Rick Cook - Wizardry Compiled

The rock was wet, soaked from the eternal damp and the dragon’s fire converted a good portion of the moisture into steam. The overhang protected Wiz, but the dragon got a burst of live steam square in the face.

Dragons are not immune to dragon fire, and still less to steam. The beast snapped its head back and roared a high whistling scream like a tea kettle gone berserk. It jerked back from the pit, whipped around and galloped off, roaring and screaming at the top of its lungs.

Son of a bitch! Wiz thought as the dragon’s screams faded into the distance. He drew a deep lungful of moist warm air that stank of sulfur and dragon and looked around the pit in wonder.

I’m alive. Son of a bitch! He was still trapped in the pit and he was still hunted, but he was alive.

Wiz threw back his head and laughed at the wonder of it all.

"Rise and shine," Jerry said as he came out of the bedroom. "We need to get an early start today."

It was mid-morning, which didn’t strike Moira as particularly early, but she didn’t comment. She watched fascinated as Jerry pulled a couple of packages out of the refrigerator’s freezer compartment and popped them into the microwave oven.

"Breakfast will be ready in a couple of minutes. The bathroom’s over there if you need to freshen up." Moira nodded and went through the door. Most of the fixtures were strange to her, but fortunately Wiz had told her enough about his world that she was able to figure things out.

"Hope you like country breakfast," Jerry said. "I wasn’t expecting company and it’s all I’ve got."

The microwave oven beeped and Jerry removed the boxes. Moira opened hers and poked the contents dubiously with her fork. The eggs were tough, the sausage patty tougher and had an odd metallic taste besides. The biscuit and gravy were steaming hot on the surface and icy in the interior. If this was the "fast food" Wiz had raved about there was something seriously wrong with the man’s taste buds.

She looked over at Jerry, who was busy shovelling the contents of his box into his mouth.

Well, I have eaten worse, she thought. Wordlessly she began eating what was in front of her.

Jerry drank coffee with his meal. Moira, who had wanted to taste this beverage Wiz had talked about, took one sip and stuck with water.

The day was bright but overcast. Except for the odd stink in the air, it was very pleasant.

"It will take us about an hour and a half to get there," Jerry said as he unlocked the door of his Toyota. "Depending on traffic, of course."

He held the door open for Moira and then went around and slid behind the wheel. Once in he reached back behind himself and pulled a dark cloth strap diagonally across his body. Then he looked at her.

"Strap in."

Moira looked at him, puzzled.

"Reach behind you and pull the belt out, bring it across and buckle it over beside the seat. No, you’ve got to pull it out smoothly or it won’t come all the way."

With much tugging and contortions, Moira got the lap and shoulder belts fastened.

"It’s for your own good," Jerry told the hedge witch. "It will protect you in case of a crash."

"A crash?" Moira echoed faintly.

"Yeah, a wreck. Oh, but that almost never happens," he said, catching sight of her face.

Moira barely had the belt fastened when Jerry started the car and pulled out in traffic. Moira found herself speeding along at an incredible clip bare inches from another car moving in the same direction. She looked up and saw other vehicles charging toward them, only to whiz by close enough to touch.

Moira gulped and turned white. Jerry, nonchalant and oblivious, kept his eyes on the road.

They came to an intersection and Jerry whipped the car through a right angle turn in the face of oncoming traffic. To Moira it appeared they had missed the truck bearing down on them by a hair’s breadth. She stared at the dashboard and tried to ignore the outside world.

There was a tremendous roar in her right ear. Moira jumped at the sound and looked up involuntarily. To her right, barely an arm’s length away sat a man who was going faster than they were. His arms were extended to the front and his beard and long hair were whipped into a wild tangle by the wind. The hedge witch caught a glimpse of the complicated black-and-silver contrivance he was sitting on before he flicked away around another car.

Jerry reached a place where the road narrowed, and climbed gently. Instead of slowing on the hill, he speeded up. Moira moaned softly and concentrated hard on her lap. Her hand grasped the door handle until the freckles stood out stark against the white knuckles.

Jerry glanced over at her. "Don’t pull on that!" he said sharply. "If the door comes open in traffic we could be in real trouble." Moira jerked her hand off the handle as if it had turned into a snake. She reached forward with both hands to grab the dashboard tightly.

Jerry wasn’t a very good driver, but he had been driving the California freeways for almost twenty years. He speeded up smoothly and edged left to merge into the center lane of traffic.

Out the right window Moira saw trees and greenery whizzing by so fast they were a blur. She looked left just in time to see Jerry jerk the wheel and slip the car into a space barely longer than the automobile.

They were sandwiched between two semis—roaring, bellowing monsters that threatened to spread Moira and the car between them like butter on a sandwich. She moaned again and closed her eyes.

"It’s not bad today," Jerry said conversationally. "You should see it when the traffic’s heavy."

Moira mumbled something and kept her eyes on her lap.

"I beg your pardon?"

"I said I hope I never do see that," Moira said more loudly. But she didn’t lift her eyes.

Jerry looked at her sympathetically. He was a white knuckle flier himself. "Okay. If there’s anything you need, just let me know."

"My Lord," Moira said fiercely, "the only thing I need is for this trip to be over as soon as possible."

Wiz ran his hand over the surface of the stone one more time. There had to be a way out of this. After all, the Dark League would need to retrieve anyone captured in the pit, wouldn’t they?

He looked over at the spike-and-wood contraption in the pit. Then again, maybe not. It would be perfectly in character for the Dark League to leave a captive to rot in a place like this. Well, he wouldn’t get anywhere brooding on that. He would have to see what he could find.

Wiz put both his palms against the wall and pushed. His left hand met unyielding resistance, but the stone under his right hand seemed to shift. He pushed again. Yes, the stone had moved!

A secret door. Wiz didn’t know much about dungeons and mantraps, but that fitted perfectly with his conception of them. There must be a passage behind this wall.

He pushed again. The block shifted a little, but nothing else happened. He pushed the stones around it. Some of them also moved but no door opened. He put his fingers on the edge of the block and tugged hard. The stone moved slightly, but that was all.

He dropped his arms. Either he hadn’t found the right stones to push or the door was broken. Either way, it seemed like the best thing to do was force the door rather than rely on the mechanism. For that he needed something to pry with.

He looked at the iron spikes of the trap reflectively. The metal was dark and pitted with rust, but it looked strong. Each spike was about three feet long and perhaps two inches around, crudely forged to a point on one end.

He grabbed the end of a spike and tugged. The spike moved ever so slightly. He dug his heels into the stone floor and wrenched back on the spike with all his strength. The spike moved some more.