Rick Cook - Wizardry Compiled

"He came this way." The voice floated up to him from the street nearly a hundred feet below.

"He must be near here," the other wizard called out from the shadows. "Down this way."

Wiz could not see which way he pointed, but several pairs of feet pattered off away from his hiding place.

So they weren’t waiting for him to use magic! Those searchers were as dangerous to him as the monster. They knew the city and he did not. How many of them were there? Wiz wracked his brain trying to remember how many wizards had been in the room when he appeared. A dozen? Certainly that. And more besides.

And Ebrion. A traitor to the Council and now dead at the hands of his erstwise allies.

Well, Wiz thought grimly, you brought this on yourself. If you hadn’t been so high-handed with the Council, Ebrion never would have gone to the Dark League.

Somehow the thought didn’t make him feel any better.

The wind gusted and Wiz shivered harder. He didn’t remember any part of the city being this cold. Perhaps the Dark League had warmed it by magic when they held it. Now there was slick black ice in patches on the streets and occasional piles and drifts of snow in the corners and sheltered spots.

Wiz shifted position and listened again. Save for the moan of the wind down the deserted streets and about the ruined tower, there was no sound. Slowly and cautiously, he rose and started back down the steps. He couldn’t stay here and if he didn’t find some kind of shelter soon the wind would do what the Dark League and their pet monster hadn’t yet been able to.

The moon cast a pale light on the steep, narrow street below when it was not obscured by scudding clouds. The City of Night was built on the flank of a volcano and the whole town sloped up from the harbor. Wiz hugged the side of the buildings and headed downhill. Not only was it easier walking, it was away from the underground room where he had appeared and where the wizards and his demon waited for him.

At every corner he paused and listened. The streets were narrow and the hard black basalt of the buildings turned them into echo chambers. His own footsteps rang so loudly on the pavement he was certain that any pursuer could track him by sound alone. He hoped that he could pick up a trace of anyone in the area the same way.

At the third cross street he paused an especially long time to catch his breath. Up ahead there was the tiniest scuffling sound, as if something was dragging stealthily along the building ahead of him.

Wiz froze and then dropped back into the shadows. Across the narrow street on the other side of the intersection he saw a stealthy movement in the shadows. At first it was just a flicker here and there, then it looked as if the entire shadow on that side of the street had come to life. Then the shadow took form and substance and Wiz held his breath as he realized what it was.

The huge head was man-high off the ground as the serpent glided along. Its tongue flickered in and out constantly as it tested the air for scent of prey. Even in the moonlight Wiz could see the diamond patterns of its scales.

Then it turned and soundlessly whipped down the side street. Wiz caught his breath, but he stayed in hiding for a long time.

"Alone?" Arianne asked wide-eyed. "Alone into the Wild Wood?"

"So it would seem," Bal-Simba told her. He had spent the last two hours trying to control his unease and finally told his deputy what had happened. "Philomen did not stop him."

"He could not very well forbid him," Arianne pointed out. "Wiz is a member of the Council, Lord."

"Yes, but he knows less of the Wild Wood than a child," Bal-Simba said. "Remember the stories Moira told about the troubles she had with him on their last journey."

"The Dark League is not seeking him now."

"True, else I would have every magician and dragon rider in the realm searching for him. But he has barely been out of the city in the last two years and he still has little understanding of the World’s dangers."

They were both silent for a moment.

"Lord," Arianne said finally, "what do you think is troubling Sparrow now?"

"If I had to guess, I would say he is discovering the price of power." Bal-Simba made a face. "I do not think he likes it overmuch."

Pryddian, once apprentice wizard, closed the door softly and looked around the sitting room. He saw no signs of traps or warning devices anywhere. Once the apartment’s door had been breached there seemed to be nothing to protect the contents.

There was no reason why there should be. Ordinary theft was virtually unknown in the Wizards’ Keep because it was so easy to find thieves by magic. The wizards’ workrooms were carefully protected by multiple spells, but there was no reason to extend that protection to living quarters. After all, no one worked in his or her apartment.

With one very important exception.

Pryddian moved cautiously across the sitting room toward the desk piled high with books and papers. With the hedge witch fled and the Sparrow sent away there should be no one here, but the enormity of what he was doing made Pryddian careful nonetheless.

Well, Pryddian thought, the Sparrow had it coming. This was a way to avenge himself and perhaps profit as well.

As he approached the desk beneath, the red dragon demon reared up from among the clutter and hissed at him. Pryddian stopped and studied the creature carefully. He had expected something like this. Not even the Sparrow would be so careless as to leave his secrets completely unguarded.

However, Pryddian had come prepared, just as he had come armed with an unlocking spell for the door. The fact that it was a thing of the Sparrow’s made it all the more delicious.

" ddt exe!" he whispered, pointing at the guardian demon.

The little red dragon paused in mid-hiss and scampered off the table. Pryddian watched in satisfaction as it ran whimpering for the bedroom.

Eagerly he bent over the desk and began to riffle through the material piled there. The large leatherbound book in the center of the table seemed most important, so he opened it first. But what was inside was the confused mishmash of the nonsense the Sparrow foisted off upon the wizards. Not a true spell in the lot. He slammed the book in disgust and turned to the piles of parchment, slates and tablets stacked around.

Quickly he sorted them, putting aside everything that was too arcane or too fragmentary to be useful. He was left with a sizable amount of material. Stacking the pile on top of the book, he reached into his cloak and produced a pen, a travelling inkwell and a sheaf of parchment. He dipped his pen into the ink and began to copy as fast as he could write, cursing when he blotted something in haste.

This was what he wanted. Not the inane babblings the Sparrow expounded in his classes, but his spells. His real power. Frantically he copied the crabbed smudged characters, taking care to put alternate lines on different sheets of parchment to prevent activating the spells. He added the marginal notes as he went, even though most of them meant nothing to him. With time perhaps he could puzzle out their meanings.

He was perhaps halfway down the pile when he came to the real prize. A powerful searching spell that would show the user anything that went on in the world. Flipping through the parchments he saw the spell commanded three separate sets of demons.

Pryddian licked his lips and his hand trembled. This must be the spell the Sparrow had used to track the Dark League. Like any magician, he believed that knowledge was power and this was a spell that would give him knowledge of the entire world.