Rick Cook - Wizardry Compiled

It was long and lean, with a body made for coursing. The legs were a hound’s legs, although the three ripping talons on each paw were like no dog that ever lived. The head was narrow with ivory fangs protruding from the heavily muscled jaws. Dzhir Kar made a gesture toward Wiz with his staff and the thing lunged and snapped at Wiz. The sound rang like a rifle shot in the gloomy chamber.

"Do you like my pet?" the black-robed wizard crooned, laying a gnarled hand upon the scaly head. "I made him especially for you, Sparrow."

The demon remained impassive under the caress, its yellow eyes fixed hungrily on Wiz.

"Not nearly as powerful as Toth-Set-Ra’s demon, but he has seen you and that is enough.

"He is attuned to your magic, Sparrow. Make magic. Oh yes, please make magic. He will be upon you and your end will be truly wonderful to watch."

Wiz started to form a spell mentally. Instantly the creature’s yellow eyes flicked open and its ears pricked forward.

"Go ahead," the wizard was almost dancing in anticipation. "Oh my yes, go ahead. We want to see this new Northern magic up close, don’t we?"

The man was insane, Wiz realized. Crazy and full of spite and malice at the same time.

"No?" said the wizard in a disappointed tone. "Well, we will have to persuade you then. Flaying alive for a start. With salt rubbed well into the flesh to preserve it as the skin is peeled off. Toth-Set-Ra was right, there is so much one can do with a wizard’s skin."

"No!" Ebrion bellowed.

Dzhir Kar stopped and regarded him as if he were an insect.

"I told you I would not have him harmed! We are to return him to his place only. That was our bargain."

"Bargains are made to be broken," Dzhir Kar said. He gestured to the surrounding wizards. "Take this one away."

"Fools," Ebrion shouted. "You seal your own doom."

"We will see who is doomed when the Council is deprived of its most powerful member," Dzhir Kar retorted. "And when it becomes known that one of the most powerful wizards in the North had a hand in the deed."

As the wizards of the Dark League closed in on him Ebrion stepped back and raised his arms. With a crash and a roar a dozen bolts of lightning struck him where he stood. Wiz flinched from the noise and the light.

So did the two wizards holding him. Instinctively, Wiz twisted in their slackened grips and broke free. Before anyone could react he was across the room and out the door.

"Get him!" screamed Dzhir Kar and the others leapt past the still smoldering corpse of Ebrion to comply. But Wiz was halfway down the rough flagged passageway and running for his life.

He turned the corner so fast he slipped and a bolt of lightning exploded on the stone behind him. He scrambled to his feet and ran on as the wizards came clattering out behind him.

He ran on at random, turning this way and that on panicked whim. The place seemed to be a maze of low stone passages with rough flagged floors. Behind him always he heard the sound of pursuit, sometimes close at hand and sometimes further away, but always there.

He ran out into a rotunda where five or six corridors came together and dashed down one to his left. Down another corridor he saw the bobbing gleam of torches.

The corridor was long and straight and Wiz ran down it full tilt. He was going so fast he almost ran straight into the wall ahead. Blind alley! He whirled and pounded back the way he had come, ribs aching and breath burning in his throat.

Again out into the rotunda and down another corridor. No sign of the lights now, but he was sure they were not far behind. Halfway down the corridor there was a place where the wall had collapsed. He slowed to avoid the pile of stones and saw lights before him and behind him, distant but coming his way. Without a thought he darted up the rubble pile and through the hole in the wall.

Suddenly he was outside on a narrow street between two- and three-story buildings of rough black stone. It was night, he realized and the moon was hidden by clouds. There was little enough light, but Wiz didn’t slow down. He turned right and pounded down the street, heedless of the stitch in his side.

The empty windows of the upper stories gaped down at him like accusing eyes. Here and there an open doorway yawned like a devouring mouth. He ran without purpose or direction, on and on until a red mist fogged his vision. Finally, chest heaving and staggering with exhaustion, he turned into one of those open doorways in search of a place to hide and catch his breath.

Once through the door he sidled to the right, hugging the wall. After a dozen steps he stumbled over the bottom landing of a stone staircase. Still gasping for breath, he picked his way up the stairs.

The narrow twisting staircase had no railing and the steps were uneven and slick with wear. Wiz hugged the wall and made as much speed as he dared. At last he came to the top of the tower—or what was now the top. The entire upper section was missing, the walls bulged outward and the stonework was disrupted as if someone had set off an explosion inside it. Wiz looked out over the blasted, fire-blackened stone and for the first time he knew where he was.

The harbor with its encircling jetty, the ruined towers and the volcano bulking up behind him told him. The City of Night! The capital and base of the Dark League before their power had been broken.

A gibbous moon cast a sullen, fitful light over the landscape, picking out the tops of the ruined towers and the acres of rooftops below him. Wiz looked out over desolation and shivered.

Puffing and blowing, he sank down to sit on the stair, his back against the ruined wall and his feet dangling over emptiness. He tried to remember what he knew about the geography of this place.

Almost none of it was first-hand. He had been here only once before, when he mounted his great attack to free Moira from the League’s dungeons deep beneath the city. He had come along the Wizard’s Way and departed in the same fashion. In the hours he had been here he had never seen the surface.

The City of Night was on the Southern Continent, he remembered, separated from his home by the Freshened Sea. It was a bleak, barren land, locked in the grip of eternal winter.

Supposedly the city had been deserted after the Dark League had been defeated. Large parts had been destroyed by the forces unleashed in the final battle. The League wizards who had survived had been hunted from their lairs, their slaves had been freed and returned to their homes and the goblins and most of their other creatures had departed as well.

But the land itself was ruined beyond reclamation by decades of exercise of power with no thought to the consequences. For the people of the North the city was a place of fell reputation where no one but would-be apprentices of the Dark League went willingly. There was nothing to attract anyone to the place and even maintaining a watchpost on the Southern Continent had been considered too difficult and not worth the effort. The City of Night had been left unrestored and uninhabited.

If there was anyone here besides the League wizards they were unlikely to help Wiz.

Wiz ground his teeth in frustration. All he had to do to get help or to go home was to use magic. One single simple spell and it was done.

Of course before he could ever finish that spell the monster in the dungeon would be on him. He remembered the eagerness and ferocity burning in the thing’s evil red eyes and he shuddered. He had no doubt at all the wizard had been telling him the truth.

He listened to the wind whistle through the broken tower and tried to decide what to do next.

A clattering in the street below drew his attention. Peering out through the shattered wall, Wiz saw a dark shape cross a silvery patch of moonlight. Then another and another.