The Wiz Biz II: Cursed & Consulted (3 page)

Shauna, Moira and Danny were the only three people June would allow to hold Ian. Without protest June handed the baby to Shauna and went to heap her plate. Jerry, Danny and Bal-Simba joined her while Moira stayed with Shauna and Ian.

"It's a wonder you don't catch the ague, all of you. Out all night in the cold and damp consorting with uncanny beings. And taking the child to such doings, well . . ." Shauna peered under the blanket at the sleeping infant.

Ian awoke briefly, saw he was being made much of, accepted it as his due and drifted back to sleep.

Wiz took a pull on his mug and nearly lost it when the dragon rammed his head into his ribs.

"Well, what's your problem, Scales-For-Brains?" he said, reaching out to scratch the dragon behind its ears.

Shauna looked up from Ian. "Naming such a beast 'Lord,' " she said with a shake of her head.

"Not Lord," Wiz corrected as he dug his fingers into the scaly hide. "LRD." The dragon stretched his neck out luxuriously to expose a spot behind his right ear.

"LRD?"

"It's a TLA for Little Red Dragon," Jerry put in from where he was building a triple-decker sandwich.

"What is a TLA?"

"Three-letter acronym."

Shauna looked puzzled and Moira chuckled. "Never ask them for an explanation. You will only end up worse confused."

Shauna sniffed and turned her attention back to June and Ian. LRD reminded Wiz to keep scratching with a butt to the side that nearly knocked him off the bench.

As a two-foot hatchling, LRD had been as cute as a kitten when he wandered into the programmers' makeshift workshop and decided he liked the company. Now, a little over a year later, LRD was something more than six feet from snout to tail-tip and massive in proportion. Compared to the 80- to 100-foot cavalry mounts in the aeries below the castle, LRD was still tiny. Compared to the scale of the rooms and passages in the castle, LRD was definitely on the large side and getting bigger every day.

He had given up trying to sleep on tables after a couple of them collapsed under his weight, but he still liked to nudge people to have his head scratched. Of course what had once been just a firm, insistent push was now enough to knock a grown man off his feet. He was also beginning to show flashes of typically dragonish temper—which is to say he could turn nasty in an instant—and occasionally he would burp a little tongue of flame. Almost everyone steered clear of him and the only place he was really welcome was the programmers' workrooms and their living quarters.

The dragon decided he had had enough head scratching and ambled over to see how Ian was doing. Shauna eyed him disapprovingly but he extended his neck and sniffed the sleeping infant, giving nurse and baby a good snort of dragon breath in the process. Ian opened his eyes and cooed at the scaly monster looking down at him.

For some inexplicable reason LRD had decided he liked Ian. He would curl up next to the baby's crib for hours, dozing or watching the infant with an unwinking golden stare. If Ian was distressed or uncomfortable, LRD became frantic. When he wasn't with Ian, the dragon divided his time between chasing the castle's cats and sunning himself on any convenient surface.

He seemed mildly approving of June, and he and Shauna had arrived at an armed truce. Everyone else he ignored—unless he wanted his head scratched.

Wiz finished his ale and debated making himself a sandwich. He decided he wasn't hungry and putting food in his stomach would only dilute the soporific effect of the ale. He needed something to help him sleep after the hours spent under the magic hill.

Moira left June and Shauna and came over to sit by him.

"You're not eating?"

Wiz took a moment just to admire her. Moira was broad-hipped, deep-bosomed and had a pair of wonderful green eyes set in a wide freckled face under a mane of red hair. The hedge witch was the first person he had seen when he had been kidnapped into this world and he had thought she was breathtakingly beautiful then. They had been married nearly two years and she still took his breath away.

"I want to make sure I can sleep tonight," he said, slipping his arm around her waist. Then he leaned close and nuzzled her hair. "What's the matter, do you want your ears scratched too?"

Moira turned and gave him one of her patented 10,000-volt looks. "Perhaps we should discuss that back in our chambers, my Lord."

Wiz rose and pulled her up with him. "Maybe we
should at that."

Looks like the ale was wasted,
he thought as they made their goodbyes to the others and headed off to bed.

Once again torches lit a meeting of dwarves in an underground chamber. But this was a much smaller gathering in much less impressive surroundings than King Tosig's audience hall.

It was, in fact, a storeroom for hides. The torches were leftovers plundered from wall sconces elsewhere in the hold and the twelve dwarves sitting on the smelly bales or lounging against the rough-hewn walls had no more right to be there than the torches did.

A minor detail,
Glandurg thought as the last of his followers slipped into the room and closed the storeroom door. Anyway, now that he was acting under his uncle's orders, not even old Samlig, the keeper of the storehouses, would dare to question them.

Still Glandurg couldn't help looking over his shoulder. Samlig was a crusty one and he'd just as soon not put his new legitimacy to the test.

Taking a deep breath, he drew himself up to his full three-foot-eight and faced his men.

"Comrades," he proclaimed, but softly. "At last we have a mission worthy of us."

"Not another sewage tunnel, is it?" asked a dwarf named Ragnar.

Glandurg dismissed the question with a lofty gesture. "This is a mission to the Outside World. Beyond the tunnels of the Hold."

A couple of the dwarves exchanged suspicious glances, wondering what kind of unpleasant and menial chore had been arranged for them now.

"I have just come from a secret audience with my uncle, the King," Glandurg told them. "He has entrusted us with an important mission."

"I thought the King said he'd cut your ears off if you came next nor nigh him," put in a dwarf named Gimli who was so young his beard barely touched his chest.

Glandurg glared at him and planted his hands on his hips. "Do you want to hear this or don't you?"

Gimli wilted under his leader's stare and Glandurg adopted his heroic pose again.

"As I was saying, a secret audience with the King. He has commanded us upon a vital mission for all of dwarfdom."

He paused for effect and the other dwarves leaned forward expectantly.

"We are to penetrate the world of mortals to its very heart and there find and slay a wizard from beyond our World! It is a dangerous, desperate quest and in
his hour of need my uncle the King has turned to us as the staunchest, bravest among all his subjects." He surveyed his wide-eyed followers and saw they were satisfactorily impressed.

"This isn't another one of your stories?" one of the dwarves asked at last.

"Why don't you go to my uncle the King and put that question to him?"

That settled it. None of them would go anywhere near King Tosig, but the assurance with which Glandurg issued the challenge told them that for once their leader was not exaggerating. At least not much.

"How are we supposed to get there?" asked Thorfin,
always the practical one. "That's two hundred leagues at least."

"We will ride," Glandurg said loftily. "It has been arranged."

"I don't know about horses," a dwarf named Snorri said dubiously. "I'm not much for them."

"We will not ride horses. We will fly."

"I thought you said we'd ride," said Ragnar. "Which will it be then?"

"You'll see soon enough," Glandurg told him with a superior smile. He was pleased that he had thought of the transportation problem and he was even more pleased with the solution he had worked out in the few hours since meeting with the king. But he didn't want to tip his hand. His companions might not be as happy with his cleverness as Glandurg was.

"What about supplies?" Ragnar asked.

"Our every need will be supplied from the hold's storehouses," Glandurg said. He smiled at the thought of old Samlig's face when he issued out the carefully hoarded goods. "We shall have the weapons, the armor and the gold we need from my uncle the King's personal treasury."

He looked them over again. "This will not be easy. The alien wizard has mighty magic and his legions of mortal warriors are numberless and not to be despised. It will be a long, difficult adventure and danger awaits us at every turn."

The dwarves all nodded. Danger and adventure were fine with them.

"This will be to the death," he proclaimed. "Some of us—nay, all of us!—may not return."

He swept his gaze over his followers impressively.

"Now swear with me in blood!" Glandurg drew his knife and nicked himself on the wrist. He cut deeper than he meant to and winced slightly at the sudden pain. There was a lot more blood than he intended, but his sleeve reddened satisfactorily and the blood dripping off his wrist made a most impressive touch.

One by one the other dwarves cut themselves and mingled their blood with their leader's for the oath.

"To the wizard's death—or our own."

The problem with a kludge is eventually you're
going to have to go back and do it right.

—Programmers' saying 
 

"You're sure this will work?" Wiz asked for the fourth time that morning amid the bustle of final preparations. He was wearing a warm wool tunic and pants, a heavy travelling cloak and a very apprehensive look.

"If you can remember to do your part of it," Moira said a little sharply. Then she caught his expression and placed her hand on his arm.

"Do not worry, love," she said softly. "The spells are as simple and foolproof as we can make them. What was your phrase?—'Idiots-and-English-majors' simple."

Wiz didn't object to the characterization. In spite of the power his spell compiler gave him, he had absolutely no talent for this world's magic. It had taken Moira and Bal-Simba weeks to teach him what he would have to do today.

Wiz was much more warmly dressed than necessary for the Council chantry where he stood. But the clothing didn't entirely explain the sweat beading on his forehead.

He was standing in the middle of a circle traced in white powder on the flagged stone floor. Around him stood eight of the blue-robed wizards of the Mighty, each of them at one of the points of the compass. Late morning sunlight pouring in through the stained glass windows cast gaily colored patterns on the floor and the wizards, but beside each of them burned a pair of tall wax candles. Apprentices bustled around the edges of the room putting the finishing touches on preparations and sometimes conferring in hushed low tones. On the dais at one end of the room, Arianne, Bal-Simba's second in command, was overseeing three Watchers hunched over their communications crystals. Next to the tall blonde woman stood a pudgy little man in the blue robe of the Mighty, his lips moving silently and his eyes focused far away as he maintained contact with others of his fellows at their assigned tasks.

"Are we prepared then?" asked Bal-Simba from his spot on the circle.

"Lord, the patrols are off the beach," Arianne told him, pushing back a stray lock of blonde hair.

"The other wizards are standing by," reported Malus, the wizard next to her.

"Operation 500-Pound Parakeet is ready to go," Jerry called from his place at the side of the room. Everyone looked to the sun stick which cast a shortening shadow on the marks on the opposite wall. The tip of the shadow was inexorably approaching one of the marks.

Danny and Jerry stepped into the circle to clap Wiz on the back and wish him well.

"I never did understand why you call this after a giant parrot," Moira said as they waited for the last minutes to pass.

"Parakeet," Danny corrected. "It's how you get rid of cats. You get a 500-pound parakeet and teach it to say 'here, kitty kitty kitty.' "

Moira started to frown and then laughed as she caught the joke.

"So you call this Operation 500-Pound Parakeet."

"They
call it Operation 500-Pound Parakeet," Wiz said sourly. "I had nothing to do with the name."

"Hey man, it's gonna be easy," Danny told him lightly. "All you gotta do is zip back to the City of Night, off a demon who's waiting to toast you, and then call for the cavalry—us. We handle the rest." He made a palm-down gesture as if sweeping aside minor details. "Nooo problemo."

"It is indeed simple if you remember your spells and execute them correctly," Moira agreed.

"I rest my case," Wiz said sourly.

"Crave pardon?"

"Almost time," Bal-Simba called from his place at the head of the circle. "Make ready."

"I mean you just proved my point. Oh well, if we're going to do this thing, let's get on with it."

He kissed Moira long and hard.

"Okay," he said. "Places everyone."

Moira, Jerry and Danny stepped back and out of the circle, being careful not to scuff the chalked lines. The seven other wizards looked at Bal-Simba and he watched the sun stick as the shadow crept the last fraction of an inch along its track.

Then all the wizards raised their hands and began chanting. Wiz gripped his staff and tried to breathe slowly and evenly as the chant rose around him and the air seemed to fill with smoke. The sound became louder and louder, then began to fade as the air around him became thick and opaque.

There was a flash of darkness and suddenly the air was so cold it burned his lungs.

Wiz Zumwalt clung to his staff and pressed his eyes tightly shut as waves of dizziness washed over him. When he opened his eyes he found he was nose to nose with a wall of crudely dressed black basalt.

He turned and nearly fell when he stepped on a patch of ice in the wall's shadow. He scraped his palm as he caught himself against the rough wall. Then his vision cleared and the dizziness receded as he looked out over desolation.