Rick Cook - The Wizardry Cursed

"What was that?" Glandurg demanded as the explosions and gunfire rang out over the plain.

"Dunno," Snorri said. "But it’s about half a league over yonder." He pointed to the column of smoke and dirt boiling up well to the dwarves’ left.

"Well, let’s not wait around to find out, shall we?"

The wiring closet had been heavily guarded because it was the concentration point for the sensors and fire control systems for the outer defenses of the entire southern quadrant of the castle.

The wiring was automatically monitored, but the computer doing the monitoring could only detect breaks and bad connections. It wasn’t bright enough to realize that connections were being switched at the rate of hundreds per minute. So it didn’t go to the backup.

Not that it would have mattered. The gremlins had been at the backup all morning.

"What the hell?" Craig muttered as the alert box popped up on his screen. Quickly he called up the display for the outer sensor array. The map showed possibly hostile contacts at half a dozen shifting points in the southern quadrant. They were being fired on but as fast as one winked out another appeared somewhere else.

Not another herd of those damn grazing things, he thought and called up the security camera displays. The cameras in the area showed a wild jumble of confused flickering images, but the ones mounted on the castle walls showed several tiny figures out on the plain. But they weren’t any place close to the target zones.

"Shit!" The damn system was messed up again. He switched over to manual control and ordered a battery to fire on one of the groups of dots.

The guns fired, but the shells landed a couple of miles from where they were supposed to be. He tried to correct his aim and a different battery fired at a point well behind the targets. In rapid succession the same command fired other batteries.

Craig growled in frustration. He switched to his backup control system, only to get a message on the screen saying it was inoperative. He gritted his teeth and tried to sort out the mess by experimenting with the controls. But the demon in the wiring closet was changing connections at random much faster than Craig could fire ranging shots. At that point coincidence could be defined as the same command firing the same weapon twice in succession at the same target.

"Shit!" Craig yelled. Then he reached over and sounded the general alarm. The lights flickered and one wall of the room slid back to reveal a wall-sized map of the castle and its approaches. "Guards to the perimeter," he barked into a microphone. "We have intruders approaching from the south."

Then he threw himself back in his chair, crossed his arms and watched the screens. "All right, suckers. Let’s see you evade that!"

Slowly and cautiously Wiz and his friends made their way toward the center of the castle. They saw no more of the live guards, but several times they had to hide from heavily armed robot sentries. Fortunately they were so noisy the quartet could hear them coming and June was particularly adept at finding hiding places.

Finally they found the elevator.

Wiz eyed the number painted on the wall across from the elevator doors. "From the looks of this, we’re pretty low in the castle. I’ll bet what we want is further toward the top."

Off down the corridor there was a distinct clank clank clank.

"Robot coming. Everyone in quick." They piled in and Wiz pressed the button. "Okay, going up."

The elevator doors jerked towards each other, slammed back and then jerked together. The car twitched spasmodically, almost throwing its occupants into a heap.

"Maybe," Wiz amended. But the car began to rise, slowly and jerkily at first and then faster and jerkily. All four of them braced themselves against the sides of the car and tried their best to stay upright.

"Hey," Danny said after a few minutes, "isn’t there something about being trapped in an elevator?"

"Huh?"

"In the spy movies. Aren’t people always getting trapped in elevators?"

"Don’t be morbid."

"I’m not being morbid, I’m being practical."

"If you’re so damn practical why didn’t you think of that before we got on the frigging elevator?"

Danny just shrugged.

"Wait a minute," Wiz said, looking up, "there is something we can do. Jerry, see if you can reach the ceiling of the car."

Jerry extended his hand experimentally. "Sure. Now what?"

"See if you can find the service hatch."

Jerry prodded at the ceiling as the car continued its jerky climb. Finally one of the ceiling sections flipped back to reveal an opening perhaps two feet square.

"Okay," Wiz said, "we climb up on top of the car."

"Is that safe?" Jerry asked dubiously.

"Safer than meeting a reception committee. Now hoist Danny up, will you?"

With Jerry’s help Danny easily wriggled through the hatch. June followed lithely with a slight assist from Danny. Wiz followed June with an easy leap and a quick chin up. That left Wiz, Danny and June on top of the elevator and Jerry in the car.

Since Jerry weighed nearly as much as Wiz and Danny put together this presented a problem. Since Jerry was not exactly light on his feet, it presented a serious problem. The first attempt to hoist Jerry through the opening nearly pulled Wiz and Danny back into the car. Finally, Wiz dropped back into the car to push from below while Danny heaved from above. With much tugging and shoving, they were able to get Jerry onto the roof of the car.

Then the elevator ground to a stop and the doors started to open.

Wiz leaped for the hatch and wriggled through just as the doors ground open. Before they could close the panel two goblin guards strode into the elevator with drawn laser pistols. As the four humans held their breath the guards looked around suspiciously, their weapons tracking their head movements.

One snorted like a bull and drew in a deep breath, as if testing the air. His companion grunted something to him and he exhaled with a grunt. They looked around again, but they did not look up.

Finally the pair backed out of the car and the doors closed. After a moment, the elevator creaked and jerked and started upward again.

Wiz let out a deep breath and nearly collapsed with relief.

"It’s the helmets," Jerry said after a moment.

"What?"

"The helmets. They’re so ornate the guards have trouble looking up." He shook his head. "Bad design. Like a lot of this place."

"Personally I think it’s great design," Wiz said sharply. "It just saved our bacon."

"Aw, we could have taken them easy," Danny said. "A few lightning bolts and, hey-" He made a gun with his finger and mimed shooting at the door. There was a flash of blue spark from his fingertip and a large scorch mark appeared on the wall of the shaft.

Danny looked down at his finger in surprise. "I didn’t know it was loaded."

"Well, holster it. And remember we’re just a little bit outnumbered here. We don’t start throwing fireballs until we absolutely have to."

"Get ready then," Jerry said, looking up at the indicator over the door. "We may have to. We’re almost there."

Quickly the three magicians arranged themselves to have the best field of fire when the door opened. All three of them muttered preparation spells so they could come out shooting if they had to. Then they waited.

The elevator creaked and swayed, jerked twice more and then expired with a sigh. The doors started to open, slammed closed, and then slid all the way open with a despairing groan-leaving them looking at a blank stone wall.