The Wiz Biz

by Rick Cook

  As the villagers drifted in the direction of the monolith, Wiz, Philomen and Alaina retired to one corner of the meadow for some shop talk.

  “Okay,” Wiz said, looking over his shoulder at the enormous mass of granite. “Probably the best tool for this job is the Demon Deterrent Trap, ddt.”

  “Why not demon_debug?” asked Alaina.

  “What’s that?”

  “A wonderful cure for magic of all sorts,” the slatternly hedge witch told him. “It wipes it right out.”

  “Where did you get it?”

  Alaina gestured vaguely. “It is being passed through the villages. Much better than ddt, I assure you.”

  “Well, let’s see it.”

  Alaina nodded and raised her staff.

  “demon—debug exe” she bawled at the top of her cracked voice.

  There was a shimmering and shifting in the air in front of them and a squat demon perhaps three feet high and nearly as broad appeared on the grass before them.

  Wiz looked the thing over and frowned “This isn’t one of my spells.”

  “Of course not, My Lord,” the hedge witch said. “This is better.”

  The warty green demon leered up at him, showing sawlike rows of teeth in a cavernous mouth. The thing looked singularly unpleasant, even for a demon.

  “How does it work?”

  Alaina shrugged. “It is magic of course. How else does a spell work?”

  “No, I mean how does it function? Haven’t you listed it out to examine the code?”

  “List?” Alaina said, puzzled. “Forgive me, Lord, but how do you make a spell lean? And what good would it do.”

  Wiz shot her a dirty look. Then he realized she was sincere. She didn’t have the faintest idea how a spell worked or how to find out.

  He shook his head. “Well, let’s see then.”

  Philomen and the hedge witch hung back to watch the master work.

  “Emac”

  “Yes, master?” A small brown manikin popped up at his feet. It was perhaps three feet high with a head almost grotesquely large for its body. It wore a green eyeshade on its bald brown head and carried a quill pen stuck behind one flaplike ear.

  The Emacs were one of the first classes of demons Wiz had created when he declared his one-man war on the Dark League. They were translators and recorders of spells in Wiz’s magic language, magical clerks.

  “backslash” Wiz commanded.

  “$” said the Emac.

  “list demon_debug” Wiz said.

  The Emac pulled the pen from behind his ear and began to scribble furiously on the air in front of him. A mixture of runes, numbers, and mathematical symbols appeared in glowing green fire.

  Wiz frowned as he studied the symbols.

  “It’s based on ddt, but it’s been changed.” He turned to the Emac again.

  “backslash”

  “$”

  “dif demondebug/ddt”

  Again the Emac scribbled and again the lambent characters hung in the air. But one section of spell stood out in violent magenta against the neon green.

  Wiz bent forward over the Emac’s shoulder to study the magenta section. It represented the changes between the original ddt and this new version. He traced his finger along the lines and his lips moved as he worked out what the changes did.

  “Jesus H. Christ,” he breathed at last. “What a nasty piece of work!” He straightened up and glared at the other two magicians.

  “Who’s responsible for this?”

  “Ah, responsible for what, Lord?” Philomen asked.

  “This!” Wiz shouted. “It isn’t a defensive spell. It’s offensive, a magic killer. You turn this loose on any kind of magical creature and it won’t just protect you, it will destroy the thing.”

  “So much the better,” the hedge witch said firmly. “That way it will never come around to bother us again.”

  “But why kill it?”

  Alaina set her jaw firmly and her eyes glittered. “Because it is magic and because it threatens us. Perhaps the Mighty do things differently in the Capital, but we are simple folk out here on the Fringe. We treat harmful magic the way we treat poisonous serpents.”

  Before Wiz could reply, Philomen placed a hand on his arm. “Forgive me, My Lord, but perhaps we should discuss this. Will you excuse us, My Lady?”

  Alaina curtseyed stiffly and withdrew to the other end of the meadow.

  “My Lord, it is unwise to give an order you cannot enforce,” Philomen said as soon as the hedge witch was out of earshot. “Were you to forbid this, she could simply wait until we are gone and use demon_debug herself.”

  “This is too much. That thing doesn’t hurt anyone permanently. From what they say it doesn’t even affect anyone who doesn’t climb it.”

  “Still, it is strong magic and that mates it an unchancy neighbor. The villagers’ desire to rid themselves of the thing is understandable.”

  “Great. But where will it all end? Are these people going to go around destroying anything just because it’s magic?”

  “If they have the opportunity.”

  “That’s crazy!”

  “No, it is understandable. It is the people in the villages, especially along the Fringe, who have suffered the most from magic. To you in your pale tower in the Capital magic may be a thing to be learned and applied. Here it is a thing to be hated and feared. Is it any wonder that as soon as they were, given an opportunity to practice magic safely, they should go looking for a weapon?”

  “I gave them a defense,” Wiz protested. “I didn’t expect them to turn it into something so dangerous!”

  “You did say you wanted even common folk to learn your new way of magic,” Philomen said mildly.

  “Yes, but not like this!”

  “Are you now complaining because someone took you at your word?”

  “I’m complaining because this spell is fucking magical napalm!” Wiz yelled. “I expected people to have more sense than this.”

  “Sense?” Philomen asked with a trace of malice. “My Lord, forgive me, but when have the folk of the villages ever shown such sense?

  “Once it was the Council’s job to maintain the balance of the World. But as you have said, the Council is outworn and lives beyond its usefulness. Or did you expect the folk along the Fringe to learn restraint and balance overnight?”

  “I never said the Council was useless.”

  “You never put it in words,” Philomen retorted. “But you said it with every act, every gesture, every roll of the eyes or yawn in Council meeting. Oh, your message got through, right enough. Even to the villages on the Fringe of the Wild Wood.

  “Then you compound your actions by giving villagers a powerful spell they can use freely and telling everyone who would listen that you do not have to be a wizard to practice magic.” Philomen’s lip curled in contempt. “No, My Lord, you are getting exactly what you strived for.”

  Wiz couldn’t think of anything to say.

  “So come, My Lord, let us attend the laying of this thing. And for the sake of what little order remains in the World, let us put a good face on it.” With that he turned and walked back across the meadow to where Alaina was waiting. Wiz hesitated for an instant and then followed.

  The entire village was gathered before the stone by the time the three magicians arrived. All of them were wearing their holiday best. The adults were clumped together talking excitedly and the children were running around laughing and shrieking at play.

  They parted like a wave for the three magicians. Andrew was standing at the front of a few of the other people from the feast last night.

  Alaina looked over the crowd, eyes shining and her coarse face split in a huge smile.

  “Well,” she said briskly, “shall we begin?”

  She motioned with her staff and the villagers fell back, Wiz and Philomen with them. Then she turned to face the rock, struck a dramatic pose and thrust her staff skyward.

  “demon_debug BEGONE exe” sh
e bawled.

  At first, nothing seemed to happen. Wiz could feel the tension rising in the crowd and knotting up in his stomach. He took a firmer grip on his staff and began to review the spells he might use if this only roused the creature.

  Maybe it won’t work, he thought to himself, half-afraid and half-hopeful. Maybe the spell will crash.

  Then the rock moaned.

  The sound was so low it sent shivers through Wiz’s bones, as if someone was playing the lowest possible note on the biggest bass fiddle in the world. It started low and then built and rose until it threatened to drown out all other sound.

  There was something else there besides sound, Wiz realized. Some sort of mental influence, as if . . .

  Wiz went white. “That thing’s alive,” he shouted to Philomen. “It’s alive and intelligent!”

  “Such things often are in their own way,” the wizard agreed, keeping his eyes on the mass before them.

  “But you can’t kill it, it’s intelligent!”

  “Can we not? Watch.”

  Still groaning, the stone reared above them, heaving itself free of the earth and towering above them as if it would slam down on them and crush them like bugs. The villagers gasped and shrank back, but the thing slammed to earth in its own bed. The ground shook so hard Wiz nearly lost his balance. The creature reared again, not so high this time, and pounded to the earth once more. It tried to rear a third time, but could only quiver.

  “Stop it!” Wiz yelled. “Stop it! Can’t you see it can’t hurt you?”

  “ ’Tis magic,” Andrew replied. “ ’Tis magic and must be burned from the land. Too long we trembled under the magical ones. Now let them tremble.” His voice rose to a shout over the windy moans of the dying stone. “Let them know fear!”

  The crowd behind him growled agreement.

  The thing thinned, its stony gray turning opalescent and gradually lightening until Wiz could dimly see the outline of the hills through it. Then the creature’s body went foggy and he could see that the hills were cloaked in summer’s green. The outline blurred and became indistinct and finally, at last, the mist dissipated, leaving nothing but a hole in the ground with tendrils of smoke rising from it.

  Wiz stood shocked and numb, oblivious to the cheers of the villagers. Someone was pounding him on the back and shouting in his ear, but he couldn’t make out the words.

  Alaina left in the midst of an excited knot of villagers, talking and cheering and doing everything but hoisting her on their shoulders in triumph. Some of the others remained behind to gape at the huge pit where the rock creature had stood. Then by ones and twos they began to drift back toward the village square.

  “A waste, I calls it,” one old gaffer said to his younger companion as they passed by where Wiz stood. “They should have pounded it into gravel stead of just making it disappear. We needs gravel for our roads, we does.”

  Finally, only Wiz remained, standing at the edge of the pit and looking down.

  He didn’t know what the thing was that had died here today He had never heard of such a creature and it may well have been the only one of its kind. But whatever it was it didn’t deserve what had been done to it. His cheeks were wet and he realized he was crying.

  There was a footstep behind him. Wiz didn’t turn around.

  “Are you coming, My Lord?” Philomen asked. “There will be a feast tonight in honor of slaying the monster.”

  Wiz turned to face the wizard. “No thanks. Right now I don’t think my stomach could stand a feast.”

  “Our presence is expected.”

  “Vomiting on your hosts is probably bad form, even in this bunch.”

  Philomen’s face froze and he bowed formally. “As you will, My Lord. I will see you at the mayor’s house then.”

  “Maybe.” Wiz strode off toward Leafmarsh Brook and the bridge into the Fringe beyond.

  “My Lord, where are you going?”

  “Into the Wild Wood,” Wiz flung back over his shoulder. “Right now, I want some civilized company. Weasels maybe, or snakes.”

  Eight: Side Effects

  You can’t do just one thing.

  —Campbell’s Law of Everything

  Sitting under a flowering bush on a hillside, Wiz called up an Emac and studied the code for demon_debug again.

  It was obvious what had happened, he thought as he traced the glowing lines. Somewhere out in one of the villages, some bright person with a knack for magic and a little knowledge of his programming language had taken ddt apart and found a way to make it more effective. What he or she had done was related to the magic-absorbing worms Wiz had invented for his attack on the City of Night. The new spell, demon_debug, sucked the magical energy right out of its victim. It was crude, it was dangerous and it was absolutely deadly.

  Without one hell of a protection spell there was no way that anything magical could survive demon_debug. Idly he picked up a water-worn pebble and ran his thumb across it while he thought about the implications.

  This must be what Einrich meant when he said he could destroy any magic he met in the Wild Wood. That, and the way Alaina talked, made Wiz pretty sure the spell was spread far and wide through the Fringe.

  Wiz flung the stone into the weeds. He had screwed this up more thoroughly than he had ever messed up anything in his life. Before he had just affected himself, and perhaps the lives of a few people around him. Now he had managed to meddle in the lives of an entire world; to meddle destructively.

  He wasn’t sorry he had invented the magic compiler. He thought of the last time he had come this way. He and Moira had stumbled over the burned ruins of a farm shortly after the trolls had raided it. He had dug the grave in the cabbage patch to bury the remains of the people the trolls hadn’t eaten after roasting them in the flames of their own homestead. He still had nightmares about that.

  He didn’t want to go back to the way things had been. But looking down at the village and the scar where the rock creature had stood for time out of mind, he wasn’t at all sure what was replacing it was much better.

  He stood up and looked down on the village. The evening breeze bore the faint sounds of drunken revelry up the hill to him. In the center of the village people were piling wood head high for a bonfire. Ding doing the witch is dead! Never mind that, the “witch” had stood harmlessly for longer than the village had been there. Never mind that the people who killed it behaved like a wolf pack with the blood lust up. The witch was dead so let’s have a party. And if it’s a good party, maybe we can go out tomorrow and find some more witches to murder.

  He couldn’t go back there. But he didn’t want to go back to the Capital with its packs of wizards and no Moira. All he really wanted was to be alone for a while. Say a couple of centuries.

  Well, he decided, there really wasn’t any reason to go back. He had come to the village with only his cloak, staff, and a pouch containing a few magical necessities. He had his staff and pouch and the weather was warm enough that he doubted he would miss his cloak.

  Turning his back on the village, Wiz headed down the other side of the hill, toward the Wild Wood.

  He very quickly lost any sense of where he was. He might be wandering in circles for all he knew—or cared. If he wanted to go somewhere he could take the Wizard’s Way. What he needed was to be alone and to try to sort out the mess.

  Once he stopped to munch handfuls of blackberries plucked from a stand of thorny canes. Another time he stopped to drink from a clear rivulet. Most of the time he just walked.

  The evening deepened and the shadows grew denser but Wiz barely noticed. Finally, the second time he almost ran into a tree he sat down to think some more. As he sat the dusk darkened to full night. The last vestiges of light faded from the sky and the moon rose over the treetops. The night insects took up their chorus and the night blooming plants of the Wild Wood opened their blossoms, adding just a hint of perfume to the earth-and-grass smell of the night. Wiz fell asleep under the tree that night. He dreame
d uneasily of Moira.

  ###

  “You step more spritely this morning,” Shiara observed as her guest came into the great hall.

  “Thank you, Lady, I feel better.” She joined Shiara at the trestle table beneath the diamond-paned window and began to help herself to the breakfast spread out there.

  “You found a solution then?”

  Moira frowned. “Part of a solution, I think.”

  She heaped berries into an earthenware bowl and poured cream over them. She took an oat cake from the platter and drizzled honey on it. “Wiz always said that when you could not meet a problem straight forward you should come at it straight backwards.”

  Shiara nibbled reflectively on an oat cake. “That sounds like the kind of thing the Sparrow would say.”

  Moira nodded. “Once he told me something about a mountain that could move but wouldn’t and a wizard named Mohammed.” She wrinkled her nose. “I never understood that, but it gave me an idea.”

  Shiara chuckled. “Now that truly sounds like our Sparrow. And from this obstinate mountain and a straight backwards approach, you have discovered something to help you?”

  “To help Wiz. But Lady, I need your advice.”

  “I know nothing about going straight backwards or moving mountains.”

  “No, but you know Bal-Simba. He will have to aid me in this.”

  ###

  The sun was high in the sky before it worked its way under the tree where Wiz lay. Twice he wrinkled his nose and shifted his position to keep the beams out of his eyes, but still he slept on.

  Wiz was about to shift for the third time when something ran across his chest.

  “Wha . . .” Wiz made a brushing motion with his arm. Something small and manlike hurdled his legs, squealing like a frightened rabbit. Wiz sat upright and shook his head to clear the sleep fog. He heard something else moving through the brush. Something—no, several somethings—large and heavy. He clambered to his feet and-faced the noise just as a troll crashed through the undergrowth and into the clearing.