by Rick Cook
Jerry shook his head. “It’s not that simple. What are the commands? What are the options you can use? How is it all supposed to work? You already tried this and it failed. Until we understand it we won’t know why it failed.”
“How long will it take you to find out?”
Jerry shrugged. “I don’t know. The hardest part of a job like this is always getting your head cranked around to see the other guy’s way of doing things. Once you do that, sometimes it just falls right into place.” He frowned. “And sometimes not. Anyway, I’ll put a couple of people on it I wouldn’t count on being able to use this any time soon, though.”
“Hopes raised and dashed before breakfast,” Bal-Simba said as they walked across the courtyard. “I am sorry, My Lady. I thought surely we had found the answer.”
Moira clenched her jaw and held her head high. Bal-Simba saw she was crying. “There is still one thing we may try,” she said tightly. “I will go to Duke Aelric and plead for his help.”
Bal-Simba stopped dead. “What?”
“Elven magic is much more powerful than human. Surely they can find him.”
“I was under the impression that Duke Aelric was already looking for Wiz.”
“Then we can share what we know.”
“Dealing with elves is dangerous,” Bal-Simba said neutrally.
Moira flicked a grim little smile. “Madness, you mean. But Aelric seems to have a fondness for Wiz and I think he might listen to me.”
“I ought to forbid you to do this.”
Moira resumed walking. “Forbid away. But do not expect me to heed you.”
###
The hill managed to be peaceful and foreboding at the same time. The moonlight played down on the wooded knoll, silvering the leaves of the trees and the grassy clearing before them.
But the moon also caught the megalith standing at the base of the hill where woods met grass. Three great stones, two upright and one laid across them like the lintel of a door. Was it only a trick of the moonlight that made the shadows within stir?
Moira licked her lips and pressed them firmly together. In spite of her cloak she was chill and she did not think the warm summer night had much to do with it. She took a firmer grip on her staff and strode boldly into the clearing.
“I wish to speak to Duke Aelric,” she said loudly.
There was no response, no movement. The hill lay in the moonlight exactly as it had. Moira thought of repeating her request and decided against it. Elves were a touchy breed and much consumed with politeness. A human thought pushy or demanding would be in dire trouble.
“My Lady.”
Moira jumped. Duke Aelric was standing in the moonlight in front of her. He wore a white doublet and hose embroidered with silver that glinted in the moonlight and a hip-length cloak of pale blue.
He regarded her with interest but without the warmth he had showed the last time they had met. Nor did it escape her notice that the elf duke had not welcomed her, merely acknowledged her presence.
She licked her lips. “My Lord, we need your help in finding Wiz.”
Aelric arched a silver brow. “An elf helping mortals? An odd notion, Lady.”
“It has been known to happen.”
He gestured languidly. “So it has, when it is sufficiently amusing. I fail to see the amusement here.”
That was the end of it then, Moira acknowledged as a cold lump congealed in her stomach. When Wiz and Moira had first met Aelric, she had told him that elves acted for their own reasons and no mortal was ever likely to untangle them. Standing here in the moonlight with the elf duke she began to appreciate how true that was.
Moira took a deep breath and gathered all her courage. “Lord, forgive me for mentioning this, but is it not true that your honor is involved as well? Wiz did disappear while travelling from your hold.”
Aelric gave her a look that made her go weak in the knees. For a horrible instant she thought she had offended the elf.
“My honor is my own concern,” he said coldly, “and not a matter for discussion with mortals. I know who kidnapped him and at the proper time they will feel the weight of my displeasure.”
“But you will not help us find Wiz.”
Again the chilling, haughty gaze. “Child, do you presume to instruct me?”
“No, Lord.”
“Then guard your tongue more carefully.” Duke Aelric softened slightly. “Besides, I cannot find him.”
He smiled frostily. That surprises you? It surprises me as well—and tells me that others besides mortals had a hand in this.” He motioned fluidly, as if brushing away a fly. “However that is my concern, not yours.”
“But you know who kidnapped him?”
“That too is my concern little one, among the ever-living revenge is artifice most carefully constructed and sprung only at the proper moment. These ones have offended me and they shall feel the weight of my displeasure at the proper time.”
With a sinking feeling Moira realized that to an elf, “the proper time” could mean years—or centuries.
“Now if you will excuse me.” He sketched a bow and Moira dropped a curtsey. When she looked up she was alone in the clearing.
###
Dzhir Kar eyed the man in front of him skeptically.
“So you bring us the Sparrow’s magic?” he said coldly.
“Yes, Lord,” Pryddian said. One of the wizards holding him jabbed him sharply in the kidney with his staff. Pryddian gasped and jerked under the influence of the pain spell.
“Yes, Master,” he corrected himself. “I stole it from the Sparrow himself.”
Pryddian was very much the worse for wear. Once he had been passed on to the Dark Leagues hidden lair he had been questioned. Since the questioning had been merely “rigorous” rather than “severe” he had all his body parts and could still function. But his back was bruised and bloody, one eye was swollen shut and he was missing a few teeth. It had taken nearly three days before the wizards who had remained behind were convinced he was worth passing on to their master. His trip south had been expeditious rather than comfortable. Now he waited in the arms of his captors for the misshapen creature before him to decide his fate.
Dzhir Kar considered. It was not unknown for apprentices to decide the Dark League offered them more scope than the wizards—rare, but not unheard of. Still, this was neither the time nor the place to add apprentices, especially ones so recently allied with the North. A quiet dagger between the ribs would have been the normal response to such presumption.
But still, a spell of the Sparrow’s . . .
“What is this thing?” he asked, flipping through the parchments.
“It is a searching spell. The Sparrow used it to scan the world. It involves three kinds of demons, you see, and . . .” Pryddian gasped again as the wizard prodded him with the pain spell.
“Confine yourself to answering my questions,” Dzhir Kar said.
“A searching spell,” Pryddian gasped out. “It can search the whole World in a single day.”
Dzhir Kar thought quickly. This just might be the answer to his problem. A host of demons could search the City of Night far better than his wizards could. He had a limited ability to train his demon to ignore specific instances of Sparrow’s magic. If it could be trained to ignore these demons, then the combination of the Sparrows own magic and his demon could do in a single day what his wizards had been unable to do in a matter of weeks.
He waved his hands and the guards released Pryddian and stood away. The ex-apprentice slumped to the floor, his legs unable to support him.
“Very well,” Dzhir Kar said. “It amuses me to use the Sparrow’s magic to track him down. If you can produce these demons as you say, then I will give you your life. Moreover, if they can find the Sparrow, you will be accepted as a novice by the Dark League.
“If you cannot do these things, I will see to it that you suffer for your presumption.” He looked up at the wizards. “Take him away.”
&nb
sp; He nodded to the guards and they half-carried, half-dragged Pryddian out.
###
They gave Pryddian a cell just off the main workroom and he set out to duplicate Wiz’s searching system. It was not a simple matter for an untutored ex-apprentice to unravel the notes he had stolen. Nor was it easy to cast the spells once he learned them. The Sparrow seemed to delight in alternate choices at every step of the spell and the wrong choices did little or nothing. But Pryddian worked until he dropped. His black-robed jailers saw to that with their pain spells. It might have amused him to know he was not the only person having trouble with the Sparrows spells.
###
“This guy was a real hacker,” Mike said, leaning over his wife’s shoulder to study their latest task.
Nancy nodded and looked back at the code above her desk. “You don’t have to tell me that. Jesus! I’ve seen better commented programs in BASIC.” She took another look at the runes glowing blue before her. “And I’ve seen clearer comments in the London Times crossword puzzle!” She jabbed her finger at one line.
“What the hell is this monstrosity? And why the hell did he name it corned beef?”
“Jerry says the name is probably some kind of rotten pun. What does it do?”
“Basically it takes the value of the characters of a demon’s name, multiplies them by a number, adds another number and then divides the result by 65,353. Then it uses that result as a subscript in some kind of an array.” She shook her head again. “Why 65,353? Jesus! You know, if this guy doesn’t come back we may never understand some of this stuff.”
The man sighed. “Well, let’s get to it. This is going to take a while.” He nodded to Wiz’s book of notes on his magic compiler. “Hand me the Dragon Book, will you?”
###
Ghost-gray and insubstantial, the searching demons began to pour from the ruined tower and blanket the City of Night.
Each demon had very little power. It could only absorb impressions from the world around it and forward them to a larger demon which would catalog them. The final step in the process was a demon formed like a weird crystal construct that perched atop the tower. It did the final sorting and alerted the wizards if it found anything that looked worthwhile.
Wiz had endowed the demons with all the mortal senses, but no magical ones. Of those senses, sight was the most important to an airborne creature. Since Wiz wore his tarncape constantly there was little visible sign of him. Demons by the thousands searched every nook and cranny of the city, but they saw nothing of Wiz.
Dzhir Kar ground his teeth in fury at the news and ordered Pryddian beaten to make him fix the spell. But Pryddian could not repair what he did not understand and, in spite of the demons, Wiz eluded the Dark League.
Sixteen: Trouble in the North
You can’t unscramble an egg.
—old saying
You can if you’re powerful enough.
—the collected sayings of Wiz Zumwalt
Dragon Leader looked back over the flight in satisfaction. They weren’t parade-perfect, but their spacing was good. Even his wingman was keeping his proper distance and holding position on the turns.
As he moved in easy rhythm with his mount’s wing beats, he surveyed the forest below. The trees were dark green in their late summer foliage and the pattern was broken here and there by the lighter green of a natural meadow or the twisting channel of a brown stream wandering among the trees. This far north there were a lot of streams because the land got a lot of rain.
Today’s patrol had had good weather all day, thank goodness, and if he was any judge of weather, tomorrow would be fair as well. Only a few clouds, all of them high enough still to be tinted golden by the setting sun—and scattered enough not to provide shelter for possible ambushers, Dragon Leader thought.
No likelihood of that, of course. There were no more enemy dragons. This was simply a routine patrol over the northernmost reaches of the human lands—a pleasant summers excursion for men and dragons alike.
Dragon Leader gave a hand signal and applied gentle knee pressure to his mounts neck. As his dragon swept around to the right the three other dragons in the flight followed, speeding up to hold their relative position. He noticed that his wingman held almost exactly the right distance and speed.
The kid’s shaping up, he thought as the dragons swept over a heavily wooded ridge, so low they startled a flock of brightly colored birds out of one of the taller trees. He’ll have his own squadron yet. But that was for the future.
Just over the next ridge was the Green River and on a bluff above a wide looping bend sat Whitewood Grove, the northernmost of the settlements and their destination for the night.
It didn’t have a full aerie, but there was a covered roosting ground for the dragons and snug quarters with their own bath for the riders. Right about now, Dragon Leader reflected, that sounded pretty good.
Again the dragons swept up over a ridge, buoyed by the upwelling currents of air. Dragon Leader started to signal another wide turn to line up on the village. Then he froze in mid-gesture.
What in the . . . There was the river and a bluff, but there was no village there. Instead the rise was crowned by a grove of large trees.
Could they be that far off course? Unlikely. Although the people of the World did not use maps as the term is commonly understood—the Law of Similarity made any map a magical instrument—they did have lists of landmarks. Dragon Leader had been checking them automatically and they had hit each landmark in turn. Besides, he had been to Whitewood Grove many times. He recognized the shape of the bluff, the bend in the river and the rapids just downstream. He even saw a snag near shore he recalled from his last visit. Everything was exactly as it should be except the village was missing.
The hairs on the back of his neck prickled and his mouth tasted of metal. Suddenly Dragon Leader was very, very alert.
Without using his communications crystal he signaled his flight to break into pairs. A wave of his arm sent the second pair climbing and circling wide around the area. Then with his wingman following he bored straight in to pass over the place where the village should be.
Splitting his forces like this was bad tactics and Dragon Leader didn’t like it at all. But if he hadn’t made a stupid mistake, then whatever had caused this was probably more than a match for four dragons. Splitting into pairs increased the chances that someone would get word back to the Council. For the first time since the patrol began, Dragon Leader wished he had an entire squadron of a dozen dragons behind him instead of a single flight of four.
They came in low and fast over the bluff, nearly brushing the tops of the trees. It appeared a perfectly ordinary grove of Whitewood trees. This was definitely the spot, but there was no sign of a village. No buildings, no ruins, not even any footpaths. He signaled his wingman and they swept back over the spot, quartering the site.
The village of Whitewood Grove was simply gone. The wharf was gone from the river and even the path that led from the wharf to the village was missing.
They circled the site while Dragon Leader considered. There was nothing on any checklist that applied to a situation like this. Looking over his shoulder at the place where the village of Whitewood Grove should have been, he made a decision.
“Second element, run for the patrol base,” he said into his communications crystal. “Fly all night if you have to and as soon as you are over the ridge start reporting to the Capital. Wingman, stay on perimeter patrol. I am going to land and inspect the site on foot. If I am not back in the air in one half of a day-tenth, run for the patrol base. Now go!”
To his right and high above he saw the second element break off and scoot for the ridge. He waited until they were across before he turned his dragon inward toward the bluff.
There was barely room to land a dragon on the very tip of the bluff. The air currents off the river made it tricky and his dragon didn’t like the place at all. She bridled and growled and tried to break off the approach twice
. He had to force her down and once on the ground she would not settle. She kept her wings half-spread and her neck extended high in the classic fighting posture. The way she was breathing told Dragon Leader she was building up for an enormous gout of flames.
Which was fine with Dragon Leader. An aroused dragon is far from the worst thing to have at your back in a tight spot.
Sword in hand, he scanned the trees while keeping close to the dragon’s bulk. The grove of Whitewoods looked peaceful and quite unremarkable. The early evening sun tinged their glossy green leaves with gold. A slight breeze gently rustled through the branches. Somewhere a bird sang and close to the groves edge a red squirrel jumped from branch to branch. The grove exuded the faint, sweet aroma of Whitewood blossoms. None of which made Dragon Leader or his dragon feel any more secure. The dragon stayed poised for combat and on cat feet Dragon Leader moved into the wood.
The Whitewoods were fully mature, large enough that he could not have put his arms around them at their base. The litter on the forest floor was deep with dead leaves and rotting vegetation. There were ferns and there were many apples and here and there a purple forest orchid. But there was not the least little sign of anything that might possibly have once marked human habitation.
Warily, Dragon Leader moved out of the grove, keeping watch over his shoulder as if he expected something to pounce on him at any minute. As quickly as he could he mounted, wheeled his dragon and launched her off the bluff. The dragon dived for the river to gain air speed and Dragon Leader finished securing himself to the saddle on the fly. As his wingman came up to join him and the pair ran south for the patrol base, he realized his jerkin was soaked with sweat.
For the first time since the war with the Dark League ended, Dragon Leader was very, very frightened.