by Rick Cook
Suddenly Atros took his staff in both hands, raised it high over his head and brought it down with a vicious chopping motion. Wiz raised his staff to ward it off, but he was driven to his knees by the force of the blow. Blindly he raised his staff and gestured again. But the stroke was weak and ill-judged and Atros thrust it aside contemptuously. He stepped forward again and raised his staff for a final, killing spell.
From the cell door a blazing ball flew over Wiz's head and straight at Atros's face. The wizard dropped his staff and flinched aside from the burning sphere. He gestured and it swerved off to splatter in a flaming gout on the tunnel wall behind him.
Atros looked over Wiz and saw Moira standing in the door with her eyes blazing and her hands extended clawlike.
"Witch!" he said contemptuously and made a shooing motion with both hands. Moira screamed and flew back into the cell as if pushed by an unseen hand. Then the skin-clad giant stooped to pick up his staff. Inside the cell an explosion blasted out. A choking cloud of dirt billowed from the shattered door and a reddish light like a new-kindled fire burned within. Atros frowned and made a warding move with his staff. Wiz shook his head and climbed half to his feet.
Within the cell, obscured by the dust and lighted by the fire behind, a huge misshapen thing moved. Atros took a step back and a firmer grasp on his staff. What new sort of demon was this?
The light grew brighter as the fire took hold of the straw. Through the smoke and reddish backlight the thing resolved itself into a vaguely man-like figure. It groped through the smoke and dust, narrowing and resolving as it moved toward the door as though coalescing into something solid. Atros shifted uneasily. There was something familiar about that figure . . .
Then it came through the door and out of the smoke. "So," it rumbled in a familiar voice. "A bear chasing a sparrow, eh? Not very edifying Atros. Not very edifying at all."
"Bal-Simba!" Atros spat the name like a curse.
"Bal-Simba indeed," the great wizard agreed. He was disheveled and his hair and skin were powdered gray with dirt and dust, but his teeth showed white as milk and sharp as daggers as he smiled. "A worthier opponent than yon sparrow, mayhap?
"Sparrow," Bal-Simba said without taking his eyes off the southern wizard, "please put out the fire in the cell. Atros and I have wizards' business to discuss."
"We discuss it on my ground, Northerner," Atros said with an evil smile.
"Oh, I think no one's ground." Bal-Simba's smile was no less evil. "Your protective spells are neutralized, your brother wizards are, ah, occupied elsewhere and Toth-Set-Ra is dead." He raised his eyebrows. "What? You did not know? Demon trouble I believe. Troublesome things, demons. Almost as much trouble as sparrows."
Their eyes locked and neither moved while Wiz scrambled on his hands and knees behind Bal-Simba's trunk-like legs and through the cell door. Moira was waiting and they clung together like frightened children, heedless of the smoldering straw.
Finally Atros snarled and thrust his staff at the black giant. Wiz saw the air between them twist and contort into a half-sensed shape that flew straight at Bal-Simba's chest. Bal-Simba turned his staff sideways and the thing disappeared in a shimmer of air.
He took a step forward. Atros gestured again and the bloody green slime in the center of the corridor massed and grew and rose up in a foul dripping wave in front of Bal-Simba.
Again Bal-simba gestured and the slime hung back. It recoiled, gathered itself and thrust forward like a striking snake. With an easy grace Bal-simba pirouetted to one side. The slime thing missed and fell into the center of the corridor with a hollow "splat." Before it could gather itself again the Northerner pressed his staff into the slime's "back." It quivered for a moment and then lay still.
The giant turned to face his giant assailant. Atros's lips were working as he prepared another spell. But Bal-simba didn't give him the chance to use it.
"And now." Bal-simba tapped his staff on the flagging and stepped forward. Atros gave ground, pawing the air frantically with his staff.
"And now." Bial-Simba stepped and struck the pavement with a ringing blow as Atros blanched and flinched.
"And now," he bellowed and smote the floor so hard his staff shattered into three pieces. Atros screamed as a great chasm opened beneath him. He teetered on the crumbling brink for an instant and then toppled forward. He was still screaming ever fainter and further away when the earth closed with a clap of thunder, cutting off his screams forever.
The black giant sagged and put a hand on the tunnel wall to stay upright. "Whoo," he gasped and shook his head. "Whoo."
"Lord, am I glad to see you!" Wiz stepped out of the cell, leaning on Moira for support.
"Sparrow," Bal-Simba rumbled, "you are a great deal of trouble."
Wiz just laughed and hugged him.
"Lord," Moira hugged him from the other side. "Lord, I had lost hope."
"Always unwise, Lady," said Bal-Simba. He frowned. "My two guardsmen? Donal and Kenneth?"
"Here, Lord," croaked Kenneth, pulling himself erect on the frame of the cell door. "Donal is with me, but he is in a sore way."
"Then I suggest we take him someplace more comfortable," Bal-Simba said. "Sparrow, will you do the honors? I'm not sure I am up to walking the Wizard's Way just yet."
"With pleasure," Wiz grinned. "Uh, it may take me four or five tries to get the spell right."
It actually took six.
Thirteen
The Beginning
Spring was returning to Heart's Ease.
Except for the spots in deepest shade the snow was melting, exposing the wet black earth beneath. Here and there the hardiest plants thrust forth brave green shoots and the branches of the trees swelled with the promise of buds. The ground was soggy and chill, and there was still a skin of ice on the puddles in the morning, but the afternoon air was soft and the sun shone more brightly onto the warming land.
Wiz and Moira stood together in the door of his hut, sharing a cloak and looking out over the Wild Wood.
Heart's Ease was still a gaunt blackened thumb against the blue sky, but the burned parts of the stockade were already down, removed by the forest folk. As soon as the paths through the Wild Wood dried out men would arrive, masons and carpenters who would begin rebuilding Heart's Ease. As before there would be no magic in its construction.
"We don't have to stay here, love," Wiz told Moira. "It will take time to make the place habitable and there's no reason you should live in a log cabin. We could go someplace more civilized. Even the Capital if you prefer."
"I want to stay here, I think," Moira said, snuggling to him under the cloak. "Oh, I'd like to go visit my village after things thaw and dry. But I like it here." She turned her face to his for a kiss and Wiz responded enthusiastically.
"Besides," she went on after a bit, "I think Shiara likes having us." She turned to him. "But where do you want to live?"
"Anywhere you are," Wiz told her. "I'd be happy anywhere with you."
Moira bit her lip and dropped her gaze. "We need to talk about that."
"Fine," Wiz agreed, "but not now. We've got company."
Moira looked up and saw Bal-Simba picking his way across the muddy court.
"Merry met, Lord," Moira said as he came up to them.
"Merry met, Lady, Lord," the great black wizard replied as he came puffing up, his bone necklace jangling. "Merry met indeed."
"What's happening at the Capital?" Wiz asked once they were seated around the log table in the tiny cabin. Wiz and Moira sat holding hands on one side and Bal-Simba seemed to fill the rest of the dwelling.
Bal-Simba smiled "Ah, they are still as roiled as ants whose hill has been kicked over. From the ditherings of the Council you would think it was the Capital which had been destroyed, not the City of Night." Then he sobered.
"But that is not why I am here, Lord. I came to tell you that with the Dark League's power broken, we may be able to send you home again."
Wiz frowned. "I th
ought that was impossible."
"With the League in ruins many things are possible. Their wizards are scattered and cannot interfere if the Mighty band together for a Great Summoning. I have consulted the Council and we are willing to perform a Great Summoning to return you to your world."
Wiz felt Moira's hand tighten in his and caught his breath.
Home! A place with pizza, books, movies, records and music. A place where someone or something wasn't trying to kill him all the time. A place where he didn't have to be dirty or cold or frightened. And computers again.
But a place with no Moira. He saw she was staring intently at the table top. Was all the rest of it worth that?
There was something else too. He could help people here. Back home it didn't matter if he worked on a project or not, not really anyway. There were other programmers who could do what he did, although maybe not as well. Here he did matter. He could make a big difference. And that was worth a lot.
"I will not lie to you, Sparrow," Bal-Simba said. "There will be an element of danger. It will be hard to locate your world out of the multitude and even with all of us working together we are not sure we can send you back. But we believe the chances are very good."
"I don't think I want to go," he said firmly and drew Moira to him. "Not now." The hedge-witch came close, but he could still feel the tension in her body.
Bal-Simba grinned. "I thought that would be your answer. But I had to make the offer. And remember Sparrow, you can change your mind. The North owes you a great debt."
"You owe a greater debt to Patrius," Wiz said. "It was his idea."
The wizard nodded. "I wish Patrius had been here to see it."
"I wish he had too," Wiz said gravely. "He should have been here to see it. It really was his victory. Besides, I would liked to have known him."
"But you made it happen," Moira insisted. "You did the work. And Patrius made a mistake. He said you were not a wizard."
Wiz sighed. "You still don't get it, do you? I'm not a wizard. Most likely I never will be."
"There are those among the League who would dispute that—were they still alive to do so," Bal-Simba said, showing all his pointed teeth.
"They'd be wrong." Wiz sighed again. "As wrong as you are. Look, you still don't appreciate what Patrius did. It wasn't that he found me and brought me here—and I'm not unique, by the way. In fact I was probably a poor choice if things had gone as Partrius intended them. But he wasn't looking for a wizard at all."
"I did not know you had added necromancy to your talents, Sparrow."
"No magic, just logic. Although I didn't work it out until everything was all over." Wiz took his arm from around Moira's waist and leaned both elbows on the table.
"Your real problem was that you had a magical problem that couldn't be solved by magic. Every great spell was vulnerable to an even greater counterspell and as the League waxed you inevitably waned. Individually, the League's magicians were stronger than the Council's, they had to be because they didn't care about the consequences of their actions. Patrius knew that a conventional solution, a bigger magician, would only make matters worse in a generation or so when the League learned the techniques."
"That is common knowledge in the council," Bal-Simba rumbled. "Indeed one of the reasons it was so easy to get agreement to attempt to return you is there is a strong faction which wishes to be rid of you. Go on, Sparrow."
"Okay, take it one step further. Patrius must have. He realized what you needed was a completely new approach. He had the genius to see that despite everything you believed, everything your experience showed you, somewhere behind all your magic there had to be some kind of regular structure. He realized that if he could find that formalism you could control magic."
"Eh?" said Bal-Simba. "Forgive a fat old wizard, but I was under the impression that we do control magic."
"No," Wiz said emphatically and then caught himself. "Forgive me Lord, but it is true. Each magician can use the spells or demons he or she stumbles upon and masters, but none of you—Council or League—controls magic. You don't deal with magic as a whole. You have no coherent theory of magic and you usually can't generalize from what you do know to what you don't. That was the root of your problem. The League and the Wild Wood were just symptoms."
Wiz could see Bal-Simba rolling that idea around in his mind. Obviously he didn't like it, but he was not going to reject it out of hand. "Go on," he said neutrally.
"In my world we have a saying that Man is a creature who controls his environment. You're in trouble because there's an important part of your environment you can't control: magic. Patrius didn't go looking for a wizard to beat the League. He wanted someone who understood abstract formalisms and how to apply them to complex problems in the hope he could learn to control magic. He needed a computer programmer or a mathematician. Magical ability wasn't in the job description."
"It appears that he got more than he bargained for," Bal-Simba said.
Wiz shook his head. "No. He got exactly what he bargained for. I'm not a magician in the way you mean.
"I've told you about computers, the non-living thinking machines I used to work with? Well, back when they were very new we worked with them the way you work your spells. Every new program was written by cut-and-try and every program was unique. Anyone who wanted to use a computer had to be an expert and it took years of work and study to master a machine.
"Later we realized it didn't have to be that way. We found the computer could do a lot of the work. We could write programs that would take care of the tiresome, repetitive parts and we could design programs whose parts could be used over and over in many different programs.
"Finally we figured out that you didn't even have to have a programmer for every computer. You could write programs that anyone could use to do common jobs like word processing or accounting.
"So today anyone can use a computer. Even children use them regularly. You still need programmers, but we work at a higher level, on more difficult or unusual problems—or on writing the programs that those children use."
Bal-Simba frowned. "Well and good for your world, Sparrow, but I am not sure I see what use it is to us."
"Patrius did," Wiz told him. "He hoped he could do the same thing with magic we do with computers. And he was right.
"In the long run the important thing wasn't that I beat the League with magic. It wasn't even that I was able to rescue Moira." Although I'll be damned if I'll take that long a view, he thought. "The important thing was programs—ah, the 'structure'—I had to build to do it." He leaned forward intensely.
"Don't you see? With my system you don't need to be a wizard to work spells. You need programmer-wizards to create the spells, but once they are set up anyone can use them. All you have to do is understand how those spells work and anyone can make magic. Good, controllable magic."
"Magic in the wrong hands is dangerous," Bal-Simba said dubiously.
Wiz smiled. "Don't worry. Where I come from we have a lot of experience in keeping our systems secure and users' fingers out of the gears. If the spells are properly designed just about anyone can use them safely.
"And it goes beyond that. I can teach someone to do what I do. It's not hard, really. It takes an organized mind and a knack for thinking logically, but jut about anyone can learn it. If your magicians have the knack I can show them the tools and teach them how to use them.
"Don't you see?" he repeated. "It means humans don't have to walk in fear any more." He thought of a small cabin deep in the Wild Wood and the four carefully tended graves behind it. Of a burned farm near the Fringe and the mound of raw earth among the cabbages. "People don't have to be afraid."
Bal-Simba sat silent for a long time. "This will require thought," he said at last. "The Council must consider it carefully. No doubt you will be asked to come to the Capital to explain to them." He chuckled. "Oh, we're in for some rare debates in the Council chantry, I can see that."
The wizard pushe
d away from the table and rose. "But it will be soonest over if it is soonest started. And I should carry the news to them quickly. For that I will leave you now." He turned toward the door.
"No, wait!" Moira rose from the table. "There is one more thing you must do."
Bal-Simba cocked an eyebrow and waited.
Moira clasped her hands in front of her, took a deep breath and closed her eyes.
"Lord, I want you to remove the infatuation spell from Wiz," she said in a trembling voice.
"Eh?"
"Uh, never mind," Wiz told him. "I'm not sure I want it removed. Not now." He put his hands on Moira's shoulders but she shook them off with an angry gesture.
"Please, Lord. It is not fair to Wiz that I hold him in thrall thus."
"Now wait a minute . . ." Wiz began, but Moira cut him off. "It is his right, Lord."
"Now how is this?" asked Bal-Simba with a twinkle in his eye. "You wish to be rid of this troublesome Sparrow?"
"No, Lord, I do not. But I love him and I cannot . . ." she took a deep ragged breath and rushed on. "I cannot accept what is constrained from him. I love him too much to hold him by magic."
"Don't I have anything to say in this?" Wiz interjected.
Moira turned to him. "No, Wiz you do not. Not now. After the spell is removed, perhaps then. But don't you see? You feel what you must because of the spell."
"He may not love you once the spell is removed," Bal-Simba said gravely.
"Yes, I will!" Wiz shouted but neither paid any attention to him.
"I know that, Lord." Moira looked as if she would cry. "I know that. But I cannot take by magic what is not mine by right."
"You have treated him very badly, you know."
"Lord, please."
Bal-Simba steepled his hands and rested them on his great belly. "Lady, you ask a thing which is impossible."
"Lord!" Moira gasped, her face white. "But you said . . ."
