The Wiz Biz

by Rick Cook

  “No, nothing like that. At least not me any more than everyone else. But what the hell is he doing here?”

  “Moira wanted him. Not my idea. Wouldn’t be the first time the customer stuck a dud on a project team.”

  “Yeah, but usually they’re the project manager’s girlfriend or something.”

  “His work’s not bad.”

  “No,” Cindy admitted. “He likes to hack an easy out and he hates doing grunt work, but he’s bright and he seems to take to this kind of programming.”

  “Let’s just hope his love life lets him get some work done,” Jerry grumbled. “We’ve just doubled our number of programmer hours and we still can’t afford to waste any of them.”

  ###

  The sun was just breaking over the distant mountains when the spell quit and the world jerked back to normal for the team. Most of them took it as a signal to stretch, yawn and head for bed. Mike and Larry stayed at their desks, deep in their work even after so many hours. Judith left with the rest, but she wasn’t ready for bed yet. Every day at dawn dragon riders left the Capital on patrol. This was the perfect opportunity to see the dragons.

  The aeries were in the cliff beneath the castle. Judith was nearly trembling with excitement as she made her way down the long flights of stairs cut into the rock. All her life she had dreamed about dragons, unicorns and other magical creatures and now she could see them close up. Maybe she could even get one of the dragon riders to take her for a ride. A handsome dragon rider.

  In her mind’s eye she was already soaring over the castle on dragon back when she reached the portal into the aerie. The two guardsmen on duty recognized her as one of the foreign wizards, which meant she was of the Mighty, after a fashion, and thus allowed to go nearly anywhere. It never occurred to them that she did not know what she was doing when she nodded to them and strode out onto the floor of the aerie.

  The aerie was clangor, noise and barely organized confusion. Dragons were being harnessed, armed and carefully guided to their places. Swarms of men and women worked around them, grooming them, tending them and carefully moving the ones ready to fly to their assigned places.

  The dragons themselves were fit and eager. They pranced and tried to flex their wings in anticipation. It took careful work by their handlers and a lot of attention from their riders to keep them calm.

  As Judith watched, another dragon came up to the mark, spread its huge leathery wings and charged straight at the rectangle of sunlight that was the gate to the outside. It plunged through the portal, disappeared from sight for an instant below the sill and then rose into view again, wings beating as it climbed to join its fellows circling above.

  Judith was so enchanted she didn’t see the dragon being brought up behind her until she stepped right in front of it.

  The dragon snorted explosively, jerked its head back and lashed its tail in surprise. The whipping tail missed another dragon by inches and slammed into a food cart, knocking it over and spilling chunks of beef and cow intestines everywhere.

  The second dragon saw the food laid out before it and lunged for the meat in spite of the efforts of its crew. The first smelled the meat and turned, drawing a warning roar from the other dragon. The first one roared back a challenge and both beasts tried to rear and spread their wings in threat.

  What had been organized confusion dissolved into chaos, with dragon roars reverberating from one end of the aerie to the other and men running everywhere trying frantically to get the animals under control.

  The Master of Dragons, a gray-haired man with the light, compact build of a dragon rider and an empty sleeve from the accident that had ended his riding days came charging down from his platform.

  “You fornicating moron,” he yelled at Judith over the roars of the dragons and the shouts of the men, “Get the fornicating shit off the floor!”

  While the crews fought to control the dragons, rough hands grabbed Judith and hustled her out the door. She stumbled through the portal and stood white and shaking under the disapproving eye of the guards for a moment. Then she burst into tears and dashed up the stairs.

  ###

  With the coming of the programming team Moira had blossomed. The programmers were ignorant of the ways of this World and they had no time to learn. From her association with Wiz, Moira was better equipped to deal with them than anyone else in the Citadel—even if she frequently didn’t understand them. So Moira became ‘liaison, staff support and den mother” with her own box on the table of organization charcoaled on the wall of Bullpen;

  For the first time since she had come to the Capital, Moira had a job that kept her busy and fulfilled. Most of the time it also kept her mind off Wiz.

  She did not go into the Bullpen at night, but her days were filled with obtaining materials the team needed, making sure there was sufficient ink and parchment available, and now with the new spell seeing that food would be ready for them when they emerged at dawn. She also served as go-between to smooth matters between the team and the Mighty and the Citadel’s people.

  Thus she was the one the Master of Dragons cornered later that morning and berated because one of those execrable new wizards had the fornicating stupidity to blunder out into the execrable aerie just as the execrable morning patrols were taking off. This execrable woman nearly caused a dragon fight, disrupted operations and delayed launching half the patrols by nearly a day-tenth. If these execrable aliens couldn’t stay in their places he would go to the execrable Council and get an execrable spell to put a fornicating wall of fire across the fornicating door to the fornicating aerie.

  “Begging My Lady’s pardon, of course,” the man said when he paused for breath.

  Moira agreed with him, soothed him, promised him it would never happen again and sent him away still grumbling but more or less content.

  After he left, she sat in the tiny room at the keep she used for an office and scowled at the wall. From the Master’s description she recognized that the offender was Judith, but what in the World had she been doing in the aerie? Everyone knew dragons were difficult, chancy creatures whose handling had to be left to experts. Even if someone didn’t know that, it was obvious that a fire-breathing monster with an eighty-foot wingspan was not something to be approached as casually as a pony. These people from Wiz’s world might be strange and more than a touch fey, but they were intelligent and they did not appear suicidal.

  Well, speculation gets me nothing, she thought, rising from her desk. The thing to do is find Judith and have a talk with her.

  That and give orders to the guardsmen that the team is not to be allowed free run of the castle, she added as she went out the door.

  It took Moira the better part of an hour to find the miscreant. She was standing on the parapet looking so utterly miserable that Moira’s carefully prepared scolding died in her throat.

  “My Lady, are you all right?”

  “Oh, hello Moira,” Judith sniffed. “No, I’m fine.”

  “Forgive me, but you seem upset.”

  Judith smiled wanly. “I was just thinking that you should be very careful what you wish for because you may get it.”

  “My Lady?”

  Judith turned toward her and Moira could see she had been crying.

  “You heard what happened this morning? When I went to see the dragons?”

  “That was not wise, My Lady. Dragons are dangerous.”

  “Yeah. Dangerous, nasty-tempered, foul-smelling beasts.” She took a sobbing breath. “Up close they’re not even pretty.”

  “I am sorry if they frightened you, My Lady.”

  “No, they didn’t exactly frighten me.” She smiled through her tears. “I probably scared the dragons worse than they scared me. I guess I’m really mourning the death of my dreams.”

  She sniffed again and smiled with one corner of her mouth. “Funny isn’t it? I’m thirty-three years old and I’ve still got dreams. Or I did until I came here. I believe in romance. Not so much the boy-girl kind a
s, well—romance.”

  “Romance?” Moira asked, puzzled.

  “Yeah. Castles, dragons, knights in shining armor. All that stuff. And then one day they all come true. And you know what? They’re all about as romantic as a Cupertino car wash.”

  Moira thought about it for a minute. “Why should it be otherwise? People are people in your World or mine. As best I can see they all have the same wants and needs.”

  “Yeah, but it was supposed to be different! Does that make any sense?” Judith asked miserably.

  “In a way,” Moira said. “I am not what you call a romantic person, but I think I understand somewhat. You know they tell the story of Wiz and I throughout the North.” A quick smile. “We are heroes, you see. Figures of romance.

  “But what we did was not terribly heroic and it wasn’t at all romantic. Mostly I was very frightened and cold. Wiz was too angry that I had been stolen to be heroic. We both did the best we could and by fortune it worked out well.”

  “So what you’re saying is there is no romance in the world, in any world?”

  “No, but I think there is another element, one that comes between the doing and the hearing. That is what turns something frightening or wearying or utterly miserable into a romance. I think that element is in the mind of the teller.”

  She paused and looked out over the battlements to the fleecy clouds. “I think you confuse what is outside with what is within you. The dragons, or the freeways, those are the external things. It is not the deeds or the things that make a romance, it is what you do with them inside yourself.

  “My Lady, do you remember the day you arrived, when the dragon cavalry swept over the keep? You made us see them in a way we had never seen them before. I think that is the real secret of romance. Not places or people, but the ability to look at the World and see the romance that is there.”

  Judith quirked one side of her face up into a smile. “You may be right. I sure don’t seem to be having much luck finding that quality outside of me.”

  “But you have it inside, Lady. That is better than not having it at all.”

  “I guess you’re right,” Judith said, fumbling a well-used handkerchief from her gown’s sleeve. “Thanks.”

  “You are more than welcome, My Lady. Just stay out of the aeries, please.”

  ###

  As the days dragged on Wiz came to know his pursuers well enough that they developed distinct personalities. There was the fat one who hated to exercise and who searched perfunctorily and never a place that was hard to reach or might be dangerous. There was the one who was addicted to laying in ambush, but whose fondness for onions and persistent flatulence gave him away. There was the lean one with the long arms who seemed to delight in rooftops and other high places.

  And then there was Seklos. Seklos of the keen nose, who never seemed to rest and who searched relentlessly, who poked into every nook and cranny and who checked everything.

  This couldn’t go on. He would slip sooner or later. So far only more luck than any mortal deserved had kept him alive and free. But that couldn’t last.

  Meanwhile, the longer this murderous game of hide-and-seek went on, the more likely it was that there would be a war. It wasn’t just his life that was on the line here—although that is a major consideration, he thought, it was the fate of the entire World.

  Well, if he couldn’t run forever and he had to survive, there was only one thing to do. He didn’t want to fight the Dark League, but they would not rest until he was dead. He had no way out so he had to fight them to the death.

  Yeah, but whose death? He shook the thought off and began to consider methods of fighting back.

  ###

  This place was odd, Wiz thought. It was a tower in the shadow of what had obviously been a major palace. But the tower was squat and ill-proportioned with doorways big enough to drive a truck through.

  The peculiar proportions were emphasized by the feet that the top was missing, blasted away during his attack on the city. But it was sound up to the fourth level, which was where Wiz was standing now.

  The room was large and roughly circular, with a single large French door that led out onto a tiny balcony overlooking the street below. It gave a wonderful view of the city, but aside from that seemed useless.

  So did the contents of the room. It had either been stripped or hadn’t had anything in it to begin with. Just a few stone benches around the walls and some miscellaneous trash on the floor.

  He was about to leave when he heard voices outside. Someone was coming up the street below and it could only be wizards of the Dark League.

  Normally, Wiz would have run away, but his new resolve made him step out on the balcony to check out the situation.

  The situation could not have been better. Laying on the balcony were several large blocks of stone which must have fallen when the top of the tower went. Coming up the narrow street were two wizards of the Dark League and one of them was Seklos!

  Wiz picked up one of the blocks of stone and rested it on the carved stone railing. Then he watched the wizards get closer and closer and smiled.

  “. . . dragging me all the way up here,” the other wizard said as they came closer. Wiz recognized him as the cautious one.

  “Because this is where he must be,” Seklos said. “Fool, do you not see that the quicker we catch this most troublesome bird, the sooner we can leave this place?”

  Wiz put both hands on the block and held his breath.

  “But why me?” the other wizard asked.

  He never got his answer. At that moment they came under the balcony and Wiz shoved the rock over the edge.

  Wiz watched with a sinking heart as the stone smashed into the pavement and shattered a good arm’s length behind his intended victim. He scuttled back from the edge dislodging a shower of pebbles in the process.

  Seklos’s companion gaped at the shattered rock on the pavement behind them. “Dangerous place.” He looked up at the tower nervously. “The stones are loose.”

  Seklos looked up at the parapet. “I do not believe in such accidents.” He turned to his companion. “Go, spread the word that this area is to be cordoned off and searched most carefully. I think we may be near our Sparrow.”

  As he pounded down the stairs, Wiz realized he had made a serious mistake. There was only one door to the tower and that was just around the corner from where the wizards had been standing. If he didn’t get out the door before Seklos came looking for him . . .

  Too late! He was still nearly a flight from the bottom when Seklos came through the door and into the tower. As quietly as he could, Wiz backed up the stairs.

  Seklos came on, staff in hand, ready to strike at the slightest sound or movement. Wiz moved back up the spiraling stairs ahead of him. There was no time to open a door and no room to squeeze past his pursuer. The only place he could go was back into the room where he had thrown the rock.

  That’ll still work, he thought, fighting down the panic rising inside him. He can’t see me and as soon as he comes into the room, I’ll be able to slip around him and get down the stairs. Moving as quietly as he could, he eased through the door and made for the far end, next to the window.

  Seklos strode into the room and sniffed the air. His head swung this way and that like a hunting dog tracing a scent. Wiz stood stock still, afraid to breathe. Two more steps and he would be far enough in that he could get behind him and out the door.

  Seklos took a single cautious step into the room and scanned from side to side. The wizard stopped short. “What . . .” Then his face split in an evil smile.

  “A cloak of invisibility? Clever Sparrow. Oh, very clever indeed. But did they not tell you never to stand in a sunbeam wearing a tarncape?” He raised his hand and flicked his wrist in the direction of the window. Wiz had a glimpse of something silvery flying through the air. Instinctively he dove and rolled.

  Behind him the stone wall exploded into flame. Wiz hugged the floor and squinted his eyes shut to
block out the heat

  Dust! Wiz thought frantically. The dust gave me away! Seklos must have seen his outline in the sunlit dust motes. He raised his head and saw Seklos blocking the doorway, his staff extended in front of him. Behind him a wall of luminous blue blocked the doorway.

  In desperation, Wiz hefted the halberd. He knew he couldn’t get in under the staff with the shorter weapon, so he threw it at the wizard, sidearm so it spun horizontally.

  As soon as it left Wiz’s hands the halberd became visible. Seklos dodged it easily, swaying to one side like a snake. His face lit with unholy glee as he watched it sail past him.

  “So you confirm your presence. Thank you, Sparrow. And now you cannot hide. Your cloak cannot save you.” The wizard extended his staff and waved it from side to side like a blind man while he fumbled in his sleeve.

  On tiptoe Wiz backed away from the questing staff. No good to try to get around him. Frantically he looked for someplace to hide.

  The only possible place was under one of the benches. Wiz squeezed beneath the nearest one, face to the wall in a vain attempt to muffle his breathing. He clinched his eyes tight and waited to feel the lethal staff tip in the center of his back.

  “Come out, little Sparrow,” the hateful, hate-filled voice crooned. “Come out and face your end.”

  There was a hideous roar followed by a ringing scream cut short in mid-cry. Then there was a thrashing and horrible crunching noise. Wiz forced himself further back into the crevice.

  Then all was silence. No sound from Seklos, no sound of anything else. As quietly as he could Wiz twisted around and looked out.

  At first he thought it had suddenly turned to night. All he saw from beneath the bench was blackness. And then the blackness moved. The enormous black body hopped ponderously to one side, the huge head turned. Wiz went weak from sheer terror.