensed the boy and girl looking up at her. Young, Shiara thought, so very young. Convinced the world is full of hope and possibilities and so blind to the truth. She felt the warmth of the fire on her face and turned her head to spread the heat. Then she sighed and began the old, old tale.

  "Once upon a time, there was a thief who loved a rogue . . ."

  Cormac, tall and strong with his corn-ripe hair caught back by a simple leather filet. He had doffed his leather breeks and linen shirt and stood only in his loin cloth. The fire turned his tan skin ruddy and highlighted the planes and hollows of his muscles. The scars stood out vividly on his torso and legs.

  "Well, Light. Do we know what the thing is?"

  Shiara shook her head and the motion made her tresses ripple. The highlights in her hair danced from the flames and the motion.

  "Only that it is powerful—and evil. An evil that can shake the World."

  "Mmmfph," Cormac grunted and turned back to his sword. Again he checked the leather cords on the hilt, running his fingers over them for any sign of looseness or slickness that might make the sword slip in his hand. "And it lies above us, you say?"

  Shiara nodded. "In a cave well above the tree line this thing sleeps." She bit her lip. "It sleeps uneasily and I do not like to think what it might become when it awakens."

  "And we must either possess it or destroy it." He shook his head. "It's an awful way to make a living, Light."

  "Terrible for two such honest tradesfolk," she agreed, falling into the well-worn game.

  The thief had been very, very good. With skill, cunning, carefully arrayed magic and a good element of luck he had managed to penetrate the crypt beneath the Capital where the most dangerous treasures of the Council were stored.

  In the end it had not been the Council that had caught him. When the vault's magic detectors screamed and guards and wizards came rushing to investigate, they found the thief already dead, his throat torn out by the guardian the original owner had set upon the thing he had come to steal.

  The object of the daring raid had been a chest imprisoning a demon of the sixth order, a thing powerful enough but not so unusual as to attract the close scrutiny of the Mighty The real treasure was in the hidden drawer in the bottom of the chest. What the compartment contained was well worth scrutiny.

  "I had heard of the thieving of course," Cormac told her as they toiled up the steep trail toward the foreboding summit, "but I had not known what was in the compartment."

  "A parchment," Shiara said. "A map and a note that a very old and very great treasure of magic lay somewhere in a cave near the top of this mountain."

  "So we come hotfoot deep into the Wild Wood to stir up something which has lain undisturbed for aeon and on," Cormac said. "Better, I think, to leave it lie. Sufficient unto the day are the evils thereof, Light."

  Shiara smiled thinly. "This evil's day has come it seems. Someone knew of the map and we have strong reason to believe that that someone now knows at least generally what the map had to say. We think someone was looking through the eyes of our thief when he died."

  Cormac grunted. "So it is a race then." He looked up at the summit with its wreath of grey-black clouds.

  "A race," Shiara agreed. "Although we may have lost already."

  "You sense something?"

  "No, but I can use my head as well as my magic. Whoever sent that thief had more time to prepare than we did. If the League knew generally what was on that parchment they could easily have been ready to move."

  "So that is why we were sent upon the Wizard's Way. I mislike this, Light. If the League are ahead of us it means a meeting battle. Those are always chancy and I have the feeling we would be outnumbered."

  "I doubt any of the factions of the League Council would be left out of such an enterprise, so I cannot argue with you. But what would you? There were no others in the Capital fit for such a mission and we dared not delay." She looked up the trail. "We can only hope we are in time."

  As they worked their way up the steep slopes the forest changed around them. The great oaks and beeches gave way to pine and firs and thick green rhododendrons. Here and there outcrops of dark rock poked through the thinning soil, more and more of it as they climbed.

  The air changed about them as well, growing cooler and dank with the glacier
's breath. There was a dampness in the air that hinted fog and even in full daylight the mists moved the horizons closer. The mountain loomed over them and they had to crane their necks further and further back to see the snow-clad summit.

  They were almost to the treeline when Cormac pulled even with Shiara and spoke quietly in her ear. "We're being followed I think."

  Not by look or action did Shiara show she had heard. "How many?"

  Cormac shook his head. "Not many. Not creatures born to the woods either."

  "The League? The ones who set the thief?"

  "Possibly."

  Shiara stopped and closed her eyes. With intangible eyes and ears she searched for signs of magic about them. She did not dare risk active magic so close to something so powerful.

  "Ahhh," she breathed at last. "The League indeed. But one man only. Luck may be with us, my Sun. I think this is a private quest, not an expedition sent by the League Council."

  "You know this man?"

  "He is called Toth-Ra, a minor wizard."

  "Is he dangerous?"

  "Like an adder. Small and puffed with malice."

  "And we seek a dragon yonder." Cormac jerked his head toward the snow-covered heights. "Well, Light, what say you?"

  "I say leave him for now. He cannot do us much harm and I will need everything I have for lies above."

  Well behind the pair Toth-Ra toiled up the slope. He puffed as he came and stopped to rest frequently both because he was unused to exertion and because he did not want to tread too closely on the heels of the two Northerners ahead of him.

  A pretty train this, he thought, like ants following a scent trail.

  Even further above, he knew, was the party sent by the League to obtain the treasures of the mountain. A group of black robes and apprentices, carefully balanced to represent each faction of the League council. After them the two from the Council of the North. And finally, himself, representing naught but his own interests.

  Like a jackal following lions. He smiled sourly. Well enough. For when lions fight, jackals win.

  Toth-Ra had little doubt these lions would fight. Even without the Northerners, the very richness of what lay above guaranteed that.