by Rick Cook
Bal-Simba entered with Arianne at his side. He stood in the doorway for a moment, surveying the organized chaos, and then moved to the great chair on the platform overlooking the room.
On the wall opposite a map sprang into existence showing the Lands of the North and much of the Freshened Sea. Already there were six arrowheads of red fire approaching the Southern Coast. Six strikes coming in at widely spaced points, two of them obviously directed at the Capital. Here and there nebulous patches of gray and dirty green glowed on the map where the Sight would not reach.
Bal-Simba leaned forward in the chair to study the pattern of the attack.
"What do you make of it?" he asked his apprentice.
"If half of that is real," she said, gesturing to the colors on the map, "it is the biggest attack the League has ever mounted. Do you suppose that has something to do with the great disturbance in the Wild Wood this afternoon?"
"No, that was something else."
"This is powerful, but it seems—disorganized—as if it was hastily put together. Also, we have had no reports from the South to suggest an attack was being readied."
Bal-Simba waved her to silence. "Let us watch and see if we can find the underlying pattern."
Down in the pit three sweating magicians worked to keep the map updated. To the right of Bal-Simba’s great chair on the platform five of the Mighty sat in a tight ring around a glowing brazier, mumbling spells. Now and then one or the other of them would throw something on the fire and the smoke and the reek would rise up to fill the chamber. Down in the earth and up in the towers, others of the Mighty worked alone, weaving and casting their own spells to aid the defense.
"Seventh group coming in," sang out one of the Watchers. "Airborne. Probably dragons."
Bal-Simba studied the configuration written in lambent script on the wall.
"Launch dragons to intercept. Tell them not to stray over the water."
"Dragons away, Lord."
"Time to intercept seventeen minutes," another talker reported. Others huddled over crystals keeping contact with the dragon force.
"Porpoises report three krakens moving toward the Hook. Formation suggests they are screening something else."
Around the room crystals glowed green, red and yellow as the talkers contacted the forces of the North and prepared for the struggle. From the most battle-ready guard troops to the hedge-witches in the villages the word went out. All the North braced to receive the assault.
But no one thought to tell the inhabitants of a small keep hidden away in the Wild Wood.
High above the Capital the Dragon Leader climbed for altitude. Reflexively he checked the great bow carried in a quiver by his steed’s neck. The fight was unlikely to close to a range where arrows would do any good, but it gave him a sense of security to know they were there. Outside the freezing wind tore and whistled about him, but inside his magically generated cocoon a warming spell kept him comfortable. He would have to turn that off as he approached intercept to present minimal magical signature and to make his detectors more sensitive, he knew, and he hated that more than he feared dying.
Echeloned out below and behind him were the seven other dragons of his squadron. He spared them a glance as he checked his communications with the other dragon flights and with the Watchers back in the high hall of the keep.
His dragon’s wings beat air as the beast clawed for height. With each stroke the Dragon Leader felt muscles pulse and jump beneath his thighs. With gentle leg pressure he turned his mount south, toward the Freshened Sea and the swiftly moving misty patch on the magic detectors that might indicate an air attack coming in. Reflexively his head swiveled, seeking any sign of his foes.
The moon was bright and just beginning to wane. The silvery light picked out the surface of the clouds, creating a wonderland of tops and towers, nubbly fields and high streaming pennons beneath him. Here and there the contorted fields of clouds were marked by pools of inky black where an opening let the light stream through to the ground below.
The Dragon Leader took it all in as he scanned the surface. He was less interested in the beauty than in what the clouds might conceal. As the first group off, his troop had drawn high cover—flying above the clouds to seek out the League’s agents. Other troops were at work beneath the clouds while the clouds themselves were searched magically. Somewhere ahead of him was the enemy—or what appeared to be the enemy, he corrected himself. It was not unknown for the League to enhance a bat or a raven to make it look like a ridden dragon. The Dragon Leader bit his lips and kept scanning the cloud tops.
"Time to intercept twelve minutes," a voice said soundlessly inside his skull. He did not reply.
One of his men waved and pointed below. There silhouetted against the pale cloudtops, were four dragons skulking north. The Dragon Leader did not need to call the Capital to know they were not in the Council’s service.
He rose in his stirrups and looked behind him. The rest of his troop had seen the enemy too and were waiting expectantly for his signal.
The Dragon Leader switched off his warming spell, gestured down at the other dragons and patted the top of his head in the time-honored signal to dive on the enemy. A gentle nudge with the knees, a slight pressure on the reins and his mount winged over to dive on the invading force.
The Dragon Leader was well into his dive when the four dragons below him winged over and scattered into the clouds. The leader swore under his breath and signalled his squadron to break off the attack. We’ll never find them in that, he thought. Sharp eyes in that patrol. It was almost as if they had been warned.
As if they had been warned… !
"Break! Break!" he screamed into his communications crystal. But it was already too late. The hurtling shapes plummeting down from the moon-haze were upon them and two of his dragons had already fallen to the ambush.
Abstractedly, the Dragon Leader realized he had been suckered. A flight of enemy dragons had snuck in earlier, perhaps laying silent and magicless on the ground until it was time to climb high above the chosen ambush site. Then they had waited until the flight committed to the attack on the decoys. Another part of his mind told him that if they succeeded in eliminating the top cover the lower squadrons would be horribly vulnerable to dragons diving out of the clouds.
But that was all abstract. The reality was the twisting, plunging battle all about him. In the distance he saw the flare of dragon fire. Another circle and he saw a ball of guttering flame dropping into the clouds. A dragon and probably a rider gone. He could not tell whose.
The Dragon Leader leaned forward against the neck of his mount and pressed his body close to cut air resistance. His dragon was diving with wings folded for maximum velocity. Now it was a simple speed contest. If he could plummet fast enough he had a chance of reaching the dubious safety of the clouds. If not, man and beast would be incinerated in a blast of dragon fire or dashed to pieces on the cold earth below.
The clouds reached out for him, first in wisps and tendrils and then as a solid, gray mass. He was in them now and hidden from sight. Magic could find him, but unless the searcher was a wizard, he would need to scan the clouds actively. He doubted his enemies would try. Dragon riders had a saying: "he who lights up first gets smoked." The Dragon Leader had no intention of using active magic.
Enough hiding, he thought, and turned his mount in a wide, climbing arc. His attackers had not followed him into the cloud, which meant they had probably gone hunting other prey. Even if they had not, they would be loitering on the cloud tops, without speed or height advantage. Fine with him. The Dragon Leader had lost his wingman in the first stoop and he was spoiling for a fight.
His mount was tiring, but the Dragon Leader urged her up out of the clouds, trying for enough altitude to rejoin the battle.
His magic detector screamed in his ear and he jerked under the impact of the seraching spell. Too late he saw his mistake. The enemy dragon had been laying for him, not down on the clouds but well above
with no magic showing. Now he was trapped. The other was too close and had too much maneuvering ability to lose in the clouds again and there was no time to turn into the attack.
In desperation the Dragon Leader threw his mount into a tight spiral dive and clawed his bow and a heavy iron arrow free from his quiver. Over his shoulder he could see his opponent hurtling down on him, with speed, altitude and position all on his side.
At the last instant he kneed his mount and jerked the reins hard over and down. The dragon dropped her inside wing and dived even more steeply. A brilliant burst of dragon-fire destroyed his night vision and bathed his face with heat. Then his first opponent hurtled past, so close they could almost have touched, and was lost in the pearly clouds.
His opponent’s wing man had more time to react. He had slowed his dragon, great wings beating mightily to brake his dive and he had used the time to line up. Worse, the Dragon Leader was in the process of recovering from the sideslip and could not maneuver.
But shooting dragon fire is not an easy matter and the wing man was not as skilled as his leader. The blast of blinding, scorching heat only touched the Dragon Leader and his mount. He smelled burned hair and knew it was his. His dragon bucked and roared in pain, but both of them were still in the air. Meanwhile the wing man was diving past, still trying to slow and turn on his opponent.
It was a fatal combination. The Dragon Leader loosed a shaft as the enemy swept by. It was nearly a right-angle deflection shot and the mechanics worked against him as much as they did against the enemy. But he felt a tingle in his hands as the arrow leapt from the bow and he knew the arrow had seen its target.
The shaft sensed the enemy dragon and adjusted its trajectory accordingly. The tiny crystal eyes on either side of the broad barbed head both acquired the dragon and guided the arrow unerringly. The range was so close that the wing man’s magic detector barely had time to begin to sound and he had no time at all to maneuver out of the way.
The shaft struck deep into the dragon’s neck with force that drove it through scales and muscle until it struck bone. The beast arched its neck back and screamed in mortal agony while its rider clung desperately and despairingly to its back. Then the arrow’s spell took hold and the dragon went limp.
Below him the Dragon Leader saw the shape of the other dragon twisting dark against the gray-white clouds. As it disappeared into the cloud bank there was a faint pinkish glow marking the dragon’s last feeble gout of flame.
The Dragon Leader craned his neck, swiveling and searching for others in the night sky. There were none and no sign of battle anywhere. The moonlit cloud field was as quiet and serene as if nothing had happened here.
But it had happened, the Dragon Leader knew. His own scorched skin told him that. Soon there would be pain as the nerves started to complain of destroyed tissue. Now it was merely heat. The wheezy breathing and weary movements of his mount’s great wings told him she too had suffered from the other dragon’s fire. And worst, there would be at least three empty roosts back at the aerie tonight. That hurt more than the burns ever would.
"There will be other days," the Dragon Leader promised through cracked and blistered lips as he looked to the south. "There will be other days."
It was late and the fire in Wiz’s chamber had long since burned to cold, gray ash. He sat by the fireside, now lit only by the silver moonlight pouring in through the window, watching cloud shadows make patterns on the pier glass.
Damn fools, he thought for the tenth time. Can’t they see how valuable all this is. All right, so I made a mistake. But don’t they see its worth?
"We’ve had this conversation before," the mirror told him.
"But they’re wrong," Wiz said. "Damn it, they are wrong and I’m right. I know it."
All evening he had alternated between anger, chagrin and self-pity. Each cycle was less satisfying than the one before and by now he was just going through the motions.
"That’s not really the issue, is it?" the mirror spoke quietly in Wiz’s mind. "If it was you wouldn’t be telling me all this again, would you?"
"Can’t they see… ?"
"Can you? What is really eating at you?"
"They were wrong!" Wiz protested tiredly. They were wrong and he was right and that was all there was to it.
"Is it?" the mirror asked. "Is that all there is to it?"
Wiz didn’t answer. Magic or no, the damn mirror was right. There was more than that.
He had been convinced he was right and he had done what he always did when he believed that: he went ahead without worrying about what others thought.
"And this time?" the mirror prompted him.
This time others had been involved, he realized. There was no way they could not be.
Working magic wasn’t like sneaking some extra time on the computer to try a new hack. If this barfed, the results were a lot worse than crashing the system. It wasn’t just his life he was messing with, but theirs as well, and not surprisingly they resented it bitterly.
"Well, wouldn’t you?" the mirror asked. "Do you like having people mess with your life?"
"All right," Wiz said tiredly. "You’re right. I was right too, but I was wrong in the way I went about it. I should have tried to work with them rather than ignoring them. Maybe I should have convinced them, won them over, before proceeding. But dammit! They didn’t have to make such a big deal of it."
"But you promised," the mirror said soundlessly.
That stopped him. To these people promises were something important. You kept your promises here because they had a force more binding than contracts on his home world.
People were so much more sincere, so much more real here. Surrounded by magic and the stuff of fantasy the people were more intensely human than the people he had known at home.
Or was it just that he cared more about them? He did, he realized. Not just Moira, but Shiara and Ugo, too. Even the tiny unseen folk of the forest.
He’d hurt them by betraying their trust and that, in turn, had hurt him. He was unhappy here so he’d tried to do what he always did—take refuge in technical things, to bury himself in not-people. Only this time it had only involved him more closely with the people around him.
Slowly, slowly, William Irving Zumwalt began to think about what it meant to consider other people’s feelings.
Perhaps he was right about the magic language. But that didn’t make what he had done right. Magic wasn’t a computer system where he had the expertise to follow up his idea.
What was it one of his professors used to say? Always use the right tool for the job. The right tool to repair a television set is a television repairman. The right tool for this job was a wizard. He should have talked to Bal-Simba or one of the other Mighty and let them follow through. But he had wanted to be somebody here so he had charged ahead like some damn user with a bright idea. And very predictably he had screwed things up and caused a lot of people trouble.
Let’s face it. I’m not a magician and I never will be. I can’t be anything special here. I’m just me and I have to live with that and make the best of it.
Bal-Simba had said that too. The black giant was wise in ways more than magic.
So no more magic, Wiz resolved firmly. I’ll explain my idea and that will be the end of it. Then I’ll chop the wood and learn to live as best I can. Perhaps some day they’ll forgive me for what I did. In the meantime…
He grinned. In the meantime I accept being a sparrow and quit trying to be an eagle.
He looked at the mirror. But all he saw was the dim reflection of a moonlit window and he heard nothing at all.
Wiz rose from his chair, drained, exhausted and his knees aching from sitting in one place too long. Time for bed, he thought. Way past time. You’ve got a life to build tomorrow.
There was a "whoosh" overhead followed by several bumps on the roof.
A confused bat? He hesitated, then picked his cloak off the chair and went into the hall. It was doubtful anyone else
had heard and he wanted to see what the noise was.
His shoes padded lightly on the stone corridor. All the castle was deathly still. He heard no more thumps. At the end of the corridor was a short flight of stone steps to the roof door. Wiz put his foot on the first step up.
The door burst inward with a crash and black-clad warriors poured down on him. Too stunned to shout, Wiz flinched back from the black apparitions.
He found himself staring into merciless dark eyes and felt the prick of a dagger at his throat. He was forced back roughly against the wall and held as the rest of the storming party rushed by, but otherwise he was unharmed.
The Shadow Warriors’ orders were explicit: seize the magicians and burn the castle. Whether the other inhabitants lived or died was not in their orders and was thus of little concern to them. Wiz was subdued and silent, so he lived.
The Shadow Captain spared a long searching glance for the prisoner as he went by. The man so expertly pinned against the wall was peculiar, but he was clearly not a magician. There was neither trace nor taint of magic about him.
It never occurred to the Shadow Captain that someone might be working magic second hand or that there was no more reason to expect a magic sign on such a one than to expect machine oil on the clothes of a programmer who wrote control software for industrial robots. The notion was so utterly alien that Toth-Set-Ra himself had not considered it. The captain’s orders covered only magicians.
Swiftly and silently, the assault force padded down the stairs. In teams of two and three, warriors checked every room on every level, but the vanguard never slowed. Wiz was dragged along by a knot of Shadow Warriors to the rear of the party.
They were down on the second level when they met their first opposition. It was Ugo, coming up the stairs with a tray balanced on one hand and a branch of candles in a candelabra in the other.