Rick Cook - The Wizardry Quested

"No, I’ll be all right. There’s things I need to do."

The healer nodded and withdrew, leaving Wiz to his thoughts.

Night and fog closed around the Wizards’ Keep, black, damp and almost palpable. The lamps burned in Bal-Simba’s workroom where the leader of the Council of the North sat and thought.

There was a single knock at the door. Bal-Simba gestured and Arianne entered.

"Any sign?" the giant black wizard asked.

The Watchers can find nothing. Not even sign of anything unusual."

"To be expected, I fear."

"Lord, you know that Moira was pregnant?"

Bal-Simba nodded. "Bronwyn told me." He sank his chin into a meaty palm. "I wonder if that was what attracted this creature to her?"

Arianne’s eyes went wide at the thought. Then she bit her lip. That implies somewhat unpleasant things about our enemy," she said neutrally.

"Very unpleasant indeed." He sighed. "Beyond the fact that it was Moira, this business has aspects I do not like at all."

"Our enemy seems powerful."

"Powerful, strange and malign," Bal-Simba agreed. "Since the Sparrow has been among us we have seen the magic of elves and even things not entirely of this world. But never magic of the sort I saw today."

Arianne, who had stayed at the Wizards’ Keep to organize the defenses cocked a questioning eyebrow.

"Have you ever dealt with a viper?" Bal-Simba asked. "Something small and mindless yet full of menace and the single desire to harm? That was what those things were like."

"Yet even a viper has reason," Arianne said. They act so to defend themselves or because they are frightened."

Bal-Simba gave her a tired smile. "And in understanding the viper we become able to deal with it. We may hope that these things act with reason as well and that by understanding their reason we can learn to deal with them." He didn’t say it with a lot of conviction.

Both of them were silent for a moment. "Well," Bal-Simba sighed at last. "If then the Watchers cannot find anything, best to resort to other methods. Have my scrying bowl brought to me. If it will not show us Moira- and I doubt very much that it will-we can at least learn where this new magic lairs."

"Oh, and Lady:" Arianne turned, hand on the door handle.

"We need not mention our speculations to the Sparrow. Certainly not yet."

"Of course, My Lord."

Someone edged into the room. Looking up, Wiz saw it was Malus.

"Excuse me, My Lord," the pudgy wizard said. "I just heard what happened. I wanted to offer condolences- and whatever aid I might give."

"Thanks, Malus. I appreciate it."

"I was going to ask you about my spell." He drew the roll of parchment from his sleeve and looked at it ruefully. "It seems so trivial now."

Wiz held out his hand. "Give it to me."

"Now, My Lord?"

"I’ve got to keep busy," Wiz said grimly.

"Oh, of course, My Lord. And if there’s anything I can do, anything at all." Wiz clapped the fat little man on the shoulder. "Thank you, Malus. You’re a good friend."

After Malus left, Wiz spread out the parchment strips and arranged them on a bench beside the window. Like all spells it was written on parallel strips so the spell would not be activated by the act of writing it Wiz stared at them for nearly five minutes before he realized he had the strips out of order. With a sigh he picked them up and stuffed them in his belt pouch. Then he wandered down the hall toward the programmers’ workroom.

He found Danny hard at it. There were at least six listings in different colors above his workbench and two emacs below them giving more magical commands. As Wiz entered, his young colleague whispered something to a third emac seated cross legged on the floor and the demon made a note with a quill pen on a strip of parchment in its lap.

June was in the corner with Ian nestled wide-eyed and clinging in her skirt. Her other hand stayed near her knife. She hadn’t let her husband or son out of her sight since the attack.

"Have you been able to get a line on the spell?"

Danny turned toward him and made a face. This thing is real cute. First, you were right. It was done with something based more or less on our magic compiler."

"Which version?"

"I said more or less. It’s been hacked, moby hacked. There’s stuff in there I’ve never seen and I’ve got no idea what it does. There’s other stuff that goes back to your original quick-and-dirty interpreter, in a couple of cases stuff we took out of the later versions because it wasn’t stable. Then there’s stuff that’s just been fine-tuned."

He gestured and another screen opened, showing another listing. Here and there lines of code stood out in brighter fire.

Those things we met in the square are very loosely based, maybe ’inspired’ is closer, on our searcher system. The highlighted parts were probably lifted verbatim. But each of the things in the square is considerably more complex than our searchers-and a lot more lethal."

"How do they work?"

I’m not quite sure. What they do is to suck the Me force out of their victim, like a bunch of magical vampires. But there’s more to it than that and I’m not sure what. Lake I say, some of this stuff is just real strange. Some of it is beautifully tuned, some of it is damn crude and a lot of it doesn’t look like it does anything at all. " He paused. " You know, I think I saw something like this once on the net. A guy kept posting stuff to alt.c.sources. He was a really good programmer only he was going psycho and in his last articles before they took him away he had this same kind of mix of off-the-wall brilliant and just plain off the wall."

"This guy’s too strong just to be crazy. Where’s this stuff coming from?" Danny shrugged. "Bal-Simba and some of the others are working on that. I’ve been concentrating on trying to understand what we’re up against."

Wiz was still looking at the code when the door banged open and Malkin strode in.

The tall thief looked like grim death. Her lips were pressed into a hard bloodless line and her dark eyes glinted dangerously. Clearly she wanted to kill someone. Wiz could sympathize.

"Word reached me at Heart’s Ease," she said by way of greeting.

"Jerry’s in your apartment:" Wiz began.

"I know. I have already seen him, much good that it did me. Now I want some answers. Then I want someone’s head."

"I bet you think those are original ideas," Wiz said bitterly.

Malkin softened. "I know they are not, My Lord Your loss is much greater than mine and I am truly, deeply sorry." Then her jaw clenched and her eyes flashed again. "And it gives me one more reason to want this one’s head on a pike." Even through his own misery Wiz was impressed, and a little awed. Normally Malkin was almost obsessively cheery, even in the face of utter disaster. He had never seen her this angry before-not, he thought, that she’d ever had this kind of reason before-and the effect was definitely impressive. More accurately, it was downright scary.

Malkin let out a sigh through her teeth and seemed to relax through a sheer effort of will. "Now then, tell me what happened at the fair this day." Talking in shifts and interrupting each other, Wiz and Danny filled her in on the attack.

"So," Malkin said as the programmers wound down, "does this thing come to us or do we winkle it out of its hole?"

Danny and Wiz looked at each other. Neither of them had gone that far in their thinking.