Just because it doesn’t work the way you expected doesn’t mean it’s useless.
The Consultants’ Handbook
Wiz stewed about the incident on the bridge for the next three days without coming to any kind of conclusion-except that someone here really didn’t like him. Since he had known that almost from the moment he set foot in town, the information didn’t help him any.
He was still stewing when the mayor showed up on his doorstep. He was hoarse and made liberal use of the handkerchief in his sleeve, but he looked better than he had the last time Wiz had seen him.
“What can I do for you, Your Honor?” he asked once they were settled in his workroom.
“It’s this new organization,” Mayor Hendrick said. “Oh, I’m sure it’s wonderful and all that. But it’s so, well, complicated, we meet and we meet and we meet and nothing ever seems to get done.”
“Reinventing and re-empowering an organization does take some time to get up to speed,” Wiz said. “But I’m sure once the initial formalities are out of the way you will find it a vast improvement.”
“Maybe, but that’s not exactly what I wanted to talk to you about. I need something to help me maintain my position.”
Thoughts of a palace coup flashed through Wiz’s mind. “Maintain your position?”
“With this new executive committee. I need something to increase my dignity,” the mayor said. Wiz thought about suggesting a face-lift and a personality transplant, but he decided against it.
Wiz shrugged. “Well, I’m not much on public speaking.”
“Oh, but you handled that presentation wonderfully,” the mayor said. “Anyway, I speak well enough as it is. What I need is something more, well, imposing, if you know what I mean? Something magical. I was thinking, perhaps, a halo?”
Wiz thought that a halo would make the mayor look more ridiculous than dignified. “Fine for a darkened room, but what about broad daylight?”
Mayor Hastlebone sniffled. “Yes, that is a problem. What do you suggest then?”
“Well, how about some background music?”
“You mean like a fanfare of trumpets?” The mayor brightened. “Yes, that would be just the thing.” He waved his hand. “Make it so, Wizard.”
“It’s not quite that simple. Let me think for a minute. What do you want it to sound like?”
“Oh, something like Ta-daa tum tum tum TAA.” The mayor waved his hand in time to the imaginary music. “You know, important.”
“I guess so,” Wiz said, punching keys on his workstation and watching the fiery letters scroll past. “Can you do that sound again?”
“TA-DAA TUM TUM TUM TAAA.” The mayor was louder this time.
“Okay got it. Now . . .”
“You mean you’re not going to make a hundred trumpets materialize in the room?” The mayor sounded disappointed.
“No, I’ve captured the sound and I’ll use that. After I juice it up, of course.”
Calling up his synthesizer module, Wiz set to work. Eventually he came up with something that combined the theme from Masterpiece Theater with the post call from a horse race. Even to Wiz’s musically untrained ear it sounded more like a chorus of kazoos than a trumpet call.
The mayor’s face fell.
“Needs something more,” Wiz said quickly. “How about a three-part echo effect?”
Wiz noticed that the sound of the trumpets had brought Llewllyn to the doorway. He didn’t seem awed, but he was very interested.
A few more minutes of fiddling and Wiz tried again. Now it sounded like some of the kazoos had bass voices and they weren’t quite playing together. The mayor brightened at the noise.
“Now I just say fanfare exe?”
“That’s right. Try it.”
Mayor Hendrick puffed out his chest and struck a pose as if delivering an oration. fanfare exe! Flinging one arm outward he began to address a non-existent crowd.
As soon as he opened his mouth the invisible trumpets brayed. His Honor stood with his mouth open for a minute and then closed it just as the fanfare finished. “My friends,” the mayor began and was immediately drowned out by the trumpets.
“Ah, I think this needs a little more work,” Wiz said. “Let me play with it some more and perhaps we can do better.”
The mayor’s reply was drowned out by a volley of trumpets.
“Say ‘fanfare cancel exe,’ “ Wiz shouted through the noise.
“What?” Immediately another round of racket burst on top of the existing one.
“FANFARE CANCEL EXE,” Wiz shouted.
“FANFARE CANCEL EXE?” the mayor asked. The trumpets cut off in mid-bray.
“This needs a little work,” Wiz said into the ringing silence.
“I thought a wizard simply waved his wand, or staff, to make things happen.”
“I’m afraid there’s a little more to it than that, at least on such complex spells. This may take a couple of days, but I’m sure I can cook something up you’ll like.”
He had just seen the mayor out the front door, still sniffling, when a noise in the kitchen caught his attention. He went downstairs and found Llewllyn and Anna sitting at the table with a large basket between them. There was a blanket neatly folded on top of the basket.
“You wanted to see me?” he asked Llewllyn.
“Ah, a trifle really. Nothing of any importance I assure you.”
Wiz gestured at the blanket and basket. “And this?”
“We’re going on a picnic,” Anna said brightly. Her face fell. “That’s if you don’t mind, My Lord. I’ll be back in plenty of time to fix dinner and all my work’s done, except for washing the walls and I can’t do that until the soapmaker finishes her next batch of cleaning soap and that won’t be for another two days, so . . .”
“No, it’s fine with me.” Then he eyed Llewllyn. “Just remember our discussion.”
The young man gave his boss a toothpaste smile. “Of course, My Lord.”
“Oh, by the way,” Wiz said casually to Anna. “Have you seen the butter knife anywhere?” Then he smiled insincerely at Llewllyn, who had suddenly gone a little pale and developed a distinct hunch.
A pleasant way out of town a jumble of rocky spires reared from the countryside. It was a common destination for picnics and other more private affairs, as Llewllyn knew from his previous residence nearby.
Anna had packed a lunch in a wicker basket and neatly covered the provisions with a spare blanket to serve as a tablecloth. She had fixed the lunch herself, but Llewllyn was the one who suggested the blanket.
“My gran would never let me come here,” she told Llewllyn as they turned off the road onto the path into the rocks.
“Oh, it’s perfectly safe, I can assure you,” the putative wizard said carelessly. “I’ve been here many times.”
“Many times?”
“Picnics,” Llewllyn added hastily, catching her tone. “I’ve been here on picnics.”
“Oh, this is a lovely spot,” the girl said, as they came to a glade in the rocks.
“There’s a better one a little ways up. More private-ah-better view.” He took her hand and helped her up the steep trail among the pink granite boulders. The path twisted and climbed until it reached a spot just below the top of the main spire. Rocks jutted up around them, forming a natural bowl enclosing a flat spot just large enough for a cozy picnic.
“Here, you see? You can see for miles and no one can see us at all.”
“No one?”
“Completely private.” He moved closer to her. “And look at the view.” He stood behind her and extended one arm over her shoulder to point out the sights. “There’s the river, and there’s the town over there, you see?” Somehow it was completely natural that Llewllyn’s other arm fell around Anna’s waist.
“Are you sure we’ll be all right?” she asked wide-eyed.
“Never fear,” Llewllyn said. “I am here to protect you.”
“Oh, Llewllyn,” she whispered softly.
He drew her to him and held her in his arms. “You know I would give my last drop of heart’s blood for you. I love you more than life itself.”
“Oh, Llewllyn.”
Anna’s eyes were dewy and her lips soft and partly open. Llewllyn bent forward to kiss her.
A shadow passed before the sun.
Anna’s eyes grew round and she went rigid in Llewllyn’s arms. The wizard wasn’t used to getting that kind of response so it took him a second to realize she was looking over his shoulder and not at him. He turned around in time to see a dragon settle down among the crags below them.
Peering around a rock Llewllyn could see the dragon, or part of it, nestled among the rocks below them. It had curled up, blocking the trail.
Anna shrank back against him, cowering in his arms. Llewllyn clasped her tightly to stop his own trembling.
“Be brave, my beloved,” he said to her. “I will protect you.” She made no sound but clung to him more tightly.
Llewllyn’s first instinct was to sneak away. But he knew this place well enough to know there wasn’t anyplace to sneak to from here. The only way out was the trail they had come up. They could stay where they were, but sooner or later the dragon was sure to see or smell them. There really wasn’t anything else to do, he decided. Especially not with the girl here.
“I will face the monster.”
Anna turned even paler. “Oh, but you can’t. You’ll be killed.”
The wizard took her in his arms. “If I am it will be in a good cause. I will gladly offer up my last drop of heart’s blood to save you.”
“Oh, be careful,” Anna breathed. “Come back to me.”
He patted her cheek. “Never fear my darling. All will be well.”
A quick peek around the rocks showed the dragon was lying down and couldn’t see the trail. Llewllyn took a deep breath and moved toward the dragon, dodging from boulder to boulder and sometimes crawling on his belly.
His first thought was that he might be able to find another way down the rocks. Or perhaps, if the dragon was truly asleep, they could sneak by it. By the time he reached the place where the dragon rested he knew both hopes were in vain. The rocks were much too steep and while he could hear the dragon breathing regularly, it was obviously not asleep.
Llewllyn stopped and thought hard. He had scant experience with dragons. But he knew Wiz had handled one by talking to it and if there was one thing Llewllyn was confident of, it was his ability to talk.
No help for it, really, he told himself. Then he stood up, straightened his tunic, brushed the grass out of his blond hair and squared his shoulders. It never hurt to make an impressive entrance.
In fact, he realized, he had a spell of his master’s to make the entrance even more impressive. All the trumpets might even make the dragon think he had an army behind him.
fanfare exe! he whispered. Then he took a deep breath and opened his mouth to go forth and do battle with the dragon.
The dragon, meanwhile, was mostly interested in getting a nice nap. He had fed that morning on a dozen or so sheep at an outlying farmstead and taken light exercise by flying a few dozen leagues. Now he was ready to settle down and digest his meal. The rocks were nicely warm from the sun and the scenery suited his dragonish nature.
He was just relaxing into gentle slumber when the blare of trumpets yanked him awake.
The dragon’s head jerked up and he roared in surprise and anger. A lance of flame shot from his jaws directed at nothing in particular but passing over the rock behind which Llewllyn waited. The bard was unharmed but the blast of superheated air cost him what little courage he had remaining.
Unfortunately, when Llewllyn became frightened he stuttered uncontrollably. Every time he tried to get a syllable out it touched off another peal of trumpets. The rocks rang and resounded with the noise of a trumpet fanfare played as a twenty-part round and the dragon’s head darted this way and that seeking the source of his torment.
Finally it was too much. With a roar of frustration the dragon leapt into the sky to try to find a quieter place for his nap.
Llewllyn was still watching the dragon go when Anna came running down the trail and into his arms.
“You’re all right! I saw the fire and the dragon, and I was afraid.” She stopped with her eyes even wider as the significance sank in. “You did it,” Anna breathed. “You defeated a dragon.”
Llewllyn opened his mouth to say something modest but the trumpet fanfare cut him off.
Anna’s eyes grew even wider. “Oh, you are a mighty wizard! And my hero.” Llewllyn just smiled and held Anna tighter. Occasionally, given enough hints, he did know when to shut up.
Winging away from the rocks the dragon came to a somewhat different conclusion. A pretty pass indeed when you can’t even take a nap without being disturbed by these pesky humans and their stupid magical jokes, he thought. I’m going to have to do something about them. And this new wizard of theirs.
The Consultant’s Three Rules of Crisis Management:
1) When Life Hands You A Lemon, Make Lemonade.
2) When Life Hands You A Hemlock, Don’t Make Hemlock-ade.
2a) Always Know The Difference Between A Lemon and A Hemlock.
The Consultants’ Handbook
“ . . . and then the dragon flew away,” Anna told Wiz and Malkin, her blue eyes round as saucers. “And we were saved!”
“Oh, it was nothing really,” Llewllyn said modestly from where he stood at her side, his hand resting on her shoulder. Anna reached up and placed her hand over his. Then she beamed up at her savior.
Wiz and Malkin exchanged glances and then stared down at their plates and the remains of dinner. Obviously both of them thought that for once Llewllyn’s description of events was more accurate than Anna’s.
The pair had been through the incident three times and Wiz still wasn’t completely sure what had happened. For one thing, the story had grown with each retelling. For another he trusted neither Llewllyn’s veracity nor Anna’s powers of observation. He was reasonably certain there had been a dragon involved and that the dragon had flown away, perhaps in response to something Llewllyn had done. He suspected from Anna’s description of the sound of trumpets that his fanfare spell had been involved as well. Beyond that, he wasn’t willing to speculate-except about the reason for the grass stains on the blanket and the dried grass in Anna’s hair and the flush on the girl’s cheeks.
Obviously something more was called for, so Wiz tried. “Well, I’m glad you’re safe.”
Anna sighed. “I owe it all to Llewllyn. Isn’t he wonderful?”
Malkin kept her eyes on her plate.
“Quite remarkable,” Wiz said dryly, rising from the table. “But if you’ll excuse me, I have work to do.” Like trying to keep my dinner down, he thought as he headed up the stairs.
Since Llewllyn had developed the habit of cadging meals with them the scene was repeated at lunch the next day.
Since the mayor had summoned Wiz to discuss the fanfare spell, the scene was prolonged because Llewllyn insisted on accompanying him to the town hall. The young man paused several times to ostentatiously greet important people, keeping Wiz close so he could bask in his reflected glory. Somehow he managed to work the fact that he had defeated a dragon into each conversation, so Wiz had to listen to more or less the same story three or four more times. By the time they reached the street that led to the main square Wiz was thoroughly fed up with his assistant.
“You know that what you did was stupid,” Wiz told him finally. “I mean terminally stupid. Why didn’t you just wait for the dragon to leave?”
“Were I by myself I might have,” Llewllyn admitted with a disarming smile.
“But Anna was there.”
“So you risked her life as well as your own to impress her.”
“No, to protect her. Better for me to face near-certain death at the fangs and claws of a dragon than for anything to happen to her. Were I slain perhaps the monster would be satisfied and not look further among the rocks.”
“Still it was stupid.”
Llewllyn nodded, as if to show he was too well bred to argue with his employer. “Perhaps, My Lord. I can only say that love makes a man do strange and wonderful things.”
Wiz snorted.
“But I do love her,” Llewllyn proclaimed. “Why, I would shed my last drop of heart’s blood for her.”
“Yeah, but will you marry her?”
“Of course, My Lord, in due time. Do you doubt me?”
“Your record in that department isn’t exactly sterling,” Wiz said as they turned the corner into the main square.
“Ah, but I was young and callow then, a mere stripling. You see before you not a boy, but a man full-grown, a man redeemed by love.”
Wiz thought that what he saw before him was a pompous windbag and he was about to say something to that effect. But just then the world stuttered.
One instant Llewllyn was beside him and the next he was in front and staring open-mouthed. Everyone was running and screaming and there was dust in the air that hadn’t been there before.
Wiz started to ask what had happened. Then he saw the brick. No, not a brick, a piece of worked stone. Like part of a cornice. It was lying in the street behind Llewllyn, surrounded by the dust it had raised when it fell. There were several other pieces of freshly broken stone nearby. Looking up he could see that a big chunk of the stonework on the building was missing.
Wiz looked back and saw Llewllyn had progressed to working his jaws, but not far enough to actually make noise. He also saw they had drawn a crowd.
“It, it, it . . . bounced,” Llewllyn finally managed. “It just hit you and it split to pieces and it bounced right off the top of your head.”
Looking around, Wiz saw that several councilors and the sheriff had joined the excited group.
“Think nothing of it,” he said over the rising buzz of conversation. “As a great wizard I am protected by a spell that renders me invulnerable to mortal danger.” The conversation grew even louder.
“But you froze. Like a statue,” his assistant said.
Wiz had been hoping no one would notice that. “A side effect,” he said with a wave of his hand. “So long as the danger lasts I am immobile and invulnerable. Now come. Let us be on our way.”
Maybe that will stop people from trying to terminate my contract with extreme prejudice, he thought as the crowd parted before them. At least it might if I can find someplace to sit down before I get the shakes.
Wiz didn’t see the bald little man with the leather sack of mason’s tools lounging at the edge of the crowd and wouldn’t have recognized him if he had. Nor would he have attached any special importance to the thoughtful way he rubbed his chin as Wiz and Llewllyn proceeded on their way.
Having a piece of rock dumped on his head may not have hurt Wiz physically, but it sure didn’t do anything for his mood. Between Llewllyn’s bragging, the mayor’s insistence on having the new spell before the next executive committee meeting and being sneered at by Pieter Halder on the town hall steps, he was in a foul mood when he got home that evening.
Anna, however, was still starry-eyed and bubbling. For once Llewllyn wasn’t hanging around, so Wiz was spared that, but the maid’s innocent prattling about the wonders of her true love was just as hard to take.
“ . . . and someday we’ll be married,” the maid finished up her latest, albeit short, line of thought.
“You hope,” Wiz said in an undertone, unable to contain himself further.
Not enough of an undertone, unfortunately. “Why of course we will,” Anna said innocently.
“Look Anna, I don’t mean to burst your bubble or anything, but are you sure Llewllyn is the marrying kind?”
“My bubble?” Anna said blankly.
“A figure of speech. I mean your illusions about Llewllyn.” As soon as he said it, he knew it was the wrong thing to say, but by then it was too late.
“But they’re not illusions. They’re real. As real as Llewllyn’s magic that saved me from the dragon!”
“Uh, yeah, his magic is another thing. I mean . . .”
“Oh, I know what you mean,” Anna burst out. “You’re jealous of Llewllyn’s powers and I think you’re awful!” Then she remembered she was talking to her employer and dashed from the room in a flood of tears.
Wiz watched her go and turned back to his tea. “Women!” he snorted.
“Men!” Malkin retorted. “Well, that was nicely done. What do you intend for an encore? Pull the wings off flies?”
“Now wait a minute. You’re the one who brought up the dull butter knife.”
“Aye, and I would too. But that doesn’t excuse being cruel to the child. That was cruel and all it’s likely to accomplish is driving them closer together.”
“Little trollop’s right,” Widder Hackett chimed in. “All you did was hurt her feelings.”
“But I was trying to let her down easy. To help her.”
“By making her miserable?” Malkin replied.
“Help her my left foot,” Widder Hackett grated. “Of all the shoddy, ill-done . . .” There was a lot more.
Wiz looked to either side at the women, one visible and now silent, one invisible and just working up a good head of steam.
“All right have it your way,” he snapped. “I’m a miserable failure as a human being. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to get some air.” With that he stormed out of the kitchen with Widder Hackett still railing in his ear.
Wiz stood on the stoop for an instant, looking out along the dark street. There were no street lights and the moon was only half-full. There wasn’t so much as a candle showing in a window, which made the street gloomy and forbidding. It was as if the houses were bombed out and abandoned, he thought. Somewhere several streets over a dog howled, adding to the effect.
He turned and started away from the square, head down and lost in thought.
The truth was, he did feel bad about making Anna cry. But dammit! The girl was his responsibility and he couldn’t let her get too mixed up with someone like Llewllyn.
The other truth was he didn’t want the responsibility, he admitted as he picked his way along the dark, deserted way. In fact he didn’t want any of the responsibilities he had acquired since he got here. Yet he was stuck with them and he was juggling like a madman trying to meet them. That was one of the reasons he’d been so hard on Anna.
Ever since he got here he had been writing checks furiously. Sooner or later some of them were going to come due and he was way overdrawn at the luck bank.
It wasn’t just that, this wasn’t fun any more. In the beginning this had all been a big game, but now the joke was old and not particularly funny.
He couldn’t even take pride in his job, like he could writing a good tight module of code in something like COBOL. At heart he just wasn’t a con man and playing the role was taking its toll on him. He sucked a breath of the cold night air and sighed gustily. This wasn’t working out at all the way he had anticipated.
He was cold and tired and frustrated and a little scared and more than anything else he just wanted to go home.
Wiz never even saw the shadow that separated itself from the wall as he passed. And he never heard the hiss of the blade through the air. The edge landed squarely across his shoulders and as he froze into immobility a sharp whistle rang out from the darkness from whence the shadow had come.
“Ow!” said the shadow. “My wrist.”
“I told you not to hit him, didn’t I?” retorted a second cloaked man as he emerged from the darkness. He was shorter and for an instant a moonbeam gleamed off his dark pate. “Just tickle him in the ribs, I said. But no, you have to take a mucking great whack at him.”
There was a rattling on the cobblestones just around the corner.
“Here comes the cart,” said the first one. “Let’s get this business over with.”
Heaving and straining the three men loaded Wiz’s immobile form into the cart. The spell didn’t increase Wiz’s weight, but it did do funny things to his inertia. The footpads found they could only move him slowly and that made him seem even heavier. It didn’t help that one of them had to keep his sword pressed against Wiz at all times lest the spell break. That left two of them to do most of the work, including burying the frozen wizard under the turnips that made up two-thirds of the cart’s load.
It was not a quiet business, especially since all three men had a tendency to curse and mutter at every little bit of work. But not a shutter banged open nor even a light showed at a window, as if these kinds of goings-on were commonplace here.
Finally, with Wiz stowed and covered, the pair mounted the cart and rattled off in the night, leaving the occasional turnip behind to mark their passage.
A few minutes jolting over cobblestones brought them to the city’s west gate. It was lit by flaming torches on either side and before it stood a representative of the city’s guard. He was tall, gangly, wearing a steel cap and leather-covered jack. In the crook of his bony arm he carried a halberd that had definitely seen better days.
“And where do you think you’re going?”
“Out to my granny’s,” said the tall one. The medium-sized one next to him nodded vigorously and the short one sat twisted on the seat to keep his knife on Wiz’s throat under the pile of turnips.
“At this time of night?”
“We had to finish work,” the tall one said. “Then we had to eat dinner and harness the cart and load it, and . . .”
The guard peered past the driver. “What have you got in there?”
“Uh, turnips.”
“Why are you taking turnips out of the city?” he demanded.
“Granny lost her entire turnip crop,” the tall man said smoothly. “Weevils got them, they did.”
“Turnip weevils,” added the driver helpfully. “Terrible things, turnip weevils.” His companion, who recognized lily-gilding when he heard it, poked him in the ribs to shut up.
The guard had never heard of turnip weevils, but then he was a city boy. More importantly perhaps, in this city the best and brightest did not become city guardsmen and out of that lot, the best and brightest of the not-so-good and not-so-smart weren’t assigned to gate duty after curfew. Still, this was irregular and he had the reputation of the city guard to uphold.
“What’s the rest of that stuff?”
“Building supplies. We’re going to make some repairs on her cottage while we’re about it.”
“Fixing the fireplace,” the man in the back added helpfully.
“It’s after curfew. You won’t be able to get back in until morning.”
“That’s all right. We’ll stay at my granny’s.”
The guard still thought the whole thing was extremely fishy, but his orders were more about people and things coming into the city than people and things going out.
“All right. Pass on then. But I’m going to remember the lot of you.”
“Well?” said the tall one at last.
“Well what?” the guard replied.
“Aren’t you going to open the gate?”
“If you want the gate opened do it yourself. There’s three of you.”
The driver started to protest, thought better of it and nudged his companion to get down off the seat.
“Takes two to manage. Can you at least help him?”
The guard jerked his chin at the man in the back of the cart. “What’s wrong with him? And why’s he sitting funny like that?”
“Hurt meself loading the cart,” the little one said. “Set off me lumbago, it did, and sitting any other way hurts.” The guard snorted and turned to help the third man open the gate. The cart creaked through and off into the night with Wiz still magically frozen under a load of turnips.
“Hurry up with that cement, will you? My arm’s getting tired.”
A fire provided light and kept off the chill. A couple of hundred feet away the horse, still hitched to the cart, munched grass placidly. Wiz was standing in a tub half-full of cement, gesturing to empty air. One of the thugs was holding a sword to his throat and the other two were bent over another tub stirring the contents with wooden hoes.
“You want another turn at it?”
“All this work. I think we’re underpaid, charging for this like a simple kidnapping. Between the hauling, the mixing and the rest I swear stone cutting’s an easier living.”
“Where is he anyways?” the third one put in. “I want to count me money and see the back of this job.”
“We’re supposed to meet him at Bottomless Gorge, and we’re still a good half mile from Bottomless Gorge.”
“And who was it who decided we’d stop and do it here, eh?”
“I didn’t decide. Here’s where the cart broke down.”
“I knew it would,” the third one said gloomily. “Overloaded it was, and as soon as we got off the main road . . .”
“It will ride lighter with nothing but him in it,” the tall one told them. “Just get that stuff mixed up good and we’ll have plenty of time to fix the cart while it sets hard. Meanwhile our client will just have to wait.”
“I dunno. Not good business practices to keep a client waiting. How’s that cement coming?”
“Still more like soup than cement.”
“You put too much water in,” the tall one said from where he held the sword on Wiz.
“I did not!” the shorter man retorted.
The third one stuck his hoe blade in the trough and watched the milky concoction run off the end. “This lot’s got chalk mixed in with it. Adulterated, that’s what it is.”
“Came right out the city warehouse, it did,” the short man said morosely. “Councilman Hanwassel’s best. You can’t trust no one nowadays. The decline in honesty in our society is shocking. Positively shocking. Me, I lay it all to the parents.”
“Me, I lay it all to you,” the tall one said acidly. “Last time I let you get the supplies for a job!”
“And who was it who was too busy nattering over his ale in the Blind Goat to go out and get the necessaries?”
“That was planning,” he answered loftily. “Something like this takes planning-and delegation. It’s up to the subordinates to fulfill the tasks delegated to them.”
“You can delegate all you want,” the short man answered sullenly. “But next time you steal the flipping cement.”
The other one started to reply, but the third man gestured them to silence.
“Hsst. Here he comes.”
Pieter strode into the firelight.
“Where have you been?” he demanded. “And what are you doing here?”
“Cart broke down,” the tall one told him. “We figured we’d set him up here and then take him the rest of the way.” But Pieter had quit listening as soon as he caught sight of Wiz.
He stood in front of Wiz, arms akimbo. “So Wizard, not so high and mighty now, are you?” He followed it up with a stinging slap to the face.
At least Pieter’s hand stung. It was like slapping a rock and the young man winced in pain.
“He can’t hear you,” one of the footpads said.
“Can’t feel what you do to him either,” another one added.
“Well, wake him up then. I want him to know the author of his fate.”
“Wake him up?” the shortest one quavered. “He’s a wizard.”
“And he’s tied so tight he can’t wiggle a finger and gagged so tight he can’t utter a word. Release him, I say!”
Hesitantly the one with the sword removed it from Wiz’s ribs.
Suddenly Wiz was there again, tied up, gagged, surrounded by three armed thugs and a grinning Pieter, and up to his knees in cement. Not for the first time it occurred to him that the protection spell’s definition of “mortal danger” left a lot to be desired.
The short, balding one, whom Wiz mentally tagged “Curly,” was edging away from the reanimated wizard. The one beside him was holding his sword warily, ready to thrust it between Wiz’s ribs at the first sign of movement. The tall one was looking back and forth between Wiz and Pieter.
“Throw me out of the house, will you?” Pieter snarled and drew back his hand to slap Wiz again.
The blow never landed. Wiz was gagged, but that didn’t matter. He could form the words in his throat and that was all it took.
The spell for “loose knots” worked in part by making things self-repulsive and in part by reducing the coefficient of friction of everything in the neighborhood to something less than teflon on plate glass lubricated by greased owl shit. Which is to say that any friction fastening in the vicinity stopped working instantly.
Which is to say that everyone’s pants fell down as their belts came untied. Actually it is to say more than that. Sewing can be loosely defined as a form of knotting, so the clothes not only fell off, they fell to pieces.
That left Wiz, Pieter and his three henchmen standing there stark naked. In this crisis the thugs reverted to their natural behavior: They turned to run like frightened rats. Pieter just stood with his hand stopped in mid-air and his mouth open. Wiz spoke another word and all four of them were frozen in place.
Wiz took a step forward and nearly tripped over the edge of the tub he was standing in.
light exe he commanded and a witchfire globe cast an even blue light over everything.
It made an interesting tableau. The tall man had lost his footing and fallen to his hands and knees. The balding one was trying to scramble over the tall one’s back, which left them poised as if playing a slightly obscene game of nude leapfrog. The middle-sized one was straightening up with arms pumping, like a sprinter coming out of the blocks.
Wiz shook the wet cement from his legs and considered his next move. A chill evening breeze reminded him that his first priority was finding something to wear if he didn’t want to catch cold. He looked at the piles of fabric littering the ground around them but none of them were large enough to cover much.
The cart had been outside the range of the spell, so the horse was still placidly cropping grass. Wiz pulled off the horse’s blanket and, ignoring its condition and its odor, draped it over his shoulders toga style.
Leaving Pieter frozen, he gestured to unfreeze his stooges. The three returned to awareness facing a wizard surrounded by glowing blue light and wearing a tattered horse blanket. Just then Wiz’s sartorial shortcomings meant less to them than his obvious power.
Their first act was to collapse in a heap as their momentum caught up with them. Curly covered his head with his hands and moaned.
“Stand where you are!” Wiz commanded in a stern and majestic manner-or as stern and majestic as you can be when the cold night air is nipping at your bare backside. “Go on, stand up, all of you.”
The three thugs pulled themselves erect and sorted themselves out facing Wiz. They were all about the color of the cement in the tub and Wiz didn’t think they were shivering because they were cold.
“I ought to turn you all into frogs,” he said sternly. The tall one blanched and the short one whimpered more loudly.
One of these days I’ve got to write a spell to do that, he thought.
However, just now the threat was enough.
He pointed at the trough. “What’s this stuff?”
“Cement, My Lord. It’s a little thin because . . .”
Wiz cut him off with a wave of his hand. “Okay, you’re going to take this cement and you’re going to paint a coat of it onto Pieter here. All over, so he’s thoroughly covered. Then, when it’s dry, you’re going to load him into the wagon, take him back to town and set him up in the square in front of the town hall. Got that?”
“The wagon’s broke,” Larry said sullenly.
“Then carry him,” Wiz said and turned away into the night. He took two steps and then turned back to them. “But if he’s not standing in the square by noon, you’re all going to be pigeon roosts by evening.”
He took two more steps and turned back again.
“Oh, and one more thing.”
The three quailed before him.
“Which way is it to town?”
God what an evening, Wiz thought as he trudged down the dusty road toward town. The moon gave enough light to keep him on the road and out of potholes, but not enough to see every rock and tree root. As a result he had stubbed his toes and bruised his heels a half dozen times before he had gone as much as a mile.
The only good thing is, it’s too late for anything else to happen to me tonight.
Just then a shadow passed over the moon. Wiz looked up to see a dragon settling down on a hillock beside the road. The moon was behind the creature so it loomed nightmarishly large and black before him.
“Starting a new fashion, Wizard?” Wurm’s “voice” rang in his head.
“Right now I’m trying to get back to town.”
“Still, this is opportune. I have been meaning to speak to you at a time and place which would not upset your, ah, clients.”
Wiz had a sudden premonition the night’s events so far had just been a warm-up. “What do you want?” he asked wearily.
“An opportunity to discuss your progress, and perhaps your future actions. I understand for example that you personally convinced one dragon to give up his prey. That in itself is a notable accomplishment.”
“Ah, to tell you the truth it wasn’t that difficult. Not with that particular dragon.”
Wurm nodded his enormous head. “Griswold is a moron. Even for a hatchling.”
“Well, at least my run-in with him helped get me in solid with the council.”
“Oh, you have accomplished more than that,” Wurm said, amused. “In two days there will be a dragonmote to decide what to do about you.”
“Dragonmote?”
“A meeting of dragons, or of all who choose to attend.” He cocked his enormous scaly head. “Quite an honor actually. The first dragonmote in several hundred years. Dragons dislike gatherings and prefer single combat to the constant clumping and bickering of humans. Besides, dragons seldom feel the need to take concerted action.”
Suddenly it got even colder under the horse blanket. “Concerted action?”
Wurm nodded again. “I believe the currently favored solution is incinerating the town and you with it.”
“Is this where I came in?” Then he thought furiously. “Look, can you get me in to that meeting? To speak to them I mean.”
Wurm cocked his enormous head. “I think it can be arranged.” The way he said it left Wiz no doubt that had been his plan all along.
The number of screw-ups in a presentation is directly proportional to the importance of the audience and inversely proportional to their belief in what you’re selling.
The Consultants’ Handbook
Never meddle in the affairs of dragons, for they are subtle and see right through bullshit.
Marginalia in a copy of The Consultants’ Handbook
The place was a narrow chasm between two towering sandstone cliffs. When it rained the sandy bottom was probably under several feet of water. About twenty feet of water, Wiz judged from the bits of driftwood and debris caught in cracks and ledges up the wall. He devoutly hoped it didn’t rain while the dragonmote was in progress.
Not that it would matter to the dragons. They dropped in through the narrow crack of sky above and settled themselves along the cliff faces, hanging head-down like bats.
The smell of snake and sulfur was well-nigh overpowering and garbled bits of dragon speech rang in his head.
With a minimum of hissing and squabbling the dragons settled into their places. There didn’t seem to be any strict hierarchy, but the larger, older dragons clearly got the best seats in the house.
A smallish dragon slipped in through the crack of sky, but instead of choosing a spot on the sandstone walls, it dropped down onto the sand next to Wiz. All dragons looked pretty much alike to Wiz but as soon as the creature “spoke” Wiz recognized Griswold.
“You cheated me!” the young dragon said. “Cheated me out of my rightful prey. That spell you showed me was a phony.”
“No it wasn’t.”
“But it doesn’t do anything!” Griswold protested.
“I never said that it did,” Wiz said blandly.
“But, but, but . . .” Griswold did a fair imitation of a turkey gobbling.
Wiz just smiled sweetly.
The young dragon drew back his head as if to say something else, but Wiz shushed him as the meeting came to order.
“This mortal is here under my protection,” Wurm declared as the dragons settled in. “Are there any objections?” There was a certain amount of shifting and hissing, but apparently no one objected strongly enough to try to tackle Wurm.
There was no introduction. The dragons fell silent and stared at Wiz, waiting for him to begin.
Wiz gestured and his equipment appeared. It included an overhead projector, complete with a green demon to operate it, a screen, and a large easel holding flip charts. Beats heck out of lugging this stuff down the hall, he thought. He picked up the pointer lying on the easel and launched into his prepared spiel.
“Uh, good afternoon ladies and, uh, well dragons. My name is . . .”
“We know who you are,” a steely voice rang in his head. “Get on with it.”
“Certainly, Mr. ah . . .”
“Ralfnir,” came the cold voice. Looking up and to his right Wiz identified the “speaker” as a dragon nearly as large as Wurm and just as ferocious looking.
“First slide, please. Now, as you can see here . . .”
The demon flipped on the projector and a gorgeous rainbow-tinted slide appeared on the screen. It was not, however, the title slide. Wiz didn’t recognize it at all. Then he looked harder and realized it was in upside down. At least it seemed to be upside down. Since it was titled in Japanese it was hard for Wiz to tell.
“Uh, next slide please. Now, as you can see here . . .” He stopped. This one was the Miss July picture from the presentation to the council. Trying to look at the slide from the dragons’ perspective, Wiz realized her pose and lack of clothing made her resemble something on a buffet. The dragons seemed mightily unimpressed.
“Uh, next chart please.”
Finally, mercifully, the demon got the right slide.
“Now as you can see . . .” But that was as far as he got. Ralfnir drew back his head and aimed an incandescent blast of dragon fire down at him.
The world blinked as Wiz’s protection spell cut in. When it cut out Wiz found himself standing beside a heap of smoking ashes holding the charred stub of a pointer. Behind him the reflected heat from the canyon wall warmed his back unpleasantly.
Damn. There have been times I’ve wanted to do that to a presenter.
“Ah, perhaps it would be better if I dispensed with the visual aids,” he said weakly.
“Now,” said another frigid, metallic “voice,” “tell us something we wish to hear or begone.”
Always stress the advantages to the client. But he couldn’t think of any.
“All right,” he said desperately. “I’m here today to talk to you about a matter of mutual concern between humans and dragons.”
“Not all dragons think there is a problem with humans,” Ralfnir put in, looking at Wurm. “Humans multiply and dragons eat them.”
Wiz got the strong impression that Ralfnir and Wurm were rivals in some way. The very fact that Wurm was sponsoring him seemed to make Ralfnir oppose him.
“You have until now,” Wiz said. “But things are changing among the humans.”
“Oh yes,” Ralfnir said, “the ‘new magic’ we have heard of. Why should we fear anything you humans do?”
“It’s already defeated two of you,” Wiz said levelly.
“That’s a lie!” Griswold “shouted” so loud Wiz flinched. “I was hornswoggled, not defeated.”
There was a ripple of laughter from the other dragons. Griswold bridled with rage, but Wurm checked him with an easy gesture of his wingtip. The young dragon subsided, glaring murderously at Wiz.
“The point is,” Wiz went on, “that humans are much more potent magically than they have been. It would be in all our interests for dragons to recognize that and to renegotiate your contract with humans.”
That produced a babble of dragon speech that made Wiz’s head ring. Finally Ralfnir cut through the din.
“Nonsense!” he roared. “I have no ‘contract’ with humans.” There was another head-splitting chorus of assent from the dragons up and down the canyon walls.
Gradually the noise, both acoustic and mental, died away. “Not all of us are afraid of humans,” Ralfnir continued, turning his head to look at Wurm. “Dragons dealt with your kind for ages and dragons will deal with them for ages more. Magic or no, dragons will continue to handle humans as it pleases us to do so.”
“That won’t be as easy with the new magic,” Wiz said.
“So far, your ‘new magic’ has only disturbed Shulfnim at his nap.” He paused and nodded toward Griswold. “Oh yes, and bested that one.”
Griswold’s renewed protest was cut off by a roar of dragonish mirth. The other dragons flapped their wings and slapped their tails against the rock to show approval.
Ralfnir waited for the noise to die again before he went on. “I do not think we have to fear such powers as these.”
“This was just a taste,” Wiz warned. “The new human magic is very powerful. You will have to reckon with it or I cannot be responsible for the consequences.”
“If humans interfere with us,” came another steely voice, “it will be we who are responsible for the consequences-to the humans.”
Another cacophony of approval with more wing flapping and tail slapping burst out from the assembled dragons.
“But if you look at the long-term trend . . .” Wiz began, but Ralfnir cut him short.
“A human talks to dragons about the long term? We who live for age upon age?”
Wiz gathered his remaining courage and tried again. “Even dragons can die,” he pointed out. “They can be killed by magic and humans now have magic that can, ah, severely limit your scope of action.”
“Then prove it,” Ralfnir said. “Show me the power of this new magic you think of so highly.”
“I’ll be glad to demonstrate,” Wiz said. As soon as the words were out of his mouth he realized he had made a mistake. “Uh, what did you have in mind?”
“Why,” Ralfnir purred, “if this new magic is so dangerous to us, surely you cannot object to a simple duel.”
Having no lips, dragons cannot smile. But Ralfnir did an excellent imitation, drooping his lids over his golden eyes and opening his mouth slightly to run a blood-red forked tongue over his gleaming ivory fangs.
Wiz looked at Wurm but the great dragon remained impassive. The chasm had gone very, very quiet.
“Okay,” Wiz lied. “How about tomorrow?”
Their business concluded, the dragons left the canyon like a cloud of startled bats. At last only Wurm and Wiz remained.
“It was perhaps unwise to challenge Ralfnir to a duel,” the dragon said in a tone of mild reproof.
“Did anyone ever mention your genius for understatement?” Wiz said sourly.
“This was not your object, then?”
“No. I was suckered. What now?”
Wurm seemed surprised by the question. “Why, that is up to you. You can fight him or not.”
“Any advice?”
“Advice? That would be presumptuous indeed of me. You must do as you think best.”
Wiz thought Wurm had been presumptuous as hell already by getting him into this mess. However he didn’t see any point in saying so.
“But if I fight him and he kills me, I haven’t solved the problem.”
Wurm considered. “Your death would be a solution of sorts.”
For an instant Wiz wondered if this entire episode might have been Wurm’s elaborate plot to get him to commit suicide. He dismissed that as unnecessarily baroque, even for a dragon.
“I don’t suppose I could talk him out of this?”
Wurm cocked his enormous head. “Unlikely. The challenge was formally issued and accepted. Now it is a matter of honor.” He paused, as if considering. “True, there is not much honor to be gained by killing a single human, but Ralfnir enjoys sport for its own sake.”
“But if I win do I have a deal?”
“Why should you? If you win you will only eliminate Ralfnir.”
“Then what’s the point?”
“No point, really,” Wurm said, “unless you like slaying dragons as much as Ralfnir likes slaying humans. I told you before, Wizard, dragons do not form groups as humans do. There is none who can speak for all of us.”
“So why should I even show up for this duel?”
Wurm gave a mental “shrug.” “Perhaps no reason at all. Save that if you do not Ralfnir will undoubtedly hunt you down and quite likely burn down that town you humans are so fond of in the process.”
“And if I do face him?”
“If you win you have nothing to fear from him. If you lose-“ again the “shrug” “-he will probably not bother with the town.”
“Great. And if I do beat him, I’ll still have to best every single other dragon in order to get them to leave the people alone?”
Wurm paused, as if considering. “Probably not. I imagine that after you have slain forty or fifty dragons most of the rest will decide humans are not worth bothering with.” He cocked his head. “It would be an effective strategy, were you able to carry it out.”
“There’s gotta be a better way,” Wiz muttered.
“If there is I would suggest you endeavor to find it,” Wurm said. “It would be best if you found it ere dawn tomorrow.”
“I’m working on it,” Wiz told the dragon and turned to start down the canyon.
“Oh, and Wizard . . .” Wurm’s “voice” rang in his head.
Wiz turned back to the dragon.
“Do not count on your ring of protection. Even a hatchling could defeat that spell.”
“Thanks,” Wiz mumbled, and turned his face again toward town.
The essence of successful consulting is knowing when to bail out.
The Consultants’ Handbook
Wiz spent most of the night staring at the screen and doodling meaningless bits of code. He knew he should be coming up with some dynamite dragon-killing spell, but instead he kept reviewing the spells he did have.
Let’s see. I’ve got lightning bolts . . . probably not much good against a dragon . . . suck energy . . . maybe that would do something . . . frictionless surface . . . nope, not against a flying creature . . . attract fleas . . . I wonder if dragons get fleas? Occasionally he would compound something out of the spells at his command, combining the old spells to be called in sequence or simultaneously by a single code word. He spent rather more time working on a fire-protection spell that looked pretty good. But mostly he just sat at the terminal and stared into space.
Time and again his fingers would stretch to the keyboard and he would start the sequence to reach the Wizard’s Keep over the Internet. Time and again he hesitated and his hands dropped away. He knew he wasn’t thinking clearly but trying to think more clearly only made things less clear. Like trying to squeeze a handful of jelly, he thought morosely.
Anna spent the night sleeping the sleep of the completely unworried-or the really stupid, which may have been the same thing in her case. Bobo spent the night doing tomcat things. No one knew how Widder Hackett spent the night except that she wasn’t talking to Wiz.
The only really active one in the house was Malkin. She spent most of the hours before first light gathering up the booty she had secreted about the place. Even though she’d turned most of it to gold coins through One-Eyed Nicolai it still made a substantial load.
Live for some time on that, she thought as she swept the last of the gold into a leather sack. Time to move on anyway. I was tired of this town. The prospect wasn’t very satisfying somehow and Malkin realized it wasn’t just because this was where she had been born. With a sigh of frustration she dropped the bag on the table. It toppled and spilled a cascade of coins onto the tabletop. Malkin didn’t bother to sweep them back into the bag.
Restless, she wandered down to the kitchen to get something to eat. Once she descended the narrow steps she found she wasn’t hungry. Maybe a cup of hot mulled wine would help her sleep.
She busied herself blowing up the fire and drawing wine from the small cask on the sideboard. She took down a lovingly polished saucepan and put in the wine with cinnamon, cloves and other spices to steep over the still barely glowing coals.
“Smells good,” came a voice behind her. “Can I have some?”
Malkin whirled and there was Wiz, dressed for traveling with cloak and staff.
“Startled me,” the tall girl said. “But yeah, there’s plenty.”
“On second thought I’d better not. I’ll need a clear head this morning.”
He didn’t sound at all confident.
Malkin ladled out a cup of the hot, spiced wine. “Getting an early start eh?”
“No sense in postponing things.” Malkin just nodded and sat down at the table.
For several minutes neither of them said anything or moved, Malkin drinking her wine at the table and Wiz standing on the stairs.
“Look,” he said at last. “I’m not much good at these things, but I just wanted you to know that you’ve really helped me here. And I wanted to thank you for that.”
Malkin only nodded, not trusting her voice.
Wiz sighed heavily. “Well, I’d better get going if I’m going to make the spot by sunup. Thanks again.”
“Good luck Wizard. And thank you.” Then she stared down into her wine cup so Wiz couldn’t see her tears.
Wiz went back up the stairs. A moment later she heard the front door open and close.
Well, she thought to herself, that’s that. It was possible Wiz would beat the dragon, of course. But in Malkin’s world winning a fight with a dragon was a near-impossibility. Besides, the wizard hadn’t sounded nearly as confident as he had when he’d been tackling human foes.
She sighed and drained the last of the wine. She still wasn’t sleepy so she poured the rest of it into her cup and headed back upstairs with it. She still had packing to do.
Wiz had left the workroom door ajar and his workstation on. The colored light from the screen saver pattern streamed onto the floor in rainbow patterns of cold fire. Malkin paused at the door, intrigued. A combination of thief’s caution and a certain sense of honor had kept her away from Wiz’s work table so far, but now Wiz was gone and she was going as well. She no longer felt bound and the thing had always intrigued her.
A glance out the window showed the sky just turning pink, so she had a while. She spoke the word that turned off the guardian demon. Then she slipped into the chair, set the wine cup on the desk and started to experiment.
Unlike most of the non-magicians in her world, Malkin could read. Literacy is a handy skill for a thief who wants to know what she is stealing. Thus the keyboard on Wiz’s workstation wasn’t completely alien to her. Further, burglary is as much a matter of attitude as technical skills. Malkin knew nothing about computers and security, but she had seen Wiz type his log-on sequence repeatedly and she had memorized it.
Unfortunately her memory wasn’t that good. The keys were small and fairly close together. What’s more, Wiz’s program didn’t echo the password on the screen and to top it off, Malkin’s typing technique was primitive. Twice she blew the password and she was hesitating with her index finger hovering over the keyboard when Widder Hackett took a hand.
“Not that one dummy!” the Widow Hackett screamed in her ear. Malkin didn’t hear of course, but Bobo jumped up on the desk and walked across the keyboard, placing his paws very deliberately.
Malkin sneezed as the cat’s tail brushed under her nose and when she opened her eyes she was in.
The fiery letters above the desk formed a list of items, each with a number after them. At the top of the list, blinking in and out of existence, was a tiny black demon with a spindly tail and long nose wearing red shorts with two big white buttons in front. When she moved the steel mouse on the table the demon moved. Obviously it was what Wiz called a “mouse,” although it looked like no mouse she had ever encountered.
She moved the mouse and the on-screen mouse skittered over the first item on the list. As she had seen Wiz do so often, she pressed the steel mouse twice. The screen changed and she saw a series of messages. Another push on the mouse and the mouse demon on the screen flipped the first message down to reveal the next one. Malkin started going through them and puzzled out the messages as they came up.
What she got was extremely confusing. The first group of messages seemed to be jokes, except they were about pieces of knotted string-frayed knotted string-and mouse testicles. Malkin couldn’t understand why that was supposed to be funny and most of the stories didn’t make any sense anyway. There was another series which consisted mostly of a four-way argument with the participants hurling vituperative abuse at each other. The subject was obscure and she didn’t recognize all the words but she guessed that a complete translation would have made a fishwife blush.
The next batch of messages consisted of a host of extremely creative ways to kill off a being who was apparently some kind of demon-at least it was described as large and purple and the only things Malkin could think of that matched that description were demons. Judging from the hatred in the messages it must be an exceptionally evil demon. It also seemed to have a fondness for children. Perhaps it ate them, she couldn’t be sure.
Several of the messages mentioned a being called “Kibo” who seemed to be an extremely powerful demon. At least these people seemed to believe that mentioning the name brought them luck.
There were even some messages that seemed to bear upon magic. But they were obscure and often couched in strange combinations of runes which made her eyes water just to look at them.
Finally, unknowingly, she clicked out of the stored messages and into the next item on the menu, which happened to be chat mode.
Jerry was working late. Which meant it was dawn and he was still at his desk. He was deep in a piece of code when a slate-blue demon wearing a dress and sporting a telephone headset in her 1940s hairdo popped up at his elbow. “Wun-ringy-dingy,” the creature pronounced in a nasal voice, “teew-ringy-dingy.”
“Gotta get a new chat demon,” he muttered. Then he saw who was asking to chat and hit the call button for Danny and Moira.
Danny had been in the kitchen getting a snack before he went to bed. He showed up with a slab of gingerbread liberally smeared with butter in his hand, a mouth so full he could barely breathe and a generous trail of crumbs leading down the hall.
Moira was right on his heels. Her face was puffy, her red hair a tangled mess and a green silk robe had been wrapped hurriedly around her.
“He’s on IRC,” Jerry said over his shoulder. “But so far he hasn’t said anything.”
“Here,” Danny said around the gingerbread, “let me take it.”
“But . . .”
“Get the search demon started,” Danny hissed. “Use my workstation.” Somewhat reluctantly Jerry gave up his seat and Danny set down his snack and began to type.
A message formed itself in fire at the level of Malkin’s eyes.
“How you doing?” it said.
Malkin had seen this happen with Wiz before but it was still a little surprising.
“All right,” she picked out on the keyboard.
In chat mode a person’s method of typing is almost as distinct as a telegrapher’s “fist,” especially when you’re expecting a very fast typist and you get someone whose method is obviously more hunt than peck.
“You’re not Wiz,” Danny typed.
“Shut up,” Jerry hissed. “Keep him on the line until we’ve got the location.” Beside him the tracing demon was scribbling furiously as it unraveled link after link.
“Right about that,” came the laborious reply. “I’m Malkin.”
“Where’s Wiz?”
“In over his head is where,” Malkin typed. “He’s out fighting a dragon.”
Moira gasped, Danny paled and Jerry craned his neck to read the message from Danny’s workstation.
“Is he all right?” Danny typed.
Moira snorted when she read the question. “I told you he’s fighting a dragon,” she picked out. “In these parts that ain’t healthy. Who are you?”
“I’m Jerry,” Danny lied, “Wiz’s best friend. It sounds like he can use all the help he can get.”
“You got that right,” came the reply.
“Look, he’s under a spell cast by a dragon to keep him from telling us where he is. Can you tell us where he is?”
Malkin hesitated, then her thief’s caution won out.
“Look, I don’t know why but for some reason Wiz didn’t want you to know where he is. I don’t think I should tell you either.”
“Shit,” Danny muttered as he read the message. Behind him Moira said something considerably stronger.
“But he’s under a spell,” he typed.
“So you say,” was the answer. “Maybe you’re telling the truth and maybe you’re not. But it’s not for me to give away his secrets.”
Danny looked over his shoulder and tried to gauge the progress of the tracking demon. “All right,” he typed. “I guess we have to respect that.”
Back in Wiz’s workroom Malkin had a sudden flash of insight. “You can find me through this, can’t you?”
“How could we do that?” came the hasty response. “We just want to talk is all.”
“No,” Malkin typed, “I’ve talked too long as it is. Goodbye.” With that she moved to sign off.
“NO YOU IDIOT!!!” shrieked Widder Hackett but no one could hear her.
It was Bobo who rose to the occasion-literally. Before Malkin could complete the logoff sequence, he uncoiled from his spot on the windowsill, levitated across the room in a single bound and skidded to a four-point landing on the table next to the “computer.” A quick lash of his powerful tail sent the cup of hot mulled wine splashing into Malkin’s lap.
With a curse Malkin jumped to her feet. Bobo hopped off the table, clawed her solidly on the ankle and ran out yowling. Malkin grabbed the fireplace poker and chased the cat down the hall. She didn’t realize she had forgotten to log off.
Back at the castle the programmers realized it immediately.
“Line’s still live!” Danny shouted. “Quick, get the trace going.”
“That will take hours!” Jerry didn’t exactly shove Danny out of the chair but he squeezed in so quickly the smaller programmer almost landed butt-first on the floor.
His fingers blurred as he rattled through a sequence and the fiery letters flew from the demon’s pen.
“What do you think you’re doing?” Danny demanded as the message began to take shape.
Jerry stopped typing and backspaced over a mistake. “I’ve turned off the routine that splits spells into pieces on the screen so you don’t activate them just by entering them.”
“I can see that.”
“As soon as this spell appears on Wiz’s terminal it will activate. Just printing it out is the equivalent to reciting it.” Another pause and more frantic backspacing. “It’ll produce a big flare of magic to show us where Wiz is.”
“It is also gonna produce a big flare of magic here,” the younger programmer pointed out. “That’s likely to raise all kinds of hell with the spells around here.”
Jerry didn’t take his eyes off the screen. “I know.”
“Bal-Simba is not gonna like this.”
Jerry hit the last key and completed the spell at the Wizard’s Keep, and sent it on its way.
The magical lights in the workroom dimmed and then came back with an unhealthy greenish pallor. There were various poppings and cracklings, unearthly wails and one or two outright explosions from other parts of the Wizard’s Keep, accompanied here and there by yells from wizards who had been working late or were at work early.
At the abandoned terminal in Wiz’s office Jerry’s typing poured out of the screen. There was no one there to read it, but since it was a spell and not a message that didn’t matter. Unknown to the inhabitants of the house, magical forces gathered and twisted around them as an invisible tornado of magical energy rose toward the heavens. The emac reached the last line of the spell and sent the requested acknowledgment.
“It worked!” Jerry yelled triumphantly. He spun to face Moira. “Quick, tell the searchers to scan the World for a flare of magic. Big magic.” Moira nodded and dashed from the room.
“And tell Bal-Simba too,” Jerry called after her. He raised his voice to follow her down the hall. “And apologize to him for the mess, will you?” Then he turned to Danny. “Get your staff. I think we’re going to fight a dragon.”
When a dragon says dawn, does he mean daybreak or sunrise? Wiz wondered.
It was past first light and already the sun was peeking over the eastern hills. There was still no sign of the dragon. Wiz didn’t know if that was because the duel wasn’t supposed to start until sunrise or if it was a psychological move on Ralfnir’s part. If it was psychology, Wiz thought, it was sure effective.
The dawn air was heavy with dew and still as death. Not so much as a zephyr ruffled the tall green grass or the yellow meadow flowers. A few puffy clouds hung high in the summer sky and here and there a butterfly or bumblebee went about its business among the patches of buttercups and field mallow.
Wiz licked his lips, took a tighter grip on his staff and nearly died in an eyeblink.
With a pop of displaced air Jerry, Danny, Moira and Bal-Simba flashed into existence in Wiz’s workroom. A quick glance showed them the room was empty but the sound of cursing downstairs told them there were people about. As one they dashed for the door.
Malkin was standing at the sink, sponging the wine out of her dress and describing in lurid detail all the things she was going to do to Bobo, when Bal-Simba and the others came pounding down the stairs with Jerry in the lead.
“You’re Malkin, aren’t you? Where’s Wiz?” he got out in a single breath.
Malkin’s mouth fell open.
“My Lady, please,” Moira said as she pushed around Jerry. “Where is Wiz?”
“Where, Lady?” Bal-Simba demanded over Jerry’s shoulder.
No one argued with Bal-Simba. Not only did he have the presence and voice of a mighty wizard, he was nearly seven feet tall with bulk to match his height. For the first time in her adult life Malkin found herself dwarfed and intimidated by another person.
“Tell them, girl!” shrieked Widder Hackett.
Over in the corner Anna gaped at what had invaded the kitchen.
“At the dueling field,” Malkin stammered. “You take the west road . . .”
“No,” Bal-Simba commanded. “No time for words, just think of the place.
Think clearly.”
“Got it!” Danny shouted. “Let’s go.” The four gestured as one and vanished.
There was a pop of inrushing air and the kitchen was empty again save for its normal inhabitants.
“Fortuna!” muttered Malkin. The stains on her dress forgotten, she reached for an empty wine cup, eyed it, tossed it back on the drainboard and took a beer tankard down from its peg. She filled it to the brim from the wine keg and downed nearly half of it without taking the tankard from her lips.
“Excuse me, My Lady,” Anna quavered when Malkin came up for air, “but who were they?”
“Friends of the master’s.”
“How did they get here?”
Malkin shrugged.
Bobo sauntered into the kitchen looking pleased with himself. But since Bobo always looked pleased with himself neither woman noticed.
Malkin took another long pull on the wine. “Best prepare the spare bedrooms, girl. We’re going to have company this night.” Either that or dragon fire ere sundown, she thought as she turned away. But no sense in saying that. Nothing they could do about it and the poor child was already frightened near out of what little wit she had.
The essential difference between a consultant and an owner is that it’s not the consultant’s butt on the line.
The Consultants’ Handbook
And if it is your butt on the line you’ve screwed up big time.
Marginalia in a copy of The Consultants’ Handbook
Wiz sensed rather than heard the movement behind him and flung his staff out in an instinctive warding gesture. A wall of flame washed over him, charring the grass and scorching the earth beneath. The sky darkened for an instant and then the shock wave nearly knocked Wiz off his feet.
Shaking his head to clear it, Wiz realized Ralfnir had come in behind him right at ground level and very fast. His instinctive guard was the only thing that had saved him. Looking the way the shadow had gone he sought Ralfnir. At last he saw the dragon, so far away it was only a speck in the blue. The dragon hauled around in a tight turn, mighty wings beating the air. Then he seemed to drop down on Wiz like a stooping hawk. Again Wiz raised his staff and this time he didn’t let the dragon close.
Bolt after bolt of lightning struck Ralfnir square on and splattered harmlessly off his armored chest. The dragon replied in kind and Wiz’s anti-fire spell glowed dull red around the edges. Wiz turned his head away from the blast of heat radiating off the shield and countered with a rainmaking spell. The dragon steamed and sizzled in the sudden downpour, but shook off the water like a dog and kept coming.
Wiz raised his staff and gestured again. Four things like old-fashioned beehives made out of steel appeared at the cardinal points around Ralfnir. As soon as they winked in they exploded, releasing a horde of steel bees aimed straight for the dragon. Ralfnir shot a great gout of flame, slewing it back and forth to play over the oncoming metal insects. Most of them glowed red, then yellow, then fell from the sky like a rain of molten steel. The few that penetrated Ralfnir’s defenses bounced harmlessly off the beast’s armored hide.
Now he swooped close and reached out with gaping jaws. Wiz dropped flat on the ground and heard the dragon’s jaws close above him like a rifle shot. The pressure from the wingbeats made Wiz’s eardrums ring and then the dragon was gone again with a lashing of lightning bolts to speed him on his way.
Ralfnir winged over and dived behind the hill. For an instant Wiz thought he had gotten him, but the dragon popped up seconds later, spraying Wiz with fire from close range and jinking down again before the human could get a spell off.
backslash spindizzy exe! Wiz muttered. A blue haze enveloped him and he rose, a hundred, two hundred, three hundred feet straight into the air. The ground fell away from him and the hilltop where he had stood became a black smear on the rolling green meadow.
It was a calculated insult. Dragons hate other flying things near them, especially flying humans. Ralfnir swelled his neck and hissed like a runaway steam whistle. Then he dove for Wiz with all his strength.
* * *
Jaws agape and talons spread, Ralfnir dived for Wiz Zumwalt. With a mighty roar he struck the flying wizard square on with the full force of his two-hundred-foot-long armored body.
Wiz bounced. Bounced and skittered away from the dragon, light as a windblown leaf. Ralfnir clutched at him with his talons but Wiz popped out of his grasp like a watermelon seed.
The dragon roared in frustration and fury and unleashed a column of fire straight at his would-be prey. The incandescent blast curled around the blue haze and Wiz was simply borne away like a feather on a puff of breath. Again and again Ralfnir spewed mighty gouts of flame at his victim. Each time Wiz was borne lightly away by the force and unharmed by the flame.
Hot damn! It’s working. When he had developed the spell it had seemed just too tricky, but it was not only protecting him, it was obviously puzzling the hell out of the dragon. The bubble-of-force component kept the searing heat of the dragon’s fire away from him and the repulsion spell kept the dragon from grabbing him, but the real secret was the inertia-canceling spell. Without inertia the dragon couldn’t hurt him no matter how hard he hit. Even the force of Ralfnir’s fiery breath simply blew him gently away.
Now maybe he’ll get tired and give up.
Ralfnir hung motionless, wings beating and armored chest heaving. He cocked his head and considered the human in the blue bubble floating a few hundred feet away. Then he straightened his neck as if he had reached a decision.
On the other hand, Wiz thought, maybe he won’t.
Slowly, methodically, the dragon began to stalk the human across the sky.
If Ralfnir couldn’t harm Wiz, he quickly discovered he could knock him around a lot. The dragon batted Wiz in his blue bubble from paw to paw and then lashed him with his tail. The force of the blow drove Wiz down to the earth. The spell bounced him back up again like a rubber ball and rattled Wiz’s teeth, spell or no.
Again and again blows from Ralfnir’s tail hammered Wiz to the ground, and again and again he bounced back up. In effect Ralfnir dribbled Wiz the length of the meadow and back.
His spell might have rendered Wiz immune from physical force, but it did nothing at all for his inner ear. Somewhere between the second and third dribble Wiz discovered a hitherto unknown predilection to airsickness.
While he fought to keep his stomach in place Wiz realized he hadn’t been as smart as he had thought. He couldn’t even think straight in the middle of all the bouncing, much less cast spells. Perhaps worse, the protection field severely limited the kinds of spells he could cast at all. The best he had was a standoff and he had a suspicion that wouldn’t last forever.
It didn’t. After bouncing Wiz off the terrain one last time the dragon lay back and regarded him briefly. A garbled bit of dragon speech formed in Wiz’s mind and suddenly his bubble burst, leaving Wiz hanging unsupported and unprotected several hundred feet in the air.
There was a brief, sickening drop as the world rushed toward him.
backslash paracommander exe! Wiz cried and his fall slowed to an easy descent. Ralfnir, however, didn’t. The dragon dived again on the now-helpless wizard, intent on finishing him before he reached the ground.
Wiz sucked in his breath when he saw the dragon coming. Doesn’t shooting a man in a parachute violate the Geneva Convention or something? He realized Ralfnir had probably never heard of the Geneva Convention and wouldn’t abide by it if he had.
Wiz watched the dragon bore in on him, looming ever larger in his vision. backslash uncommander.exe! he whispered and the spell released him, letting him fall free again. The sudden burst of speed confused Ralfnir and instead of nailing Wiz squarely, he passed several feet over Wiz’s head. As the dragon spread his wings to brake and come around again he twisted his head over his shoulder and shot a quick burst of fire at Wiz. The shot was badly aimed and missed, but it came close enough to fill Wiz’s nostrils with the reek of singed hair.
Wiz was so intent on watching Ralfnir he almost forgot to reactivate the spell. He was only a few feet off the ground when he switched it back on and hit hard enough to drive him to his knees. He barely had time to grab his staff before the dragon was on him again.
This time Ralfnir settled to the ground with two mighty wing beats that threw up so much dirt Wiz flinched away. Then slowly, ponderously, he waddled across the meadow to confront his adversary.
A quick spell reduced the friction beneath the dragon to almost nothing, but the dragon simply glided on like a skater on ice. He nearly fell into the gaping pit that opened before him, but he hopped over with a quick half-flap of his wings. Tendrils of meadow grass tugged at his feet, but the dragon broke their grip without seeming to notice. Wiz used an illusion spell to fill the meadow with duplicates of himself. Ralfnir ignored them and came straight for the real Wiz.
A basketball-sized meteor blazed out of the sky and struck the dragon squarely between the eyes. Ralfnir shook his head as if to dislodge a fly. An iceberg congealed around him and shattered instantly. Ralfnir plowed through the pile of ice shards and kept coming. Barely a dozen feet from Wiz he stopped, raised his head high over Wiz and looked down at him.
Wiz felt as if he was suffocating. The dragon’s glare seemed to press down on him like a rock on his chest. He felt his will, his magic and even his life draining away from him under the impact of those great yellow eyes.
Gasping, Wiz managed to form one more word and the world went black and freezing cold.
Ralfnir roared in rage and frustration as his prey disappeared in the rapidly expanding black cloud. He drew his head even higher and breathed a gout of flame at the spot where Wiz had been.
The resulting fireball blew Ralfnir clear across the meadow. Technically it was a misfire since the carbon black and liquid oxygen Wiz’s spell had dumped around him hadn’t had time to mix fully. However, the result was impressive enough. The carbon was very finely divided, almost monomolecular, and the liquid oxygen not only propelled the carbon black outward in all directions, shutting out light, it also made a dandy oxidizer for the carbon fuel.
Another part of the spell protected Wiz from the explosion. Ralfnir wasn’t so lucky. He lay stunned for an instant where the blast had flung him. As he rolled to his feet Wiz saw he was moving slowly, as if in pain. But he sprang into the air as agilely as ever.
This time the attack was purely magical. Again the dragon closed in on Wiz, beating and battering at him with magical blow after magical blow. Wiz was able to deflect some of them with his staff, but there were so many and they came so quickly he could not ward them all off. Under the inexorable pressure Wiz was beaten to his knees, waving his staff in one hand in an increasingly futile effort to protect himself. His chest constricted, his vision blurred and he gasped for breath, leaning on his staff to keep from falling. Ralfnir came ever closer, moving in for the final kill.
There was a sound like machine-gun fire from the edge of the meadow, four quick sharp explosions.
And Jerry was there.
And Danny.
And Moira was there.
And Bal-Simba was there.
As one the quartet raised their staffs and hurled death and destruction at the dragon bearing down on Wiz.
If he’d had time to prepare Ralfnir might have had a chance. He was an old dragon and greatly skilled in magic. But he was in the midst of battle and he was focused on Wiz with a predator’s intentness. He barely noticed the other humans before their spells hit him.
Bal-Simba was quickest off the mark. A bolt of black lightning flew from his fingertips and wrapped itself around Ralfnir. The dragon was brought up short in mid-swoop as if he had been lassoed, and he jerked violently against the sooty black bonds drawing tighter and tighter around him. The more he struggled the more closely he was held. Before the others’ spells could reach him he was already weakening and sinking toward the earth.
Jerry’s spell was an outgrowth of his speculations about the physical nature of dragons. It enclosed Ralfnir in a perfectly reflecting sphere that rapidly brought its contents to the black body temperature of a dragon. Of course, since there was no energy sink available in the sphere, the dragon died a heat death, which is sort of the thermodynamic equivalent of heat stroke.
Moira wasn’t fancy. She just threw the three worst death spells Wiz and his friends had taught her. She topped it off with the worst spell in the old magic she remembered from her days as a hedge witch-a spell guaranteed to give the victim a case of hives.
Danny’s spell was probably the most ingenious. It took all the random molecular motion in the dragon’s body and pointed it in one way-toward the highest gravity potential. What was left of Ralfnir didn’t just drop out of the sky, he hurtled with ever-increasing speed. In the space of a few hundred feet the dragon went from zero to Mach eight. Straight down.
Where he hit, Ralfnir literally left a smoking hole in the ground.
Wiz sagged against his staff and stared dumbly at the hole where the dragon had been. Then he stared at his friends coming across the meadow to him. Neither event registered very strongly.
“You shouldn’t have come,” Wiz mumbled as Bal-Simba reached him slightly ahead of the others. “You weren’t supposed to come. I didn’t want you here. You’ve ruined everything.”
He was still mumbling when Bal-Simba laid a huge hand on his shoulder. “Sparrow look at me,” he commanded. Wiz met his eyes and his mouth dropped open. He shuddered, staggered and would have fallen if Bal-Simba had not taken his arm.
“Wha . . . what . . . ?”
“A geas,” Bal-Simba said. “A magical compulsion. Laid on you, I have no doubt, by a certain dragon.”
Wiz’s jaw dropped again. “Oh,” he said. “So that’s . . .” He didn’t get a chance to finish. Moira was in his arms, kissing him and crying and all he wanted to do was hold her close forever and ever.
“Hey, Wiz,” Danny said after an appropriate interval.
Wiz raised his face from Moira’s mane of copper hair. “Thanks guys. I think you just saved my life.”
The giant wizard made a throw-away gesture. “It was a piece of pastry.”
“That’s ‘piece of cake,’ “ Danny corrected.
“Whatever.”
“Come on love,” Moira murmured in his ear, “let us leave this place.
Wiz shook his head without taking his nose out of his wife’s hair. “I can’t just yet. There are a couple of loose ends I need to tie up here.”
Moira looked over Wiz’s shoulder at Bal-Simba.
“No geas,” he told her. “Only a sense of responsibility.”
“Responsibility to whom?” Moira asked.
“The town council,” Wiz told her.
“The town council?”
“Yeah, I’m a consultant to them on dragon problems.”
“Sparrow,” the giant black wizard rumbled, “I am almost afraid to ask what you have been doing.”
“Well,” Wiz admitted, “it’s kind of complicated.”
Bal-Simba eyed his friend. “Now I am afraid to ask.”
“I’ll explain it to you when we get back to town,” he said. “It’s really not that bad.” Then he stopped. “At least it seemed like a good idea at the time. But it’s not dangerous.” He stopped again. “Well, okay, there are these three thugs who were trying to kill me and a couple of people on the council who want my hide. And I guess Pieter, the guy in the cement overcoat who’s standing in the town square, is going to come looking for me once he gets unfrozen. But it’s really not that bad.” He realized all four of his companions were staring at him, hard. “Honest,” he finished lamely.
“You had best tell us about it when we get back to town,” Bal-Simba said.
“Uh, I’ve got to make a kind of a detour first.” Wiz looked over his shoulder at the trickle of smoke coming from the fresh crater in the sod. He took a deep breath.
“Okay, now for the hard part.”
History does not always repeat itself. Sometimes it just yells “Can’t you remember anything I told you?” and lets fly with a club.
John W. Campbell
Again Wiz Zumwalt faced the assembled dragons. This time he had arrived under his own power along the Wizard’s Way. He had come alone, but Bal-Simba and the others were watching him closely.
This meeting being called on short notice, there weren’t as many dragons along the walls of the canyon as there had been the day before. But there were still a satisfying number.
“Well,” he said to the mass of monsters, “you’ve had your taste of the new magic. Satisfied?”
“It was not a fair duel,” one of the dragons complained. “You had help from others of your kind.”
“Not fair at all,” Wiz agreed cheerfully. “But then you’re not going to get a fair fight with a human. Don’t you see? Humans cooperate. They work together naturally.” He thought of the town council. “Maybe not always easily and not always well, but they manage to do it.”
He threw his head back to look up at the assembled dragons and raised his voice so his words echoed off the cliffs. “It won’t be one dragon against one human. It will be one or a few dragons against every human in sight. And most of the time the humans will win with the new magic.”
There was a great shifting and slithering as the dragons absorbed the idea.
“Then we should kill you all now,” a voice rang harshly in his head.
“You could try,” he said levelly. “But there are many more humans than there are in this valley and a lot of them already have the new magic. Even if you got every human in the valley, others would replace them.”
More shifting and slithering.
“What do you propose then?” a new voice asked.
“Simple. You’re going to make a treaty with the people in the valley. And this time you’re going to abide by it.” He turned round to face the mass of assembled dragons. “All of you.”
“And how shall we bind all dragonkind by our agreement?” a “voice” like an iron kettledrum asked.
“That’s your problem. Maybe the seniors could take turns patrolling the border. But you’re going to solve it or in a few generations there won’t be any dragons left in the Dragon Lands.”
He looked up at the assembled monsters. “Think it over,” he said. Then he turned on his heel and left.
It wasn’t yet noon but the group was worn out by the time they returned to the house. They were too tired to walk so they took the Wizard’s Way back and popped into the front hall just as Anna came up the stairs from the kitchen.
She wasn’t the least fazed by the apparition in her front hall. These were wizards, wizards did strange things, therefore anything wizards did was normal. She merely curtseyed.
“Will there be anything you need, My Lord?” she said to Wiz. As usual Anna looked utterly charming in a brown work dress and dirty apron. There was a smear of soot on her cheek just below one china blue eye and blond curls peeked out from the kerchief that protected her hair.
“No, nothing now, thank you,” Wiz said. “There’s ale in the keg in the kitchen isn’t there? We’ll probably be down there for a while.”
Anna curtseyed again. “I’ll finish preparing the guest rooms, then, My Lord.” With that she turned and hurried up the stairs, oblivious to Moira’s eyes boring into her back.
“Who,” Moira demanded, “is she?”
“That’s Anna. She’s my housekeeper.”
The red-haired witch fixed him with a fishy eye. “Your house had better be all she has been keeping, My Lord.”
In the event the explanation in the kitchen took somewhat longer than Wiz had anticipated. About three hours, in fact, by the time he answered all the questions, straightened out everyone’s chronology, found out about Judith’s troubles with the FBI, and gave Jerry and Danny a very detailed and highly technical explanation about exactly how to gimmick an Internet router.
“What do you intend to do about this Pieter, the one you left in town square?” Bal-Simba asked when he finally ran down.
“Well,” Wiz said, “I don’t suppose it would be really right to leave the little oinker frozen for all eternity.” He sighed with genuine regret. “So I guess I’ll have to take the spell off him.”
“I would suggest doing it the last thing ere we leave the town,” Bal-Simba said. “Otherwise he will like as not try to attack you again.”
“Oh, I wasn’t thinking of being around at all,” Wiz said. “I figured I’d create a timer demon to unfreeze him after we’ve left.”
“Wise,” Bal-Simba nodded.
“I was thinking of having the demon unfreeze him-oh, I dunno, say at high noon on the next market day. The square should be nice and crowded about then.”
“That’s nasty,” Danny said. “I really like it.”
“You get that way when you play consultant,” Wiz grinned back. “That and hanging around politicians.” He snapped his fingers. “Speaking of which, I’d better get down there and set up the spell. Don’t want to leave it to the last minute. Also I’ve got an errand to run at the town hall.”
Bal-Simba cocked an eyebrow. “More consulting?”
“No,” Wiz told him as he stood up from the table, “I’ve got to see a man about a house.”
Wiz’s errand at the town hall took somewhat longer than he had expected. But not nearly as long as it would take in Cupertino, he thought as he pushed his front door open. The council may have had politics down to a blood sport but at least they hadn’t invented lawyers yet. As part of his efforts to gum up the works Wiz had considered introducing them to the concept, but he had saved it as an emergency tactic if things really got dire. Common decency if nothing else, he thought. Llewllyn hadn’t been in his office at the town hall and Wiz was just as glad.
As he tugged the front door closed Malkin came up from the kitchen.
“Where is everyone?” he asked as she reached his floor.
“Oh they’re around,” she said breezily. “Your wife’s down in the kitchen, ‘helping’ Anna.”
“ ‘Helping’?”
“Allaying her suspicions about what you’ve been up to with her. The big black wizard is in the front parlor, along with one of your friends.” She grinned. “They’re supposed to be meditating, but every so often they get so deep in thought they start to snore. Your other friend is upstairs working at your desk. Says he’s surfing, but there’s not a wave to be seen.”
“That’s just a figure of speech,” Wiz told her. “What about you?”
“Oh, I’ve got some errands to run.” She paused. “Leaving, eh?”
“Probably tomorrow. I’m done here.”
She nodded. “That’s the way of it.”
There was a longer pause.
“What about you? What are you going to do once I’ve left?”
Malkin laughed. “Oh, I’ll go back to the Bog Side, away from all these high-toned folk like the town council and their fancy ways. I’ll be taking the air, as you might say. You’ve stirred up a right hornet’s nest here and I’m minded to see how it goes on for a bit.”
“I mean, you’ll be all right and everything?”
Malkin laughed again and Wiz thought it sounded a bit brittle.
“Me? Fortuna, I’ve looked out for meself all these years. I’ll do just fine on my own. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got an errand to run.” She loped up the stairs toward her room.
“Malkin.”
The tall thief paused at the top of the stairs and looked back. “Yes?”
“I meant what I said about appreciating your help. Thanks again.”
“Any time, Wizard. Any time.” With that she disappeared down the hall.
As Wiz turned back toward the kitchen there was a hammering on the front door.
“What in the . . . ?” Anna was halfway up from the kitchen, but he waved her back and tugged the door open himself.
As soon as the door cleared the latch it flew open, sending Wiz reeling backward. Llewllyn burst through, waving his arms. He was flushed, sweaty and almost completely out of breath.
“Flee!” he gasped. “There’s a dragon . . . Anna. Run. We must . . . run or be . . . burned where we stand.”
He tried to push past to the kitchen but Wiz put his arm around him.
“Relax. The dragon’s dead. It’s all over.”
Llewllyn turned back to Wiz and blinked. “Dead?”
“Very dead. There’s no danger.”
“But . . . but, but . . .”
“Look, we’ve got houseful of company, so if you can just put off seeing Anna until tonight I’m sure she can explain the whole thing.” He gently turned the sometime bard and would-be magician around and guided him back toward the front door.
Wiz almost had him out the door when Bal-Simba came out of the parlor, rubbing the “meditation” from his eyes.
“Sparrow, I . . .”
Llewllyn gaped. He might never have been near the Wizard’s Keep, but even people who had barely heard of the Council of the North recognized its leader on sight. Even in our world how many six-foot-eight, 380-pound guys do you see-outside of the NFL? And even NFL linemen don’t file their teeth to points.
“I am sorry, Sparrow,” the huge wizard said, “I did not know you had a visitor.”
Llewllyn’s head was swiveling back and forth between them convulsively.
His mouth hung open and he had suddenly gone pasty white.
“Uh, leave us for a minute will you, My Lord?”
“Of course,” Bal-Simba rumbled. “I will be in the parlor.”
“You knew,” Llewllyn said dully as soon as Bal-Simba closed the parlor door. “You knew what I was all along.”
“It was a little hard for me not to,” Wiz said dryly.
Llewllyn struck a noble pose, chin-high. “Well, go ahead. Denounce me to the council. Have them stake me out for the dragons to rend and tear. Or will you simply turn me into a toad?”
It was awfully tempting, but Wiz shook his head.
“I’ve got a better idea. I’m leaving tomorrow and I’m going to make you my successor.”
Llewllyn stopped posing and gawked. “But, My Lord, I am a liar! A charlatan! A back-stabbing schemer!”
Wiz smiled and clapped him on the shoulder. “I can’t think of a better set of qualifications for this job.”
It is also, he thought, called making the punishment fit the crime.
“Besides,” Wiz continued, “Anna needs you.”
Llewllyn looked blank. “Anna, My Lord?”
“My housekeeper. You know, the woman at whose merest whim you’d lay down your life. The very light of your existence. You are in love with her, aren’t you?”
“You know I am, My Lord,” Llewllyn said quietly. “But why is she your concern now that you are leaving?” His eyes narrowed. “Or was there something between you?”
“Would it make a difference to you if there was?”
Llewllyn looked at him levelly. “Only that I’d have your heart for trifling with her, be you wizard or no.”
Wiz suddenly discovered Llewllyn could be amazingly convincing under the right circumstances.
“No, there was nothing between us. But she’s a good kid and she deserves to be happy. You are apparently what makes her happy, so . . .” He shrugged.
The blond man bowed. “I will endeavor to see that she is happy, My Lord.”
“Do that. Meanwhile, come back later.” With that he pushed him out the door.
Always end projects on a positive note, no matter what they were like.
The Consultants’ Handbook
“Excuse me, My Lord,” Anna said from the top of the kitchen stairs. “But Llewllyn, what did he want?”
“Mostly to tell you about the dragon. I asked him to come back this evening.”
Anna frowned, prettily. “The one you killed? But I already knew that.”
“Yes, but he didn’t.”
“My Lord?” It was a good thing Anna looked so pretty when she was confused, Wiz thought, because she spent so much time being confused.
“He’ll explain it to you this evening. But I wanted to talk to you anyway.”
A shadow darkened the maid’s beautiful, empty brow. “Have I done something wrong, My Lord?”
“No, no. Not at all. It’s just that . . . Look, you know I’m leaving here tomorrow with my friends?”
The maid nodded. “I know and I’m so happy.” Then she went crimson. “Oh, that’s not what I mean at all. I mean . . .”
“I know what you mean,” Wiz said reassuringly.
“I mean it has been a pleasure serving you, My Lord, but I, I mean,” then the words came in a rush. “I mean Llewllyn has asked me to marry him and I said yes and oh, I’m the happiest girl in the world!”
Wiz ignored the disembodied snort from over his shoulder.
“Congratulations. When is the happy event?”
“As soon as can be.” Her eyes sparkled. “He is wonderful and I love him so. Besides,” her voice dropped. “I have been so alone since Grandma died. Oh you have been kind, My Lord, but there’s been no one for me to turn to for advice and Llewllyn,” she sighed, “why he knows everything!”
Wiz held up his hand, checking the explosion of spectral wrath behind him.
“Well, since I’m not going to be here for the wedding, I’d better give you your present early.”
The girl flushed again. “Oh My Lord, that is not necessary.”
“Still, I am going to give you this house. As a wedding present, you might say.” Anna’s jaw dropped and her face lit up like a child’s at Christmas. He waved a finger. “Now mind, I am giving this to you personally. Not to the two of you. I’ve arranged it with the council that it shall be yours alone.”
Anna hugged him and started to cry into his shirt pocket. “Hey, it’s okay,” Wiz protested and tried to move her away. “It’s all right.”
“Well, My Lord,” Anna said with a smile and a sniffle. “I’d best go and finish in the kitchen.”
“Yes, do that.” Before Moira catches you hanging all over me and turns us both into toads.
“Smart,” Widder Hackett said at last. “If she owns the house I’ll be able to advise the poor child. And she’ll need it, married to that empty-headed popinjay.”
“That’s kind of what I was thinking,” Wiz said. That and I don’t want to find out if the ghost stays with the owner if he leaves the house.
* * *
Malkin was gone for a long time doing Malkin-ish things. The principal one of those things was a visit to her fence to turn the last of her swag into gold. Since One-Eyed Nicolai didn’t open for business until after dark, she took her dinner at a dingy little food stall in the Bog Side. On the way home she was diverted by a couple of opportunities to ply her trade and ended up returning with more loot than she left with, plus the gold from the fence, and coming in quite late to boot.
Thus it was that Malkin was sneaking up the back stairs with her latest acquisitions when a looming shadow blocked her way.
Jerry, who was wide-awake after the day’s nap, had been net surfing on Wiz’s workstation. He had taken a break to stretch his legs-and see if there was anything to eat in the kitchen. He wasn’t expecting to meet anyone on the stairs and he nearly stepped on Malkin before he could stop. As it was he half-stumbled, half-fell into her and they ended up clinging to each other to keep from falling completely downstairs.
“Oh, hello,” Jerry said mildly, releasing his hold on the girl.
“Hello yourself,” said Malkin, looking up at him. Not only was she one stair lower on the stairway, but even on the level Jerry overtopped her by perhaps half a head. “Let’s see, you’re the one called Jerry, right?”
“That’s me.”
“And you’re a wizard too?”
“Well, a programmer but around here it pretty much comes to the same thing.” Between the darkness in the stairwell and Malkin’s dark clothing Jerry couldn’t see much of his new acquaintance, but the combination of dark hair working its way out from under the knit cap, the pale, fair skin and lithe figure he had wrapped his arms around to keep from falling all made a very favorable impression.
“I was just taking a break,” he explained. “From work on the computer, ah, workstation, I mean.” It occurred to Jerry he was babbling, but if he shut up she might just pass him by on the stairs. “I do that a lot. Work, you know. Besides I’m kind of a night person,” he explained. “I do most of my best work then.”
Malkin smiled up at him. “I know just what you mean. I’m that way myself.”
Somehow the big programmer and the tall thief ended up sitting side by side on the stairs, talking. Somehow it was getting light outside before they reached a stopping place in their conversation and went their separate ways.
It is possible they were overheard. But Danny was sleeping in the front parlor and Wiz and Moira were far too occupied to hear anything. If Bal-Simba heard he gave no sign. Widder Hackett didn’t talk about it and Bobo just looked smug.
It was barely dawn, but Wiz was already up and packing to go. He was taking clothes out of the wardrobe, folding them more or less neatly and putting them in a thing he persisted in thinking of as a duffel bag, even if it was made out of sueded leather rather than canvas. There wasn’t much besides a few clothes. He hadn’t accumulated many possessions in his time here, just as he hadn’t grown particularly attached to the place.
There was a shadow at the window, as if a cloud had passed before the rising sun. But a cloud doesn’t usually send the early risers in the street running and screaming. Nor does a cloud rattle the windowpanes.
Shirt still in hand, Wiz went to the window. There was a dragon settling daintily into the square, oblivious to the townsfolk scattering like a herd of terrified sheep. He didn’t have to be told it was Wurm.
“Leaving, Wizard?” the dragon’s voice came in his head.
“Yes, now that I’m free of your damned geas.”
Wurm waddled across the square until his head was just outside Wiz’s room. It was a small square and Wurm was a large dragon, so it was only a few steps.
Wiz watched him come. He discovered he wasn’t intimidated by dragons any more, but he was awfully tired of them.
“You had solved the problem so I would have removed that anyway.”
“Big of you,” Wiz said and turned back to his packing.
The dragon cocked an enormous golden eye at Wiz through the window.
“You have not claimed your fee.”
Wiz put a stack of shirts into his pack and hissed in irritation as one of them slid onto the floor. “I’m not interested in a fee,” he said stooping down to pick up the shirt.
Wurm raised an enormous eyebrow. “If you are not paid how do you expect to remain in business?”
“I’m out of business as of right now,” Wiz told him. “The next time I feel the urge to do this I’ll take up a more honest branch of the profession, like television evangelism.”
“Nevertheless, you are entitled to payment.”
“The only payment I want is a little peace and quiet, like about fifty years worth. I don’t want ghosts screeching in my ear, I don’t want to have to worry about the cops busting down my door because of my housemate’s hobbies, I don’t want to have to put up with a bunch of quarrelsome children masquerading as politicians.” He threw the shirt into the bag and it promptly slid out again. “And most of all, I don’t want to have to deal with dragons.”
“That is a rather large reward indeed,” Wurm said. “Even for a task such as you have performed.”
Wiz stuffed the shirt into the bag again, more carefully this time, and turned to face the dragon. “You knew this, didn’t you? You knew the new magic was spreading to the north and you knew that with it humans could beat the dragons.”
“Let us just say I found the probabilities inopportune,” Wurm said lazily.
“So you went right to the source of the new magic and kidnapped me to fix things before they got out of hand.”
“And you fixed them. That is vindication enough, I think.”
Wiz opened his mouth to protest and then closed it again. Dragons being cold-blooded in more ways than one, nothing else was likely to matter to Wurm, least of all the danger Wiz had been in.
“So you dragged me in here against my will to help the humans with their dragon problem.”
“I prefer to think of it as dragons having a human problem,” Wurm said.
“Well, why didn’t you just tell me that?”
Wurm’s “voice” was coldly amused. “Would you have bent all your skill to protecting dragons from humans? Even under geas?”
There was enough truth in that that Wiz didn’t have a reply, so he changed the subject. “By the way, what are you going to do?”
“I? Oh, you mean dragonkind. We will solve our own problem-now that we agree it is a problem.” The dragon sounded amused. “That is the essence of consulting, is it not? To, ah, ‘borrow someone’s watch and tell him what time it is’?”
Wiz wondered where the dragon had heard that. He had an uneasy feeling Wurm had heard, and knew, a lot more than he was telling.
“Goodbye Wizard. I do not think we will meet again, but I predict you will have an extremely interesting future.” With that Wurm turned sinuously, took three running steps and launched himself into the air with a beat of wings that rattled the windows and made the shutters bang against the walls.
“If I have anything to say about it,” Wiz said to the dragon’s rapidly dwindling back, “my future will be about as exciting as watching grass grow.”
“I see you had a visitor,” Bal-Simba said as Wiz came down to breakfast in the kitchen.
Wiz leaned over and kissed Moira soundly before replying. “Yeah, Wurm. He wanted to say goodbye.”
Moira arched a coppery eyebrow and the big wizard accepted this without comment. Wiz helped himself to the porridge on the tile stove. He added some sliced apples and peaches from a bowl on the table and drizzled honey over the mixture.
It was a remarkably full kitchen, considering the programmers’ normal working hours. Anna was still bustling about finishing up the last of breakfast. Moira was sitting next to Bal-Simba and Jerry and Malkin were off to one side, talking intently. Only Danny hadn’t come down yet and that wasn’t surprising. Yesterday was probably the earliest he had gotten up in months.
Wiz took a mouthful of porridge and fruit and sighed.
“A few more hours and we’ll be back at the Wizard’s Keep and peace and quiet.”
Moira raised her eyebrows and gave Wiz one of her patented smoldering looks with her enormous green eyes. “So it’s peace and quiet you want, My Lord?” Bal-Simba guffawed.
Wiz reddened. “Relatively speaking, I mean. And speaking of relations . .
.”
Anna set another bowl on the table and Moira looked at the girl significantly. “We shall have plenty of time to discuss that when we get home.”
“Home,” Wiz repeated. “I can’t wait to get back. I’ve missed you so much. I’ve missed all of you.” He quirked a smile. “Heck, I even got to missing Little Red Dragon, I mean Fluffy.”
Moira raised an eyebrow and smiled. “I take it you have not enjoyed your adventure? Seeing strange lands? Battling dragons? Doing great deeds of heroism?”
Wiz smiled back. “I only battled dragons when it was absolutely necessary, I rigorously avoided deeds of heroism, great or otherwise, and this place may be strange enough, but I wish I’d never seen it and I bet you all do too.”
Moira turned to where Jerry and Malkin were deep in conversation.
“Well, not all of us perhaps.”
Watching the pair Wiz felt a sudden chill.
“Well, we’ll be out of here soon enough. Let me finish eating, grab my staff and we’ll be leaving inside a half-hour.” He smiled at the prospect and leaned back to take another pull from his mug of tea.
“Oh, that reminds me,” Jerry said. “I’ve got some news too. Malkin’s agreed to come back to the Capital with us.”
Wiz spewed tea all over the table.
“WHAT?” he demanded indignantly and lapsed into a coughing fit that somewhat diminished the effect.
“I have decided to come with you,” Malkin said gaily. “This Capital of yours sounds like an interesting place. Full of opportunities.”
Wiz thought of Malkin’s definition of “opportunity” and blanched. “I don’t think you’ll find any opportunities in the Capital. Nope, no opportunities at all. It’s a dull place really. Full of all kinds of boring guards and burglar alarms and . . .” He trailed off when he saw he obviously wasn’t making an impression. Then he looked at her more closely, over at Jerry and back at Malkin. “There’s more to it than just opportunity, isn’t there?”
Malkin looked shy. “He’s the first man I’ve ever met I didn’t have to look down on.”
Wiz was tall by this world’s standards and Malkin could look him square in the eye. Jerry was a head taller than Wiz, which made him about the biggest man around, save Bal-Simba. He was still heavy, but after several years of more exercise and the diet full of vegetables, grains and fiber eaten in this world he was no longer exactly fat.
Wiz looked at his friend.
“I’ve never met anybody like her before,” Jerry said simply.
Considering that Jerry had never been in jail that was probably true, Wiz reflected.
Wiz turned to Moira. “I don’t suppose this is some kind of infatuation spell?” he asked with a tinge of desperation in his voice.
Moira looked amused. “Infatuation, yes. A spell, no. Only the age-old magic between man and woman.”
Wiz put his head in his hands and moaned.
“Is there aught I can do?”
“Yes, warn the people at the Wizard’s Keep to nail down anything they want to keep.” He considered. “And tell them to use big nails.”
Jerry and Malkin had moved to the corner, intent on some private matter and oblivious to the other people in the room. She had her hands on the rough stone walls and was apparently explaining to him how to scale a wall at a corner. Jerry was just looking at her, ignoring what she was saying.
“I think Jerry has finally met his match,” Moira said approvingly. “She seems quite taken with him as well.”
“She probably just wants a place out of jail,” Wiz said sourly.
Moira looked speculatively at the couple in the corner. “No, she is really in love, I think.”
“Worse,” Wiz groaned.
“Well,” rumbled Bal-Simba. “At least it shall not be boring.”
“That,” said Wiz Zumwalt, “is exactly what I am afraid of.”