Rick Cook - The Wizardry Consulted

However, Malkin did have one observation. "I don’t know if you’re the greatest wizard I’ve ever met," she told him as soon as they came through the front door, "but you are sure the luckiest." With that she turned and went up the stairs.

Wiz started to reply, but then he realized that she was right and that left him with nothing to say.

After a minute he also realized he was hungry. He vaguely remembered eating something after the sheriff’s men got through searching the house, but he wasn’t sure if he’d had anything since then. Rather than going upstairs to bed, he went downstairs to the kitchen.

Down in the kitchen his assistant wizard was enchanting his maid.

"… so we escaped before the bandits even realized what had happened."

"That’s so exciting," Anna breathed.

Llewllyn waved a hand dismissively. "Oh tut. All in a day’s work for a journeying wizard."

He had a wonderful rich voice and talked enchantingly with hand gestures, smiles and just the right amount of eye contact. If you treated the content as some kind of fairy tale, it was great.

Anna obviously thought it was great. She sat at the table with her chin in both hands, her pale blue eyes fastened rapturously on his face. He didn’t have his arm around her waist yet but things were definitely moving in that direction.

Wiz cleared his throat. Both of them started and turned toward the door. Anna blushed and for an instant Llewllyn looked flustered. "Ah, My Lord, how was the meeting with the Council?" he asked before Wiz could say anything.

"Productive. Very productive." Produced more confusion than anything I’ve seen since the last Total Quality Management seminar. "Can I see you upstairs Llewllyn?"

The young man turned and bowed to the still-blushing Anna. "Forgive me My Lady, but duty calls."

"Okay," Wiz said as soon as they were in the front room, "the council’s going to be reorganizing following a proposal I presented to them. Since you’re the one in the office most of the time they’ll probably be coming to you with questions. Refer any and all questions to me. Don’t try to answer them yourself. The situation’s kind of, ah, delicate."

Llewllyn smiled knowingly. "Am I to be permitted to know the nature of this plan?"

"Malkin’s got copies of the materials I gave the council. You can get one from her."

"Very good, My Lord. Is there aught else?"

"Yes. One other thing." Wiz thrust his face very close to Llewllyn’s. "If you mistreat Anna in any way I will personally break you in two."

The younger man’s eyes widened. "By magic?"

Wiz flexed his muscles. "That wouldn’t be nearly as much fun."

"And you think that I… ? For shame."

"Spare me the speeches. Just don’t, okay?"

With that he turned on his heel and went upstairs to his workroom.

Wiz ran into Malkin in the upstairs hall. "Our favorite house pest was in the kitchen," Wiz told her. "I filled him in and he’s probably going to ask you for a copy of that presentation. Give it to him, but don’t let him get any ideas about doing anything on his own, especially answering questions."

The tall woman nodded.

"Oh yeah, one other thing. Llewllyn seems to be making a play for Anna."

Malkin snorted. "You finally noticed that did you? You may," she said, stressing the word may, "be a mighty wizard, but you’re still blind as any other man. Well, you have nothing to worry about on that score."

"I know," Wiz said. "I told him I’d break him in two if I caught him messing with Anna."

Malkin grinned nastily. "I told him I’d have his balls for earrings and do it with a dull butter knife." The grin got broader and nastier. "Slowly. With a red-hot butter knife."

Looking at her expression, Wiz felt a certain tightness in a very sensitive spot. "Oh," he said in a very small voice.

Danny swore a particularly sulfurous oath just as Moira walked into the programmers’ workroom.

"I’m sorry, My Lords," she said and turned to go.

Jerry looked up. "Oh, hi Moira. No, that’s all right. We weren’t swearing at you. We were swearing at the system."

"More problems?" she asked in the resigned voice Jerry and Danny had come to know all too well since the search for Wiz started.

"I’m afraid so. We’ve been checking the sites on that wacko routing path of Wiz’s and checking them regularly. But now we keep pinging and we keep getting nonsense."

Danny went over the routing list item by item. Then he stopped dead. "Wait a minute! According to this he’s going through shark.vax."

"That’s the North Australia Oceanographic Institute. So?"

"So shark.vax is down. They had a typhoon or something. There was a message about it on the net."

"Let me see that!" Jerry grabbed the tablet from Danny’s hand. He traced down it and frowned. The frown grew deeper as he compared the tablet to the screen.

"Ping shark.vax." Danny nodded and typed frantically.

"What is it?" Moira demanded, pressing close.

"I think…" Jerry began, but Danny cut him off. "See. shark.vax isn’t there. But how is he using it if it’s not there?"

"Magic?" Moira suggested.

Jerry slammed his hand down on the table so hard a pile of manuscripts slid onto the floor. "No, a gimmicked router table! He got into one of those routers and redid the table."

"Slick. No wonder we couldn’t find him."

"Does this help?"

"Yes, it helps a lot. All we’ve got to do now is find the router he tricked and see where the entries in the table really lead. With that we can find the switch he’s using and from there we can trace him back to this world."

"But not quickly?"

Jerry forced a smile. "Oh, it’s not automatic, but we’ll find him. He can’t keep hiding like this for much longer."

I can’t keep going on like this, Wiz Zumwalt thought wearily. It wasn’t just that he had lost another solitaire game. He was stuck on the project and stuck fast. Even if he could keep a lid on things with the town council, which was doubtful, he still hadn’t made any real progress on protecting humans from dragons.

In fact, he realized, a lot of what he had done since he came here was in the nature of avoiding work on the problem hoping something would bubble up from his subconscious. But his subconscious was as flat as an open can of Coke left on a programmer’s desk over the weekend.

Maybe his subconscious didn’t have enough to work on. The truth of the matter was that he didn’t know much about dragons and he hadn’t really learned much about them since he came here.

"Hey, Malkin," he called over his shoulder, at the same time he clicked his mouse to deal another game.

"What?" came a voice in his ear.

Wiz jumped. There was Malkin at his shoulder.

"I wish you wouldn’t sneak up on me like that when I’m working."

The tall thief shrugged. "I’m not sneaking. It’s my normal way of walking. Kind of a professional asset, you might say."