Rick Cook - The Wizardry Quested

Wiz thought about it. "No, not really."

"And have we encountered greater numbers of them?"

An ugly little prickle of his neck hair told Wiz he wasn’t going to like where this was going. "No," he admitted.

"Then," Malkin asked, "are we sure we are getting closer to our goal?"

"Well, the seeker says we’re going in the right direction."

Malkin just looked at him.

"I’m really beginning to wonder about that seeker," Danny said. "I know this place is big but we should be at least a little closer to Moira than when we started."

"Maybe it’s been getting brighter so slowly we didn’t notice," Wiz suggested. Malkin reached out and tapped his shoulder. "The glow only extends out to this smudge on your right breast. That’s where it was yesterday and the day before."

"Are you sure?"

"Trust me. In my profession you notice these things. You always hold the crystal in the same place, straight out from your breastbone to the length of the cord around your neck."

Wiz thought about that. Then he looked down at the crystal. Then he thought about it some more. Not very pleasant thoughts.

"Let’s see something."

"Emac."

Instantly a two-foot-high demon with a big bald head, flapping ears, glasses and a green eyeshade appeared before him.

"?," said the little demon.

"backslash list find_moira exe."

The creature took a quill pen from behind one enormous ear and began to scribble fiery letters in the air. Wiz and his fellow adventurers were soon bathed in warm yellow light from the golden letters hanging before them.

"Wait a minute!" Danny said almost as soon as the Emac finished writing. "That doesn’t look right." He pointed with his staff at a section of the code.

"It’s not," Wiz said sourly. "Neither is that," he added as his staff jabbed out, "that or that."

"The spell’s been sabotaged!"

"Who?" demanded Glandurg. "Who has played such a foul trick upon us?"

"If I had to guess, I’d say the Enemy," Wiz said. "Okay folks, gather around, it’s conference time."

The party sat down on a convenient patch of rocks and all of them looked at Wiz expectantly. "Well," he said to break the silence, "what are our options?" No one wanted to mention the obvious one: Give up, try to make their way to the surface and wait for rescue.

"Dwarves can find their way underground," Danny suggested. "Perhaps Glandurg can guide us?"

"I would have to know where we were going," the dwarf said shortly.

"Impractical."

"Besides," Malkin said, "he tends to get lost."

"Slander," hissed the dwarf.

"Okay, settle down, people. The important thing is it won’t work" Glandurg and Malkin glared at each other but obeyed.

"What about re-casting the seeker spell?" Malkin asked after a minute.

"Hard to do. We could write a new spell easily enough, but we need something like a lock of Moira’s hair to focus the spell." He sighed. "If Moira’s personality were still with her body we could work something up to seek that, but otherwise we’ve got to have something intimately connected with her."

"Her cloak," June said from her place beside Danny. "Like mine."

"Similarity isn’t good enough I’m afraid."

"From the same cloth. Made at the same time."

With a pang Wiz remembered the long summer afternoons when Moira and June had sat together under a rose bower at Wizards’ Keep, sewing the matching cloaks for the coming winter and watching Ian and Caitlin romp among the rose bushes. Sometimes they had worked together, with a cloak stretched across their knees as they sat side by side or across from each other.

"Wait a minute! You both worked on Moira’s cloak, didn’t you?"

June nodded.

"Did you ever prick your finger while you worked and get blood on the cloak?" A hesitation and then another nod.

"Jackpot! Okay, we can do this then."

Everyone looked at him. "DNA," he explained. "If June got blood on the cloak her DNA is still on there."

"Washed it," June said defensively.

"I’m sure you didn’t get it all out. We can home on your DNA." ’

Danny grinned. "Yeah, and because it’s uniquely hers it will stand out almost as strongly as a true name." Then his face fell. "Wait a minute. How are you going to make it sensitive enough to find June’s blood on Moira’s cloak with June standing right here?"

"I’ve got a way to make a spell directional, like an antenna. As long as June’s not in the beam, her presence won’t interfere."

"Let’s get to it, then."

In the event it took several hours to produce and check the spell. Part of that was because Wiz and Danny took good care to armor the code against tampering and to sprinkle alarms throughout the program to warn of attempted subversion. Part of it was the usual quota of unexpected problems and glitches. Part of it was simply that it’s harder to work sitting on rocks in a cave than it is in your own workroom. So while Glandurg fidgeted, Malkin watched and June did whatever June did, the pair turned out a new spell.

The only real difficulty came in drawing a sample of June’s blood for comparison. June was so eager to hero she slashed a four-inch gash in her arm and Wiz and Danny had to break off preparing the spell to give her first aid. Finally they held up the finished product and commanded it to find Moira. Almost instantly the pointer lit up and swung around, pointing almost back the way they had come.

"Wonderful,’’ Danny said glumly. " We have been going in the wrong direction. " Wiz ached to get going in the new direction but common sense prevailed. " In the morning. Let’s get a good night’s rest and then we’ll head out. And this time we’ll be heading for Moira."

Honesty compelled him to admit that what they’d actually be heading for was Moira’s cloak. There was no guarantee Moira would still be with it. He tried very hard to push that thought out of his mind.

They moved out the next morning in good order and somber spirits. Once again Malkin led the way and Wiz followed, staff at the ready. His senses were alert but his mind was elsewhere. Malkin was right. The defenses of this place didn’t make any sense in the real world. They made sense in terms of a fantasy role-playing game, but there weren’t any fantasy role-playing games here. The only people in this World now who knew about such things were Danny, Jerry and himself. There had been Craig and Mikey, two computer crackers who had come to this World and hooked up with the forces of primal chaos. But Craig was dead and Mikey was a mindless husk held under tight guard at the Wizards’ Keep. So where had the idea come from?

Damn, he thought for about the thousandth time, I wish we knew what we are fighting.

"Well," E.T. Tajikawa said, "there’s your weapon."

On the table sat a golden globe about the size of a softball.

"Behold the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch," Taj said with a sweeping gesture.

"It’s what you might call an anti-takeover device-a poison pill."

"You intend to poison the Enemy?" Bal-Simba asked.

"Actually we’re going to hand him a retrovirus and he’s going to do a number on himself."

Both Bal-Simba and Jerry waited for him to continue.

"It started with those indeterminate instructions, the ones you call I’ll Do As I Damn Well Please, IDAIDWP."