Rick Cook - Wizardry Compiled

"And this is Lisella."

She was nearly as tall as Aelric and her skin as milk-fair. But her hair was black and glossy as a raven’s wing where Aelric’s was snow white and her eyes were green as emeralds rather than icy blue. Her gown was old rose with a subtle embroidery of deeper red. Her figure was slender and elegant.

Wiz gulped and bowed clumsily.

"I discovered you were in the area and thought you might do us the honor of dining with us this evening," Aelric said. He looked around the rock shelter. "Perhaps you would care to guest the night with me as well."

"Why, uh, yes," Wiz said, managing to tear his eyes away from the elf duke’s companion. "Thank you, Lord."

"Well, then," Aelric said. "If you would care to accompany us. And your friends, of course."

The brownies had dived for cover as soon as Aelric appeared. Now they poked their heads out from behind rocks or from the crevices where they had gone to earth.

"Come on," Wiz said. "He won’t hurt you."

Reluctantly the brownies came out and gathered tight around Wiz. Lannach wasn’t clinging to his pant leg, but Wiz got the feeling he wanted to.

"Shall we go?"

Aelric and Lisella strode to the back of the shelter and the elf duke made a gesture to the blank stone. Soundlessly the rock dissolved and there was an oak door, magnificently carved and bound with silver. The door swung open and warm golden light flooded out.

Wiz had no idea where he was in the Wild Wood, but he was pretty sure he was a long way from where he and Moira had entered the elf duke’s hold the first time they met.

Time and space run strangely in places the elves make their own, Moira had told him then. He shrugged and followed Aelric and Lisella into the hill with a gaggle of brownies close on his heels.

Once again Wiz sat in Aelric’s great dining hall. The magical globes floating above the table cast the same warm light onto the scene. The food was as superb as it had been before and the soft music in the background was as enchanting.

But there were differences. The last time he and Moira had been fugitives, snatched from the pursuing army of the Dark League by Aelric’s whim. Now Moira was somewhere else and Wiz was… what?

And beyond that there was Lisella.

In the warm glow of the magic lights she was even more beautiful than she had been beneath the moon. Her presence reminded Wiz that before he met Moira he had been attracted to tall slender brunettes.

From time to time their eyes met across the table. Lisella looked at Wiz with a kind of intent interest that both stirred him and reminded him uncomfortably of the way a cat regards a baby bird it can’t decide if it wants to play with or eat immediately.

Although Aelric and Lisella were careful to include Wiz in the conversation, he had the distinct feeling that he was missing most of what was actually being said. They were playing some kind of game, he decided, some elaborate elven game with malice at its heart. Whatever these two were they were definitely not lovers.

Throughout dinner Aelric had kept up an easy conversation on inconsequential topics. Wiz had sensed that his host did not want to discuss serious matters, and still in awe of the elf duke, he had likewise avoided them. Finally, as light-footed servants placed bowls of nuts and decanters of wine on the damask-covered table, Lisella rose.

"Alas, My Lords, the hour grows late." She curtseyed to Aelric. "If you will excuse me?"

Aelric stood up and Wiz followed suit. "Of course, My Lady." He bowed and kissed her extended hand.

Then she turned to Wiz and fixed her green eyes on his. "Perhaps we shall meet again," she said softly and with a rustle of her brocaded gown she was gone.

"Remarkable, is she not?" Duke Aelric said. Wiz realized he was gaping and made a determined effort to shut his mouth. Aelric sat down and Wiz followed suit.

"I thought it would amuse you to meet her." He picked up his wine glass and again Wiz followed his lead.

"Uh, why? I mean aside from the fact that she’s beautiful."

Aelric cocked an eyebrow. "My dear boy, she has been trying to kill you for months."

Wiz choked, spewing wine across Duke Aelric’s fine damask table cloth.

The elf duke dabbed the wine drops from his sleeve. "You mean you did not know? Dear me, and I was about to comment you for your insouciance."

"How… I mean why? I mean I’ve never seen her before."

"That is immaterial, Sparrow. As to the how, she has been arranging little accidents’ for you for some time. So far you have been lucky enough to avoid them."

Wiz remembered the falling stone and the toppled viewing stand and felt sick. Then he looked closely at the elf duke. "Somehow I don’t think it’s been entirely luck."

Aelric smiled. "Your escapes were at least as much luck as your accidents were mischance."

Wiz absorbed that in silence. All of a sudden he felt like a piece on someone else’s chess board. He didn’t like it much.

"Thanks, I think. But why is she trying to kill me?"

"Oh, many reasons, I expect. The technical challenge for one. Penetrating a place so thick with magic as your Capital undetected and laying such subtle traps. That required superb skill, I can assure you."

He smiled reminiscently. "So did countering them. You’ve provided quite a diverting experience."

"And if I had missed that handhold on the parapet? Or hadn’t jumped the right way when the stand collapsed?"

Aelric looked at him levelly. "Then the game would have been over."

Wiz was silent again. "You said there were many reasons Lisella wanted to kill me," he said at last. "What are some of the others?"

Duke Aelric poured more of the ruby wine into a crystal glass with an elaborately wrought and delicately tinted stem. "Surely you can guess. When last we met, I said I would follow your career with interest, Sparrow." He smiled wryly. "I admit I did not expect it to be quite this interesting."

"I didn’t either, Lord."

"It is not often a mortal is sufficiently interesting to hold the attention of one of us. You have become interesting enough to fix the attention of quite a number of the never-dying."

The elf duke looked at his guest speculatively. "You have made yourself much hated, you know."

"Yeah," said Wiz miserably. "It wasn’t supposed to work this way. Things kind of got out of hand."

"Not unusual when mortals dabble in magic," Aelric said. "Lisella is a minor difficulty. You would do well to dismiss her from your mind—after taking proper precautions, of course. What you have done has deeper consequences."

"You mean the destruction of magic along the Fringe?"

"I mean the destruction of mortals everywhere," the elf duke said. "You mortals make this new magic and in the process you raise forces against yourselves you do not understand. For the first time in memory there is talk of a grand coalition of magic wielders, a coalition aimed at the mortals."

"That’s crazy!"

"That is mortal logic, Sparrow. None of these are mortals and many of them are not logical in any sense."

"But, I mean a war."

"They would not think of it as a war. Rather the extermination of a particularly repulsive class of vermin who have made themselves too obvious."

Wiz stared straight into the depths of the elf duke’s eyes. "Do you think you could beat us?"

Aelric shrugged gracefully. "I really do not know." Then he caught and held Wiz’s gaze. "But I tell you this, Sparrow. Whoever wins, the outcome is likely to be the utter destruction of the World."

Wiz dropped his eyes. "Yeah. But does it have to happen? I mean, can’t we prevent it?"

"It would be difficult at best," Aelric said. "That is not a consequence all of us wish to avoid. There are some who hunger for death and destruction on the widest possible scale. There are some who by their very natures cannot comprehend or appreciate the threat. And there are some who would find the end of the World merely diverting. A new experience, so to speak."