Rick Cook - The Wizardry Cursed

But why have just a memory? Why not a souvenir to help keep the memory fresh. In fact, why not four souvenirs?

As the robots returned from moving the computer, Craig gave them new orders.

Outside the Mousehole was a ship, a golden cigar shape lying on its side and pressing into the earth. One by one the robots carried their burdens up the gangway and carefully stowed them in one of the holds.

"Okay," Mikey said as he came back into what had been the computer center. "Let’s get going. Hey! Where’s Zumwalt and the others?"

"On the ship. I’m gonna build a trophy room and they’re going to be my first trophies."

Mikey snorted and shook his head.

"Have it your way. Just make damn sure they stay frozen. Now have you got everything? Then let’s haul ass."

As soon as they were aboard the gangway withdrew into their ship and the airlock doors swung shut. With an ear-piercing whine the golden craft rocked slightly and then rose straight up.

In the cockpit, Craig and Mikey lounged back in their acceleration couches and watched the ground fall away. Once they were high above the valley, Mikey used the mouse to line the crosshairs up on the now-deserted Mousehole. Then he pressed the left button quickly three times.

"Bombs awaaaay," he called as three dots detached themselves from the ship and plummeted to Earth.

Three blinding, shattering explosions came as one, making the ship’s screens darken for an instant and filling the world below them with boiling, churning dust. The ship rose and fell slightly in the blast wave and then sailed serenely out of the billowing mushroom cloud, made a right-angle turn and headed north.

The cloud of smoke rose high in the air behind them.

From the hillside where he lay, Glandurg cursed as the airship vanished in the distance. "Balked again!" Then he straightened. "Come. We must follow these strangers to their lair."

"Don’t see why," Snorri grumbled. "Seems like this Sparrow is bloody well finished."

"He was alive when he was taken from his abode."

"Didn’t look none too healthy," Thorfin said. "All stiff like that."

"But he was alive. To fulfill the quest we must kill him ourselves or make certain of his death."

"Lot of extra work, if you ask me," Snorri said.

Glandurg turned on him, red-faced. "Who’s leading this quest, you or me?"

"Oh you are," Snorri said sullenly. The other dwarves stood in a silence Glandurg chose to interpret as assent.

"Too right I am! And I say we track the wizard down."

"How far do you reckon they’ll take him?"

"That’s immaterial. We will follow our prey to the ends of the World."

"We’re a good bit beyond those already," Thorfin muttered.

Glandurg ignored the remark. "Besides, I doubt these newcomers will have their lair ensorcelled against us. We should be able to penetrate easily."

"Does this mean griffins again?" Gimli asked plaintively.

"We would be too easy to see. No, we shall follow on foot. Now quickly." He looked down at the cloud of smoke roiling out of the valley. "There is nothing left here for us."

Gathering their packs the dwarves set out toward the north, following Glandurg’s magic indicator toward an unseen foe.

There was no sign of life in the room where Wiz had met Craig and Mikey. Now the glass wall showed the night sky clear but oddly devoid of stars. There were just a few sprinkled around, making it hard to tell where the sky left off and the shadow of the mountains began.

Aside from the weak starlight, the only illumination came from the console monitor which spilled a squarish puddle of pale light onto the tiled floor. The only motion was the slow ceaseless rotation of the strange shape on the computer screen as the system ground inexorably closer to the final solution.

The door opened and a robot guard clanked in, sensors swiveling left and right as it probed the darkness, the laser turrets on its shoulders tracking restlessly back and forth. It was the very picture of mechanized death, even if a thin stream of oil was leaking from a blown knee seal, leaving oily footprints in its wake. Every time the robot took a step the piston in the leaking hydraulic damper slammed against the stop, making a distinct "clank." But the noise only made the black metal thing more menacing.

Twice it circled the computer, alert for any sign of life or anything out of order. Finding nothing, it clanked around the room once more and left. The dim light glinted faintly off its shiny black carapace as it turned the corner and the sound of its passage faded into the silence and stillness of the night.

Long after the guard’s last echo died something moved in the deepest dark at the base of the computer. Slowly and oh so cautiously a smaller patch of darkness separated itself from the computer’s shadow. As it scuttled along the base of the wall a stray glimmer of light caught it and resolved the patch into a tiny manlike figure.

The gremlin squeaked inaudibly at the light and scurried back into the shadows. There it paused, casting this way and that, its leaflike ears flapping and its long pointed nose quivering.

Machines! It was in the middle of an enormous collection of machines with a variety and complexity it had never imagined. In every direction beyond these stone walls was a gremlin king’s ransom of machines. The computer that had been such a regal home just a few days ago was shabby and threadbare by comparison.

A broad, snaggle-toothed and beatific smile spread over the little creature’s face.

Suddenly it was a very happy gremlin.

"Nothing?" Bal-Simba demanded. "Nothing at all left?"

Dragon Leader shook his head. "A smoking crater, Lord. We landed and searched for survivors, but we found only one."

He gestured at the brownie standing on the council table.

"Breachean, my Lord." The little man hung his head. "It is my great shame that when the invaders came I ran away."

"It is our good fortune that you did," Bal-Simba said kindly. "Else there would be none to tell us what happened."

"I cannot tell you much, my Lord. I was outside when the metal creatures arrived and I ran. From the top of the hill I saw them carry out the thing the gremlins loved and put it in their ship. But then I ran over the hill and saw nothing more until the explosion."

"The computer?" Moira demanded from her place behind Bal-Simba’s chair. "They took the computer?"

"Aye, my Lady. The metal things carried it out."

"But you saw no people?"

"No, Lady, either yours or my own."

The giant black wizard was silent for a moment, his head sunk on his chest. Up and down the long table the wizards of the Council of the North simply stared. One seat at the table was conspicuously vacant.

"Very well," he said at last. "Thank you, Breachean. Dragon Leader, keep what watch you can on the area in case someone else did survive, but do not endanger your riders."

Dragon Leader saluted and left with the brownie at his heels.

Bal-Simba sighed and looked back at Moira. "Child, I am sorry," he said simply.

The hedge witch was white, her freckles standing out vividly. "They will pay for this," she said softly. "By the World, the sea and the sky above they will pay!"

"Indeed they shall," the wizard Juvian said from his place near the head of the table. "Lady, the Council extends its deepest sympathies to you in your bereavement."