Rick Cook: The Wizardry Quested

It was high winter and beyond the town the world lay under a blanket of white. Wiz and Moira stood outside the outer gate of the castle and looked down the long sloping High Street to the scene beyond.

"Oh Wiz! Look at the fresh snow! Isn’t it beautiful?""If you say so," Wiz Zumwalt told his wife. "I’m a California boy and this isn’t my style.""Oh you just don’t like snow.""It’s not that I don’t like snow. But I hate slush."

"Still," Moira said firmly, "it’s beautiful." Wiz reached out and circled her waist with his arm. "You’re beautiful."

Even an objective observer-which Wiz most definitely was not-would have agreed. Moira was wearing a heavy cloak of dark green wool lined and trimmed with dark fur. Her red hair, sparkled by diamond drops of melted snowflakes, hung down over the collar. The cold brought roses to her pale cheeks and her green eyes were bright under lashes the color of brushed copper. He had loved her from the first moment he had seen her, but that had been a magic spell. What had grown between them since then needed no spells.

She clung to him for an instant and then broke away. "Oh, come on," she said breathlessly, "I want to see my domain."

Wiz sketched a mock bow. "Lead on, Your Majesty."

Moira struck a regal pose. "Not until tomorrow. After Our coronation you may address Us as Your Majesty. Meanwhile you may give Us your arm."

Ever since the fair committee had announced its choice it had been a joke between them. When the fair officially opened tomorrow Moira would be crowned with holly and mistletoe and proclaimed Winter Queen to reign over the fair. Normally the queen was one of the women of the town, but this year the townsfolk had chosen Moira. If the truth be known this was due to a deadlock between the two logical candidates, but Wiz and Moira had chosen to ignore the politics and concentrate on the honor.

"What? You don’t want the rest of me?"

Moira opened her green eyes wide and gave him one of her patented 10,000-volt looks. "There are other parts of you that are useful," she said, "but let us leave that for later." Side by side they started down the icy street toward the fair.

The Wizards’ Keep stood on a great bluff that jutted up at the joining of two rivers. The town known simply as the Capital tailed down the sloping back of the rock to the flatlands below. From where they stood they could see over the roofs and walls of the Capital down to the fairgrounds.

Two days ago the water meadows beside the rivers had been as plain and white as the fields beyond. Now, as if by magic, a city had sprung up. Brightly colored canopies spilled carelessly against the fields of white. Along the dark river, boats lay ashore. Here and there campfires burned against the midwinter’s chill and everywhere people bustled like ants, erecting tents and stalls, unloading and setting up to display their wares.

Merchants had come from all over the human lands to trade at the Winter Fair. Wizards, townsfolk, farmers and villagers for miles around came to buy, barter, gossip and just gawk at the spectacle.

"Have you ever seen the like?" Moira asked excitedly.

"In my world we call them trade shows," Wiz said. "Remind me to tell you about Comdex some time."

Side by side they strolled down the Capital’s main street, greeting townsfolk and acknowledging greetings. Thanks to his magic, Wiz was a member of the Council of the North, the wizards who ruled and watched over the human lands. With his combination of magic and computer programming he was perhaps the mightiest of the Mighty who sat upon the Council. But most of the hellos were for Moira. Before they met she had been a hedge witch in a village near the borders of the Wild Woods sharing the lives of the villagers, healing, advising and helping them in their day-to-day concerns. Her magical ability would never be above moderate, but she had a warmth and genuine liking for people that none of the Mighty could match.

There were few enough folk out as they made their way down the cobbled streets. The cold kept as many who could stay inside and as it was midmorning most of the residents were hard at work. Wiz could hear the ring of a blacksmith’s anvil carried from some side street in the frosty air. From another street came the steady rhythmic clanging of a coppersmith beating out a vessel on a stake. The women of the Capital liked to do their marketing early and anyone who had free time and didn’t mind the cold would be down at the water meadows watching the fair go up.

Wiz and Moira were perhaps halfway through the town when Moira slowed and clutched Wiz’s arm more tightly. Wiz turned to look at her and saw she had gone white, making her freckles stand out starkly against her skin.

"Darling are you all right?"

"Fine," Moira gasped. "Be fine. Just let me sit for a minute."

Wiz guided his wife to a wooden bench by a nearby doorstep. She sank down on it and leaned forward until her head was nearly between her knees. She gasped for breath a couple of times and then held the air in. Wiz stood with his hand on her shoulder, feeling helpless.

"Can you make it back all right?"

"I do not want to go back," Moira said, staring at her toes. "I will be all right and we can go on."

"Nuts. You’re going back to the castle."

Moira breathed deeply again and straightened up. Wiz could see the color coming back to her cheeks.

"I am fine," she said in a stronger voice. "It was just a momentary dizziness."

"You’re trying to do too much and you know you haven’t been feeling well. You need to slow down, or at least let Bronwyn have a look at you."

She smiled up at him and patted his hand. "I will. After the fair, I promise." Wiz started to protest, then smiled back. "Why is it I never seem to win these arguments?"

Moira’s smile grew even brighter and she squeezed his hand in hers. "Because I am always right."

Cold. Black, bitter, eternal cold and forever-frozen silence. They lay heaped where they fell, as they would lie until the primal forces of weather and earth moved them, Some had lived once. Others had lived never. Immaterial. Now the living were as lifeless as the never-living, all mixed together in the dark and endless, freezing Cold.

Somewhere in the chill mass a thing stirred.

As they got lower into town more people appeared on the street, all going in the same direction. By the time they reached the main gate at the foot of the bluff they were part of a small crowd.

The fair started just outside the gate. The road was lined with a double row of booths and pavilions in various stages of erection. Behind those rows Wiz could glimpse other tents, all brightly colored, all erected without the least regard for the appearance of their neighbors, yet all of them swirling together into an oddly harmonious whole.

The place was a cheerful babble of excited voices chattering, calling, crying wares, and shouting. Here, there was a cheer as a pavilion was raised to its full height, followed immediately by a groan as the center pole slipped on the frozen earth and the tent billowed to the ground again. There, children chased one another between the tents and through the crowds, shrieking their excitement. Over yonder a horse whinnied and a bull bellowed. Somewhere else musicians played on pipe and drum and tambourine. From the river bank came the chant of boatmen pulling in unison to bring their boat ashore.