by Rick Cook
Moira continued her chant as if nothing had changed. She lowered her staff and pointed at the heart. Bale-Zur stayed motionless, great taloned hands resting on his misshapen horned knees. The hedge witch extended her staff and tapped the crystal sphere once, twice, three times. The demon leaned forward as if in special interest. Moira repeated the three taps and Bale-Zur cocked its head. Again the three taps and this time the demon seemed to shrink in on itself like a deflating balloon. Suddenly, noiselessly, it shrank and vanished without a trace. The glow faded and all that was left was a woman and a head-sized ball of some shiny black material.
Moira grounded her staff and sighed deeply. Then she sagged against it.
That broke the spell. Wiz rushed to her and put his arms about her shoulders. She leaned against him and he could feel her heart pounding even through the thick cloak she wore.
"Fine," she muttered. "M'fine. Just hold me, will you?"
Danny, Jerry and June all gathered around them in the deepening gloom of evening. Moira took a deep breath and straightened in Wiz's arms.
"It is done," she said in a surprisingly strong voice.
Wiz looked at the globe, now cold and dark. "That's it then," he said. "Bale-Zur is gone."
"May we never see its like again," Moira said fervently.
"Oh, you will not, mortals," said a sweetly mocking voice behind them. "I see that in your future."
All four of them whirled. There, standing poised on the ruined wall, was an elf.
Like all her kind, she was tall and slender. The delicate points of her ears peeked through the long dark hair that curved around her face and fell loose down her back. Her oddly slanted eyes were as blue as Moira's were green. In spite of the cold she wore a shoulderless gown of fine pale pink stuff that rippled in the chill wind and set off her pale skin and dark hair. She was as alien as she was beautiful, utterly relaxed and as menacing as a tiger poised to spring.
June screamed and sank back against Danny. Moira stepped to the side and held her staff aloft as if to strike. Danny clutched June to him and Wiz and Jerry simply goggled.
"Uh, hi," Wiz said, completely nonplussed. "Lisella, isn't it?"
The elf maiden arched her beautifully formed brows and pursed her red lips in a mock pout.
"You have forgotten me already. I am disappointed, Sparrow."
"Ah, not exactly." I never forget someone who's tried to kill me. The elf looked amused at his discomfort.
"So," he said at last, "what brings you here?"
Lisella smiled, bright and cold as the moon at midwinter. "Why, I came to renew our acquaintance, Sparrow, and to offer you a gift of prophecy. Shall I tell you your future?"
"Uh, no thanks."
"Ruin and loss," Lisella went on as if he had not spoken. "Your company shall meet your greatest enemy, one like you with powers as great as yours and allies greater than you can imagine." Her voice rang off the stones and the wind pulled at her skirt and hair. "At the crossroads of the worlds you and your companions shall meet him in a great battle. The mightiest among you shall die, each of your number shall suffer great loss and your enemy shall achieve his heart's desire."
She raised her arm and made a sweeping gesture that encompassed all of them. "That is your future, mortals. That is what lies ahead."
And then she was gone. The only sound was June's harsh sobbing echoing off the cold stone.
They looked at each other.
"Bitch!" Danny said fiercely as he clung to his wife. "Goddamn bitch."
"That's the one who was trying to kill you?" Jerry asked Wiz.
"Yeah. She kept trying to set up magical accidents."
"Why?"
"Who knows? I met her once at Duke Aelric's but by that time she'd been after me for months. I think it was some sort of cat-and-mouse game between her and Aelric—with them as cats and me as the mouse. She'd try to kill me by accident and Aelric would help me escape by the skin of my teeth."
"Do you think she's after you again?"
Wiz looked apprehensively at the place on the wall where Lisella had stood. Then he shrugged. "Maybe."
Jerry followed his gaze. "It sounds like we're in for some real trouble."
"If she's right, maybe."
"Well, elves can foretell the future, can't they?"
"Foretelling and true speaking are two different things," Moira said firmly. "Elves can see truly but they are as false and tricksome as a piskhie maze. Clearly she means us no good and we had best ignore what she has said."
It would have been more convincing, Wiz thought, if her knuckles hadn't been white on her staff.
"Well anyway, I think we'd better wind up here and get back to the Capital," Jerry said. "Bal-Simba needs to know about this."
"I don't think he's going to like it much," Wiz predicted.
* * *
Wiz's prophecy, at least, was correct. The enormous black wizard heard them out and then led them back through their story time and again with sharp questions. At last he had no more questions and simply sat with his head sunk into his hamlike hands. The group of programmers sat clustered around the table, unsure what to do next but unwilling to depart without his leave.
"What do you think it means, Lord?" Wiz ventured at last.
"I wish I knew, Sparrow." He lapsed into silence again.
"There have been other elven prophecies to mortals," Moira said. "Or so the stories say."
"Not like this," Arianne said from her place behind Bal-Simba's chair. "Those stories speak of chance meetings and a prophecy given either as a reward or punishment."
"This was neither," Bal-Simba said. "She asked for nothing. More, she obviously sought you out at a time when you would all be together and away from the Capital and its protections."
"What should we do?"
"There is nothing we can do. The future may be open to elves, but to us it is closed and hidden. We can only live our lives as best we can and see what comes of all this."
"I wish I knew what her game was," Wiz said.
"I wish I knew why she wanted you dead," Moira replied.
"She hasn't tried to kill me since I was kidnapped to the City of Night. That's something anyway."
"True," Bal-Simba said. "It is something. I only wish I knew what."
Six: QUEST COMPANION
Good help is so hard to find nowadays.
—Personnel manager's lament
Craig paused at the foot of the stairs and went over his spiel again. He wanted to get this just right, otherwise Panda would think he was crazy.
For two weeks he had visited Judith every night, even missing two Friday gaming sessions in a row. Slowly and patiently he had worked the story out of her; where she had gone and what she had seen and done.
It was unbelievable. It was fantastic. Except that it made sense. When you put it together with other little things over the last year, it had to be true!
The exultation grew until a lump rose in his throat from sheer joy. There were other worlds where magic worked! It wasn't all just game scenarios and science fiction. Those places really did exist and you could get there from here! He shivered again at the wonder of it all.
Only—now he needed help.
Out on the street the traffic rushed by unheeded. Craig stared unseeing, while he went over his dilemma one more time.
Somehow he had to find a way to open that door into the other world. He wanted that more desperately than he had ever wanted anything in his life, even, he realized with a guilty start, more than he had wanted his mother to live. But he had to have a Quest Companion, someone to help him push that door open.
Who? He had spent most of the last three days going over possibilities and the list was disappointingly small. When you got right down to it, Craig realized, he didn't have any close friends except maybe Judith.
The gamers were the only people he actually knew. But he really didn't like them much and most of them thought he was kind of strange. Besides, they couldn't help him. The
thought of Joe or Howard as Quest Companions on a real quest was silly and the rest didn't know enough about computers.
There were the others, the ones he met in the shadowy neverland of bulletin boards in his secret identity as Skullslayer, the master hacker. But he knew as little about them as they did about him. It would be embarrassing to confide in someone and then have it turn out to be a pimply faced thirteen-year-old.
There was one whose real identity he did know. A year and a half ago Panda had taken the unusual and dangerous step of contacting him in person. He was such an outtasight hacker that he'd discovered Skullslayer's identity and found that he used to work as a part-time operator in the University computer center. Not only that, he knew that Craig's password and login were still active!
The stuff about the virus, that had been an accident. Mikey had explained it all to him the night he showed up at his apartment and wanted help to cover it up. At first he'd been scared that Mikey was going to turn him over to the FBI, but Mikey just sort of mentioned in passing that he knew a lot about Skullslayer and of course if he was picked up he'd have to make a deal to save his own skin. Just this one favor, Mikey had promised, and we'll be square.
Actually it was a thrill and kind of an honor to be involved in something as big as the Jesse James Virus. So in a matter of ten minutes, from his living room, he had hopelessly muddled the trail that led from the out-of-control computer virus back to Panda.
They'd never met in person again, but they had become good friends over the BBSs. Craig followed Panda's exploits with admiration and more than a little awe. The guy was not only good, he was, well, daring. A dozen times or more Panda had boldly gone where no hacker had gone before, coming up with phone numbers and access codes to some of the most outrageous systems.
A woman with a bag of groceries in either arm came up the walk from the parking lot. She stepped off the sidewalk to pass well around Craig, eyeing him suspiciously as she did so.
She's gonna call the cops on me. Well, he couldn't delay any longer.
* * *
The name on the door was "Michael E. Baker," but Craig knew everyone called him Mikey—like in the cereal commercial.
"Panda? It's me. Skullslayer."
There was a muffled "just a minute" and the sound of a lock turning.
The door opened a crack and a blue eye peered out.
"You alone?"
"Yeah. Just me."
The door closed and then opened wide.
Mikey was shirtless and barefoot. He was several years older than Craig, but Craig was already beginning to bulge and Mikey was lean without being skinny. His blonde hair was cut surfer style and wire-rimmed glasses hid mild blue eyes. While Craig looked like a computer nerd, nothing suggested Mikey Baker was one of the most accomplished hackers in Silicon Valley.
"Come on in." He turned his back on his guest and strode back into the apartment.
"Nice place," Craig said as he closed the door behind him. The living room was furnished in modern chrome-and-leather furniture. Brown leather that complemented the beige carpet and the darker brown drapes. One entire wall was taken up with an elaborate entertainment center, including a big-screen television that was playing soundlessly. It was fairly neat for a hacker pad. No printouts, no posters, no stacks of books and magazines, just the day's newspaper on the floor by the recliner and a couple of empty beer cans.
Mikey went back into the kitchenette and opened the refrigerator. "Want a beer?"
Craig plopped himself down on the leather-and-chrome sofa. "No thanks." Then he saw what was on television and his jaw dropped.
A luscious brunette was squatting before a man who was hung like a horse. The man's pants were down around his ankles and the woman was completely naked. The camera closed in tight on the man's crotch and the woman's mouth.
"X channel," Mikey said as he came back into the living room with a beer in his hand. "Satellite feed."
"Wow. I thought you couldn't get those here."
Mike smiled. "They're up on the satellites if you know where to look."
Craig watched the action on the screen some more. "Wow."
"How'd you find me?"
Craig tore his eyes away from the television.
"The day you—uh—came over to my place. I got your license number." He shrugged. To any true system breaker the rest was obvious.
Mikey grunted. "Pretty cute. So what brings you here?"
Craig tore his eyes away again.
"You know Judith Conally?"
"No."
"Well, I game with her and . . ."
Mikey grinned. "Is she a good fuck?"
Craig colored. "I never . . . I mean, I don't know her that well."
Mikey's grin got even wider. "So if she's not a good fuck why play games with her?"
Craig stopped dead. That was the thing about Panda. He had a way of derailing your train of thought. And you could never be quite sure when he was kidding.
"Well, she's in the hospital, see? She had a real bad accident. I've been going to see her and sometimes she, like, talks, you know? Like she doesn't know what she's saying.
"Anyway," he hurried on, "she's been talking about this world where magic works and there are dragons and wizards and all that kind of shit."
Mikey popped the top of the beer. "So?"
"So I don't think it's just a story."
"Get real!" Mike took a hefty swig from the can and turned back toward the TV. A skinny blonde with a haystack hairdo and basketball breasts was being caressed from behind by a black man.
"No, listen man. She went someplace last year, her and a bunch of other people. They were recruited at an SCA war and they were gone for maybe six months. Everyone who went has been real secretive. It was right after Judith came back that she started trying to write fantasy.
"And," he concluded triumphantly, "they got paid in gold! I remember Judith bitching about how hard it was to get it changed into money."
Mike turned back to his visitor. "And you think they went to Middle Earth or something?" he said contemptuously.
"They sure as hell didn't go to Redmond, Washington. Microsoft doesn't pay its people in gold."
Mikey turned back to the television. "Bullshit."
"Wait, there's more. They were recruited to, like, program magic. Over there you can hack magic the way you can computers. Programmers are super-wizards in that world."
"And you believe her. This cunt's wacked out of her mind in the hospital and you still believe her."
"I'm telling you it all fits!" Craig said desperately. "It's gotta be true."
"It's still bullshit. And even if it's true, so what? What's that got to do with us?"
"Don't you see, we can go there too!"
Mikey set the beer down. "Why the fuck would we want to do that?"
Craig stopped with his mouth open. In all his planning, in all his imagining this meeting, that question never occurred to him. "Well," he said lamely, "it would be an adventure."
Mikey snorted.
"There's gotta be all kinds of treasure and stuff laying around. They paid all those people in gold, man! And we'd be wizards. Super-powerful wizards over there."
Mikey stared at the television and said nothing. On the screen the blonde was pistoning up and down on the black man. Her breasts were flapping like tethered balloons, but not a strand of her haystack hair was out of place.
"So what do you want me to do?"
"I, uh, need help figuring out how to make the stuff work. I need someone who's even better than I am and Panda's the best!"
Mikey accepted the compliment without comment. For a long time he sat and drank his beer, watching the screen and saying nothing while Craig fidgeted in silence.
Finally he tilted the bottle and drained the last drops. "I want to talk to your friend."
Craig hesitated. "She's kind of hard to talk to."
Mikey smiled a 1,000-watt smile. All of a sudden he looked about fifteen and utterly charmi
ng. "I think I can get through to her."
* * *
"Hi, Sheila, we're here to see Judith."
The young black nurse stood up from the filing cabinet and turned around. "Hi, Craig. One of you will have to stay here. Rules say only one visitor at a time."
"Oh, come on Sheila, it would only be for a couple of minutes."
"Please," Mikey said, flashing one of his winning smiles. "We'll only be a few minutes and I really think it would do her good to see us both."
He looked so sincere, so innocent and so vulnerable that Sheila hesitated and then nodded. "Well, all right. But don't tire her out. And if the supervisor comes around, you snuck by me. Okay?"
"Did you catch the ass on that nurse?" Mikey asked in an undervoice as they headed for Judith's room.
Judith had a roommate now, an elderly Italian woman who lay spread-eagled beneath the sheets and breathed in great, wracking gasps. Otherwise everything was exactly as it had been on Craig's first visit.
"Hi, Judith," Craig said brightly. "This is Mikey. He's a friend."
There was no response from the bed. Mikey glared at Craig.
"It takes a little bit to get her talking," he whispered. Then he turned back to Judith.
"Mikey's interested in dragons, Judith. Dragons and wizards and magic. You know, the stuff you saw in the other place."
The woman's eyelids fluttered.
"You remember the dragons you saw. The ones you could ride on."
Judith's lips moved. Out of the corner of his eye Craig could see Mikey sitting impassively.
"You remember the flying dragons, don't you, Judith?" Craig went on with a tinge of desperation. "The ones you rode?"
" . . . not ride," Judith mumbled. "Mad at me . . ."
Craig threw a triumphant look at Mikey, but Mikey's expression didn't change.