Rick Cook - Wizard’s Bane

"Can’t they see… ?"

"Can you? What is really eating at you?"

"They were wrong!" Wiz protested tiredly. They were wrong and he was right and that was all there was to it.

"Is it?" the mirror asked. "Is that all there is to it?"

Wiz didn’t answer. Magic or no, the damn mirror was right. There was more than that.

He had been convinced he was right and he had done what he always did when he believed that: he went ahead without worrying about what others thought.

"And this time?" the mirror prompted him.

This time others had been involved, he realized. There was no way they could not be.

Working magic wasn’t like sneaking some extra time on the computer to try a new hack. If this barfed, the results were a lot worse than crashing the system. It wasn’t just his life he was messing with, but theirs as well, and not surprisingly they resented it bitterly.

"Well, wouldn’t you?" the mirror asked. "Do you like having people mess with your life?"

"All right," Wiz said tiredly. "You’re right. I was right too, but I was wrong in the way I went about it. I should have tried to work with them rather than ignoring them. Maybe I should have convinced them, won them over, before proceeding. But dammit! They didn’t have to make such a big deal of it."

"But you promised," the mirror said soundlessly.

That stopped him. To these people promises were something important. You kept your promises here because they had a force more binding than contracts on his home world.

People were so much more sincere, so much more real here. Surrounded by magic and the stuff of fantasy the people were more intensely human than the people he had known at home.

Or was it just that he cared more about them? He did, he realized. Not just Moira, but Shiara and Ugo, too. Even the tiny unseen folk of the forest.

He’d hurt them by betraying their trust and that, in turn, had hurt him. He was unhappy here so he’d tried to do what he always did—take refuge in technical things, to bury himself in not-people. Only this time it had only involved him more closely with the people around him.

Slowly, slowly, William Irving Zumwalt began to think about what it meant to consider other people’s feelings.

Perhaps he was right about the magic language. But that didn’t make what he had done right. Magic wasn’t a computer system where he had the expertise to follow up his idea.

What was it one of his professors used to say? Always use the right tool for the job. The right tool to repair a television set is a television repairman. The right tool for this job was a wizard. He should have talked to Bal-Simba or one of the other Mighty and let them follow through. But he had wanted to be somebody here so he had charged ahead like some damn user with a bright idea. And very predictably he had screwed things up and caused a lot of people trouble.

Let’s face it. I’m not a magician and I never will be. I can’t be anything special here. I’m just me and I have to live with that and make the best of it.

Bal-Simba had said that too. The black giant was wise in ways more than magic.

So no more magic, Wiz resolved firmly. I’ll explain my idea and that will be the end of it. Then I’ll chop the wood and learn to live as best I can. Perhaps some day they’ll forgive me for what I did. In the meantime…

He grinned. In the meantime I accept being a sparrow and quit trying to be an eagle.

He looked at the mirror. But all he saw was the dim reflection of a moonlit window and he heard nothing at all.

Wiz rose from his chair, drained, exhausted and his knees aching from sitting in one place too long. Time for bed, he thought. Way past time. You’ve got a life to build tomorrow.

There was a "whoosh" overhead followed by several bumps on the roof.

A confused bat? He hesitated, then picked his cloak off the chair and went into the hall. It was doubtful anyone else had heard and he wanted to see what the noise was.

His shoes padded lightly on the stone corridor. All the castle was deathly still. He heard no more thumps. At the end of the corridor was a short flight of stone steps to the roof door. Wiz put his foot on the first step up.

The door burst inward with a crash and black-clad warriors poured down on him. Too stunned to shout, Wiz flinched back from the black apparitions.

He found himself staring into merciless dark eyes and felt the prick of a dagger at his throat. He was forced back roughly against the wall and held as the rest of the storming party rushed by, but otherwise he was unharmed.

The Shadow Warriors’ orders were explicit: seize the magicians and burn the castle. Whether the other inhabitants lived or died was not in their orders and was thus of little concern to them. Wiz was subdued and silent, so he lived.

The Shadow Captain spared a long searching glance for the prisoner as he went by. The man so expertly pinned against the wall was peculiar, but he was clearly not a magician. There was neither trace nor taint of magic about him.

It never occurred to the Shadow Captain that someone might be working magic second hand or that there was no more reason to expect a magic sign on such a one than to expect machine oil on the clothes of a programmer who wrote control software for industrial robots. The notion was so utterly alien that Toth-Set-Ra himself had not considered it. The captain’s orders covered only magicians.

Swiftly and silently, the assault force padded down the stairs. In teams of two and three, warriors checked every room on every level, but the vanguard never slowed. Wiz was dragged along by a knot of Shadow Warriors to the rear of the party.

They were down on the second level when they met their first opposition. It was Ugo, coming up the stairs with a tray balanced on one hand and a branch of candles in a candelabra in the other.

The Shadow Warriors flattened against the wall as the flickering light preceded the wood goblin onto the landing. When he reached the top of the stairs the warriors closed in.

Unlike the human, Ugo did not freeze when the black shapes came out at him out of the shadows. With a roar he threw the tray at the closest men and rushed the others brandishing the heavy brass candelabra. He made three steps before a blade lashed out. The wood goblin gasped, staggered and took two more steps toward the Shadow Warriors. This time three blades licked evilly in the candlelight and Ugo shuddered and fell. The candles flickered out on the cold stone floor.

The door on the landing flew open and Shiara and Moira appeared, outlined by the hearth fire in the room behind them.

"Ugo. What… ?" Moira gasped at the sight of armed men in the hall and tried to slam the door, but the warriors bounded forward, pushing the women back into the room.

Instinctively Wiz tried to break free of the warriors holding him.

"Wiz!" Moira screamed as she saw a knife flash high and then descend at his back, but the warrior had flipped the blade so he struck only with the heavy pommel. Wiz collapsed instantly, held up only by the warriors.

The captain’s gaze flicked about the room. The one on the floor was not a magician. He knew of the white-haired one and confirmed that she was not practicing magic. That left the shorter red-haired woman and she was definitely a magician. He gestured and his men closed in on her.

If it had been in the shadow Captain’s nature to question orders he might well have questioned this one. However Shadow Warriors exist to obey, not question.

"Sparrow? Wiz?" Shiara asked plaintively. "Moira what have they done to Sparrow?"

But Moira did not answer. Three warriors closed in on her and Moira screamed and struggled in their grasp. Wiz lay like a sack on the floor and Shiara stood helpless, groping about her. Then one of the warriors broke a seed pod under Moira’s nose. She inhaled the dark, flour-like dust and sagged unconscious.