Rick Cook: The Wizardry Consulted

The jailer looked at him oddly and ducked back down the stairs.

Wiz lay down on his bunk and thought hard. Unless these people had some very powerful magicians, something he had seen no sign of, he could get out of here any time he wanted to. But that wouldn’t help solve his problem. Given a little time to prepare spells, his magic would probably let him beat a dragon-provided it wasn’t too big or too powerful. But he didn’t think that he could take on all the dragons in the Dragon Lands alone and win. That obviously wasn’t the answer.

He might be here to help these people but they felt he had a higher and better purpose as dragon bait. They didn’t want help, they wanted a sacrificial goat they could hang all their trouble on. Yet he had to help them! It was imperative that he solve their problem.

Wiz chased the problem round and round in his mind without finding even the beginnings of a solution. He did, however, find an increasing sympathy for that long-ago rat in the nearly forgotten psych lab. He wondered if the rat had ever found the solution to its problem. Then he wondered what constituted a "solution" to a psych maze from the rat’s point of view. The patch of sunlight from the window in the side wall finished its journey up the wall and gradually dimmed out at dusk. Outside the street noises quieted and died as the city settled into sleep. Eventually Wiz did the same.

Gently, soundlessly, the searcher floated north into the graying dawn. Physically it looked like a smear of smoke or a wisp of gray silk about the size of a handkerchief. Magically it was nearly as uncomplicated. All it did was gather sense impressions and pass them on to a slightly larger, somewhat more substantial entity floating along well behind it. It had only limited mobility and moved mostly by floating on the wind.

By itself it wasn’t much, but the searching spell cranked them out by the tens of thousands. The searchers fed back into hundreds of the larger concentrators and they fed into dozens of high-level analysis demons. Given time they could find anything in the World that was in the open and unmasked. Slowly, inexorably, the net of magical watchers was spreading over the face of the World.

The rising sun tinted the underside of the clouds orange but the mountains below were still in deep shadow. Soon the sun would break above the horizon and bathe the mountain peaks in fire. It would be a glorious sunrise but the searcher was incapable of knowing or caring. It floated where the wind took it, working generally north on the air currents.

The searcher saw the speck detach itself from a peak and waft into the air, but it attached no more significance to it than to the pinkened clouds or the dark valleys. Analysis was for the higher echelons. So it faithfully recorded the speck’s growth and resolution into a dragon, climbing to just below the bottom of the clouds. It watched without apprehension as the dragon approached, its great wings cleaving the air in mighty beats. It felt no fear as the dragon swooped down with its wings slightly folded to increase the speed of the dive, and no terror as a gout of dragon fire blotted out its existence. All of this it simply recorded and transmitted back to the collector, neither knowing nor caring that another dragon had flamed the collector minutes before.

Its killer, a young female only recently sentient, felt a pang of fierce joy at having destroyed the intruder. She gloried in her strength and prowess as she climbed toward the clouds to begin her day’s hunting-and to kill any more of the strange creatures who invaded her territory.

Back at the Wizard’s Keep, Jerry Andrews studied the results on his display and frowned.

"A problem?" Arianne asked mildly. Bal-Simba had been up late and his assistant had taken the early watch. Jerry had been up all night and probably wouldn’t crash for a few more hours.

"Something’s happening to the searchers." He took a long pull on the mug of blackmoss tea on his workbench and swiveled to face the tall blond woman. "We’ve got good coverage on the lands of man and the Wild Wood, but when we move outside that territory we start losing them."

"Losing them?"

"The search demons. Mostly they’re being destroyed. Some we’re just losing contact with. I think those are local magical effects. But a lot of them are being attacked by dragons."

It was Arianne’s turn to frown. "That could be natural. Dragons are common beyond the borders of the lands of man and they do not like other flying objects in their air." She paused.

"Do you think it’s natural?"

"I do not know," the wizardess said slowly. "I would not count on it."

"Wurm’s doing?"

"It may be. However, dragons are solitary creatures. It takes a great cause to get them to cooperate, even slightly."

"Which means that kidnapping Wiz is a very big deal for the dragons."

"What it means, I think, is a problem for Bal-Simba when he awakens, and possibly the Council of the North. It is far beyond my abilities to decipher. What does this do to your search?"

"Complicates the hell out of it." Jerry swiveled back to the columns of glowing letters above his bench. "We’re not getting any searchers more than a couple of hundred leagues beyond the borders of the known world. Unless we can change that we’re going to be limited in where we can look." He took another pull on his tea mug. "Somehow I don’t think we’re going to find Wiz in the known world."

"You still here?"

Wiz jerked awake and there was Malkin standing just outside his cell.

"Of course I’m still here. I’m in jail!"

Malkin shrugged. "So? You’re a wizard, aren’t you? Why don’t you just magic yourself out of here?"

"I can’t do that," Wiz said miserably.

"Well, don’t you know other wizards? They could get you out of here."

"I can’t do that either," Wiz said.

"Why not?"

"I just can’t. I’ve got to solve these people’s problems."

"Look," said Malkin, obviously exasperated, "the folk hereabouts don’t want you to solve their problems. They want to stake you out like a pig at a barbecue."

"I can’t run away," Wiz said simply. "I’ve got to stay, don’t you see?"

"I see they’re right," Malkin said. "Them as says wizards is all cracked."

She was right, he knew. The smart thing would be to magic himself out of the place, walk the Wizard’s Way back to the castle and return with enough help to clean up the whole situation. But he couldn’t do that. He just couldn’t. There had to be a better way and he had to find it on his own. Malkin sniffed and Wiz looked miserable as he pondered the trap he was in.

And then, in a blinding flash, he had it!

The misery and indecision were gone and his brain shifted into overdrive as he saw the possibilities. He started to smile. Then he started to grin. Then his expression became positively maniacal with glee.

Like most programmers, Wiz preferred straight talk and plain dealing. But he wasn’t a fanatic about it. It was obvious the only thing straight talk and plain dealing would get him in this situation was a quick trip to The Rock.

Malkin edged away from the bars. "Are you all right?"

"Never better," he assured her. "Never better. It’s just the solution is so obvious."