The Wiz Biz II: Cursed & Consulted (16 page)

Bronwyn looked up from the still form, her lips pressed into a tight bloodless line. "What have those damned barbarians done to her?" she demanded.

"How should I know?" Wiz said. "I'm not a doctor."

"Neither are any of them by the look of it. They kept her clean and fed, but they did nothing to heal the damage to her brain."

"I don't think we can," Wiz said. "Head injuries are hard for us to handle."

"Barbarians," Bronwyn repeated and motioned her assistant to her. "Now leave us. And don't expect to talk to this one for a couple of days at least."

In the event, it was three days before Bronwyn would let Wiz and Moira in to see her patient.

Judith was lying in bed propped up with pillows. She still looked terrible, but she was conscious.

"Hi, Judith. How are you feeling?"

"Wiz, Moira," she said weakly. "I dreamed about you." Then she frowned. "I feel funny. Arms and legs don't move right and my eyes don't wanna focus."

"That is normal," Bronwyn said. "Magic can only do so much safely. You must heal the rest of the way naturally. That will take time and work on your part."

"Not complaining," Judith said muzzily.

"You said you dreamed about us," Moira said gently.

"Dreamed about this place a lot. I think."

"Do you remember answering questions about this World?"

Judith's eyes flicked from side to side, as if searching. "I, I might have. It seems like I went over and over things about this place."

"She will never have complete memory of that time," Bronwyn whispered in Wiz's ear. "There was too much damage."

"Did you have any notes about our system of magic?" Wiz asked.

"Notes?" Judith seemed confused. Then she pressed her fingers to her forehead in an effort to think. "Yes, I did make some notes after I got back, but I didn't show them to anybody. They're in my apartment."

"We'll check on that," Wiz said.

"What's wrong?" Judith asked.

"We think you talked while you were in the hospital," Wiz told her. "We think someone got most of the system of magic out of you. I'll bet we won't find those notes in your apartment either. Do you know a guy named Mikey Baker?"

"No."

"What about Craig Scott?"

"Yes," Judith said hoarsely. "He's a friend of mine. We furp together all the time."

"Furp?" Moira asked.

"FRP—fantasy role playing games," Wiz explained absently.

"What's happened? What's wrong?"

"Craig and this Mikey character are here. They're raising all kinds of hell."

Judith went even whiter. "No! I couldn't have!"

"That is enough," Bronwyn said firmly. "She needs to rest."

"Right," Wiz said. "Listen, you just concentrate on getting well and don't worry, okay." He patted her hand and left.

"Moira?" Judith said weakly as the hedge witch turned to go.

"Yes, my Lady?"

"I screwed up, didn't I? I really screwed up."

Moira smiled and patted her shoulder. "It is all right," she told her. "It doesn't really matter."

Then she turned away so Judith would not see how much that statement cost her.

Wiz was in the middle of analyzing a module from the crashed recon drone when Bal-Simba found him in the Bull Pen.

"My Lord, you have a visitor."

There was something in the way he said it that made Wiz snap around, the intricacies of the code forgotten.

"Who?"

"Duke Aelric."

Wiz's jaw dropped. Only once before had the elf duke sent his image into the Wizard's Keep. The times Wiz had met him it had been in his own elf hill. No mortal understood how the elf hierarchy worked, but Aelric was called "duke" and stood high among the elves. Whatever this was, it had to be important.

Without another word Wiz left his code and hurried out the door of the Bull Pen, but when he turned toward the main keep and the Watcher's Hall, Bal-Simba placed a hand on his shoulder.

"Not there. The main gate."

"Why did he send his image there?"

Bal-Simba looked at him strangely.

"He did not send his image, my Lord. He is here in person."

There was no room in the Wizard's Keep deemed grand enough for receiving an elf, but the Wizard's Day Room was quickly put right, Malus was awakened from his afternoon nap and shooed out, and Wiz and Duke Aelric retired there.

Even in leather breeches, boots and a simple tunic of dark blue velvet brocaded in silver, Duke Aelric was as out of place as a president in a pig sty. But he contrived to put Wiz so much at his ease in the short walk from the main gate that Wiz didn't notice—almost.

"What can we do for you, my Lord?" Wiz asked after his guest had been seated and refused refreshment.

"It is more a question of what I can do for you, Sparrow," Duke Aelric said. "Or perhaps what we can do for each other."

"Oh?" was all Wiz could think of to say.

"You have already met the new arrivals from your world?"

"Mikey and Craig?" Wiz said grimly. "Yeah, I've met them."

"Then you agree they must be dealt with?"

"Yeah. That's what you might call at the top of my to-do list."

"I also want to see them dealt with. And what is behind them. Better to work together on this, do you not agree?"

"I'd be honored, Lord. But why . . . ?"

Aelric cocked a silvery eyebrow. "Why am I interested? Because what you are doing is important. And because I think you will need my help. In fact, you will need all the help you can get."

The way he said it made Wiz's blood run cold. He knew the business with Craig and Mikey was serious, but if Duke Aelric was interested it had to be even more serious than he imagined.

You will meet your greatest challenge,
Lisella had said. He forced the rest of the prophecy out of his mind.

"Okay, what do you suggest?"

"First, I think, we must pool our knowledge. There are things I can tell you which will help and other things I wish to learn from you."

"Sure." Wiz reached for the silver bell to summon a servant. "Let me get the rest of the team in here."

Duke Aelric made small talk while they waited. Wiz was too astonished by the whole situation to do more than respond half-heartedly. He was very glad when Jerry burst into the room.

"They said you wanted to . . ." He stopped short and goggled at the guest. Duke Aelric rose and bowed exquisitely, obviously amused by Jerry's reaction.

"This is, uh, Duke Aelric," Wiz said lamely. "I've told you about him."

"Honored."

"Ye . . . yeah," Jerry replied weakly. "Uh, forgive me. They didn't tell me . . . I mean, they just said Wiz wanted to see me."

The door opened behind him and Danny came in with June beside him.

"And this is Danny . . ." Wiz began, but he was cut short by June's shriek. She shrank back against Danny, white and open-mouthed.

Aelric bowed again. "My Lord, my Lady."

June turned away and buried her face in Danny's shoulder.

"Uh, Danny, why don't you take June back to your room?" Wiz said desperately. "I'll talk to you later, okay?" Danny threw Aelric a venomous glance and led his shaking wife out.

"Now then," Wiz said, turning back to Duke Aelric, "here's what we know so far."

It was several hours later when Wiz hunted up Moira.

"How is our guest?" she asked as soon as he came into their apartment.

Wiz kissed her perfunctorily. "You heard, huh?"

Moira looked at him. "Not much of a greeting, my Lord."

"I've got a problem. You know June saw Aelric and nearly went into hysterics?"

Moira nodded. "So I had heard."

"It's the same thing that happened the last time she met an elf," Wiz went on. "At the time I thought it was just Lisella. The way she popped up was enough to scare anyone and June's easy to frighten. But Aelric was just sitting there and she's more afraid of him than she was of Lisella."

Moira nodded. "Certainly she is terrified of elves. But you are concerned about more than June's feelings, I think."

"I'm concerned about making this thing work. Right now Danny wants to tear Aelric's heart out because of the effect he has on June. We can't build a team with something like that going on."

"What can I do to help you, love?"

"You're closer to June than anyone. Do you have any idea why she's so afraid of Aelric?"

"Nothing specific," the hedge witch said slowly. "June is afraid of many things." She smiled ruefully. She is hardly what you would call normal in the best of circumstances."

"Amen to that!"

"But still . . ." Moira trailed off and stared away. Then she looked up at her husband. "You know her history. She was found wandering on the Fringe of the Wild Wood a few years ago, much as she is now. No one knew her or whence she came and she cannot, or will not, tell us."

"So?"

"She is terribly afraid of elves. Perhaps she has had dealings with them before."

"That doesn't make sense. Elves don't deal with humans."

"They deal with you."

"So I've got an elf magnet in my pocket. June sure doesn't."

"There is one case where elves do deal with humans regularly. They take human children to act as bond servants within elf hills."

"And you think June . . ."

"Time passes strangely under an elf hill. It seems like a season or two but when the servants have fulfilled their bond and are released centuries have passed. Their family, their friends, even their village are dust and gone."

"It makes sense," Wiz said at last. "It would explain where she comes from and a lot about why she is so
strange."

Moira said nothing.

"What else? There's something you aren't telling me, isn't there?"

"My Lord, I do not know any of this. It is all surmise."

"But you suspect something. Out with it."

Moira stared into her lap. Wiz waited. "Do you know why June needs Shauna to help nurse Ian?" she asked at last.

"I never really thought about it."

"Because she does not produce enough milk."

"As flat-chested as she is, I can believe it, but so what?"

Moira snorted. "My Lord, contrary to what lechers like you believe, the size of a woman's breasts has little to do with her ability to feed an infant. No, June does not produce enough milk because her breasts are damaged. There are scars around both her nipples. Many little scars, as if she had been bitten repeatedly."

Wiz went cold. "Meaning what?"

"You recall I once told you elves prefer human nursemaids for their infants? It is said that elf babies are born with all their teeth."

Moira looked at him levelly, green eyes intent and serious. "It is also said those teeth are sharp enough to draw blood."

Duke Aelric was on the castle wall, watching the setting sun turn the clouds orange and the hills purple. In his own unearthly way he was as magnificent as the sunset and Wiz watched both for several minutes before he got up the courage to approach him.

"My Lord, I need to talk to you."

Aelric turned from the sunset and inclined his head. "Of course, Sparrow."

"It's about June, Danny's wife."

A graceful frown knitted the elf duke's brow. "Ah, the one who was so upset? Forgive me, I thought she was a servant."

"Was she?" Wiz asked harshly.

"I beg your pardon?"

"Was she one of your servants?"

Duke Aelric made a throw-away gesture. "I really do not know, Sparrow. There have been so many."

"She was some elf's servant. Now she's terrified of elves because of something that happened to her."

Duke Aelric said nothing.

"Doesn't that bother you at all?" Wiz demanded.

The elf duke raised a silvery eyebrow. "Why should it?
If she did serve the ever-living I can assure you she was not deliberately mistreated. If she was a servant it was because she was offered a bargain and she accepted. I assure you the bargain was kept." He cocked his head. "Forgive me, but I do not see the relevance of an old bargain with one mortal—if bargain there was. Nor do I understand why you are so concerned about it."

"Some bargain," Wiz said bitterly. "Parents would 'foster' their children into elf hills in return for the protection they needed to survive."

"Nonetheless, she would have entered our domains as all mortals enter them. Of her own will."

"And came out to find that centuries had passed."

Aelric cocked his head and said nothing.

Wiz could only stare. When they had met before Duke Aelric had been gracious, even charming, if somewhat frightening. Wiz knew that elves could be cold and cruel, but this was the first time he had ever seen it in Aelric.

And the worst of it was, Wiz realized, he wasn't being cruel at all. He honestly did not understand why what had happened to June should be any of his concern. He began to appreciate, vaguely, just how un-human elves really were.

"Now she's terrified of you and her husband would just as soon murder you as look at you and I've got to work with both of you."

The elf turned to Wiz and gave him a look that rooted him where he stood. "Her husband cannot find the necessity one-tenth as distasteful as I do." Aelric's fine features drew up in a sneer. "Sparrow, do you think I
like
coming here; associating with mortals?"

"Then why did you come?"

"Sparrow, listen to me. There are
things
in this World that are not of it. Ancient things whose very nature you cannot comprehend." His eyes bored into Wiz. "I told you once that you had upset a very delicate balance. Even after all that has happened I still do not think you understand what you have done.

"Magic in the hands of mortals is dangerous, Sparrow. Unlike the ever-living, you are not inherently magical. You do not really understand magic.

"But your new magic is very powerful. That arouses certain—things—" He trailed off, as if thinking. Then he resumed briskly. "Now those things must be dealt with. For this we will both need to bend all the powers we possess to the task."