The Wiz Biz

by Rick Cook

  “And those already in the North,” he asked, “behind the Watchers’ shield of spells?”

  “Our best servants are creatures of the dark. On Mid-Summer’s Day their power is at its weakest. Our dragon allies and our others seek as best they can, but there is so much magic upon the land that it is hard to scan.” He gestured into the Sea of Scrying. Atros looked and saw sparks and patches of magic everywhere.

  “Someone mighty enough to be worth the risk of a wizard like Patrius must leave a track even through that,” the giant magician objected.

  The newly made black robe lowered his head. “We have found no sign, Master.”

  Atros bit his lip thoughtfully. It was possible for a magician to hide his presence through cloaking spells, but such spells usually betrayed that something was being hidden. Either the League’s servants were unusually inept or this magician from beyond the World was extremely powerful. Someone that powerful might indeed tip the balance against the League.

  Unless . . .

  “Is there sign of aught unusual in the cities of the North?”

  “Nothing, Master, save what you know. Nothing unusual anywhere in the North’s territories.”

  “Then perhaps he whom we seek is not within the North’s territories,” Atros said suddenly. “Patrius performed his Great Summoning on the Fringe of the Wild Wood? Then search the Fringe most carefully. And extend your search into the Wild Wood itself.”

  “Thy Will, Master,” said the Watcher. “But there is no sign of anything unusual on the Fringe. Besides, it will mean weakening our search of the North’s lands.”

  “If he was in the North’s lands we would have some sign ere now,” Atros said. “Perhaps he goes another way to mislead us.”

  It was the Master’s turn to rub his chin thoughtfully. “If he pushes into the Wild Wood he brings himself closer to our servants and his magic will stand out even more strongly against the non-human magics of that place.”

  “Only if he uses magic,” Atros said. “If he weaves little or none he will be much harder to find, will he not?”

  “What kind of wizard travels without magical protection?”

  “A most powerful and dangerous one. So search carefully.” Atros paused for a moment, looking down into the Sea once more.

  “But our alien wizard will not find it so easy to shield his travelling companion,” he said. “Tell your searchers to look carefully for signs of a hedge witch in the Wild Wood. That should stand out strongly enough.”

  ###

  They camped where dusk found them, spreading their cloaks against a fallen log. Moira would not allow a fire, so their dinner consisted of some bits of jerked meat and a handful of leathery dried fruit. Normally, Wiz didn’t eat red meat, but things were decidedly not normal and he gnawed gratefully on the pieces Moira placed in his hand.

  As the twilight faded Moira took a stick and drew a design around them and their resting place.

  “The circle will offer us some small protection,” she told him. “Do not leave it tonight for anything.”

  “Not even for . . . ?”

  “Not for anything,” she repeated firmly.

  Without another word Moira rolled herself in her cloak and turned away from Wiz. He sat with his back to the log staring up at the unfamiliar stars.

  “This is soooo weird,” Wiz said, more to himself than Moira.

  “Sleeping outdoors is not what I am used to either,” she said.

  “No, I mean this whole business. Dragons. The magic and all. It’s just not like anything I’m used to.”

  Moira rolled over to face him. “You mean you really do not have magic where you come from?”

  “The closest I ever came to magic was working with Unix wizards,” said Wiz.

  “Eunuchs wizards? Did they do that to themselves to gain power?”

  “Huh? No. Not Eunuchs, Unix. Spelled . . .” Wiz realized he couldn’t spell the word. He recognized the shapes of the letters, but they twisted and crawled in his mind and no meaning attached to them. When he tried to sound the word out only runes appeared in his head.

  “Never mind, but it’s not that at all. It’s an operating system.”

  “Operating system?” Moira said frowning.

  “An operating system is a program which organizes the resources of a computer and virtualizes their interfaces,” Wiz quoted.

  “A computer? One who thinks?”

  For the thousandth time in his life, Wiz wished he were better at making explanations. “Well, kind of. But it is a machine, not alive.”

  “A machine is some kind of non-living thing then. But this machine thinks?”

  “Well, it doesn’t really think. It follows preprogrammed instructions. The programmer can make it act like it is thinking.”

  “Is it a demon of some kind?”

  “Uh, no. A demon’s something else. It’s a program that does something automatically when called. Unless of course it’s a daemon, then it’s active all the time.”

  Moira wrinkled her brow. “Let us go back a bit. What do you have to do with these creatures?”

  “They’re not creatures, really.”

  “These demons, then.”

  “I told you, they’re not demons. A demon is something else.”

  “Never mind all that,” Moira said impatiently. “Just tell me what you do.”

  “Well, I do a lot of things, but basically I’m a systems-level programmer. That means I write programs that help applications programs—those are the things people want done—to run.

  “What is a program?”

  Wiz sighed. “A program is a set of instructions that tells the computer what to do.”

  “You command these beings then?”

  “I told you, they’re not . . .”

  “All right. These creatures, or not-demons or whatever they are. You command them?”

  “Well, kind of.”

  “But you have no magic!”

  Wiz grinned. “You don’t need magic. Just training, skill, discipline and a mind that works in the right way.”

  “The qualities of a magician,” Moira said firmly. “And with these qualities you master these—things.”

  “Well, you try to. Some days you get the bear and some days the bear gets you.”

  “There are bears involved too?”

  “No, look, that’s just an expression. What I mean is that sometimes it’s easy to get the computer to do what you want and sometimes it isn’t.”

  “Powerful entities are often hard to control,” Moira nodded. “So you are the master of these—whatever they are.”

  “Well, not exactly the master. I work under a section chief, of course, and over him there’s a department head. Then there’s the DP Administrator . . .”

  “These entities tell you what to do?”

  “They aren’t entities, they’re people.”

  “But you do not master these, what did you call them?”

  “The section chief, the department head . . .”

  “No, I mean the other things, the non-living ones.”

  “Oh, the computers.”

  “You master the computers.”

  “Well, no. But I program them according to the tasks assigned me.”

  “So you are only a low-level servant,” Moira concluded firmly.

  “No, I’m not! It’s an important job,” Wiz said desperately.

  “I’m sure it is,” Moira said. “Even temple sweepers perform an important job.”

  “No, it’s not like that at all! It’s . . .” He realized it was hopeless. “Just forget it, okay? It was an important job and I was damn good at it.”

  “Do not curse, Sparrow,” Moira snapped. “We are in enough danger as it is.” With that she rolled over and settled down to sleep.

  Wiz didn’t follow suit. He sat there listening to the wind in the trees and the occasional cry of a night animal. Once he heard a wolf howl far off.

  Damn! he thought. Here I am in the middle
of a forest with a beautiful girl asleep at my side and I can’t do anything about it. I didn’t think it was supposed to work this way.

  Wiz had never read much fantasy, but he knew that the hero was supposed to get the girl. But then he didn’t feel very heroic. He was cold, uncomfortable and most of all, he just felt ineffectual. The same old klutzy Wiz.

  And lonesome. Oh my God, was he lonesome! He missed his apartment, the traffic-clogged streets, the movies, the all-night pizza joint on the corner. With a great inrushing pang, he felt utterly lost.

  He even missed the goddamn buggy text editor at work. Do you realize there probably isn’t a computer anywhere on this world? He thought. I have probably written my last program.

  That hurt worse than anything. All his life Wiz had only been good at one thing. When he discovered computers in high school, he found he was as good with them as he was bad with people. He had put his life into being the best ever with computers and if he hadn’t been the best ever, he had certainly been damn good. Only a lack of money and fascination with immediate problems had kept him from going to grad school and getting the Ph.D. that would have led him to the top rank of computer scientists.

  So here he was in a world where none of that meant diddly. What was he supposed to do with himself? He couldn’t earn a living. He wasn’t really strong enough for physical labor and the only thing he knew how to do was useless.

  Goddamn that old wizard, anyway. Then he started guiltily remembering Moira’s admonition against cursing. I wonder if it matters if you just do it in your head?

  If he was big and strong it might have helped. But he was skinny and gangly. The only difference between him and the classic pencil-necked geek was that he didn’t wear glasses.

  Good thing too, he thought. If I did, I’d probably have broken them by now.

  It wasn’t fair. It just wasn’t fair.

  Somehow he got to sleep and dreamed uneasily of home and his beloved computers.

  ###

  The next morning Wiz was sore all over. His legs ached from the unaccustomed exercise and the rest of him hurt from sleeping on the ground.

  Moira was already up and seemingly none the worse for the night. Her copper hair was combed and hung down her back in a long braid. Her face was freshly scrubbed and she looked heart-stoppingly beautiful.

  She was sitting cross-legged going through the contents of her worn leather shoulder bag. There was already a pile of things on the ground beside her.

  “I do not think I can afford to keep all these things,” she said in response to his unasked question. “I will have to discard them carefully as we go.”

  “I’ll carry them for you.”

  Moira snorted. “The problem is not weight, you idiot. Magic calls to magic and these things,” she gestured, “are magical. The League may be able to find us through them.”

  She looked down at the small pile and sighed. “They cost much time and no little effort to gain. All are useful and in a way they are all parts of me. But,” she added with forced cheerfulness, “better to discard them now than to have them lead the League to us.”

  “Uh, right.”

  Moira gathered the items back into her pouch. “I will dispose of them one at a time as we go along,” she said standing up. “It will make them harder to find, I hope.”

  Wiz scrambled to his feet, feeling the kinks in his muscles stretch.

  “We can make better time today,” the hedge witch said. “Mid-Summer’s Day is past and the magic will be less strong. We do not have to move quite so cautiously.”

  “Great,” Wiz muttered, appalled at the prospect.

  True to her word, Moira set an even faster pace for the day’s journey. Wiz struggled to keep up, but he didn’t do any better than he had the day before. Several times they had to stop while he rested and Moira fidgeted.

  From time to time Moira would take something from her pouch. Sometimes she flung the object as far as she could into the woods. A couple of times she buried it carefully. Once she hid a folded bit of cloth in a hollow log and once she dropped a piece of carved wood into a swiftly running stream.

  Wiz could see the effort it took her to discard each of those items but he said nothing. There was nothing he could say.

  The forest was more open than it had been the day before. The trees were smaller here. They were just as thick where they grew, but they were interspersed with clearings. Once they passed the ruins of a rock wall, running crazily through the woods.

  They kept to the forest and stayed as deep among the trees as possible. Occasionally they had to skirt an open space and it was near one such clearing that Moira stopped suddenly and sniffed.

  “Do you smell it?” she asked.

  Wiz sniffed. “Something burnt, I think.”

  “Come on,” Moira said, forging ahead and breasting through the undergrowth.

  They were in the clearing before they recognized it. One minute they were pushing through bushes and brambles and the next they were standing on the fringe of a meadow, looking at the smoldering remains of a homestead.

  There had been at least three buildings, now all were charred ruins. The central one, obviously a house, had stone walls which stood blackened and roofless. The soot was heaviest above the door and window lintels and a few charcoaled beams still spanned the structure. Of the nearer, larger building, a planked barn, there was almost nothing left. On the other side of the house was a log building with part of one wall standing.

  “Something else,” Wiz said, sniffing again. “Burned meat, I think.”

  But Moira was already running across the meadow. Wiz cast a nervous eye to the clear blue sky, then shifted his pack and followed.

  When he caught up with her, Moira was standing in the space between the remains of the house and the smoldering heap of ashes that had been the barn, casting this way and that.

  “What about dragons?” Wiz asked, looking up.

  Moira’s suggestion on what to do with dragons was unladylike, probably impractical and almost certainly no fun at all.

  “Did a dragon do this?” Wiz asked as they walked around the remains of the house.

  “Probably not,” Moira said distractedly. “Dragons might attack cattle in the fields or swine in their pen, but they seldom burn whole farms. This was done from the ground, I think.”

  “Well, then who?”

  “Who is not important, Sparrow. The important thing is what happened to the people.”

  “I don’t see anyone,” Wiz said dubiously.

  “They may all have escaped. But perhaps some are lying hurt nearby and in need of aid. I wish I had not been so quick to discard parts of my kit this morning.”

  “There doesn’t seem to be anyone here.”

  “Then search more closely.”

  Moira didn’t call out and Wiz didn’t suggest it. He felt conspicuous enough as it was.

  While Moira searched near the house and log building, Wiz wandered around the remains of the barn. The heaps of ashes were unusually high there and from the remains he guessed the barn had been full of hay when it went up. He wondered what had happened to the animals.

  Wiz stumbled over something in the debris. He looked down and saw it was an arm, roasted golden crisp and then obviously gnawed. A child’s arm. Wiz opened his mouth to scream and vomited instead.

  “What is it?” Moira came rushing up as he heaved his guts out. “What did you . . . Oh.” She stopped short as she saw what lay on the ground between them.

  “Oh my God,” he moaned, retching the last bit of liquid from his stomach. “Oh my God.”

  “Trolls,” Moira said, her face white and drawn, her freckles standing out vividly against the suddenly pale skin. “They burned this place and put the flames to use.”

  “They ate them,” Wiz said

  “Trolls are not choosy about their fare,” Moira said looking out over the smoldering ruins.

  “Do you think they’re still around?”

  “Possi
bly,” Moira said abstractedly. “After a meal like this trolls would be disinclined to go far.”

  “Then let’s get out of here before they come back for dessert.”

  “No!” Moira shouted. Wiz started and turned to see tears in her eyes. “We go nowhere until we bury these folk.”

  “But . . .”

  “There was no one to do it for my family.”

  “Did your family end up . . . like that?” Wiz finally asked.

  Moira’s face clouded. “I do not know. We never found them.”

  “What happened?”

  “It was a summer day, much like today only later in the year. I had gone into the wood to pick berries. I filled my apron with them that my mother might make preserves. My father had found a bee tree, you see. It took me all the afternoon to gather enough berries. I was away for hours. And when I returned . . . there was no one there.

  “The door to the cottage stood open and the cream was still in the churn, but my parents and brother and sisters were gone. I looked and called and searched until after nightfall. For three days I looked, but I never found them.”

  “What happened to them?”

  “I don’t know. But there are worse things on the Fringe of the Wild Wood than being eaten by trolls.”

  Without thinking, Wiz clasped his arms around the hedge witch and hugged her to him. Without thinking she settled into his arms to be hugged and buried her head in his shoulder. They stood like that for a long minute and then Moira straightened suddenly and pulled away.

  “Come on!” she said sharply. “Find something to dig with.”

  There was a charred spade leaning against the remains of the log building and Moira set Wiz to work digging a grave in what had been the kitchen garden. The tilled loam turned easily, but Wiz was red-faced and sweating before he had a hole large enough to suit Moira.

  While he dug, Moira searched for pieces of bodies. Somewhere she found a smoke-stained old quilt to serve as a shroud. Wiz kept his head down and his back to her so he would not have to see what she was piling on the cloth spread among the heat-blasted cabbages.