Rick Cook - Wizardry Compiled

"Stop it!" Wiz yelled. "Stop it! Can’t you see it can’t hurt you?"

" ’Tis magic," Andrew replied. " ’Tis magic and must be burned from the land.

"Too long we trembled under the magical ones. Now let them tremble." His voice rose to a shout over the windy moans of the dying stone. "Let them know fear!"

The crowd behind him growled agreement.

The thing thinned, its stony gray turning opalescent and gradually lightening until Wiz could dimly see the outline of the hills through it. Then the creature’s body went foggy and he could see that the hills were cloaked in summer’s green. The outline blurred and became indistinct and finally, at last, the mist dissipated, leaving nothing but a hole in the ground with tendrils of smoke rising from it.

Wiz stood shocked and numb, oblivious to the cheers of the villagers. Someone was pounding him on the back and shouting in his ear, but he couldn’t make out the words.

Alaina left in the midst of an excited knot of villagers, talking and cheering and doing everything but hoisting her on their shoulders in triumph. Some of the others remained behind to gape at the huge pit where the rock creature had stood. Then by ones and twos they began to drift back toward the village square.

"A waste, I calls it," one old gaffer said to his younger companion as they passed by where Wiz stood. "They should have pounded it into gravel stead of just making it disappear. We needs gravel for our roads, we does."

Finally only Wiz remained, standing at the edge of the pit and looking down.

He didn’t know what the thing was that had died here today. He had never heard of such a creature and it may well have been the only one of its kind. But whatever it was it didn’t deserve what had been done to it.

His cheeks were wet and he realized he was crying.

There was a footstep behind him. Wiz didn’t turn around.

"Are you coming, My Lord?" Philomen asked. "There will be a feast tonight in honor of slaying the monster."

Wiz turned to face the wizard. "No thanks. Right now I don’t think my stomach could stand a feast."

"Our presence is expected."

"Vomiting on your hosts is probably bad form, even in this bunch."

Philomen’s face froze and he bowed formally. "As you will, My Lord. I will see you at the mayor’s house then."

"Maybe." Wiz strode off toward Leafmarsh Brook and the bridge into the Fringe beyond.

"My Lord, where are you going?"

"Into the Wild Wood," Wiz flung back over his shoulder. "Right now I want some civilized company. Weasels maybe, or snakes."

Sitting under a flowering bush on a hillside, Wiz called up an Emac and studied the code for demon_debugagain.

It was obvious what had happened, he thought as he traced the glowing lines. Somewhere out in one of the villages, some bright person with a knack for magic and a little knowledge of his programming language had taken ddtapart and found a way to make it more effective. What he or she had done was related to the magic-absorbing worms Wiz had invented for his attack on the City of Night. The new spell, demon_debug, sucked the magical energy right out of its victim. It was crude, it was dangerous and it was absolutely deadly.

Without one hell of a protection spell there was no way that anything magical could survive demon_debug. Idly he picked up a water-worn pebble and ran his thumb across it while he thought about the implications.

This must be what Einrich meant when he said he could destroy any magic he met in the Wild Wood. That, and the way Alaina talked, made Wiz pretty sure the spell was spread far and wide through the Fringe.

Wiz flung the stone into the weeds. He had screwed this up more thoroughly than he had ever messed up anything in his life. Before he had just affected himself, and perhaps the lives of a few people around him. Now he had managed to meddle in the lives of an entire world; to meddle destructively.

He wasn’t sorry he had invented the magic compiler. He thought of the last time he had come this way. He and Moira had stumbled over the burned ruins of a farm shortly after the trolls had raided it. He had dug the grave in the cabbage patch to bury the remains of the people the trolls hadn’t eaten after roasting them in the flames of their own homestead. He still had nightmares about that.

He didn’t want to go back to the way things had been. But looking down at the village and the scar where the rock creature had stood for time out of mind, he wasn’t at all sure what was replacing it was much better.

He stood up and looked down on the village. The evening breeze bore the faint sounds of drunken revelry up the hill to him. In the center of the village people were piling wood head high for a bonfire. Ding dong the witch is dead! Never mind that the "witch" had stood harmlessly for longer than the village had been there. Never mind that the people who killed it behaved like a wolf pack with the blood lust up. The witch was dead so let’s have a party. And if it’s a good party, maybe we can go out tomorrow and find some more witches to murder.

He couldn’t go back there. But he didn’t want to go back to the Capital with its packs of wizards and no Moira. All he really wanted was to be alone for a while. Say a couple of centuries.

Well, he decided, there really wasn’t any reason to go back. He had come to the village with only his cloak, staff, and a pouch containing a few magical necessities. He had his staff and pouch and the weather was warm enough that he doubted he would miss his cloak.

Turning his back on the village, Wiz headed down the other side of the hill, toward the Wild Wood.

He very quickly lost any sense of where he was. He might be wandering in circles for all he knew—or cared. If he wanted to go somewhere he could take the Wizard’s Way. What he needed was to be alone and to try to sort out the mess.

Once he stopped to munch handfuls of blackberries plucked from a stand of thorny canes. Another time he stopped to drink from a clear rivulet. Most of the time he just walked.

The evening deepened and the shadows grew denser but Wiz barely noticed. Finally, the second time he almost ran into a tree he sat down to think some more. As he sat the dusk darkened to full night. The last vestiges of light faded from the sky and the moon rose over the treetops. The night insects took up their chorus and the night blooming plants of the Wild Wood opened their blossoms, adding just a hint of perfume to the earth-and-grass smell of the night. Wiz fell asleep under the tree that night. He dreamed uneasily of Moira.

"You step more spritely this morning," Shiara observed as her guest came into the great hall.

"Thank you, Lady, I feel better." She joined Shiara at the trestle table beneath the diamond-paned window and began to help herself to the breakfast spread out there.

"You found a solution then?"

Moira frowned. "Part of a solution, I think."

She heaped berries into an earthenware bowl and poured cream over them. She took an oat cake from the platter and drizzled honey on it. "Wiz always said that when you could not meet a problem straight forward you should come at it straight backwards."

Shiara nibbled reflectively on an oat cake. "That sounds like the kind of thing the Sparrow would say."

Moira nodded. "Once he told me something about a mountain that could move but wouldn’t and a wizard named Mohammed." She wrinkled her nose. "I never understood that, but it gave me an idea."

Shiara chuckled. "Now that truly sounds like our Sparrow. And from this obstinate mountain and a straight backwards approach, you have discovered something to help you?"