Rick Cook - Wiz Biz_玖贝云文库

- Prologue

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- Prologue

Book One:

Wizard's Bane

For Pati.

Who has her own

special brand of magic.

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Contents

Framed

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- Chapter 1

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- Chapter 1

One

Meeting in Midsummer

It was a fine Mid-Summer's morning and Moira the hedge witch was out gathering herbs.

"Tansy to stop bleeding," she said to herself, examining the stand that grew on the bankside. Carefully

she selected the largest, healthiest stems and, reciting the appropriate charm, she cut them off low with

her silver knife. She inspected each stem closely before placing it in the straw basket beside her.

When she had finished, she brushed a strand of coppery hair from her green eyes and surveyed the forest

with all her senses.

The day was sunny, the air was clear and the woods around her were calm and peaceful. The oaks and

beeches spread their gray-green and green-gold leaves to the sun and breeze. In their branches birds sang

and squirrels chattered as they dashed about on squirrelish errands. Their tiny minds were content, Moira

saw. For them there was no danger on the Fringe of the Wild Wood, even on Mid-Summer's Day.

Moira knew better. Back in her village the fields were deserted and the animals locked in their barns.

The villagers were huddled behind doors bolted with iron, bound with ropes of straw and sealed with

such charms as Moira could provide. Only a foolhardy person or one in great need would venture abroad

on Mid-Summer's Day.

Moira was out for need, the needs of others. Mid-Summer's Day was pregnant with magic of all sorts,

and herbs gathered by the light of the Mid-Summer sun were unusually potent. Her village would need

the healing potions and the charms she could make from them.

That most of her fellow hedge witches were also behind bolted doors weighed not at all with her. Her

duty was to help those who needed help, so she had taken her straw basket and consecrated silver knife

and gone alone into the Fringe of the Wild Wood.

She was careful to stay in the quietest areas of the Fringe, however. She had planned her route days ago

and she moved cautiously between her chosen stands of herbs. She probed the forest constantly, seeking

the least sign of danger or heightened magic. There was need enough to draw her out this day, but no

amount of need would make her careless.

Her next destination was a marshy corner of a nearby meadow where pink-flowered mallow grew in

spiky profusion. It was barely half a mile by the road on whose bank she sat, but Moira would take a

longer route. Between her and the meadow this road crossed another equally well-travelled lane. Moira

had no intention of going near a crossroads on Mid-Summer's Day.

She was fully alert, so she was all the more startled when a dark shadow fell over her. Moira gasped and

whirled to find herself facing a tall old man wearing a rough travelling cloak and leaning on a carved

staff.

"Oh! Merry met, Lord," she scrambled up from the bank and dipped a curtsey. "You startled me."

"Merry met, child," the man responded, blinking at her with watery brown eyes. "Why it's the little

hedge witch, Moira, isn't it?" He blinked again and stared down his aquiline nose. "Bless me!" he

clucked. "How you have grown my girl. How you have grown."

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Moira nodded respectfully and said nothing. Patrius was of the Mighty; perhaps the mightiest of the

Mighty. It behooves one to be respectful no matter what style one of the Mighty chooses to take.

The wizard sighed. "But it's well met nonetheless. Yes, very well met. I have a little project afoot and

perhaps you can help me with it."

"Of course Lord, if I can." She sighed to herself. It was never too healthy to become involved with the

doings of the Mighty. Looking at Patrius she could see magic twist and shimmer around the old man like

heat waves rising from a hot iron stove.

"Well, actually it's not such a little project," he said confidingly. "A rather large one, in fact. Yes, quite

large." He beamed at her. "Oh, but I'm sure you'll be able to handle it. You were always such an adept

pupil."

In fact Moira had been so far from adept she had barely survived the months she had spent studying with

the old wizard. She knew Patrius remembered that time perfectly. But if one of the Mighty asks for aid

he or she can not be gainsaid.

"Lord," suggested Moira timidly, "might not one of your apprentices . . . ?"

"What? My apprentices, oh no, no, no. They don't know, you see. They can't know yet. Besides," he

added as an afterthought, "they're all male."

"Yes, Lord," Moira said as if that explained everything.

The wizard straightened. "Now come along, child. The place is near and we haven't much time. And you

must tell me how you have been getting along. It's been such an age since I saw you last. You never

come to the Capital, you know," he added in mild reproach.

"For those of us who cannot walk the Wizard's Way it is a long journey, Lord."

"Ah yes, you're right, of course," the old man chuckled. "But tell me, how do things go on in your

village?"

Moira warmed. Studying under Patrius had nearly killed her several times, but of all her teachers she

liked him the best. His absentminded, grandfatherly manner might be assumed, but no one who knew

him doubted his kindness. She remembered sitting in the wizard's study of an afternoon drinking mulled

cider and talking of nothing that mattered while dust motes danced in the sunbeams.

If Patrius was perhaps not the mightiest of the Mighty, he was certainly the best, the nicest and far and

away the most human of that fraternity of powerful wizards. Walking with him Moira felt warm and

secure, as if she were out on a picnic with a favorite uncle instead of abroad on the Fringe of the Wild

Wood on one of the most dangerous days of the year.

Patrius took her straight into the forest, ignoring the potential danger spots all around. At length they

came to a grassy clearing marked only by a rock off to one side.

"Now my child," he said, easing himself down on the stone and resting his staff beside him, "you're

probably wondering what I'm up to, eh?"

"Yes, Lord." Moira stood a respectful distance away.

"Oh, come here my girl," he motioned her over. "Come, come, come. Be comfortable." Moira smiled

and sat on the grass at his feet, spreading her skirt around her.

"To business then. I intend to perform a Great Summoning and I want your help."

Moira gasped. She had never seen even a Lesser Summoning, the materializing of a person or object

from elsewhere in the World. It was solely the province of the Mighty and so fraught with danger that

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- Chapter 1

they did it rarely. A Great Summoning brought something from beyond the World and was far riskier.

Of all the Mighty living, only Patrius, Bal-Simba and perhaps one or two others had ever participated in

a Great Summoning.

"But Lord, you need several of the Mighty for that!"

Patrius frowned. "Do you presume to teach me magic, girl?"

"No, Lord," Moira dropped her eyes to the grass.

The wizard's face softened. "It is true that a Great Summoning is usually done by several of us acting in

consort, but there is no need, really. Not if the place of Summoning is quiet."

So that was why Patrius had come to the Fringe, Moira thought. Here, away from the bustle and

disturbance of competing magics, it would be easier for him to bend the fundamental forces of the

World to his will.

"Isn't it dangerous, Lord?"

Patrius sighed, looking suddenly like a careworn old man rather than a mighty wizard or someone's

grandfather.

"Yes Moira, it is. But sometimes the dangerous road is the safest." He shook his head. "These are evil

times, child. As well you know."

"Yes, Lord," said Moira, with a sudden pang.

"Evil times," Patrius repeated. "Desperate times. They call for desperate measures.

"You know our plight, Moira. None know better than the hedge witches and the other lesser orders. We

of the Mighty are isolated in our keeps and cities, but you have to deal with the World every day. The

Wild Wood presses ever closer and to the south the Dark League waxes strong to make chaos of what

little order there is in the World."

Moira's hand moved in a warding gesture at the mention of the League, but Patrius caught her wrist and

shook his head.

"Softly, softly," he admonished. "We must do nothing to attract attention, eh?

"We need help, Moira," he went on. "The people of the North need help badly and there are none in the

World who can help us. So I must go beyond the World to find aid."

He sighed again. "It was a long search, my child, long and hard. But I have finally located someone of

great power who can help us, both against the League and against the World. Now the time is ripe and I

propose to Summon him."

"But won't this alien wizard be angry at being brought here so rudely?"

"I did not say he was a wizard," Patrius said with a little shake of his head. "No, I did not say that at all."

"Who but a wizard can deal in magic?"

"Who indeed? Patrius responded. "Who indeed?"

It was Moira's turn to sigh, inwardly at least. Patrius had obviously told her as much of this mad venture

as he intended to.

"What will you of me, Lord?" asked Moira.

"Just your aid as lector," the old wizard said. "Your aid and a drop of your blood."

"Willingly, Lord." Moira was relieved it wasn't more. Often great spells required great sacrifices.

"Well then," said the Wizard, picking up his staff and rising. "Let us begin. You'll have to memorize the

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- Chapter 1

chant, of course."

Patrius cut a straight branch from a nearby tree, stripped it of its leaves and stuck it upright in the

clearing. Its shadow stretched perhaps four handsbreadths from its base, shortening imperceptibly as the

sun climbed higher.

"When the shadow disappears it will be time," he told her. "Now, here is what you must say. . . ."

The words Moira had to speak were simple, but they sent shivers down her spine. Patrius repeated them

to her several times, speaking every other word on each repetition so magic would not be made

prematurely. As a trained witch Moira easily put the words in the right order and fixed them in her mind.

While the hedge witch worked on the spells, Patrius walked the clearing, carefully aligning the positions

where they both would stand and scratching runes into the earth.

Moira looked up from her memorization. "Lord," she said dubiously, "aren't you forgetting the

pentagram?"

"Eh? No girl, I'm not forgetting. We only need a pentagram to contain the Summoned should it prove

dangerous."

"And this one is not dangerous?" Moira frowned.

Patrius chuckled. "No, he is not dangerous."

Moira wanted to ask how someone could be powerful enough to aid the Mighty and still not be

dangerous even when Summoned, but Patrius motioned her to silence, gestured her to her place and, as

the stick's shadow shortened to nothing, began his part of the chant.

"Aaagggh!" William Irving Zumwalt growled at the screen. Without taking his eyes off the fragment of

code, he grabbed the can of cola balanced precariously on the mound of printouts and hamburger

wrappers littering his desk.

"Found something, Wiz?" his cubicle mate asked, looking up from his terminal.

"Only the bug that's been screwing up the sort module."

William Irving Zumwalt—Wiz to one and all—leaned back and took a healthy swig of cola. It was

warm and flat from sitting for hours, but he barely noticed. "Here. Take a look at this."

Jerry Andrews shifted his whale-like bulk and swiveled his chair to look over Wiz's shoulder. "Yeah?

So?"

Wiz ran a long, thin hand through his shock of dark hair. "Don't you see? This cretinous barfbag uses

sizeof to return the size of the array."

"So how else do you get the size?"

"Right. But C doesn't have an array data type. When you call an array you're actually passing a pointer

to the array. That works fine from the main program, but sometimes this thing uses sizeof from a

subroutine. And guess what it gets then?"

Jerry clapped a meaty hand to his forehead. "The size of the pointer! Of course."

"Right," Wiz said smugly. "No matter how big the array, the damn code returns a value of two."

"Jeez," Jerry shook his head as he shifted his chair back to his desk. "How long will it take to fix it?"

Wiz drained his drink before answering. "Couple of hours, I guess. I'll have to run a bunch of tests to

make sure nothing else is wrong." He stood up and stretched. "But first I'm going to get another

Coke—if the damn machine isn't empty again. You want one?"

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"Nah," Jerry said, typing rapidly and not looking up. "I'm probably gonna knock off in a few minutes."

"Okay," said Wiz and sauntered out the office door.

Save for the clicking of Jerry's keyboard and the hiss of the air conditioner the corridor was quiet. Wiz

glanced at his watch and realized it was nearly five A.M. Not that it mattered much. Programmers set

their own hours at ZetaSoft and that was one of the reasons Will Zumwalt was still with the company.

The drink machine was next to a side door and Wiz decided to step out for a breath of dawn air. He

loved this time of day when everything was cool and quiet and even the air was still, waiting. As long as

I don't have to get up at this hour! he thought as he pushed the door open.

The magical lines of force gathered and curled about the old wizard. They twisted and warped, clawing

at the very fabric of the Universe and bending it to a new shape. Far to the South, across the Freshened

Sea, a point of light appeared in the watery depths of an enormous copper bowl.

"A hit," proclaimed the watcher, a lean shaven-skull man in a brown robe.

"What is it?" asked Xind, Master of the Sea of Scrying. He descended heavily from his dais and waddled

across the torch-lit chamber hewn of blackest basalt to peer over the acolyte's shoulder.

Looking deep into the murky water his eyes traced the map of the World in the lines cut deep into the

bowl's bottom. There was indeed a spark there. Magic where no magic ought to be. Around the edge of

the bowl the other three acolytes shifted nervously but kept their eyes fixed to their own sectors.

"I do not know, Master, but it's strong and growing stronger. It looks like a major spell."

Xind, sorcerer of the Third Circle as the Dark League counted such things, passed a fat hand over the

water as if wiping away a smear. "Hmm, yes. Wait, there's something . . . By the heavens and hells!

There are no wards. That's a great wizard without protection!" His head snapped up. "Let the word be

passed quickly!" The gray-robed apprentice crouched at the foot of the dais jumped up and ran to do his

bidding.

Xind stared back into the Sea of Scrying and his round, fat face creased into a particularly unattractive

smile.

"Fool," he muttered to the spark in the bottom of the bowl.

The haze in the clearing turned from wispy gray to opaque white to rosy pink. It contracted and

coalesced until it took the form of a dark red door with a silver knob, floating a yard off the meadow.

The grass bent away from it in all directions as if pressed down by an invisible ball. Moira concentrated

on her chanting and pushed harder with all the magic she possessed.

As if in slow motion the door opened and a man came through. He stepped out as if he expected solid

ground and slowly toppled through when he found air. His eyes widened and his mouth formed a

soundless O. Then everything was moving at normal speed and the man extended his arms.

Wiz took two steps and fell three feet onto grass in what should have been a level walk. He caught

himself with his arms and then collapsed with his nose in the green grass, weak, sick and disoriented.

The light was different, he was facing the wrong way and he was so dizzy he couldn't hold his head up.

He squeezed his eyes shut and concentrated on keeping his stomach in its proper place. The grass tickled

his nose and the blades poked at his tightly shut eyes, but he ignored them.

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Patrius made a flicking gesture at the man and then returned to the business of completing the spell.

Moira, absorbed in her chant, barely noticed the small drop of dark fluid fly from the Wizard's fingertips

and strike the new arrival on the temple. It splattered, spread and sank into the flesh and hair, leaving no

sign of its passing.

In the great, high, vaulted chantry of the Dark League, four black-robed wizards huddled about a

glowing crystal. They murmured and moved like a flock of uneasy crows, all the while peering into the

depths of the stone. Around them forces twisted and gathered.

The attack came with a rush of magic, dark and sour. Moira cried out in terror and gestured frantically

but she was thrust aside ruthlessly as the bolt lanced into the clearing and struck Patrius full-on.

A crackling blue nimbus burst out around the old wizard. He raised his arms over his head as if to shield

himself, but his clothes and beard burst into flame. In an instant he was a ghastly flaming scarecrow

capering about the clearing and shrieking in mortal agony. He toppled over and the screams turned to a

puling whimper. His flesh blackened and charred.

Finally there was nothing but a smouldering husk with knees and arms flexed up against the body. He

was so badly burned that there wasn't even a smell in the air.

Moira cowered sobbing on the ground, the blazing after-image burning in her sight even through her

eyelids. Wiz had gone flat on his face when the bolt hit.

All right, Wiz told himself. Time to get up. On three. One, two . . . He realized he wasn't going to make

it, so he settled for rolling over on his back.

"Lord?" a small voice asked tentatively.

Wiz opened his eyes. Standing over him was the most beautiful girl he had ever seen. Her waist-length

hair was the color of burnished copper. Her skin was pale and creamy under a dusting of freckles. Her

eyes were deep sea green. She was wearing a long skirt of forest green in some rough-woven material

and a white peasant blouse with a scoop neck. Wiz stared.

"Are you hurt, Lord?" the vision said in a lilting, musical voice. As she bent down to help Wiz up he was

treated to an ample display of cleavage.

"N-n-n-no," Wiz managed to stammer, dizzy from the transformation and awed by her loveliness. He

looked into her face. "You're beautiful," he said softly.

Moira saw the look in his eyes and swore under her breath. Fortuna! An infatuation spell! Patrius had

bound this unknown wizard to her with an infatuation spell. Gently she helped the alien wizard to his

feet and wondered if she should curtsey.

"How are you called, Lord?" Moira asked respectfully.

"Ah, Wiz. I'm Wiz Zumwalt, that is. Who are you?"

"I am called Moira, Lord, a hedge witch of this place." She ignored the discourtesy of his question. She

reddened under his fixed gaze and wondered what to do next. She had already sent an urgent call for one

of the Mighty to attend them, but even by the Wizard's Way that would take time. Wizards did not like

to be bothered by idle chatter, but this one stared so.

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"Lord, are you of the Mighty in your home?" she asked to make conversation.

"Say what?"

"Forgive me, Lord. The Mighty are the wizards of the first rank in our land."

"Wizards?" Between the transition and Moira, Wiz's brain wasn't working and he had never been much

good at small talk with beautiful women.

"Magicians. Sorcerers," Moira said a little desperately. Wiz looked blank and a dreadful thought grew in

the back of Moira's mind. "Forgive me Lord, but you are a wizard, are you not?"

"Huh. No, I'm not a wizard," Wiz said numbly, shaking his head to clear it.

Moira felt sick. This man was telling the trth! There was no sign or trace of magic about him, nothing

save his odd clothing to distinguish him from any other mortal. She turned away from him and tears

stung her eyes.

"Hey, what's wrong?" Wiz laid a hand on her shoulder.

"Everything," Moira sobbed. "You're not a wizard and Patrius is dead."

"Patrius . . . ?" Wiz trailed off. "Oh my God!" For the first time he saw the charred corpse at the edge of

the clearing.

"I'm sorry," he said. "Is there anything I can do?"

"Yes," Moira said fiercely. "You can help me bury him."

"If you value your life," the black robe hissed, "keep your mouth shut and your eyes on the floor. Toth-

Set-Ra has little patience with impertinence." Xind led the acolyte down the flagged corridor. Their

sandals scuffed on the rough stone floor and guttering torches in iron brackets gave a dim and uncertain

light to guide them.

The guards at the door were hobgoblins, creatures somewhat larger than men and nearly twice as broad

and bulky. Their laced armor shone blackly by the torchlight and the honed edges of their halberds

glinted evilly. At the approach of the wizards they snapped to attention.

"Two with news for the Dread Master," Xind said with considerably more assurance than he felt. "We

are expected." The hobgoblins nodded. One reached behind to swing open the great oaken door.

Both wizard and acolyte prostrated themselves on the threshold.

"Rise," croaked a voice from within. "Rise and speak."

The room was dark but a baleful green light played round a high-backed chair and the figure hunched in

it.

Shakily, the pair rose and moved toward the light.

The man in the chair was wizened and shrunk in on himself until he was more a mummy than a living

man. But his eyes burned red in the black pits of his hairless skull and he moved with the easy grace of a

serpent coiling to strike. The light seemed to come from within him, playing on the chair and the

amethyst goblet in his hand. The reflected greenish glow made Xind's complexion appear even more

unhealthy than usual.

"We have slain a wizard, Dread Master, one of the Mighty of the North."

"Yes," Toth-Set-Ra hissed. "It was Patrius. May his soul rot forever. And you destroyed him. How nice."

The novice started and opened his mouth to ask how the wizard knew, but Xind trod on his foot in

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Rick Cook - Wiz Biz

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