Two: Passage in Peril
The afternoon was as fine as the morning, warm and sunny with just a bit of a breeze to stir the leaves and cool the traveler. The birds sang and the summer flowers perfumed the air. Here and there the early blackberries showed dark on their canes.
Wiz was in no mood to appreciate any of it. Before they had gone a mile he was huffing and blowing. In two miles his T-shirt was soaked and beads of sweat were running down his face, stinging his eyes and dripping from the tip of his nose. Still Moira hurried him along the twisting path, up wooded hills and down through leafy vales, ignoring his discomfort.
Finally Wiz threw himself down on a grassy spot in a clearing.
“No more,” he gasped. “I’ve got to rest.”
“Get out of the open, you crack-brained fool!” the red-haired witch snapped. Wiz crawled to his feet, staggered a few steps and collapsed against a tree trunk.
“Sorry,” he panted. “I’m just not up to this. Got to rest.”
“And what do you think the League is doing meantime?” Moira scolded. “Will they stop just because you’re too soft to go on?”
“League?” asked Wiz blankly.
“The ones who pursue us. Don’t you listen to anything?”
“I don’t hear anyone chasing us. Maybe we’ve lost them.”
“Lost them? Lost them! What do you think this is? A game of hide-and-seek? You idiot, by the time they get close enough for us to hear it will be too late. Do you want to end up like Patrius?”
Wiz looked slightly green. “Patrius? The old man back there?”
Moira cast her eyes skyward. “Yes, Patrius. Now come on!”
But Wiz made no move. “I’m sorry,” he gasped. “I can’t. Go on without me. I’ll be all right.”
Moira glared down at him, hands on hips. “You’ll be dead before nightfall.”
“I’ll be all right.” Wiz insisted. “Just go on.”
Moira softened slightly. He was a nuisance, but he was a human being and as near helpless as made no difference.
“Very well,” she said, sitting down. “We rest.”
Wiz leaned forward and sank his head between his knees. Moira ignored him and stared back the way they had come.
“That old man,” Wiz said at last. “What killed him?”
“Magic,” Moira said over her shoulder.
“No really, what killed him?”
“I told you, a spell.”
Wiz eyed her. “You really believe that, don’t you? I mean it’s not just a phrase. You mean real magic.”
Moira twisted to face Wiz. “Of course I mean magic. What did you think? A bolt of lightning just happened to strike him while he was Summoning you?”
“You’re telling me there really is magic?”
Moira looked annoyed. “How do you think you got here?”
“Oh,” said Wiz. “Yeah. Well look, this magic. Can it get me home?”
“Patrius might have been able to do that, but I cannot,” she said angrily. She got to her feet. “Now come along. If you have breath enough to talk you have breath enough to walk.”
By paths and game trails they pushed on through the forest. Twice more they stopped to rest when Wiz would no further. Both times Moira fidgeted so impatiently that Wiz cut the stop short, barely getting his breath back. There were a thousand questions he wanted to ask, but Moira sternly forbade him to talk while they walked.
Once she stopped so suddenly that Wiz nearly trod on her skirt. She stared intently at a patch of woods before them. Besides a ring of bright orange mushrooms beside the trail, Wiz saw nothing unusual.
“This way,” she whispered, grasping his arm and tugging him off the path. Carefully and on tiptoe, she led him well around that bit of forest, striking the trail again on the other side.
“What was the detour about?” Wiz asked at their next rest stop when he had breath enough to talk.
“The little folk danced there on last night to honor the Mid-Summer’s Day. It is unchancy to go near such a place in the best of times and it would be very foolish to do so today.”
“Oh come on! You mean you believe in fairies too?”
“I believe in what I see, Sparrow. I have seen those of Faerie.”
“But dammit—”
Moira cut him off with an imperious gesture. “Do NOT curse, Sparrow. We do not need what that might attract.”
That made sense, Wiz admitted. If magic really worked and there was the burned husk of a man lying under the sod back behind them to suggest that it did then curses might work too. Come to that, if magic worked there was nothing so odd about fairies dancing in the moonlight. He shook his head.
“Why do you call me Sparrow?” he asked, feeling for safer ground.
“Because Bal-Simba called you so. You needed a name to use before the World.”
“I’ve got a name,” Wiz protested.
“Bal-Simba told you never to speak your true name to anyone,” Moira told him. “So we needed something to call you.”
“My friends just call me Wiz.”
“I will call you Sparrow,” Moira said firmly. “Now come along.”
Again she set off in an effortless stride. Wiz came huffing along behind, glumly admiring the swing of her hips and the easy sway of her body. He was used to being treated with contempt by beautiful women, but he had never been this taken with a woman and that made it hurt worse than usual.
One thing you have to say about my luck, he thought. It’s consistent.
Finally they topped a small rise and Wiz could see a road through the trees ahead. Off to the left he could hear the sound of running water. Moira crouched behind a bush and pulled Wiz roughly down beside her.
“This is the Forest Highway,” Moira whispered. “It leads over the Blackstone Brook and on into the Wild Wood.”
“Where we’re going?” said Wiz, enjoying Moira’s closeness and the smell of her hair. Instinctively he moved closer, but the hedge witch drew away.
“Yes, but not by the road. I am to meet someone here. You wait in the woods. Do not make a sound and do not show yourself.” She pulled back and continued down the trail, leaving Wiz with the memory of her closeness.
In spite of its grandiose title, the Forest Highway was a weed-grown lane with the trees pressing in on either side. The Blackstone Brook was perhaps ten yards wide and ran swift, deep and dark as its name under a rough log bridge.
As Moira predicted, there was a man waiting under the trees by the roadside. He was tall, lean, long-faced and as brown as the rough homespun of his tunic and breeches. When Moira stepped out of the trees he touched his forehead respectfully.
“I brought the things, Lady.”
“Thank you, Alber,” Moira replied kindly.
“Lady, is it true you are leaving us?”
“For a time, Alber. A short time, I hope.”
“We will miss you,” he said sadly.
Moira smiled and embraced him. Watching from behind his bush Wiz felt a pang of jealousy. “Oh, and I will miss you all as well. You have been like a family to me, the whole village.” Then she smiled again. “But another will be along soon to take my place.”
“It will not be the same, Lady,” he said dejectedly. He turned and gestured to the small pile of objects under a bush by the roadside. “The messenger said two packs. And two cloaks.”
“Correct, Alber.” Moira did not volunteer and he did not ask.
Quickly she began to sort through the items, checking them and re-stowing them into the packs.
“Shall I wait, Lady?”
“No.” She smiled up at him. “Thank you again.” The hedge witch made a sign with her right hand, first two fingers extended. “Go with my blessing. May your way home be short and safe and the journey uneventful.”
“May you be safe as well, Lady.” With that Alber turned and started down the road.
As soon as he had disappeared around a bend, Moira motioned Wiz out of hiding.
“A brave man,” Moira said as she tied the drawstring on one of the packs and set it aside.
“Why?” asked Wiz, nettled. “For bringing us this stuff?”
“Don’t sneer, Sparrow,” she said sharply. “This ‘stuff’ will sustain us on our journey. Alber was willing to chance Mid-Summer’s Day to see that we will eat and be warm in the Wild Wood.”
“Nice of him. But brave?”
Moira finished loading the second pack and shook her head. “Sparrow, how did you survive so long?”
“I survived just fine up until this morning,” Wiz retorted. “So what about Mid-Summer’s Day?”
Moira sighed in exasperation. “Mid-Summer’s Day is the longest day of the year. All magics associated with the sun and fire are at their most potent this day and magics of green and growing things are unusually potent as well. It is a day of power, Sparrow, and not a day for mortals to be about.”
“We’re out.”
“Not by choice, Sparrow,” Moira said grimly. “Now come.” She slung a large leather pouch over her shoulder and shrugged one of the packs onto her back. Then she stood and watched as Wiz struggled into the other one. As soon as he was loaded, they started off across the bridge.
Well behind them, Alber stuck to the relative safety of the road. Thus he was easily seen by a soaring raven gyring and wheeling over the green and leafy land.
Alber saw the raven as it glided low over the road. He made a warding sign, for ravens are notoriously birds of ill omen, and hurried on his way.
Above him the raven cocked his glossy black head and considered. Like most of his kind he knew enough to count one and two and one person travelling alone was not what his master searched for. There were two, and the bird’s keen eyes could see no sign of anyone else on the road.
But this was the only human he had seen today and this one was well away from the normal haunts of man.
The raven was not intelligent, but he had been well-schooled. With a hoarse caw he abandoned the search to his fellows and broke away to the south to report.
###
The forest deepened after Wiz and Moira passed over the river. They left the road around the first bend past the bridge and toiled up a winding game trail that ran to the top of a steep ridge. By the time they reached the top even Moira was breathing heavily. She motioned Wiz to rest and the pair sank down thankfully under the trees.
Through a gap Wiz could look ahead. The valley was a mass of green treetops. Beyond the valley lay another green ridge and beyond that another ridge and then another fading off into the blue distance. There was no sign of habitation or any hint of animal life. Only endless, limitless forest.
This was no second-growth woodland or a carefully managed preserve. The oaks and beeches around them had never been logged. The big ones had stood for centuries, accumulating mosses and lichen on their hoary trunks, growing close and thrusting high to form a thick canopy overhead. Here and there was an open patch where one of those forest giants had succumbed to age, rot or lightning and the successors crowding in had not yet filled the place. There were snags and fallen limbs everywhere, green with moss and spotted with bright clumps of fungus.
This is the forest primeval, Wiz thought and shivered slightly. He had never thought that trees could make him nervous, but these huge moss-grown boles pressed in on him from all sides, their leaves shutting off the sun and casting everything into a greenish gloom. The breeze soughing through the treetops sounded as if the forest was muttering to itself or passing the news of invading strangers, like jungle drums.
“I see why they call it the Wild Wood,” he said.
“This is not the Wild Wood,” Moira told him. “We are still only on the Fringe of the Wild Wood.”
“Does anyone live here?”
“None we would care to meet. Oh, a few cottagers and a small stead or two. But most who live on this side of the Blackstone have reason to shun their fellows. Or be shunned by them. We will best avoid company of any kind until we reach our destination.”
“Where are we going anyway?” Wiz sidled closer to her.
“To a place of refuge. You need not know more. Now come. We have far to go.”
It was late afternoon when they came over the second ridge and descended into another valley. Although the forest was as dense as ever, there was a water meadow through the center of this valley. The broad expanse of grass was a welcome sight to Wiz, oppressed as he was by the constant trees. Here and there trees hardly more than shrubs luxuriated in the warmth and openness. Also interspersed were small ponds and marshy patches marked by cattails, reeds and sweet blue iris.
They halted at the edge of the open and Moira surveyed the cloud-flecked sky uneasily.
“Nothing,” she sighed. “Now listen, Sparrow. We cannot go around because there are bogs above and below. We must cross and do it quickly, lest we be seen. Once we start we must not stop.” She looked him over critically. “We will rest now.”
Moira knelt, scanning the meadow and the sky above it while Wiz caught his breath.
“Moira?”
“What?” She did not stop searching the meadow.
“We’re being chased, right?”
“That is why we are running.”
“Well then, can I ask a dumb question?”
“Of course,” the hedge witch said in a tone that indicated he had been doing nothing else.
“Why are we being chased? What did we do?”
“We did nothing. It is you they want, Sparrow, and they want you because Patrius Summoned you at the cost of his own life.”
“Yeah, but why?”
“We do not know that, Sparrow.”
“Do they know?”
“I doubt it.”
Wiz shifted slightly. “Well, if you don’t know and they don’t know then why the bloody—heck—are they chasing us?”
“They hope to learn from you what Patrius’s aim was.”
“But I don’t know either!”
Moira snorted. “I doubt they will take your unconstrained word for that, Sparrow.”
“Look, I don’t want any part of this, okay? Can’t we talk to them? Isn’t there some way I can prove I don’t know anything and then they can leave me alone.”
“Sparrow, listen to me,” Moira turned to him. “The Dark League of the South is not interested in your innocence or guilt. The fact that Patrius Summoned you is enough to make them want you. Probably they want to squeeze you for the knowledge we both know you do not possess. Possibly they simply want you dead or worse.”
Moira laid her hand on his. “But either way, Sparrow,” she said gravely, “if you are given a choice between the worst death you can imagine and falling alive into the hands of the League, do everything in your power to die.”
Wiz dropped his eyes from her intense stare. “I get the picture.”
“Good.” She turned back to the clearing and checked the ground and sky again. “Then make ready. We will not try to run because the ground is boggy, but walk quickly!”
Moira rose and moved into the clearing with Wiz on her heels. The thigh-high grass whisked against their legs as they walked and the soil squished beneath their feet. Unlike the forest, the meadow was rich with life. Insects buzzed and chirped, frogs croaked or plonked into puddles as they went by. Dragonflies flitted by and once a yellow-and-black butterfly circled their heads.
In spite of the sunshine and wildlife, Wiz wasn’t cheered. Except for an occasional bush, the travelers were the tallest things in the meadow. He felt like a large and very conspicuous bug on a very flat rock, and the further they got from the suddenly friendly line of trees, the more nervous he became.
Moira was feeling it too. She pushed ahead faster, her head turning constantly. She dared not use active magic, but she listened as hard as she could for any sign of others’ magic.
Suddenly Moira dropped in her tracks. She went down so quickly that Wiz thought she had tripped.
“Get down!” she hissed and Wiz sprawled in the wet dirt beside her.
“What?” Wiz whispered.
“Something in the air of to our left. No, don’t look! The flash of your face might betray us.” After a second she bobbed her head up for a quick look.
“Fortuna!” she breathed. “It is searching the area. All right, see that tree ahead of us?” She nodded towards a big bush a few yards up the trail. “When I give the signal, crawl to it. Understand?” Again her head bobbed up. “Now!”
On hands and knees they crawled for what seemed to Wiz to be an eternity. He dared not raise his head, so all he saw was a narrow strip of wet black earth and green grass stems on each side. By the time he pulled up under the bush he was panting, and not entirely from exertion.
They dragged themselves back far under the overhanging branches, heedless of the mud or the tiny crawling things in the litter of dead leaves. As soon as they were settled, Moira pulled her cloak off her pack and threw it over them, turning two people into one lumpy brown mass and leaving just a narrow crack to see out.
Even as frightened as he was, Wiz was exhilarated by Moira’s closeness. Her warmth and the sweet, clean odor of her was wonderful and the danger added spice.
“What is it?” he whispered.
“Shhh.”
Then a shadow passed over them and Wiz saw what they were hiding from.
The dragon glided noiselessly above the trail they had just left. Its hundred-foot batwings were stiff and unmoving as it let the warm air rising from the meadow bear it up. Its long flat tail twitched slightly as it steered its chosen course. The four legs with their great ripping talons were pressed close to its body and its sinuous neck was fully extended. It came so low and so close that Wiz could see the row of white fangs in its slightly open mouth.
Wiz’s breath caught and he tried to sink into the dirt. Instinctively he grabbed Moira’s hand and they clung together like frightened children while the nightmare beast swooped above trees and turned to cross the meadow from another direction.
Clearly the monster had seen something on the water meadow. Again it glided across and again it flew directly over the bush where Wiz and Moira cowered. Wiz felt as if the dragon’s gaze had stripped him naked.
Four times the dragon flew over the meadow and four times Wiz trembled and shrank under Moira’s cloak. Finally it pulled up and disappeared over the trees.
For long minutes after, Wiz and Moira lay huddled and shaking. At last Moira threw the cloak back and sat up. Reluctantly, Wiz followed suit.
“Was that thing looking for us?” he breathed at last.
“Very likely,” Moira said, scanning the skies warily.
“Are there more of them?”
“Dragons are usually solitary creatures and one so big would need a large hunting territory.”
She frowned. “Still, I do not know of any like that who live nearby. Wild dragons make ill neighbors. It may be the one from the southern lake or it might be one of the ones who lair in the hills to the east. If it is coursing this far afield there may be others.”
“Wonderful,” Wiz muttered.
Moira sighed shakily. “I dislike playing hideabout with dragons, but we should be safe enough if we stay under the trees and are careful about crossing open spaces.”
“Sounds good to me.”
“There is risk, of course,” Moira continued, half to herself. “The forested ways are not always the most free of magic. Besides, with the forest close around us we will not have as much warning of the approach of others.”
“Others?”
“Trolls, wolves, evil men and others who do the League’s work.”
“Great,” Wiz said.
Moira missed the irony entirely. “Not great, but our best chance, I think.” She folded the cloak. “Now come. Quickly.”
###
“Well?” Atros demanded.
“The searchers are out as you commanded, Master,” said the new Master of the Sea of Scrying. “But so far nothing.”
“With all the magic of the League you cannot find two insignificant mortals?” Atros rumbled.
The Master, only hours in his post, licked his lips and tried not to look past Atros’s shoulder at the place where a newly flayed skin hung, still oozing blood, on the stone wall of the chamber. The skin of a very fat man.
“It is not easy Master. Bal-Simba—cursed be his name!—has been casting confusion spells, muddying the trail at the beginning. The Council’s Watchers are on the alert and we cannot penetrate too deeply nor see too clearly.” He paused. “We do know he has not taken the Wizard’s Way.”
Atros rubbed his chin. Walking the Wizard’s Way was the preferred method of travel for those who had the magical skill to use it. But it was also easy to detect anyone upon it Perhaps this strange wizard preferred stealth to speed.
“And those already in the North,” he asked, “behind the Watchers’ shield of spells?”
“Our best servants are creatures of the dark. On Mid-Summer’s Day their power is at its weakest. Our dragon allies and our others seek as best they can, but there is so much magic upon the land that it is hard to scan.” He gestured into the Sea of Scrying. Atros looked and saw sparks and patches of magic everywhere.
“Someone mighty enough to be worth the risk of a wizard like Patrius must leave a track even through that,” the giant magician objected.
The newly made black robe lowered his head. “We have found no sign, Master.”
Atros bit his lip thoughtfully. It was possible for a magician to hide his presence through cloaking spells, but such spells usually betrayed that something was being hidden. Either the League’s servants were unusually inept or this magician from beyond the World was extremely powerful. Someone that powerful might indeed tip the balance against the League.
Unless . . .
“Is there sign of aught unusual in the cities of the North?”
“Nothing, Master, save what you know. Nothing unusual anywhere in the North’s territories.”
“Then perhaps he whom we seek is not within the North’s territories,” Atros said suddenly. “Patrius performed his Great Summoning on the Fringe of the Wild Wood? Then search the Fringe most carefully. And extend your search into the Wild Wood itself.”
“Thy Will, Master,” said the Watcher. “But there is no sign of anything unusual on the Fringe. Besides, it will mean weakening our search of the North’s lands.”
“If he was in the North’s lands we would have some sign ere now,” Atros said. “Perhaps he goes another way to mislead us.”
It was the Master’s turn to rub his chin thoughtfully. “If he pushes into the Wild Wood he brings himself closer to our servants and his magic will stand out even more strongly against the non-human magics of that place.”
“Only if he uses magic,” Atros said. “If he weaves little or none he will be much harder to find, will he not?”
“What kind of wizard travels without magical protection?”
“A most powerful and dangerous one. So search carefully.” Atros paused for a moment, looking down into the Sea once more.
“But our alien wizard will not find it so easy to shield his travelling companion,” he said. “Tell your searchers to look carefully for signs of a hedge witch in the Wild Wood. That should stand out strongly enough.”
###
They camped where dusk found them, spreading their cloaks against a fallen log. Moira would not allow a fire, so their dinner consisted of some bits of jerked meat and a handful of leathery dried fruit. Normally, Wiz didn’t eat red meat, but things were decidedly not normal and he gnawed gratefully on the pieces Moira placed in his hand.
As the twilight faded Moira took a stick and drew a design around them and their resting place.
“The circle will offer us some small protection,” she told him. “Do not leave it tonight for anything.”
“Not even for . . . ?”
“Not for anything,” she repeated firmly.
Without another word Moira rolled herself in her cloak and turned away from Wiz. He sat with his back to the log staring up at the unfamiliar stars.
“This is soooo weird,” Wiz said, more to himself than Moira.
“Sleeping outdoors is not what I am used to either,” she said.
“No, I mean this whole business. Dragons. The magic and all. It’s just not like anything I’m used to.”
Moira rolled over to face him. “You mean you really do not have magic where you come from?”
“The closest I ever came to magic was working with Unix wizards,” said Wiz.
“Eunuchs wizards? Did they do that to themselves to gain power?”
“Huh? No. Not Eunuchs, Unix. Spelled . . .” Wiz realized he couldn’t spell the word. He recognized the shapes of the letters, but they twisted and crawled in his mind and no meaning attached to them. When he tried to sound the word out only runes appeared in his head.
“Never mind, but it’s not that at all. It’s an operating system.”
“Operating system?” Moira said frowning.
“An operating system is a program which organizes the resources of a computer and virtualizes their interfaces,” Wiz quoted.
“A computer? One who thinks?”
For the thousandth time in his life, Wiz wished he were better at making explanations. “Well, kind of. But it is a machine, not alive.”
“A machine is some kind of non-living thing then. But this machine thinks?”
“Well, it doesn’t really think. It follows preprogrammed instructions. The programmer can make it act like it is thinking.”
“Is it a demon of some kind?”
“Uh, no. A demon’s something else. It’s a program that does something automatically when called. Unless of course it’s a daemon, then it’s active all the time.”
Moira wrinkled her brow. “Let us go back a bit. What do you have to do with these creatures?”
“They’re not creatures, really.”
“These demons, then.”
“I told you, they’re not demons. A demon is something else.”
“Never mind all that,” Moira said impatiently. “Just tell me what you do.”
“Well, I do a lot of things, but basically I’m a systems-level programmer. That means I write programs that help applications programs—those are the things people want done—to run.
“What is a program?”
Wiz sighed. “A program is a set of instructions that tells the computer what to do.”
“You command these beings then?”
“I told you, they’re not . . .”
“All right. These creatures, or not-demons or whatever they are. You command them?”
“Well, kind of.”
“But you have no magic!”
Wiz grinned. “You don’t need magic. Just training, skill, discipline and a mind that works in the right way.”
“The qualities of a magician,” Moira said firmly. “And with these qualities you master these—things.”
“Well, you try to. Some days you get the bear and some days the bear gets you.”
“There are bears involved too?”
“No, look, that’s just an expression. What I mean is that sometimes it’s easy to get the computer to do what you want and sometimes it isn’t.”
“Powerful entities are often hard to control,” Moira nodded. “So you are the master of these—whatever they are.”
“Well, not exactly the master. I work under a section chief, of course, and over him there’s a department head. Then there’s the DP Administrator . . .”
“These entities tell you what to do?”
“They aren’t entities, they’re people.”
“But you do not master these, what did you call them?”
“The section chief, the department head . . .”
“No, I mean the other things, the non-living ones.”
“Oh, the computers.”
“You master the computers.”
“Well, no. But I program them according to the tasks assigned me.”
“So you are only a low-level servant,” Moira concluded firmly.
“No, I’m not! It’s an important job,” Wiz said desperately.
“I’m sure it is,” Moira said. “Even temple sweepers perform an important job.”
“No, it’s not like that at all! It’s . . .” He realized it was hopeless. “Just forget it, okay? It was an important job and I was damn good at it.”
“Do not curse, Sparrow,” Moira snapped. “We are in enough danger as it is.” With that she rolled over and settled down to sleep.
Wiz didn’t follow suit. He sat there listening to the wind in the trees and the occasional cry of a night animal. Once he heard a wolf howl far off.
Damn! he thought. Here I am in the middle of a forest with a beautiful girl asleep at my side and I can’t do anything about it. I didn’t think it was supposed to work this way.
Wiz had never read much fantasy, but he knew that the hero was supposed to get the girl. But then he didn’t feel very heroic. He was cold, uncomfortable and most of all, he just felt ineffectual. The same old klutzy Wiz.
And lonesome. Oh my God, was he lonesome! He missed his apartment, the traffic-clogged streets, the movies, the all-night pizza joint on the corner. With a great inrushing pang, he felt utterly lost.
He even missed the goddamn buggy text editor at work. Do you realize there probably isn’t a computer anywhere on this world? He thought. I have probably written my last program.
That hurt worse than anything. All his life Wiz had only been good at one thing. When he discovered computers in high school, he found he was as good with them as he was bad with people. He had put his life into being the best ever with computers and if he hadn’t been the best ever, he had certainly been damn good. Only a lack of money and fascination with immediate problems had kept him from going to grad school and getting the Ph.D. that would have led him to the top rank of computer scientists.
So here he was in a world where none of that meant diddly. What was he supposed to do with himself? He couldn’t earn a living. He wasn’t really strong enough for physical labor and the only thing he knew how to do was useless.
Goddamn that old wizard, anyway. Then he started guiltily remembering Moira’s admonition against cursing. I wonder if it matters if you just do it in your head?
If he was big and strong it might have helped. But he was skinny and gangly. The only difference between him and the classic pencil-necked geek was that he didn’t wear glasses.
Good thing too, he thought. If I did, I’d probably have broken them by now.
It wasn’t fair. It just wasn’t fair.
Somehow he got to sleep and dreamed uneasily of home and his beloved computers.
###
The next morning Wiz was sore all over. His legs ached from the unaccustomed exercise and the rest of him hurt from sleeping on the ground.
Moira was already up and seemingly none the worse for the night. Her copper hair was combed and hung down her back in a long braid. Her face was freshly scrubbed and she looked heart-stoppingly beautiful.
She was sitting cross-legged going through the contents of her worn leather shoulder bag. There was already a pile of things on the ground beside her.
“I do not think I can afford to keep all these things,” she said in response to his unasked question. “I will have to discard them carefully as we go.”
“I’ll carry them for you.”
Moira snorted. “The problem is not weight, you idiot. Magic calls to magic and these things,” she gestured, “are magical. The League may be able to find us through them.”
She looked down at the small pile and sighed. “They cost much time and no little effort to gain. All are useful and in a way they are all parts of me. But,” she added with forced cheerfulness, “better to discard them now than to have them lead the League to us.”
“Uh, right.”
Moira gathered the items back into her pouch. “I will dispose of them one at a time as we go along,” she said standing up. “It will make them harder to find, I hope.”
Wiz scrambled to his feet, feeling the kinks in his muscles stretch.
“We can make better time today,” the hedge witch said. “Mid-Summer’s Day is past and the magic will be less strong. We do not have to move quite so cautiously.”
“Great,” Wiz muttered, appalled at the prospect.
True to her word, Moira set an even faster pace for the day’s journey. Wiz struggled to keep up, but he didn’t do any better than he had the day before. Several times they had to stop while he rested and Moira fidgeted.
From time to time Moira would take something from her pouch. Sometimes she flung the object as far as she could into the woods. A couple of times she buried it carefully. Once she hid a folded bit of cloth in a hollow log and once she dropped a piece of carved wood into a swiftly running stream.
Wiz could see the effort it took her to discard each of those items but he said nothing. There was nothing he could say.
The forest was more open than it had been the day before. The trees were smaller here. They were just as thick where they grew, but they were interspersed with clearings. Once they passed the ruins of a rock wall, running crazily through the woods.
They kept to the forest and stayed as deep among the trees as possible. Occasionally they had to skirt an open space and it was near one such clearing that Moira stopped suddenly and sniffed.
“Do you smell it?” she asked.
Wiz sniffed. “Something burnt, I think.”
“Come on,” Moira said, forging ahead and breasting through the undergrowth.
They were in the clearing before they recognized it. One minute they were pushing through bushes and brambles and the next they were standing on the fringe of a meadow, looking at the smoldering remains of a homestead.
There had been at least three buildings, now all were charred ruins. The central one, obviously a house, had stone walls which stood blackened and roofless. The soot was heaviest above the door and window lintels and a few charcoaled beams still spanned the structure. Of the nearer, larger building, a planked barn, there was almost nothing left. On the other side of the house was a log building with part of one wall standing.
“Something else,” Wiz said, sniffing again. “Burned meat, I think.”
But Moira was already running across the meadow. Wiz cast a nervous eye to the clear blue sky, then shifted his pack and followed.
When he caught up with her, Moira was standing in the space between the remains of the house and the smoldering heap of ashes that had been the barn, casting this way and that.
“What about dragons?” Wiz asked, looking up.
Moira’s suggestion on what to do with dragons was unladylike, probably impractical and almost certainly no fun at all.
“Did a dragon do this?” Wiz asked as they walked around the remains of the house.
“Probably not,” Moira said distractedly. “Dragons might attack cattle in the fields or swine in their pen, but they seldom burn whole farms. This was done from the ground, I think.”
“Well, then who?”
“Who is not important, Sparrow. The important thing is what happened to the people.”
“I don’t see anyone,” Wiz said dubiously.
“They may all have escaped. But perhaps some are lying hurt nearby and in need of aid. I wish I had not been so quick to discard parts of my kit this morning.”
“There doesn’t seem to be anyone here.”
“Then search more closely.”
Moira didn’t call out and Wiz didn’t suggest it. He felt conspicuous enough as it was.
While Moira searched near the house and log building, Wiz wandered around the remains of the barn. The heaps of ashes were unusually high there and from the remains he guessed the barn had been full of hay when it went up. He wondered what had happened to the animals.
Wiz stumbled over something in the debris. He looked down and saw it was an arm, roasted golden crisp and then obviously gnawed. A child’s arm. Wiz opened his mouth to scream and vomited instead.
“What is it?” Moira came rushing up as he heaved his guts out. “What did you . . . Oh.” She stopped short as she saw what lay on the ground between them.
“Oh my God,” he moaned, retching the last bit of liquid from his stomach. “Oh my God.”
“Trolls,” Moira said, her face white and drawn, her freckles standing out vividly against the suddenly pale skin. “They burned this place and put the flames to use.”
“They ate them,” Wiz said
“Trolls are not choosy about their fare,” Moira said looking out over the smoldering ruins.
“Do you think they’re still around?”
“Possibly,” Moira said abstractedly. “After a meal like this trolls would be disinclined to go far.”
“Then let’s get out of here before they come back for dessert.”
“No!” Moira shouted. Wiz started and turned to see tears in her eyes. “We go nowhere until we bury these folk.”
“But . . .”
“There was no one to do it for my family.”
“Did your family end up . . . like that?” Wiz finally asked.
Moira’s face clouded. “I do not know. We never found them.”
“What happened?”
“It was a summer day, much like today only later in the year. I had gone into the wood to pick berries. I filled my apron with them that my mother might make preserves. My father had found a bee tree, you see. It took me all the afternoon to gather enough berries. I was away for hours. And when I returned . . . there was no one there.
“The door to the cottage stood open and the cream was still in the churn, but my parents and brother and sisters were gone. I looked and called and searched until after nightfall. For three days I looked, but I never found them.”
“What happened to them?”
“I don’t know. But there are worse things on the Fringe of the Wild Wood than being eaten by trolls.”
Without thinking, Wiz clasped his arms around the hedge witch and hugged her to him. Without thinking she settled into his arms to be hugged and buried her head in his shoulder. They stood like that for a long minute and then Moira straightened suddenly and pulled away.
“Come on!” she said sharply. “Find something to dig with.”
There was a charred spade leaning against the remains of the log building and Moira set Wiz to work digging a grave in what had been the kitchen garden. The tilled loam turned easily, but Wiz was red-faced and sweating before he had a hole large enough to suit Moira.
While he dug, Moira searched for pieces of bodies. Somewhere she found a smoke-stained old quilt to serve as a shroud. Wiz kept his head down and his back to her so he would not have to see what she was piling on the cloth spread among the heat-blasted cabbages.
With Wiz’s help, she hauled the lumpy stinking burden to the hole and dumped it in. It weighed surprisingly little, Wiz thought.
They shoveled dirt onto the quilt as quickly as they could. Wiz wielded the spade uncomplainingly in spite of the aches in his arms and back and the blisters springing up on his hands.
“It will not stop wolves or others from digging down,” Moira said frowning at their handiwork as Wiz scraped the last of the earth onto the mound. “It should be covered with stone that their rest may be more secure.”
“You want rocks?” Wiz said warily.
She thought and then shook her head. “There is not time. We will leave them as they are and hope.” Then she bowed her head and her lips moved as she recited a blessing over the pathetic mound of fresh earth. When that was done she turned abruptly and signaled Wiz to follow.
The hurried back to the shelter of the forest. For once Moira didn’t have to urge Wiz on. He was more than eager to get away from that grisly farmstead and he was absolutely convinced of the reality of magic and their present danger.
###
“How did it go with the Council, Master?” Bal-Simba’s apprentice asked as the giant wizard came into his study.
“Well enough, Arianne.” He leaned his staff against the wall and loosened his leopard-skin cloak. “But it is very good to be away from them for a while.” Bal-Simba settled into a carved chair with a sigh and leaned back.
The tower room was bright and sun-washed. The batik hangings spoke of animals, birds, flowers and cheerful things. The wide windows on both sides were thrown open and a soft summer breeze wafted through the room, stirring the hangings on the walls and ruffling the parchments on the large table in its center. Arianne, a tall thin woman with ash-blonde hair caught back in a single braid, brought him a cup of wine from the sideboard.
Bal-Simba drained the cup with another sigh and handed it back for a refill.
“Well, I have done all I can to protect our visitor. The Watchers are on the alert and they are confusing the search as best they may.”
“And the other matter?” she asked, handing him a second cup of wine.
“The Council has not the faintest idea why Patrius brought this Sparrow among us.” He shook his great head. “I had hoped that Patrius had confided in one of the Mighty, but it appears he did not. The Sparrow is as much a mystery to us as he is to the League.”
“Why do you think Patrius Summoned this one?” Arianne asked.
“Our red-headed hedge witch thinks it was a mistake, that Patrius intended to Summon some great wizard, became confused under the attack and got this Wiz instead.”
“And you, Lord?”
“I do not know. Certainly the Sparrow has no skill at magic, or ought else that I can find. But yet . . . Did I tell you that Patrius did not mark a pentagram to enclose the Summoned? That suggests he did not expect the Summoned to defend himself with magic.”
Arianne frowned. “Which means that he either was certain the Summoned would not attack him or that he knew he had no magic. Yes. What did Patrius say to the hedge witch?”
“Apparently, Patrius was being oracular. He said he sought help but when she asked him what kind he talked in riddles.”
“That would be like Patrius,” Arianne agreed. “He loved his little surprises.’
“This surprise cost him his life, Lady.”
They were silent as Bal-Simba finished the second cup of wine. Arianne moved to refill it, but Bal-Simba shook his head.
“Lord, there are certain aspects of this business I do not understand.”
“You are not alone, Lady.”
“I mean your actions.”
“Ask then.” Arianne was Bal-Simba’s apprentice not only for her skill in magic but because, like Bal-Simba, she had considerable administrative ability. One day she would sit on the Council of the North.
“Why did you leave the pair of them on the Fringe with no protection?”
“I could not bring them here by the Wizards Way, so I sent them to a place of safety. Why alone? Because two can go in stealth where an army may not tread. This Moira is no woods ranger, but she grew up on the Fringe and she has the reputation for a sturdy head on her shoulders.”
“Where did you send them?”
“Heart’s Ease,” Bal-Simba told her.
Arianne looked hard at the huge map on the wall. “Lord, that is deep within the Wild Wood itself! You set them a dangerous course.”
“But the safest available under the circumstances,” Bal-Simba replied. “The League will be searching for a magician. This Sparrow has not the slightest magic. The League will expect him to come to the Capital, or at least to the civilized lands. Instead they go in the opposite direction. If we keep interfering with the League’s searchers we can further confuse the League.”
“We know the League is searching for them with every resource at their command.” She smiled thinly. “Old Toth-Set-Ra must be stirred indeed to mount such an effort.”
“When he realized Patrius had performed a Great Summoning, he decided that the Summoned was a weapon of some land. He means to have it.” Bal-Simba smiled. “Perfectly logical if you know how Toth-Set-Ra’s mind works.”
“And we bend our efforts to frustrating him. Lord, is this Sparrow really worth so much of our effort?”
Bal-Simba considered for a moment. “Probably not. But while the League is engrossed in trying to find our Sparrow, they cannot make mischief elsewhere. That is worth some little effort on our part.”
He stroked his eagle’s skull pendant absently. “Besides, I think we owe this Sparrow something. He was snatched from his own world and dropped here by the efforts of one of the Mighty. It was no fault or choice of his own.”
The blonde woman nodded. “But still, to send two people into the heart of the Wild Wood . . .”
“Would you have me bring them here by the Wizard’s Way and all of us lost when the League saw and struck?” Bal-Simba said sharply. Arianne stiffened.
The wizard’s face softened. “Forgive me, my Lady. You are right about the dangers and I am uneasy about our fugitives.” He heaved a great gust of a sigh. “I gave them the best chance I could, now let us hope they can make good use of it.”
She smiled and placed her hand on his shoulder. “Apologies are not needed, Lord. I understand.” He smiled back and put his bearlike paw over her hand.
“There are so few unconstrained choices, Arianne. So very few choices left to us.”
“We do the best we can, Lord.”
Bal-Simba sighed again. “Aye. That at least we do.”
###
Moira allowed them a fire that night, which was a mixed blessing for Wiz. It meant warmth and hot food, but he had to gather firewood, and the sticks and branches rubbed his blistered hands raw.
“Now what’s your problem?” she asked when she saw him wince as he dropped a load of wood by the stone hearth.
“Nothing,” Wiz said, blowing on his hands.
Moira scrambled up and took one of his hands in hers. “You’re hurt,” she said with real concern. “I’ll attend to those once the food is started.”
When she had the mixture of dried meat, fruit and barley simmering in a small bronze pot, she pulled out her shoulder bag and motioned Wiz to sit down beside her in the firelight.
“You must not be used to work,” she said as she rummaged in her kit.
“You don’t get many blisters at a VT 220,” he agreed.
Moira looked blank.
“It’s a terminal. A, ah, thing that . . . oh, forget it.”
Moira produced a tiny earthenware jar and smeared the raw and blistered places on Wiz’s palms with the dark, pungent salve it contained.
“Your hands should be healed by morning,” she told him, scraping salve from her finger back into the jar. “We should cover those, but I don’t have anything to put over them.”
“That’s fine,” Wiz said. “It doesn’t hurt anymore. Whatever that stuff is, it works like a charm.”
“Oh, it’s not a charm,” Moira said seriously. “Just a healing potion. With the proper charm I could heal your hands instantly, but that would take magic and it might attract attention.” She moved away from him to check the contents of the pot.
“You’re a magician, right?” he asked, trying to recapture the moment.
Moira shrugged. “In a small way. I am a hedge witch.”
“That’s interesting. What does a hedge witch do?”
“What do I do? Oh, herbs and simples. A little healing. Some weather magic. I try to warn of dangers, find lost objects and strayed animals.” She lifted the pot off the fire and produced two wooden bowls and horn spoons from her pack.
“Eat now,” she said. “You can use a spoon well enough even with your hands.”
The mixture in the pot looked awful but tasted surprisingly good. The tartness of the fruit and the rich saltiness of the meat blended well with the bland barley.
“Is Bal-Simba a hedge witch too?”
Moira laughed, a delightful sound. “No, Bal-Simba is of the Mighty.” Her face clouded. “Probably he is the Mightiest of the Mighty now that Patrius is dead.” She returned to her eating.
“What do the Mighty do?” Wiz asked in an effort to keep the conversation going.
“They are our greatest wizards. They teach the other orders, they help wherever great magic is required, they study arcane lore and they try to protect us from the Dark League.” She sighed. “These days mostly they try to protect us from the Dark League.”
“Why aren’t they protecting us then?”
Moira looked annoyed. “They are protecting us, Sparrow. Bal-Simba stayed behind to cast false trails to confuse the League’s agents who sought to spy us out. The whole North is protected by the Watchers of the Council of the North who blunt the League’s efforts to use their magic here. Even now the Watchers are doubtless holding off the League’s efforts to search us out. Just because you cannot see the works of the Mighty, never doubt they protect you, Sparrow.”
“Sorry.”
“You should be sorry.”
They sat in uncomfortable silence.
“What’s magic like?” Wiz asked at last.
“Like?” Moira asked, puzzled, “It’s not like anything. It simply is. Magic is the basic stuff of the World. We swim in a sea of magic like fish in the ocean.”
“And you can make it work for you?”
“A magician can make magic work for himself or herself. But there are very few magicians. Perhaps one person in one hundred has any talent at all for magic and far, far fewer ever become truly skilled.”
Wiz studied the effect of the firelight on her hair and eyes. “How do you learn to do magic?”
“You find a magician to take you as an apprentice. Then you study and practice and learn as much as you can. Eventually you either cannot learn more or you must travel to find a more advanced teacher.”
“But there aren’t schools or anything?”
Moira snorted. “Magic is a craft, Sparrow. It cannot be learned by rote like sums or the days of the week.”
“How did you learn?”
“There was a hedge witch in the village that took me in after . . . after I left home. He taught me what he could. Then I traveled to the Capital and studied under some of the wizards there.” She sighed. “I did not have talent of a high order so I became hedge witch for the village of Blackbrook Bend.”
“So, how do you work magic?”
“First you must know what you are doing,” Moira said. “Then you must perform the appropriate actions with the proper phrases. If you do it correctly and if you make no mistakes, then you make magic work for you.”
Wiz gestured with the stick he had used to poke up the fire. “You mean if I wave a magic wand and say—uh—‘bippity boppity boo’ then . . . ?”
A lance of flame shot from the smoldering end of the stick into the heart of the campfire. The blaze exploded in a ball of incandescent white and an evil orange column soared above the tops of the trees. Wiz gasped for breath in the suffocating blast of heat. Through the haze and blinding glare he saw Moira, on her feet and gesturing frantically.
Suddenly, it was quiet. The fire was a friendly little campfire again and the cool night air flowed into Wiz’s lungs and soothed his scorched face. Moira stood across the fire from him, her hair singed, her cloak smoldering and her eyes blazing.
“Yes.” She snapped. “That’s exactly what I mean.”
“I’m sorry,” Wiz stammered. “I didn’t mean to . . .” Then his jaw dropped. “Hey, wait a minute. That was magic!”
“That was stupid,” the hedge witch countered, beating out an ember on her cloak.
“No, I mean I worked magic,” Wiz said eagerly. “That means I am a magician. Bal-Simba was wrong.” He grinned and shook his head. “Son of a gun.”
“What you are is an idiot,” Moira snapped. “Any fool can work magic, and far too many fools do.”
“But . . .”
“Didn’t you listen to anything I just told you? Magic is all around us. It is easy to make. Any child can do it. If you are careless you can make it by accident as you just did.”
“Well, if it’s so easy to make . . .”
“Sparrow, easy to make and useful are not the same thing. To be useful magic must be controlled. Could you have stopped what you just created just now? Of course not! If I had not been here you would have burned the forest down. A careless word, a thoughtless gesture and you loose magic on the world.”
She stopped and looked around the clearing for signs of live coals. “And mark well, magic is not easy to learn. There are a hundred ways, perhaps a thousand of doing what you just did. And most of them are useless because they cannot be controlled. Without control magic is not just useless, it is hideously dangerous.”
“But I still made magic,” Wiz protested.
Moira snorted. “You made it once. By accident. What makes you think you could do it again?”
“What makes you think I couldn’t?” Wiz countered, picking up the stick. “All I have to do is point at the fire and say—”
“Don’t,” Moira yelled. “Don’t even think of trying it again.”
Wiz lowered the stick and looked at her.
“Sparrow, heed me and heed me well. The chance that you could do that again is almost nil. The essence of success in magic is to repeat absolutely everything with not the tiniest variation every single time you recite a spell.”
She gestured at him. “Look at you. You have shifted your stance, you are holding the stick at a different angle, you are facing southeast instead of North, you are . . . oh, different in a dozen ways. Could you say those words with exactly the same inflection? Could you give your wrist exactly the twist you used in the gesture? Could you clench your left hand in exactly the same way?”
“Is all that important?”
“All that is vital,” Moira told him. “All that and much more. The phase of the moon, the angle of the sun. The hour of the day or night. All enter into magic and all must be considered. No matter what you have been told, magical talent does not consist of some special affinity for magic, some supernatural gift. Magical ability is the ability to control what you produce. And that turns on noticing the tiniest detail of what is done and being able to repeat it flawlessly.”
That makes a weird kind of sense, Wiz admitted to himself. Like programming. There’s no redundancy in the language and the tiniest mistake can have major consequences. Look at all the time I’ve spent going over code trying to find the missing semicolon at the end of a statement, or a couple of transposed letters. It also meant he probably was a magical klutz. He was the kind of guy who walked into doors and spent five minutes hunting for his car every time he went to the mall.
“Wait a minute, though,” Wiz said. “If all it takes is a good memory, why can’t most people learn to do magic?”
Moira flicked a strand of coppery hair away from her face with an exasperated gesture. “A good memory is the least part of what we call the talent.”
“Sure, but with practice . . .”
“Practice!” Moira snorted. “Perform a spell incorrectly and you may not get the opportunity to do it again. Look you, when those without the talent attempt a spell, one of three things will happen. The first, and far away the most likely outcome is that nothing at all will happen. What comes out is so far removed from the true spell that is it completely void. That is the most favorable result because it does no harm and it discourages the practitioner.
“The second thing that can happen is that the spell goes awry, usually disastrously so.” She smiled grimly. “Every village has its trove of stories of fools who sought to make magic and paid for their presumption. Some villages exist no longer because of such fools.
The third thing is that the spell is successful. That happens perhaps one out of every thousand attempts.” She frowned. “In some ways that is the worst. It encourages the fool to try again, often on a grander scale.”
“So what you’re saying is that it’s easy to make magic by accident but hard to do on purpose.”
“Say rather virtually impossible to do on purpose.” Moira corrected. “Without the talent and proper training you cannot do it.
“But there is another level of complication beyond even that,” Moira went on. “A magician must not only be able to recite spells successfully, he or she must thoroughly understand their effects and consequences.” She settled by the fire and spread her cloak. “Do you know the tale of the Freshened Sea?”
Wiz shook his head.
“Then listen and learn.
“Long ago on a small island near the rim of the Southern Sea (for it was then so called) there lived a farmer named Einrich. His farm was small, but the soil was good and just over the horizon was the Eastern Shore where the people would pay good money for the fruits his island orchards produced. All he lacked was fresh water for his trees, for the rains are irregular there and he had but one tiny spring.
“Some years the rains were scant and so were his crops of apples and pears. Some years they came not at all and Einrich spent day after weary day carrying buckets of water so his trees would not perish.
“All around him was water, but he had not enough fresh to feed his groves. Daily he looked at the expanse of sea stretching away to the horizon on all sides and daily he cursed the lack.
“Now this Einrich—ill-fortune to him—had some talent for magic. He dabbled in it, you see, and somehow he survived his dabblings. That gave him knowledge and a foolish pride in his own abilities.
“So Einrich conceived a plan to give him more water. He concocted and cast a spell to turn the water around his island fresh.
“He constructed a demon, bound it straitly, and ordered him to make fresh the water around his island.”
“Wait a minute,” Wiz said. “What do you mean he ‘constructed’ a demon?”
“Demons are the manifestations of spells, not natural creatures as the ignorant believe,” Moira said. “They are the products of human or non-human magicians, although they may live long beyond their creators.
“To continue: In doing this, Einrich was foolhardy beyond belief. Great spells work against great forces and if they are not done properly the forces lash back. Einrich was not so fortunate as to die from the effects of his bungling. His house was blasted to ruin and a huge black burn still marks the spot on the island, but he survived and the water around his island turned to fresh.
“He spent all the long summer days working in his orchards while the fruit swelled and ripened on his trees. With plentiful water his fruit was the largest and finest ever. So when the time came he harvested all his boat could bear and set out for his markets on the east coast of the sea.
“He thought it odd that he saw no other vessels, for usually the waters inshore were the haunt of fishing vessels and merchantmen trading in the rich goods of the east. Einrich sailed on, finding nothing in the water save an occasional dead fish.
“When he sighted land his unease grew. For in place of the low green hills of the Eastern land he saw cliffs of dazzling white. As he drew closer he realized that the familiar hills had turned white, so white the reflections almost blinded him.
He sought the familiar harbors but he could not find them. All was buried under drifts of white, as if huge dunes of sand had devoured the land.
“And instead of the sweet scent of growing things, the land breeze brought him the odor of rotting fish. All along the shoreline were windrows of dead sea creatures. Here and there a starving seabird tore eagerly at the decaying flesh.
“Finally, Einrich put ashore in a cove. When he stepped from his boat he stepped onto a beach of salt.
“Einrich had bound his demon to its task, but he had not limited it. The whole of the Southern Sea had been turned to fresh water. The fish within could not live in the fresh water, so they died.
“Worse, Einrich had not instructed the demon where to put the salt it winnowed. The creature simply dumped it on the nearest shoreline. In the space of a few days the greatest and most beautiful cities of the World disappeared under waves and rifts of salt. Their people perished or were doomed to roam the world as homeless wanderers—living testaments to the power of magic ill-used.
“And to this day the demon sits in the Freshened Sea, sifting salt from the water and dumping it on the land. The eastern shores are a desert of salt and the water is still fresh.”
“What happened to Einrich?” Wiz asked, awed.
Moira smiled grimly. “A suitable punishment was arranged. If you travel to that cursed shore, and if you look long enough, you will find Einrich, ever hungry, ever thirsting and hard at work with a shovel, trying to shovel enough salt into the sea to render it salty again.”
“Whew,” Wiz breathed.
“The point, Sparrow, is that magic is not to be trifled with. Even successful magic can bring ruin in its wake and unsuccessful magic far outnumbers the successful.”
“Could I have done something like that, by accident?”
“Unlikely,” Moira sniffed. “You do not have a talent for magic and you have no training. You could easily loll yourself or burn down a forest, but you have not the ability to work great magic. The most dangerous magicians are the half-trained ones. Either the ones who are still being schooled or who think they are greater than they are. The evil they do often lives after them. They and the League, of course.”
“What is the League, anyway? A bunch of black magicians?”
Moira frowned. “They are a dark league. Some of them are black, it is true. But so is Bal-Simba and many others of the North.”
“No, I mean magicians who practice black magic. You know, evil spells and things like that.”
“Evil magic depends partly on intent and partly on ignoring the consequences,” Moira said. “Spells may help or harm but they are not of themselves good or evil.”
“Not even a death spell?”
“Not if used to defend oneself, no. Such spells are dangerous and are best avoided, but they are not evil.”
“All right, what separates you from this League?”
Moira was silent for a moment. “Responsibility,” she said thoughtfully. “Magic is not evil in itself, but tends to affect many things at once. Often the unintended or unwanted effects of a spell are harmful. Like Einrich’s means of getting water for his orchards.”
“We called those side effects,” Wiz said. “They’re a pain in the neck in programming too.”
“Be that as it may, the question a responsible magician must face is whether the goal is worth the consequences. All the consequences. Those who follow the Council of the North try to use magic in harmony with the World. Those of the League are not so bound.”
Moira shifted and the fire caught and heightened the burnished copper highlights in her hair.
“Power is an easy prize for a magician, Sparrow—if you can stay alive and if you are not too nice about the consequences. The ones who join the League see power as an end to itself. They magic against the World and scheme and intrigue among themselves to get it.”
Wiz nodded. “I’ve known hackers like that. They didn’t care what they screwed up as long as they got what they wanted.”
“It may be so on all the worlds,” Moira sighed. “There are always those whose talent and ambition are unchecked by concern for others. If they have no magical talent they may become thieves, robbers and cheats. With talent they are likely to travel south and join with the Dark League.”
“Why go south. Why not just stay and make trouble?”
“Two reasons. First, the Council will not have them in the civilized lands. Second, they must still serve an apprenticeship no matter how much talent they have.” She smiled tightly. “The tests for an apprentice are stringent and many of them are aimed at uncovering such people.
“Once they pass over the Freshened Sea they are beyond the Council’s reach. They are free to work whatever magic they wish and that place shows the results. All of the Southern Shore is alight with mountains of fire and the earth trembles constantly from the League’s magic. The land is so blasted that none can live there save by magic. The very World itself pays the price for the lusts of the League.”
“Why put up with them at all? When we had problems like that we’d kick the troublemakers off the system. Or turn them over to the cops—ah, the authorities.”
“You have an easier time than we do, Sparrow,” Moira said ruefully. “There is no way to bar a magician from making magic, so we cannot ‘kick them off the system.’ As for the authorities, well, the Council exists in part to check the League but this is not a thing easily done. Individually the ones of the League are mighty sorcerers. Toth-Set-Ra, their present leader,” Moira made a warding sign, “is the mightiest wizard in all the World.”
“If he’s so powerful how come he hasn’t taken the North?”
“Because the League contains the seeds of its own destruction,” Moira said. “To conquer the North, the League would have to act in careful concert. This they cannot do because of the rivalries within. The Mighty are more constrained than the sorcerers of the League and so perhaps not so powerful individually. But they work easily together and can defeat any of the League’s efforts.
“The League is like the Phoenix which renews itself by regular immolation. When it is sundered by contention and many strive for the Dark Throne, then we of the North have a time of peace. When a strong leader emerges and brings most of the wizards of the South under his sway, the League harries the North and magics are loosed upon the land.” Moira sighed. “Twas ever so. And now we live in a time when the League is united as never before.
“Toth-Set-Ra,” again the warding sign, “is a mighty sorcerer, skilled in magic and cunning in lore. And it is our age’s woe that he has especially powerful tools at his command.”
“It doesn’t sound very secure to me,” Wiz said dubiously.
“Little in life is secure,” Moira replied. “But we contrive.” She rose and moved to the other side of the fire.
“And now let us see if we can get some sleep, Sparrow. Morning comes early and we still have far to go.”