Rick Cook: The Wizardry Cursed

"Parakeet," Danny corrected. "It’s how you get rid of cats. You get a 500-pound parakeet and teach it to say ’here, kitty kitty kitty.’ "

Moira started to frown and then laughed as she caught the joke.

"So you call this Operation 500-Pound Parakeet."

"They call it Operation 500-Pound Parakeet," Wiz said sourly. "I had nothing to do with the name."

"Hey man, it’s gonna be easy," Danny told him lightly. "All you gotta do is zip back to the City of Night, off a demon who’s waiting to toast you, and then call for the cavalry-us. We handle the rest." He made a palm-down gesture as if sweeping aside minor details. "Nooo problemo."

"It is indeed simple if you remember your spells and execute them correctly," Moira agreed.

"I rest my case," Wiz said sourly.

"Crave pardon?"

"Almost time," Bal-Simba called from his place at the head of the circle. "Make ready."

"I mean you just proved my point. Oh well, if we’re going to do this thing, let’s get on with it."

He kissed Moira long and hard.

"Okay," he said. "Places everyone."

Moira, Jerry and Danny stepped back and out of the circle, being careful not to scuff the chalked lines. The seven other wizards looked at Bal-Simba and he watched the sun stick as the shadow crept the last fraction of an inch along its track.

Then all the wizards raised their hands and began chanting. Wiz gripped his staff and tried to breathe slowly and evenly as the chant rose around him and the air seemed to fill with smoke. The sound became louder and louder, then began to fade as the air around him became thick and opaque.

There was a flash of darkness and suddenly the air was so cold it burned his lungs.

Wiz Zumwalt clung to his staff and pressed his eyes tightly shut as waves of dizziness washed over him. When he opened his eyes he found he was nose to nose with a wall of crudely dressed black basalt.

He turned and nearly fell when he stepped on a patch of ice in the wall’s shadow. He scraped his palm as he caught himself against the rough wall. Then his vision cleared and the dizziness receded as he looked out over desolation.

Even at its height the City of Night had not been attractive. Its builders, the wizards of the Dark League, had cared much more for power than for beauty. Most of the city had been crudely built out of the volcanic stone of the Southern continent with no regard to appearance or city planning.

But when the Dark League had ruled here at least there had been a kind of sinister vitality to the place. In its ruin and abandonment the city was simply ugly. The cobbled street fell away steeply and over the roofs of the close-huddled buildings Wiz could see the steel-gray harbor merging at the horizon into steel-gray sky. Behind him the volcano on whose flank the city stood curled a thin plume of smoke to the leaden sky. Even the snow that capped the mountain was dirty gray.

Studded here and there around the city were gaunt black towers, several of them with their tops blown off. A few yards ahead of Wiz the street was blocked by rubble where one of the buildings had collapsed. Many of the buildings between him and the harbor were ruined, roofless or in a couple of cases simply melted.

He reached inside his shirt and pulled out a tiny bit of blue crystal he wore on a thong around his neck. "I’m here," he said into the communications crystal. "Start Operation 500-Pound Parakeet."

Then he looked out over his handiwork again and shivered, not entirely from the cold.

Directly or indirectly, Wiz was responsible for most of the destruction. In his first great battle with the Dark League he had used his mixture of computer programming and magic to rout the League and destroyed a good part of the city in the process. In the second confrontation, he had been kidnapped to this place by the remnants of the League. For weeks the enemy wizards had hunted him through the freezing ruins of the City of Night while a tracking demon waited to destroy him if he used the least of his new magic.

He had been rescued after he had incited a magical battle between the wizards and Bale-Zur, the invincible slaying demon who had once served them. The effect of so much magic unleashed had attracted the attention of the Council’s Watchers and brought a patrol of dragons south over the City to his rescue.

However the battle had stirred up the slaying demon. Instead of staying in one place and killing whatever came to him, the Watchers reported Bale-Zur now roamed the City of Night ceaselessly looking for victims. Worse, it had begun to range beyond the City itself. If this kept up it was sure to use its powers to travel across the Freshened Sea to the lands of men.

Wiz knew he was safe enough, but he kept his back to the freezing wall anyway. The communications crystal used the old magic of the Mighty, not his new spell compiler that would activate the tracking demon. Even though it needed eight powerful wizards and a complicated ceremony, Bal-Simba had sent him along the Wizard’s Way by conventional magic so he did not have to use his own spells.

Of all the mortals in the World only three were safe from Bale-Zur. The demon would not touch Wiz, Jerry and Danny because their full names-their true names-had never been spoken anywhere in the World. To Bale-Zur they were no more prey than a rock.

However Bale-Zur was only half the problem. The other half was the hunting demon the Dark League had created in their attempt to destroy Wiz. Unlike Bale-Zur it could not range much beyond the Southern Continent. However it was keyed to Wiz’s special brand of magic and would attack and destroy anything that used it.

But spells built with the magic compiler were the only kind Wiz, Jerry and Danny knew. If they tried to make magic the demon would be on them instantly.

It presented a pretty problem. Wiz, Jerry and Danny were immune to Bale-Zur, but if they used their magic they would be immediately attacked by the hunting demon. The hunting demon would not respond to conventional magic, but not even all of the Mighty together could hope to stand against Bale-Zur.

Until Bale-Zur was contained it was horribly risky for any mortal but Wiz or his friends to enter the City of Night and until the hunting demon was contained, they could not be safe here.

The demons weren’t the only dangers in the City of Night. Remnants of the League’s old magic remained and there were other monsters here as well. However none of those were the equal of a well-prepared magician-well, probably not, Wiz told himself-and most of them were not active by daylight in the open. We don’t think!

Naturally they had backup. He was being closely watched by magical means, and several of the Mighty were poised to jump to his aid if he appeared to be in danger. There were two squadrons of dragon riders circling just off the beach. But he was still here alone and if anything went wrong he would be the first to know it.

Well, now I know how a worm on a hook feels, Wiz thought. He pulled his cloak tighter and set to work.

After hashing it over repeatedly, they had worked out a plan. It seemed like a good idea back at the Capital, but standing in the shattered city, Wiz was growing less fond of it by the minute.

He shifted his grip on his staff. The sooner they got this part of the operation over with the sooner he would be able to protect himself. And the sooner I can use a spell to stay warm.

He reached into his pouch, drew out four pieces of blue stone and set one at each point of the compass. Then he stood between them and began to scratch in the frozen dust with his staff.

Carefully he traced the figure in the dust as he had been taught. The old magic of this world depended for its success on precise execution. Everything had to be done just right and even the tiniest deviation from the rituals could mean disastrous changes in the outcome. The secret of the success of his magic compiler lay in the fact that it used extremely simple, reliable little spells that could be built up to produce complex, powerful effects with little or no talent on the part of the user.