Rick Cook: The Wizardry Quested

The face was normal enough, pale with high cheekbones and a long nose, but the eyes were not. Instead of showing a normal white and pupil they were iridescent, as though there were an opaline mist over the whole eyeball, or like an insect’s eye when the light strikes it right.

The illusionist hissed like a frightened snake and wrenched away from Wiz. His hand darted out of his sleeve and instinctively Wiz twisted away so the hand struck his wizards staff instead of his arm. There was a flash of blue lightning and a report like a rifle shot as magic met magic. That seemed to break his hold on the crowd and suddenly people were running and screaming, stampeding away from the booth.

Wiz stumbled back, his staff held before him. From down the row of booths came a shout and a flash of magic. Out of the corner of his eye Wiz saw Malus raise his staff to launch another attack.

The thing looked at Malus, back at Wiz and over Wiz’s shoulder where Moira was standing. Without a word it whirled, gathering up the hem of its robe. Black smoke reeking of brimstone poured from the robe and rose in a whirlwind above Wiz’s head. Malus fired another magic bolt at the growing black cloud, but it disappeared into the smoke without a trace.

Tall as a tree the black cloud grew, and the wind of its turning whipped and tore at the booths and the robes of the wizards. Then the cloud separated from the earth and darted into the sky, pursued by magical bolts from Malus and lightning bolts hurled by Wiz.

It climbed faster and faster until it was no larger than a hand, then a finger. Then it moved away to the south.

"What? Who?" Malus came rushing up oblivious to the commotion spreading throughout the fair. Then he seemed to realize he would not get answers to his questions and settled for indignation. "To think that they would try it here! Of all places! Why, why the sheer effrontery of it!" Wiz noticed he didn’t specify who "they" were.

"Get help," Moira said tightly. "Quickly." Her words brought Wiz and Malus back to themselves and both fumbled for the communications crystals they wore around their necks.

"Are you all right?" Wiz asked his wife.

" I think so." She clung to him fiercely and let out a deep breath. "It was like being pulled along by a strong current, or sliding down a slope of loose earth. I’ve:"

Before she could continue there was a soft pop of displaced air and Arianne, Bal-Simba’s assistant, appeared before them. Arianne’s eyes were unfocused and her lips moved silently as she spoke to the communications crystal about her neck Off behind her Wiz could see a flight of three dragons soaring away from their cavern aerie in the cliffs below the Wizards’ Keep. The Watchers had launched the ready patrol.

"We sensed a flare of magic even before your call," she told the two wizards.

"Now, what was this all about?"

"I don’t know," Wiz said, "but I don’t like it"

"A magical invasion of the fair," Mains added. "A creature posing as a man." Moira was pale and shaking. "It was magic indeed. Like no magic I have ever felt before."

"Programmer magic?" Arianne asked.

Moira bit her lip. "Not exactly. Something like it, but different-colder. Does that make any sense?"

Since Wiz lacked the natural talent needed to sense magic of any sort he could only nod. He had heard his Kind of magic described as "feeling" like a horde of ants as the tiny spells that made up the words of the magic programming language operated, but he’d never felt it.

Arianne, however, had. "Colder?"

Moira hesitated. "Not cold, exactly. Rather, not-alive."

Wiz had an image of zombie army ants. He didn’t like the picture at all.

": so whatever that thing was it had a special attraction for people who are sensitive to magic," Wiz summed up.

Around the table in the programmers’ office Jerry, Danny, Bal-Simba and Arianne all listened intently. After more than an hour’s rehashing of events, Moira wasn’t paying much attention.

"Which explains why it didn’t affect you," Danny put in. "Like the rest of us you haven’t got any magical talent to speak of. But Moira probably had more than anyone else in the crowd so it really worked on her."

"All it did was make me dizzy," Wiz added. Moira looked down at her hands and said nothing.

"None of the other Mighty have ever seen or heard of the like," Arianne told them. "This is something completely new. Worse, the magic is so different we did not detect it until the Sparrow confronted the thing."

"Where did it come from?" Jerry asked.

"It arrived at the fairgrounds early this morning and set up its pavilion like any other merchant or entertainer," Arianne said. "None of the other merchants had ever seen the thing before but none took special notice of it until the whirlwind began. It so well concealed its nature that Malus walked by the booth several times without seeing anything amiss." She nodded at Wiz and Moira. "He apologizes most abjectly for not discovering it sooner."

"I cannot blame him," Moira said weakly.

"This thing is also," Wiz added, "immune to lightning bolts, and whatever spell Malus was throwing at it But we still don’t know what it is or what it was after."

"We can hazard a guess on the last, I think," rumbled Bal-Simba from his oversized chair at the head of the table. Although he had been physically present for the whole conference he had spent most of it receiving reports and communing magically with others of the Mighty.

"An attack?" Arianne asked.

"More likely a scout," the great black wizard said slowly. "Something sent ahead to spy us out and discover our defenses."

"So you don’t think it was alone?"

"It seems unlikely. What we know now seems to suggest a being controlled or commanded from elsewhere, not an independent entity."

"Any idea who or where?"

Bal-Simba shrugged. That is as yet unknown. Perhaps we can discover more when the Council of the North meets this evening. " He heaved himself erect. " Now if you will excuse me, I must consult directly with the Watchers. My Lords, My Ladies." He sketched a bow and left.

"Are you sure you’re all right? Do you want to go lie down?"

"No, I am fine."

"You don’t look it," Danny put in. "You’re white as a sheet and you look awful." Moira looked up. "A fine thing to tell a woman, I am sure."

"Well, you do," Danny said defensively.

"Perhaps you had better go lie down, darling. You really don’t look well." Moira reached out and patted Wiz’s hand. "Perhaps I will. Dealing with strange magics seems to take a lot out of me."

"Well," came a female voice from the door, "all alive I see."

Wiz looked up and saw a stout woman standing at the door. A boy and girl were peeking around her from either side and a dragon was looking over her shoulder.

"Oh, hello Shauna," Wiz said. "Any reason why we shouldn’t be?"

Shauna was nurse to Ian, Danny and June’s son, and mother of Ian’s playmate Caitlin. In addition to looking after the children and mothering June as needed, she provided a strong dose of common sense for the programming team.

"Fortune, but you should hear the stories being bandied about in the town!" She looked at Moira, "Do you know you and Wiz both are dead a dozen times over? And each death grislier than the last?"