by Rick Cook
The village of Whitewood Grove was simply gone. The wharf was gone from the river and even the path that led from the wharf to the village was missing.
They circled the site while Dragon Leader considered. There was nothing on any checklist that applied to a situation like this. Looking over his shoulder at the place where the village of Whitewood Grove should have been, he made a decision.
"Second element, run for the patrol base," he said into his communications crystal. "Fly all night if you have to and as soon as you are over the ridge start reporting to the Capital. Wingman, stay on perimeter patrol. I am going to land and inspect the site on foot. If I am not back in the air in one half of a day-tenth, run for the patrol base. Now go!"
To his right and high above he saw the second element break off and scoot for the ridge. He waited until they were across before he turned his dragon inward toward the bluff.
There was barely room to land a dragon on the very tip of the bluff. The air currents off the river made it tricky and his dragon didn’t like the place at all. She bridled and growled and tried to break off the approach twice. He had to force her down and once on the ground she would not settle. She kept her wings half-spread and her neck extended high in the classic fighting posture. The way she was breathing told Dragon Leader she was building up for an enormous gout of flames.
Which was fine with Dragon Leader. An aroused dragon is far from the worst thing to have at your back in a tight spot.
Sword in hand, he scanned the trees while keeping close to the dragon’s bulk. The grove of Whitewoods looked peaceful and quite unremarkable. The early evening sun tinged their glossy green leaves with gold. A slight breeze gently rustled through the branches. Somewhere a bird sang and close to the grove’s edge a red squirrel jumped from branch to branch. The grove exuded the faint, sweet aroma of Whitewood blossoms.
None of which made Dragon Leader or his dragon feel any more secure. The dragon stayed poised for combat and on cat feet Dragon Leader moved into the wood.
The Whitewoods were fully mature, large enough that he could not have put his arms around them at their base. The litter on the forest floor was deep with dead leaves and rotting vegetation. There were ferns and there were many apples and here and there a purple forest orchid. But there was not the least little sign of anything that might possibly have once marked human habitation.
Warily Dragon Leader moved out of the grove, keeping watch over his shoulder as if he expected something to pounce on him at any minute. As quickly as he could he mounted, wheeled his dragon and launched her off the bluff. The dragon dived for the river to gain air speed and Dragon Leader finished securing himself to the saddle on the fly. As his wingman came up to join him and the pair ran south for the patrol base, he realized his jerkin was soaked with sweat.
For the first time since the war with the Dark League ended, Dragon Leader was very, very frightened.
Arianne gasped when Bal-Simba told her of the dragon rider’s report.
"Lord, what could have caused this?"
"I have not the slightest idea," Bal-Simba told her. "I have never heard of such a thing."
The blonde witch thought hard for a moment. "How many others know of this?"
"In the Capital? So far just two Watchers, you and I."
"Then if I may suggest Lord, perhaps it would be best if we kept it a secret for now."
Bal-Simba nodded. "The Watchers are already sworn to secrecy. But that does not help us get our people back—if they can be gotten back. Nor will it prevent such things in the future."
"Such an attack must have been provoked by the changes on the Fringe," Arianne said slowly. "Else this would have happened before."
"Once again, my thinking. But what provoked it? And what was provoked?"
"Perhaps the elves could tell us."
Bal-Simba snorted like a bull. "You grasp at straws." Then his expression softened. "Besides, I have climbed all over that notion and can find no way in. The elves will have nothing to do with any mortal except Wiz. And even if they would, I doubt I could convince them of our sincerity."
"Will not your word suffice as president of the Council of the North?" Arianne asked him.
"You know the answer to that, Lady," Bal-Simba rumbled. "I am not the mightiest magician among us, and the Council’s power ebbs as people realize they do not stand in constant need of us. Wiz may be the most junior member of the Council, but he is our most powerful magician and our best hope for correcting what is wrong."
Arianne shuddered. "So if we do not find him, we face war."
"We must do more than find him, Lady," Bal-Simba said. "We must find him alive and sound."
Seventeen: Everything Wild
Magic is real—unless declared integer.
from the collected sayings of Wiz Zumwalt
"Okay, deal."
Karl, Judith, Mike and Nancy were seated around the table in the Wizard’s Day Room, settling in for a quiet session of bridge. Ignoring the glares of the half-dozen or so wizards present, they had pulled a table from its accustomed place and brought chairs in around it.
Mike opened a fresh pack of cards and dealt the first hand with his wife Nancy as the dummy.
Nancy organized her hand and frowned. Every card she held was a heart. By some weird happenstance, she had drawn the entire suite of hearts!
"Damn, what a time to be dummy!"
Then she looked up and saw the strange expressions on the other players’ faces.
"What’s wrong?"
Wordlessly, Mike laid down his hand, face up. Karl and Judith followed suit. Mike had gotten every club, Judith had all the diamonds and Karl had all the spades.
"Jesus!" Nancy breathed. "Are you sure you shuffled those cards?"
"You saw me," Karl said. "My lord! I wonder what the odds are on that happening?"
"Astronomical," Judith said softly. "Simply astronomical."
They all looked at the cards for a minute.
"Well," Mike said finally. "Let’s shuffle and get down to play."
He raked in the four hands and took great care to shuffle the deck thoroughly. Then he dealt them out again.
Nancy picked up her hand, looked at them, and threw them down. "Shit," she said informatively.
The others followed suit. This time Nancy had gotten all the clubs, Karl had the diamonds, Mike had the hearts and Judith had the spades.
"This isn’t working," Karl said finally. "Somehow the magic in this place is interfering with the shuffle." He looked at the four piles of cards on the table and made a face. "Do you still want to play?"
"If we can find something that we can play," Judith said. "I don’t think bridge is going to do it."
"How about poker?" Mike asked. "We could play for matches or something."
"I don’t really know how to play poker," Judith protested.
"We’ll make it easy," Mike told her. "Five-card draw."
This time Karl shuffled the cards and dealt the first hand. Then he picked up his cards and looked at them.
The hand was assorted, but it was a dog. Not even a pair and no card higher than a five. Well, that was okay too. Karl played poker for the long haul and the first hand of the game was a good place to find out how the other players would react to a bluff.
Suddenly the top of his head felt wet.
Karl looked up and saw that a tiny thundercloud, no bigger than his hand, had formed above his head. A miniature bolt of lightning flashed from peak to fluffy gray peak and a fine mist of rain settled on him.
"Let me guess," Nancy said. "You got the low hand."
Karl threw down his cards in disgust. "I don’t think this universe is designed for card playing."
"Wait a minute," Mike said. "Let’s try something that’s more strategy and less pure luck of the draw. You ever played Texas Hold ’em?"
"That’s a version of seven-card stud isn’t it?" Karl asked.
"I don’t know," Judith said. "I’ve never played stud po
ker."
"It’s easy," Nancy told her. "You deal three cards to each player and four face down in the middle of the table. You try to make the best hand with the cards in your hand and the four on the table. You bet after the deal and then again after each card is turned. I’ll help you with the first hand, if you like."
"And," Mike continued, "it’s got the advantage that the outcome depends on the cards on the table more than the cards in your hand. That and your betting skill."
They had no chips, and matchsticks were not a part of this world, but they appropriated a bowl of unshelled nuts from the sideboard by the port, ignoring the audible sniffs of the wizards.
Again Mike shuffled the cards and dealt.
"Three filberts."
"I’ll see your filberts and raise you a brazil nut," Judith said. She looked at the zebra-striped nut in her hand. "At least I think it’s a brazil nut."
"What did we say, five pecans to a brazil nut?" asked Nancy, shoving into the pile of squirrel fodder.
"Ace," Mike said, flipping the card. "Place your bets."
They went around the table with everyone betting moderately. Mike reached out and flipped the second card.
"Ace again."
Nancy made a strangled sound.
"What’s wrong?" her husband asked.
"Just keep going," Nancy said, staring at the cards.
Again everyone bet and again Mike flipped a card.
"Another ace… wait a minute!"
There on the table face up were an ace of clubs and ace of diamonds. The last card was the ace of spades.
"What the hell…"
He pulled a card from his hand and threw it face up on the table. An ace of spades.
"That makes seven aces," Nancy said, throwing down her and Judith’s hands.
"No, nine," Karl said, adding his cards to the pile.
"Ten," Mike said bitterly, adding another ace from his hand. "Come on guys, let’s go watch the sunset or something."
Over in the corner Malus and Honorious watched them leave.
"What do you suppose that was all about?"
"Obviously a divination of some sort." He shook his head. "I do not think they like the outcome."
"I wonder what it portends?" said Agricolus coming over to join them.
"Nothing good, I warrant you," said Juvian from his seat near the window. "I thought the Sparrow was bad with his strange magics and alien ways. Now we have near a score of them and they are all more fey than the Sparrow ever was."
"And they left the table and chairs out of place," Honorious snapped, ringing a silver bell to summon a servant to put them back. "Encroaching mushrooms. No manners at all."
"It is a plague! A veritable plague," Agricolus said.
Juvian, Malus and Honorious all nodded in glum agreement.
"Worse than that, perhaps," said Petronus, a wizard with thinning hair and a pronounced widow’s peak, sitting apart from the others. "How much do we know of what these strangers do?"
"They have explained…" Agricolus started.
"Did you understand the explanation?"
"Well…"
"Just so. They labor endlessly in the very citadel of the North and foist us off with explanations none can understand. Meanwhile non-mortals everywhere prepare against us."
"Do you think something is amiss?" asked Malus.
"And you do not? We stand on the brink of a war of extermination that is somehow bound up with the Sparrow and we let his cohorts work in our very midst doing things they will not explain." He slapped his hand on his knee with a sharp crack. "If these strangers are so powerful, let them give us clear proof and reasonable explanations. As members of the Council of the North we should demand it of them."
"That would be a task for the president of the Council," Agricolus said.
"And I mean to talk to him about it. Now." He rose and bowed to his fellows. "My Lords." With that he swept out of the room.
"He does have a point," Honorious said, lowering his voice as the servant came into the Day Room and started moving the furniture back. "They should not hide what they are doing from us."
"I am not sure they are hiding from us," Malus said slowly.
"Do you mean you believe that rubbish, that, that ’spell compiler’?" Honorious snorted. "If so, I have an elixir of Immortality I wish to discuss with you."
The pudgy little wizard frowned. "I did not believe it when there was just the Sparrow and his wild talk. But now? All these newcomers can work magic, all their magic feels like the Sparrow’s."
"They are all from his land," Agricolus pointed out.
"And they all claim that anyone can learn this magic," Malus countered. "Perhaps they are telling the truth."
"If they are telling the truth then why can not any of us grasp the essence of this thing?" Agricolus demanded.
"Perhaps we have not tried hard enough," Malus said. "We can hardly be said to have approached the Sparrow’s magic with the same openness we would apply to learning a new spell from one of the Mighty."
Honorious snorted again.
"Well," the little wizard said, "I do not put it forward as fact, only as speculation." He put both hands on the arms of his chair and levered himself erect. "My Lords, I must return to my own work."
"There may be something in what he says," Agricolus said after a moment.
"Fortuna!" exclaimed Honorious. "Not you too?"
Agricolus shrugged. "I pride myself on having an open mind."
"And I find myself in a world gone mad!" Honorious retorted, ostentatiously picking up the scroll he had laid aside when the conversation began.
"My Lord, I think we have a problem," Moira told Karl when she found him in the Bull Pen the next morning.
"You mean another problem," he said looking up from the stack of wood strips he was pawing through. "What now? Can’t you get us more parchment?"
"No, not that—although that will be a problem if your people don’t start using slates for simple notes. This is more serious, I think."
"Won’t it wait until Jerry gets in, eh? Well, lay it on me."
"Some members of the Council have formally petitioned to have your work stopped until they are satisfied that what you do is safe and effective." She made a face. "Forever, in other words."
"But why?"
"Oh, many reasons. Jealousy is one of them. Some of the Council fears any change. But mostly I think because none of them understand what you do."
"But they must have some idea. I thought Wiz had been teaching classes all along."
"Oh, he was. That is part of the problem. Your magic is so complicated and your ways of thinking so alien none of our wizards were able to learn what Wiz tried to teach them.
"Some of them claim his teaching was a smoke screen, designed to hide the real secret of his magic. But I know that is not so. He struggled hard to teach us and none of us could learn."
Jerry tapped a scroll thoughtfully against his cheek. "Well, programming sure isn’t the easiest thing around, but it’s not near that hard."
"For you perhaps. For us even the simplest things dissolve into confusion."
"Give me an example."
Moira paused and frowned. Very prettily, Karl thought. For the hundredth time he regretted she was taken.
"Well, there are these variables that are named one thing, called another thing and have a value of something else. Wiz must have explained that to me once a moon and I still don’t think I understand it."
"Oh boy, I’m not surprised at that one," Karl told her. "It’s near the trickiest notion in programming and it’s something that confuses a lot of people. But it’s still not that hard for someone who’s got what it takes to be a wizard."
"Very well then," Moira said. "Can you explain it to me?"
Karl sighed. The clearest explanation he had ever seen n the subject started with a quotation from Tweedledee and Tweedledum in Alice in Wonderland—and the quotation was very apt.
He thou
ght for a minute.
"Okay, look," he said. "You have a true name, right? A name that is uniquely yours and must be kept secret because it identifies you exactly?"
Moira thought for a moment and decided to ignore the rude and prying nature of the question. "I do," she admitted.
"But your true name isn’t ’Moira,’ is it? Moira’s just what people call you?"
"Yes."
"And most people address you as ’Lady’ because you’re a witch. That is, you belong to the class of witches, right?"
"Yes," said Moira, who was beginning to see where this led.
"All right then," Karl said. "You are named one thing, you are called something else and you’re an instantiation of a class called yet another thing." He grinned. "Then you get someone like Wiz, who is Sparrow to most people, Wiz to his friends, is an instantiation of the class of magicians and has a true name. Each of them is different and each of them applies in slightly different circumstances.
"It’s the same in programming. A variable is an instantiation of a class, like integers, and it has its own name that uniquely identifies it, like a true name. At any given time it also has a value, which is what it actually is just then, but which can change with circumstances. Finally, it can also be known by other names in other circumstances and it can be referred to by a pointer, the way ’Moira’ points to you without using your true name. See?"
Moira stood open-mouthed. "You mean that’s what Wiz was trying to show me?" she asked incredulously. "That’s all there is to it?"
Karl shrugged. "Pretty much."
"But that’s so simple. Why didn’t he just say that?"
"Probably because he never thought of it that way. From what everyone says Wiz was a master class hacker and hackers just don’t think in those terms." He grinned. "We have a saying about people like your Wiz. Ask them what time it is and they’ll tell you how to build a clock." Jerry put the scroll back on the pile.
