George Martin - The Way of the Wizard

Or was it? Maleficarus’ heavy brow folded with suspicion. “What did you mean just then, the destruction of the human race ?”

“The Ereshkigal Working. You must remember it? That thing you did with the chalk circle and the incense? Well, all these dead people walking around, the two things are actually related. Did you know that?”

“Don’t talk to me like I’m an idiot, Cabal!”

“You are an idiot, Maleficarus! Have you the vaguest idea why the Working has not been used in over four millennia? See! Over there on the far side of the square! See what you stupidity has created!”

Maleficarus looked, and saw nothing. Cabal was furious. “It is right there! Use your binoculars if you have to, but look!”

Maleficarus raised the binoculars to his eyes, and so he did not see Cabal’s high passion fade instantly away, to be put into his inner jumble room of false emotions until it was next needed.

“I don’t see anything unusual,” muttered Maleficarus, already grown blasé to zombies. “What am I looking at?” For a reply, something narrow and metallic suddenly encircled his wrist. He tried to jerk his arm away, but not nearly quickly enough to stop Cabal from closing the ratchet on the handcuff. “What? What is this? What are you doing?”

“Saving the world. I can’t take all the credit, mind you. Just most. Of course, a lot still depends on how capable the local police are.” As he spoke, Cabal was backing away to the parapet over the town hall’s rear courtyard. As he reached the edge, Cabal turned and looked down. “I hope you’re ready, Constable,” he shouted, “or we are all going to die.”

Maleficarus looked at Cabal in bewilderment, and then looked at his handcuffed wrist. The other cuff was already locked shut and, unexpectedly, there was the end of a piece of rope tied tightly to it. He followed the rope with his gaze, across the rooftop and over the parapet by where Cabal was standing. He looked up and saw one of the great hydrogen-filled carnival balloons floating there, apparently anchored to its wagon in the courtyard. Then Maleficarus understood, and the colour drained from his face. “Oh, no. No, Cabal!”

Cabal looked back at him with an expression of rapacious anticipation. He did not have to wait long. Down in the courtyard, Constable Copeland took a moment away from kicking zombies off the wagon, said a silent prayer to the effect that his knots were at least as good as Cabal’s, and severed the balloon’s tether with a pair of bolt-cutters. Then, hefting the cutters, he turned back to the encroaching horde and smashed the undead husk of his chief inspector over the head with them. Even if he were to die now, he thought, at least he’d got one last life’s ambition out of the way.

The balloon rose quickly, far too quickly to give Maleficarus any time to do more than ineffectually scrabble at the knotted end of the rope before the slack went and he was jerked off his feet and into the air. He swivelled and gibbered and screamed for help as he rose higher — the captive of a gigantic cartoon cat — begged Cabal to save him even as the prevailing wind caught the balloon and sent it in the direction of the sea.

But Cabal just stood with his hands in his pockets, and watched him go, muttering under his breath, “Goodbye, Rufus. I would be obliged if you could avoid dying until you are at least three miles away from land.” When the sight of an idiot flying into the distance ceased to amuse him, he turned to the crowd of walking dead, and waited. Presently, they started to drop to the ground at the far end of the square, and smoothly collapsed in a wave that swept towards him, past him and behind him, as their creator moved out of range and off towards a clear horizon. It no longer mattered what happened to Maleficarus; as the final zombie toppled, the Ereshkigal Working lost its last subject, and quietly came to an end.

It seemed very quiet all of a sudden. Cabal looked down upon the hundreds of corpses that lay scattered across the town square, and he shook his head sadly. It was such an awful waste. All that fresh material just lying there, and he didn’t have time to take advantage of any of it. It was heartbreaking. He walked across the flat roof to look down at PC Copeland, standing exhausted within a ring of bludgeoned bodies. Sensing himself watched, he raised his head to look at Cabal, shading his eyes against the sun.

“Still in the land of the living, eh, Constable?” called Cabal.

Copeland raised his bloody bolt cutters and pointed them at Cabal. “You,” he managed to gasp out from between ragged breaths, “are bleeding nicked.”

“Alas,” said Cabal, “there are the practicalities to observe. Not only are your handcuffs currently floating away from here with a comical character attached to either end, but you are down there, and I am up here. By the time you get up here, I guarantee I shall have found an alternative route to down there, and will be fleeing the scene with practised rapidity. Feel free to attempt an arrest by all means, but please, don’t be disappointed when you fail.”

But, despite the warning, Copeland still was disappointed.

David Farlandis the author of the best-selling Runelords series, which began with The Sum of All Men , with the eighth and latest volume, Chaosbound , coming out last year. Farland, whose real name is Dave Wolverton, has also written several novels using his real name as his byline, such as On My Way to Paradise , and a number of Star Wars novels such as The Courtship of Princess Leia and The Rising Force . His short fiction has appeared in Peter S. Beagle’s Immortal Unicorn , David Copperfield’s Tales of the Impossible, Asimov’s Science Fiction, Intergalactic Medicine Show , and War of the Worlds: Global Dispatches . He is a Writers of the Future winner and a finalist for the Nebula Award and Philip K. Dick Award.

In the movie The Last Unicorn (based on the classic novel by Beagle), Schmendrick the Magician warns, “And be wary of wousing a rizard’s wrath… rousing a rizard’s… be wary of making a magician angry!” That’s really good advice since, when it comes to revenge, wizards have a dizzying array of unpleasant options at their disposal.

When Merlin incurs the wrath of the Lady of the Lake, he finds himself imprisoned in a crystal cave. In Robert Asprin’s Another Fine Myth , an escalating practical joke contest between a pair of wizards leaves one of them permanently stripped of his sorcerous powers. And in the Stephen King novel Thinner , an obese man finds himself cursed by a witch to undergo an involuntary and unstoppable weight loss program. (In a similar — and somewhat lighter — vein, the movie My Demon Lover is about a man who is cursed by a sorceress to turn into a horrid monster whenever he becomes sexually aroused.)

Our next story also tells of an unfortunate fellow who finds himself in the crosshairs of a magic-user, and it reminds us once again why it’s definitely not a good idea to rouse the wrath of a rizard… er, wizard.

Yan woke in the pre-dawn, sweat making her blouse cling to the hollow of her chest. She lay on her bed, unwilling to move, lest she waken her three-year-old sister who curled into her, her face close to Yan’s breast. The little girl would be hungry when she woke; this one was always hungry, and Yan did not want to have to get up and steam the rice.

Lightning snarled softly in the distance, like a hunting tiger, and just outside the window the bamboo rustled in the wind.

Yan had dreamt of Huang Fa. Only a few years before, the Silk Road had been opened to Persia, and Huang Fa had dared to take it for her last spring. Winter was coming, and snow would soon fill the Himalayas. If Huang Fa did not return soon, the trails would be blocked until next year.