Rick Cook - The Wizardry Cursed

He turned to Mick Gilligan. "Are you all right?"

"Just burns," Gilligan panted. "Not too bad, but it hurts." He looked down at his flight suit. "Good old Nomex."

"We’ll get a healer to you as fast as we can," Wiz said. "Meanwhile, we’ve got one other thing to do."

Jerry raised an eyebrow.

"Mikey," Wiz said grimly.

"Someone call me?"

Mikey strolled through the broken door as casually as if it was still his castle. He was cradling a dark, misshapen thing in both hands. Wiz recognized it and sucked in his breath.

Mikey smiled and shook his head. "You poor dumb shits. You never did figure it out, did you?"

He stepped around the fallen robots and moved to the shattered window wall, shards of glass crunching under his feet.

"Now it’s too late." He looked down at Craig’s corpse. "While that little shit kept you running around in circles, I finished this."

Mikey held his prize high. A trick of reflection from the broken window made it appear that there were two of him, one floating in air and both holding the key.

Gilligan growled and scrabbled for his gun. Mikey looked over at him and he froze. Wiz wanted to scream, he wanted to run, he wanted to go for Mikey’s throat. But he couldn’t do any of it. Like Mick and Jerry he was rooted where he stood.

Mikey looked up and Wiz saw his eyes were red and glowing like an animal caught in the headlights.

"Always one step ahead. That’s the difference between a real master hacker and people like you, Zumwalt. We’re always one step ahead.

"Anyway, I just wanted you to know before…"

Out of the corner of his eye, Wiz caught a movement in the shattered window wall. Now there were two reflections in the glass. He shifted his eyes back to the room, but Mikey was alone with the key.

Then he looked in the window again. There was someone standing in front of Mikey’s reflection.

Duke Aelric.

The elf’s silvery armor was marred and stained. There were nicks in the blade of his curved sword and what looked like a burn mark along his helmet. Wiz had no idea where he had been, but he’d obviously been in a hell of a fight.

The elf stepped forward and laid both his hands on the key.

"Mine," he said.

There was still no one in the room but Mikey took the black convoluted thing in a double death grip.

"I made it," he yelled. "I can use it. It’s mine!"

The muscles in his arms quivered and the veins in his neck bulged as though he was trying to hold the key against a tremendous pull.

In the window Aelric’s teeth were set and splotches of high color stood out on his pale cheeks. His muscles swelled and rippled under his mail as he strove to wrest the key from Mikey’s grasp.

Aelric and Mikey both seemed to flicker. Behind them Wiz thought he saw other things, some of them manlike. The sky darkened and began to run like wax-or perhaps it was his vision closing in. Faster and faster the images flickered until it was like watching an old silent movie. Then they flickered faster yet and there were two images superimposed on each other in the glass.

Mikey alternated with something large and vaguely manlike with fur and the pointed ears of an elf. The thing with Aelric was manlike too, but it shone so brightly it hurt Wiz’s eyes.

Mikey’s breath was coming in harsh gasps and his arms were shaking from the strain. Aelric was straining too, but he wasn’t shaking. A fraction of an inch at a time the key moved toward the elf.

With a cry the Mikey in the window broke away. As soon as he released the key it was as if he had been sucked down a tunnel. With a despairing wail he dwindled and vanished in the distance.

The real Mikey whimpered, slumped to the floor and lay still. The black thing he had held was gone.

There was still no sign of Aelric in the room, but in the glass he stood with the key resting in the crook of his arm.

"Well done, Sparrow," the image said.

Wiz found he could move again.

"Are you really there?"

"I am here," the reflection said. "As for reality…" He shrugged in the old Aelric manner.

"Now," he said, turning serious, "I think you will find that resistance has collapsed. You will have perhaps another day before this World starts to decay. I would suggest that you and all your people be gone by then."

"And the key?"

"With it we can close the gate forever on these others." He seemed to sway a little and then caught himself.

"Lord are you all right?"

Aelric smiled tightly. "I am as you see me, Sparrow. Now if you will excuse me, it would be best to get this to safekeeping."

And with that he was gone.

Moira was with the first group of wizards and healers to come to Caermort. She and Wiz had time for a brief tearful reunion before the demands of their work pulled them apart. That night they ate a dinner of cold field rations on a terrace at Caermort and stood on the parapet looking up at the strange night sky with only a few odd stars.

"A fell place," Moira said with a shiver. "I will be glad to be gone."

"You and me both," Wiz said, leaning over to kiss her.

"Ah, I hate to disturb you folks," Jerry’s voice came out of the darkness. "But there are some people here who want to talk to you."

Wiz and Moira turned. There was Jerry with twelve dwarves clustered around him.

"Oh, wizard," Glandurg called. "We would have speech with you."

Wiz stepped forward. Moira started to come with him but he stopped her.

"Stay back here. It’s all right."

"What about you?"

"Whatever happens I’ll be perfectly safe," he said with more confidence than he felt. "But I don’t want you close to me if he starts swinging that sword."

Surreptitiously Wiz readied a fireball spell, but he stepped up to the group as if he hadn’t a fear in the world. "Glandurg, isn’t it?"

"Aye," said the dwarf leader. "We have come to bid you farewell."

"Very nice-but not to bring up a sore subject-what about your debt of honor?"

"Oh that," Glandurg said. "We were hired to slay an alien wizard whose magic was wreaking havoc upon the World. The wizard is dead so our contract is fulfilled." He looked slyly at Wiz and Moira. "After all, the trolls did not say which alien wizard they wanted killed."

Wiz could only nod.

"We go now," said Glandurg. "The evil wizard is slain, the balance is restored to the World and our debt is paid. Perhaps our paths shall cross again should you need doughty warriors to stand at your back on some great quest."

With that Glandurg and his followers turned and filed through the door. Then they began to sing, jauntily but very off key.

" ’Debts must be paid, ’" Jerry quoted as the dwarf song died out in the distance. "Those guys are the kind who would pay off a debt in subordinated debentures-if they knew what subordinated debentures were."

"Don’t tell them," Wiz said. "The last thing this world needs is gnomes of Zurich."

"But those are not gnomes, they are dwarves," Moira said. Wiz and Jerry broke up laughing and she jammed her elbow into Wiz’s ribs, making him splutter. "Oh all right! You and your silly name jokes."

"I wonder how they expect to get off this island?" Wiz said, massaging the suddenly sore spot on his short ribs.