Rick Cook - The Wizardry Quested

"A sum lead, My Lady."

"We have few better, My Lord."

"I think:" Bal-Simba began slowly, but he was interrupted by a strong knock on the door. It was Bronwyn, tile councils chief Healer, tight-lipped and white-faced. "My Lord, I think you had better come look at this." Bal-Simba hesitated. "Now."

With Bal-Simba and Arianne in tow, Bronwyn led them up the winding stone stairs to the door of Mikey’s cell. The door was open and the two guards outside were clearly uneasy.

Once Mikey had been a skilled programmer and, as "Panda," one of the best system breakers in Silicon Valley. But the shock of his final battle against Wiz and his elven allies had left him with the mind of a four-year-old. Now he spent his days playing with blocks and toy soldiers in a prison-cell-cum-playroom in one of the Keeps towers. He was fed, cared for and guarded, but otherwise ignored. Now he was slumped in the corner, surrounded by a scattering of blocks. His eyes were closed, his head sunk on his chest and his breathing deep and regular. Bronwyn knelt and pulled open an eyelid. Mikey did not stir. She looked up at Bal-Simba. "An empty shell, Lord. There is nothing left here at all."

"When did this happen?"

"Sometime in the last two days. He sat in a corner all that time, but that was not unusual for him. The guards were becoming worried because he had not eaten." She rose and looked down at him. "Before, he had the mind of a child. Now he has-nothing."

Bal-Simba frowned "Did he still have his knowledge? Before this happened, I mean."

Bronwyn shrugged. "Since we never knew just what was wrong with him I cannot tell you. Certainly he did not have the mind to use it. But as to the knowledge itself:" She shrugged again.

"I think we can assume he still had at least some of it." Bal-Simba rubbed his chin.

"And now we can assume the Enemy has that knowledge," Arianne added. Bal-Simba nodded and looked down at the not-quite-human thing at his feet.

"Come, Lady, we have work to do."

"And him?" Arianne asked.

"I will make him comfortable," Bronwyn said grimly. "He will not last long like that."

Malkin stopped and touched Wiz’s arm. "It’s getting light up ahead again," she whispered.

Wiz strained to see beyond the magic light’s glow. "More bugs?"

The thief shook her head. "The light’s not as blue and the shadows are sharper." Now what? Wiz thought. He looked over at Danny. The younger programmer checked his magic detector. "A lot of magic, but it’s not immediately dangerous." It wasn’t the most reassuring report Wiz had ever heard but he motioned the group on and they crept down the tunnel.

Ahead of them the tunnel grew brighter and the air around them grew warmer. Suddenly they turned the corner and found themselves staring into the mouth of Hell.

The very walls of the tunnel glowed incandescent. Orange and red, yellow and white, churned and roiled on every side. Instinctively the party flinched back as if from a blast furnace and retreated around the corner.

"No heat," Wiz said wonderingly as soon as they were back around the corner. He stuck his hand around to make sure. "There’s no heat."

"It’s magically blocked," Danny said, checking his magic detector. "That tunnel must run right through the heart of the volcano, but magic keeps the heat away." He looked at the magic detector again. "Tunnels, I mean. There’s a whole pile of them out there."

"Another maze."

"A hotter-than-hell maze," Danny agreed.

"Well, we’ve got an answer to that," Wiz said as he fished in his pouch. "I have here the granddaddy of all maze solvers." He held up a demon that looked remarkably like a white rat.

"Put that away," Malkin said firmly.

Wiz frowned. Malkin had her faults, including kleptomania, but squeamishness wasn’t one of them.

"It’s not a real rat," he explained, "it just looks that way because:"

"I know what it is," the tall thief said. There is a trap here and that thing may trigger it."

"What kind of trap?"

"Magical. Beyond that:" She shrugged.

"How do you know?" Danny asked.

"Because I know. It is my business to know and this is not the place for magic." Wiz looked at the rat demon, which twitched its whiskers. He put it back in his pouch. "Okay, let’s take a break while Danny and I see what we can learn." Hall an hour later a grim-faced Wiz and Danny called the others to gather around them.

"This is the cutest thing yet," Wiz told them. "All these tunnels are kept open by magic, very carefully balanced magic. Too much additional magic will upset the spell and they’ll collapse."

Even Glandurg looked uneasily at the glowing red magma beyond. "Better it were that we use no magic then."

"We won’t, mostly. Danny and I have a spell running to strengthen the tunnels, so it’s not quite the trap it was when we came in, but any large expenditure of magical energy is still likely to bring the place down."

"So we feel our way through magicless," Malkin said.

"Not exactly. With the tunnels reinforced Danny and I can use a real low-power spell to narrow our choices."

"You say that as if there is a problem."

Wiz frowned. "Not a problem exactly, but there is a consideration. The spell is sensitive and people throw it off. It will work best if Danny and I go ahead alone while the rest of you wait here."

Malkin’s face didn’t move a muscle. "Is that wise?" she asked neutrally.

"About as wise as a lot of the rest of this expedition," Wiz told her. "Anyway people, stay close and we’ll be back as soon as we can. Above all, use no magic you don’t absolutely have to use."

It took several minutes to get the details sorted out and somewhat longer to convince June she had to stay behind and not go with Danny. That done, the two wizard programmers started off down a likely tunnel.

It wasn’t a pleasant experience. The heat from the walls beat in on them and soaked up through the soles of their boots until Wiz was reminded of bread in an oven. There was no noise through the insubstantial walls, but there was a low vibration as if hundreds of tons of melted rock around them was flowing and shifting under some unimaginable pressure. Sweat streaked their faces and soaked into their clothing. Even Wiz’s socks soaked until he squished in his boots with every step he took Here and there a trick of the light turned a patch of wall into a mirror that threw back a distorted funhouse reflection of the pair. Nor was the maze easy to unravel. It was mostly on one level, but it twisted and turned and divided and rejoined in a way that was not only confusing, it was downright unpleasant For all that, Wiz and Danny made good progress. Their spell allowed them to eliminate first large chunks of the maze and then successively smaller sections. Once or twice Wiz got an uneasy feeling they were being followed, but they saw no one and they heard nothing.

Of course, because the spell was so weak it was not infallible. Time and again, they found themselves headed in the wrong direction or caught up against a dead end.

The exit should be right up ahead here," Wiz said at last as they moved down a twisty, glowing corridor. They turned another corner and found themselves face to face with a rock wall.

"Dead end," Danny observed needlessly.

Wiz shrugged and turned to start back down the way they had come. There was a noise down the tunnel. A noise like heavy footfalls. A lot of them. Wiz motioned Danny to silence and peeked around the corner to see what was ahead. What was ahead was goblins. Big, hairy, nasty goblins armed to the fangs. The tunnel was packed three deep with them. The light from the molten rock reflected redly off the creatures’ armor and made their little pig eyes seem even redder. They were still some ways off and they apparently hadn’t seen the humans yet, but there was no place for them to go wrong.