Rick Cook - The Wizardry Cursed

"So let’s go to the outside wall, put our left hands against it and follow it around, checking every door as we go. Eventually we’ve got to find the right room."

"There are hundreds of rooms on this floor," Danny protested.

"All the more reason we need a system."

"Okay," Wiz said. "There’s the outside wall. Let’s do it."

All four of them put their left hands on the wall and started walking single file. The first room they came to was empty. The second held a mass of machinery that was obviously not the computer.

"This looks more like it," said Wiz as they came to the third door. It was wider than the others and almost as high as the corridor.

Wiz opened the door and looked inside. Ranked along the walls in the dark were a dozen heavily armed robots, all motionless. Suddenly the lights came on, the robots jerked erect and a dozen metal heads swiveled toward the door.

The programmers didn’t wait for the rest. Wiz threw fireballs, Danny threw lightning bolts and Jerry hit them with some kind of spell that made them crumble to powder. A couple of laser beams flashed over their heads and left burning furrows in the wall behind them. The heat activated the fire sprinklers, drenching all four of them with water.

June looked up at the rain magically coming from the ceiling and laughed at the wonder of it all. Wiz choked on the smell of fried, electrocuted, powdered robot and shook his head to get the water out of his eyes.

He glared up at Jerry. "You and your system."

"There’s nothing wrong with the system. It’s just that if you follow it you are certain to find everything on this floor."

"Most of which we don’t want to find. Okay, we’ll keep following the wall, but from now on we don’t open any doors unless they look really promising."

Karin stopped so quickly Mick almost ran into her. She turned, put her finger to her lips and gestured around the corner. Cautiously Mick peeked around. There was a door there, set at the end of a narrow corridor back into the wall. There were also six things out of someone’s nightmare guarding it. They were big, ugly, armored, and armed to the teeth.

He ducked back and looked at Karin. Go the other way? he pantomimed and Karin nodded.

Just then Stigi decided to see what was so interesting. He stuck out his neck, thrust his head fully around the corner and snorted in curiosity.

With a wild yell the guards charged forward.

"Shit," Gilligan said, fumbling for his shoulder holster. Before Karin could draw her bow, he stepped around the corner, dropped to a semi-crouch and fired two-handed.

Eight shots rang out in the confined space and all six of the guards were down.

Karin’s eyes widened at the sight.

"Well done," she said. "Now, shall we use the door they were guarding?"

At that moment the door flew open and a solid mass of the manlike monsters charged out waving swords, spears and other less identifiable, more nasty, weapons.

Instinctively Gilligan dropped into his shooters’ stance, but Karin grabbed his arm and pulled him down.

With a whoosh and a roar Stigi let go with a blast of flame.

The effect on the packed mass was instant and appalling. The things shriveled, screamed, burst into flame, and died in the ranks.

Again the whoosh and another lance of dragon fire struck the remaining attackers. Black smoke boiled off charred flesh and the stink was appalling. Here and there came a series of explosions as ammunition in guards’ bandoleers ignited.

And then there were no more attackers. Gilligan looked at the blackened mass in front of him and was almost sick. He’d seen people burned to death in air crashes before, but not on this scale. Karin had gone deathly pale under the layer of reddish dust.

"Let’s get inside," he said. Carefully they picked their way through the grisly remains, trying to touch as little as possible.

"My God," Gilligan breathed, "will you look at this place?"

The room was enormous. The ceiling was at least a hundred feet above them and it stretched out proportionally in all directions. In the center of the brightly lit area were half a dozen huge robots in various stages of construction with smaller robots swarming over them like worker ants. As they watched a traveling crane maneuvered a torso section over the legs and hips of one of the robots.

"It’s a factory," he said, awed.

None of the robots paid the least heed to their unexpected visitors. They kept right on working.

Gilligan motioned and led Karin and Stigi along the wall and around the assembly area.

"There’s got to be another way out of here. No way those robots could get through the door we just came through."

They were halfway around the room when another giant robot stepped out of the shadows behind them.

Karin screamed, Stigi whirled, inhaled and spouted a gout of flame. The robot stepped forward inexorably and raised its laser arm.

Craig had designed the robot with a magic power source, a magically reinforced body and magic sensors and control links. But the design was essentially technological. He hadn’t considered what might happen if his creation stepped in front of a giant flame thrower.

The robot’s first bolt went wild into the ceiling, knocking hot rock down on the three and burning a red afterimage in Mick’s vision. Then the chips in the control circuits overheated and failed. The robot pinwheeled its arms wildly and its glittering torso twisted from right to left and back again. Then the seals in the hydraulic cylinders in its legs and hips failed from the heat and contact with the boiling hydraulic fluid. The thing lost hydraulic power in a gush of robotic incontinence, tottered and fell face-first into a puddle of smoking hydraulic fluid. The floor shook, but the robot workers paid no attention.

Stigi stalked forward and sniffed disdainfully at his kill. Then he stepped daintily around the puddle-or as daintily as you can when you’re eighty feet long and in a confined space-and continued on his way.

The main door out of the assembly area was on the same scale as the rest of the factory. Fortunately it was also open.

"Now, where do we go from here?"

"Up I would think," Karin said. "Their commanders would want to be as high as possible to see as much as they could."

Gilligan didn’t bother to point out to her that it didn’t work that way when you had radar and advanced sensors.

"Think we can get Stigi upstairs?" he asked.

"Oh yes, Stigi is not afraid of heights." She frowned. "Though this place is so tall it may take us hours to reach the top."

Remembering how high the fortress looked from the outside Gilligan thought that was a wild underestimate.

Then he caught sight of something. "Wait a minute, we may not have to walk. Look at this."

Set in the far wall was a freight elevator big enough to take a semi. "They must use this to move robots. If it will carry one of them it will sure hold Stigi."

It took a little doing to get the dragon into the elevator. If Stigi wasn’t afraid of heights, he wasn’t very fond of confined spaces and to him an elevator big enough to move the Space Shuttle was still a confined space. He started alarmingly when the elevator began to move and for a moment Gilligan was afraid he was going to crush them both. But Karin stood by his head, stroking him and telling him what a good dragon he was.

Stigi calmed down but every so often he would glare over at Gilligan in a way that said he understood perfectly well Mick was to blame for all this and some day he would get even.