Putting twice as many programmers on a project that is late will make it twice as late.
—Brooks' law of programming projects
"Good morning," Karl said as he walked into his makeshift classroom.
The faces of his pupils showed they didn't think there was anything good about it. Their expressions ranged from grim determination to equally grim disapproval. He didn't know what methods Moira and Bal-Simba had used to round up the dozen or so blue-robed wizards who were sitting at the rows of tables in front of him, but he had heard hints of everything from cajolery to blackmail.
Well, Karl thought as he turned back to the blackboard. At least I don't have to worry about this bunch throwing spitballs. He turned around to face the grim-looking men and women in their magician's robes. Lightning bolts maybe, but no spitballs.
"Okay," he said. "Let's go back and review some basics."
"You sent for me, Lord?" Jerry Andrews asked as he knocked on the door of Bal-Simba's study.
The black wizard looked up. "I did. Please come in and close the door."
Uh-oh, one of those meetings! Jerry thought as he complied.
"I wanted to find out if there was any way you can speed up your project," Bal-Simba said as soon as Jerry sat down.
"Lord, as I told you at our first meeting, this will take time. We have accomplished an amazing amount, largely because you have been willing to let us alone to get on with it. We're way ahead of any reasonable schedule on this project, but we're still only about forty percent done. It just takes time, Lord."
"I know," Bal-Simba said. "But there have been some, ah, changes since our first meeting. You know that we face the possibility of war with the elves and others?"
Jerry nodded.
"What I tell you now is not common knowledge and I would keep it so. In the past three days we have lost two northern villages."
Jerry's eyes widened. "You mean they were invaded?"
Bal-Simba smiled mirthlessly. "I mean we lost them. They are not there any more. Where they stood is virgin forest once again."
"That's scary."
"Perhaps more frightening than you know. Our watchers and other magicians had not the slightest hint that anything was amiss. There was not the least quiver, not a sign that magic was at work."
"That's real scary."
"That is also why I wish to keep it quiet for the time being. But you see why we must have your new magic, and have it soon.
"If we had this we could use it as evidence to help us bargain. Or as a weapon should the bargaining fail. In either event, we must have it quickly."
Jerry thought hard. Pressure to complete a project early was nothing new and he had been in a few situations where the fate of the company depended on it. But this was the first time being late with a project meant war.
"How fast do you need it?"
"We need it today," Bal-Simba said. "But the need will be critical in a moon or less."
"We'll try," he said finally. "We'll try like hell, but there's no way we can have a working project in that amount of time."
"I understand," Bal-Simba said heavily. "Be assured that if it comes to open war we will return you and the others to your World before matters come to a head."
"Thanks," Jerry said uncomfortably. "Lord, you do understand that we're working as fast as we can? There's just not much more we can do."
"I do understand that and I thank you for your efforts. Meanwhile, is there anything we can do to make your job easier?"
Jerry made a wry face. "I don't suppose you could come up with a forty-eight-hour day, could you?"
"Would that help?" Bal-Simba asked.
Jerry froze. "You mean you can come up with a forty-eight-hour day?"
"No," the huge wizard said sadly. "Only a spell makes a night stretch to twice its normal length. The great wizard Oblius created it for his wedding night. It did not help him for he discovered that his reach exceeded his grasp—so to speak." He shrugged. "I do not think it would aid us for you to sleep twice as long.
"Or would it?" he asked as he caught the look on Jerry's face.
"Do you mean," Jerry said carefully, "that you have a spell that makes time pass half as fast?"
"We do," Bal-Simba said, "but it does not mean that time actually slows down. The people inside think so, but to outsiders they seem to speed up. Besides, it only works from sunset to sunrise."
Jerry whooped and pounded Bal-Simba on the back. "Fire up that spell! We just may be able to beat this sucker yet."
"People do not work at night," Bal-Simba protested.
"You're not dealing with people," Jerry told him. "These are programmers, boy. Programmers!"
Seklos announced his presence to his master by sniffling and wiping his nose on the sleeve of his robe. He had been showing Dzhir Kar progressively less respect as the hunt for the Sparrow dragged on interminably. Besides, his cold had gotten worse.
"We have lost another one," Seklos said without preamble.
Dzhir Kar raised his head. "Where? How?" he demanded.
"In the south tunnels. Isk-Nor. Killed like the others."
Dzhir Kar nodded. So far half a dozen of the Dark League's wizards had disappeared in the City of Night. Two of the bodies had been found, torn to pieces. Privately Dzhir Kar suspected that most or all of the others had deserted.
"I gave instructions that none were to hunt alone."
"He was not hunting. He was returning from a trip to a warehouse when he became separated from his companion."
"You mean he was out looting and found more than he bargained for," Dzhir Kar said sharply. "I warned you all that it is dangerous to go poking about. The City of Night is no longer ours."
Seklos sniffed and wiped his reddened nose on the sleeve of his robe. "And I warned you we must be done with your notion and sport and use magic to find him quickly."
"No! No detection spells. I forbid it."
"This is absurd! If you wish the Sparrow dead, then let us find him and kill him. "But this constant chasing about wastes our time and disperses our energies."
"Do you question my authority?" Dzhir Kar said dangerously.
"No master, only your judgment."
Dzhir Kar glared at his second in command. Under Toth-Set-Ra it would have been unthinkable for one of the Dark League, even the second, to use such language to the leader. But Toth-Set-Ra was dead. Dzhir Kar did not have his predecessor's power.
"I will consider what you say," he said at last.
"Consider this also. There are those who grow restive. The deaths and disappearances of their fellows upset them. All are cold and hungry and many wonder if the prize is worth the effort. Today they grumble quietly. But soon they will do more than that. We must either find the Sparrow or call this off and do one or the other quickly."
Dzhir Kar nodded and waved dismissal. The wizard bowed and, still sniffling, backed from the room.
After Seklos left, Dzhir Kar sat for a long time with his head bowed and his hood pulled up around his face. His lieutenant was right, the deaths and disappearances had made the other wizards nervous. If something was not done, he would have a mutiny on his hands—probably led by Seklos.
His position was anything but secure and he and Seklos both knew it. Unlike Toth-Set-Ra, who had a powerful slaying demon at his beck, or the councils which had ruled the Dark League by playing off the shifting factions, Dzhir Kar ruled by the force of his personality alone. As long as he led the Dark League to success, or at least kept it out of major trouble, he would remain in power. But this business had occupied far too many of his wizards far too long in something both boring and dangerous. If that did not change quickly, the Dark League would have a new leader.
He had promised the Dark League that this would be a simple task. Use the turncoat northern wizard to lure out the Sparrow, rely on the homing demon to neutralize the Sparrow's alien magic and then kill him quickly. On the strength of the League's hatred for the Sparrow and the demonstration of his demon, the League wizards had agreed to his plan.
He raised his head and looked over to where his creation sprawled, eyes slitted and tendrils quivering as it sought a trace of the Sparrow's magic. Dzhir Kar frowned. He hadn't told them the whole truth about his demon. A wizard never did, of course, for knowledge was power. But in this case he had concealed a crucial fact and now that concealment was coming back to haunt him.
It was not a desire for sport that kept him from using detection spells, it was necessity. Detection spells would interfere with the demon's senses. If anyone tried to use a detection spell to find the Sparrow, the demon would not be able to sense his magic in time to stop him from casting a spell. The League knew all too well what the Sparrow's magic was like if he were free to employ it.
Dzhir Kar's head dropped back on his chest and his claw hand tightened on the arm of his chair. Close. So very close to success and now time was running out.
"Two no-trump."
Karl, Nancy, Mike and Larry Fox were sitting at the table in the Wizard's Day Room, all hunched over their cards.
"I thought you'd given up on cards," Jerry said as he came over to them.
"We did, but we figured out a way to make it work," Nancy told him.
"Yeah. It turns out that in this universe a shuffled deck of cards is in something like a Schroediger-indeterminate state," Mike explained. "The cards don't have a value until you—ah—'collapse the state vector' by revealing them."
"Which means you can't play a game if no one has seen the order of the cards," Nancy said. "Even Canfield solitaire, you go through the whole pack the first time."
"Anyway, the key to playing is to collapse the state vector after the cards are shuffled and before they're dealt."
"But if you have to look at the cards what's the point of playing?"
"Oh, the players don't have to know the values," Karl said. "It's enough if someone or something else does. So," he gestured at the head of the table, "meet Moe the Dealer."
Sitting there was a small demon wearing a green eyeshade, a violently patterned vest and garters to hold his shirtsleeves up. His skin was a particularly pale and unhealthy shade of green and a large cigar stuck out of the corner of his mouth.
"So youse gonna bid or youse gonna talk?" Moe demanded in a raspy voice.
"He looks at the cards after he shuffles and before he deals," Larry explained.
"Come on, come on, play cards," Moe said.
Jerry shook his head. "Amazing. Well, finish your game. Starting tonight we go on overtime."
Dark purple shadows were already creeping across the landscape when Danny climbed through the trap door and out onto the roof. June was already there, looking out over the World.
"I guess you heard there's a war brewing," he said without preamble as he sat down next to her. June nodded without taking her eyes off the horizon.
"They've got to have the project even faster, so they've worked out something special," he said eagerly. "They're going to use magic to stretch the nights in the Bull Pen so we can get more work done."
June gasped and turned to him, her face chalk white. "No!"
"Hey, take it easy, it's not that big a thing."
June grabbed Danny's hand and held it tight in both of hers.
"Do not go! If you go you will never come out again."
"Hey now . . ." Danny said, but June started to cry silently.
He put his arm about her and patted her shoulder. "Look, it will be all right, I promise. It's only for a night."
"A night in such a place lasts an eon," June said. "I will be dead and dust ere you return."
"No you won't," Danny said and reached forward to pat her shoulder.
June released her hand and locked her arms about him fiercely. She pressed her lips to his and her tongue was like a living thing in his mouth.
Wordlessly she drew him down onto the roof slates, fumbling with his shirt as they went.
Half numb and half exhilarated, Danny followed where she led.
The moon peeking over the gabled roof caught the two naked bodies stretched on the slates. Danny rolled over on his side and admired the play of moonlight and shadow on the curve of June's hip.
"You're really something, you know that?" He ran his hand up over her hip and pressed her small breast, feeling her nipple harden in the center of his palm. June smiled contentedly and turned toward him, lifting her mouth up for a kiss,.
Danny kissed her long and gently. Then he broke away with a sigh and reached behind him for his clothes.
"You know I'm gonna get in a lot of trouble for this."
June didn't say anything; she just looked at him.
Danny got to his knees and picked up his pants. "I gotta see if I can get in."
June grasped his wrist hard. "You will not go."
Danny fidgeted. "I've got to," he said. "Look, this is important. For everybody, okay? They need me. I've got to go, okay?"
This time June seemed to accept it. She dropped her hands to her side and nodded dumbly.
He pulled his shirt over his head. "I'm gonna have to apologize all over the place, tell 'em how sorry I am." He stopped talking while he tucked his shirt into his pants. Then he leaned over and kissed her. "But I'm not sorry."
June smiled but her gaze was troubled.
Danny was in a daze as he made his way down the stairs and out into the courtyard. He wasn't sure what, but something had changed up there on that rooftop and somehow he knew the world would never be the same.
He approached the Bull Pen cautiously. It didn't look any different tonight than it had on any other night. The whitewashed sides shone silver in the moonlight and warm yellow light leaked out of the cracks around the door. But as he got closer he felt a tingling on his skin and the hairs on his arms and legs rose.
The feeling got stronger as he got closer. When he reached for the door there was a resistance like moving his hand through water. The latch was hard to work and the door was very hard to open. When he stepped through something pressed against his face and he couldn't breathe. Then he was through the door and everything was normal again.
"Where the hell have you been?" Jerry demanded as Danny came in.
"Just out."
He looked at him suspiciously.
"You were out screwing around, weren't you?"
Danny just grinned.
"Dammit, we're here to do a job, not get laid by the locals. If you can't keep your mind on what you're doing, then you don't belong here. Is that clear?"
Around them the other programmers were bent to their work, studiously ignoring Jerry and Danny.
"Yes, sir." Danny said meekly.
"I don't care what you do between sunrise and sunset or who you do it with. Men, women or underage goats, it doesn't matter. But between sunset and sunrise your ass belongs to me and you'll have it in here working. Do you understand me?"
"Yes, sir."
"Then get the hell over there and get it to work."
Danny's ears burned, but somehow the dressing down didn't sting as much. For perhaps the first time in his life, Danny knew that somebody really cared what happened to him.
As Danny took his seat Jerry shook his head and muttered under his breath before turning back to the routine he had been analyzing with Cindy Naismith.
"Are you sure that little punk's nineteen?" she asked. "He acts more like thirteen."
"He has a California driver's license that says he's nineteen." He looked at her. "He been bothering you?"
"No, nothing like that. At least not me any more than everyone else. But what the hell is he doing here?"
"Moira wanted him. Not my idea. Wouldn't be the first time the customer stuck a dud on a project team."
"Yeah, but usually they're the project manager's girlfriend or something."
"His work's not bad."
"No," Cindy admitted. "He likes to hack an easy out and he hates doing grunt work, but he's bright and he seems to take to this kind of programming."
"Let's just hope his love life lets him get some work done," Jerry grumbled. "We've just doubled our number of programmer hours and we still can't afford to waste any of them."
The sun was just breaking over the distant mountains when the spell quit and the world jerked back to normal for the team. Most of them took it as a signal to stretch, yawn and head for bed. Mike and Larry stayed at their desks, deep in their work even after so many hours. Judith left with the rest, but she wasn't ready for bed yet. Every day at dawn dragon riders left the Capital on patrol. This was the perfect opportunity to see the dragons.
The aeries were in the cliff beneath the castle. Judith was nearly trembling with excitement as she made her way down the long flights of stairs cut into the rock. All her life she had dreamed about dragons, unicorns and other magical creatures and now she could see them close up. Maybe she could even get one of the dragon riders to take her for a ride. A handsome dragon rider.
In her mind's eye she was already soaring over the castle on dragon back when she reached the portal into the aerie. The two guardsmen on duty recognized her as one of the foreign wizards, which meant she was of the Mighty, after a fashion, and thus allowed to go nearly anywhere. It never occurred to them that she did not know what she was doing when she nodded to them and strode out onto the floor of the aerie.
The aerie was clangor, noise and barely organized confusion. Dragons were being harnessed, armed and carefully guided to their places. Swarms of men and women worked around them, grooming them, tending them and carefully moving the ones ready to fly to their assigned places.
The dragons themselves were fit and eager. They pranced and tried to flex their wings in anticipation. It took careful work by their handlers and a lot of attention from their riders to keep them calm.
As Judith watched, another dragon came up to the mark, spread its huge leathery wings and charged straight at the rectangle of sunlight that was the gate to the outside. It plunged through the portal, disappeared from sight for an instant below the sill and then rose into view again, wings beating as it climbed to join its fellows circling above.
Judith was so enchanted she didn't see the dragon being brought up behind her until she stepped right in front of it.
The dragon snorted explosively, jerked its head back and lashed its tail in surprise. The whipping tail missed another dragon by inches and slammed into a food cart, knocking it over and spilling chunks of beef and cow intestines everywhere.
The second dragon saw the food laid out before it and lunged for the meat in spite of the efforts of its crew. The first smelled the meat and turned, drawing a warning roar from the other dragon. The first one roared back a challenge and both beasts tried to rear and spread their wings in threat.
What had been organized confusion dissolved into chaos, with dragon roars reverberating from one end of the aerie to the other and men running everywhere trying frantically to get the animals under control.
The Master of Dragons, a gray-haired man with the light, compact build of a dragon rider and an empty sleeve from the accident that had ended his riding days came charging down from his platform.
"You fornicating moron," he yelled at Judith over the roars of the dragons and the shouts of the men, "Get the fornicating shit off the floor!"
While the crews fought to control the dragons, rough hands grabbed Judith and hustled her out the door.
She stumbled through the portal and stood white and shaking under the disapproving eye of the guards for a moment. Then she burst into tears and dashed up the stairs.
With the coming of the programming team Moira had blossomed. The programmers were ignorant of the ways of this World and they had no time to learn. From her association with Wiz, Moira was better equipped to deal with them than anyone else in the Citadel—even if she frequently didn't understand them. So Moira became 'liaison, staff support and den mother' with her own box on the table of organization charcoaled on the wall of Bullpen.
For the first time since she had come to the Capital, Moira had a job that kept her busy and fulfilled. Most of the time it also kept her mind off Wiz.
She did not go into the Bullpen at night, but her days were filled with obtaining materials the team needed, making sure there was sufficient ink and parchment available, and now with the new spell seeing that food would be ready for them when they emerged at dawn. She also served as go-between to smooth matters between the team and the Mighty and the Citadel's people.
Thus she was the one the Master of Dragons cornered later that morning and berated because one of those execrable new wizards had the fornicating stupidity to blunder out into the execrable aerie just as the execrable morning patrols were taking off. This execrable woman nearly caused a dragon fight, disrupted operations and delayed launching half the patrols by nearly a day-tenth. If these execrable aliens couldn't stay in their places he would go to the execrable Council and get an execrable spell to put a fornicating wall of fire across the fornicating door to the fornicating aerie.
"Begging My Lady's pardon, of course," the man said when he paused for breath.
Moira agreed with him, soothed him, promised him it would never happen again and sent him away still grumbling but more or less content.
After he left, she sat in the tiny room at the keep she used for an office and scowled at the wall. From the Master's description she recognized that the offender was Judith, but what in the World had she been doing in the aerie? Everyone knew dragons were difficult, chancy creatures whose handling had to be left to experts. Even if someone didn't know that, it was obvious that a fire-breathing monster with an eighty-foot wingspan was not something to be approached as casually as a pony. These people from Wiz's world might be strange and more than a touch fey, but they were intelligent and they did not appear suicidal.
Well, speculation gets me nothing, she thought, rising from her desk. The thing to do is find Judith and have a talk with her.
That and give orders to the guardsmen that the team is not to be allowed free run of the castle, she added as she went out the door.
It took Moira the better part of an hour to find the miscreant. She was standing on the parapet looking so utterly miserable that Moira's carefully prepared scolding died in her throat.
"My Lady, are you all right?"
"Oh, hello Moira," Judith sniffed. "No, I'm fine."
"Forgive me, but you seem upset."
Judith smiled wanly. "I was just thinking that you should be very careful what you wish for because you may get it."
"My Lady?"
Judith turned toward her and Moira could see she had been crying.
"You heard what happened this morning? When I went to see the dragons?"
"That was not wise, My lady. Dragons are dangerous."
"Yeah. Dangerous, nasty-tempered, foul-smelling beasts." She took a sobbing breath. "Up close they're not even pretty."
"I am sorry if they frightened you, My Lady."
"No, they didn't exactly frighten me." She smiled through her tears. "I probably scared the dragons worse than they scared me. I guess I'm really mourning the death of my dreams."
She sniffed again and smiled with one corner of her mouth. "Funny isn't it? I'm thirty-three years old and I've still got dreams. Or I did until I came here. I believe in romance. Not so much the boy-girl kind as, well—romance."
"Romance?" Moira asked, puzzled.
"Yeah. Castles, dragons, knights in shining armor. All that stuff. And then one day they all come true. And you know what? They're all about as romantic as a Cupertino car wash."
Moira thought about it for a minute.
"Why should it be otherwise? People are people in your World or mine. As best I can see they all have the same wants and needs."
"Yeah, but it was supposed to be different! Does that make any sense?" Judith asked miserably.
"In a way," Moira said. "I am not what you call a romantic person, but I think I understand somewhat.
"You know they tell the story of Wiz and I throughout the North." A quick smile. "We are heroes, you see. Figures of romance.
"But what we did was not terribly heroic and it wasn't at all romantic. Mostly I was very frightened and cold. Wiz was too angry that I had been stolen to be heroic. We both did the best we could and by fortune it worked out well."
"So what you're saying is there is no romance in the world, in any world?"
"No, but I think there is another element, one that comes between the doing and the hearing. That is what turns something frightening or wearying or utterly miserable into a romance. I think that element is in the mind of the teller."
She paused and looked out over the battlements to the fleecy clouds. "I think you confuse what is outside with what is within you. The dragons, or the freeways, those are the external things. It is not the deeds or the things that make a romance, it is what you do with them inside yourself.
"My lady, do you remember the day you arrived, when the dragon cavalry swept over the keep? You made us see them in a way we had never seen them before. I think that is the real secret of romance. Not places or people, but the ability to look at the World and see the romance that is there."
Judith quirked one side of her face up into a smile. "You may be right. I sure don't seem to be having much luck finding that quality outside of me."
"But you have it inside, Lady. That is better than not having it at all."
"I guess you're right," Judith said, fumbling a well-used handkerchief from her gown's sleeve. "Thanks."
"You are mor than welcome, My lady. Just stay out of the aeries, please."
As the days dragged on Wiz came to know his pursuers well enough that they developed distinct personalities. There was the fat one who hated to exercise and who searched perfunctorily and never a place that was hard to reach or might be dangerous. There was the one who was addicted to laying in ambush, but whose fondness for onions and persistent flatulence gave him away. There was the lean one with the long arms who seemed to delight in rooftops and other high places.
And then there was Seklos. Seklos of the keen nose, who never seemed to rest and who searched relentlessly, who poked into every nook and cranny and who checked everything.
This couldn't go on. He would slip sooner or later. So far only more luck than any mortal deserved had kept him alive and free. But that couldn't last.
Meanwhile, the longer this murderous game of hide-and-seek went on, the more likely it was that there would be a war. It wasn't just his life that was on the line here—although that is a major consideration, he thought, it was the fate of the entire World.
Well, if he couldn't run forever and he had to survive, there was only one thing to do. He didn't want to fight the Dark League, but they would not rest until he was dead. He had no way out so he had to fight them to the death.
Yeah, but whose death? He shook the thought off and began to consider methods of fighting back.
This place was odd, Wiz thought. It was a tower in the shadow of what had obviously been a major palace. But the tower was squat and ill-proportioned with doorways big enough to drive a truck through.
The peculiar proportions were emphasized by the fact that the top was missing, blasted away during his attack on the city. But it was sound up to the fourth level, which was where Wiz was standing now.
The room was large and roughly circular, with a single large French door that led out onto a tiny balcony overlooking the street below. It gave a wonderful view of the city, but aside from that seemed useless.
So did the contents of the room. It had either been stripped or hadn't had anything in it to begin with. Just a few stone benches around the walls and some miscellaneous trash on the floor.
He was about to leave when he heard voices outside. Someone was coming up the street below and it could only be wizards of the Dark League.
Normally Wiz would have run away, but his new resolve made him step out on the balcony to check out the situation.
The situation could not have been better. Laying on the balcony were several large blocks of stone which must have fallen when the top of the tower went. Coming up the narrow street were two wizards of the Dark League and one of them was Seklos!
Wiz picked up one of the blocks of stone and rested it on the carved stone railing. Then he watched the wizards get closer and closer and smiled.
" . . . dragging me all the way up here," the other wizard said as they came closer. Wiz recognized him as the cautious one.
"Because this is where he must be," Seklos said. "Fool, do you not see that the quicker we catch this most troublesome bird, the sooner we can leave this place?"
Wiz put both hands on the block and held his breath.
"But why me?" the other wizard asked.
He never got his answer. At that moment they came under the balcony and Wiz shoved the rock over the edge.
Wiz watched with a sinking heart as the stone smashed into the pavement and shattered a good arm's length behind his intended victim. He scuttled back from the edge dislodging a shower of pebbles in the process.
Seklos' companion gaped at the shattered rock on the pavement behind them. "Dangerous place." He looked up at the tower nervously. "The stones are loose."
Seklos looked up at the parapet. "I do not believe in such accidents." He turned to his companion. "Go, spread the word that this area is to be cordoned off and searched most carefully. I think we may be near our Sparrow."
As he pounded down the stairs, Wiz realized he had made a serious mistake. There was only one door to the tower and that was just around the corner from where the wizards had been standing. If he didn't get out the door before Seklos came looking for him . . .
Too late! He was still nearly a flight from the bottom when Seklos came through the door and into the tower. As quietly as he could, Wiz backed up the stairs.
Seklos came on, staff in hand, ready to strike at the slightest sound or movement. Wiz moved back up the spiraling stairs ahead of him. There was no time to open a door and no room to squeeze past his pursuer. The only place he could go was back into the room where he had thrown the rock.
That'll still work, he thought, fighting down the panic rising inside him. He can't see me and as soon as he comes into the room I'll be able to slip around him and get down the stairs. Moving as quietly as he could, he eased through the door and made for the far end, next to the window.
Seklos strode into the room and sniffed the air. His head swung this way and that like a hunting dog tracing a scent. Wiz stood stock still, afraid to breathe. Two more steps and he would be far enough in that he could get behind him and out the door.
Seklos took a single cautious step into the room and scanned from side to side. The wizard stopped short. "What . . ." Then his face split in an evil smile.
"A cloak of invisibility? Clever Sparrow. Oh, very clever indeed. But did they not tell you never to stand in a sunbeam wearing a tarncape?" He raised his hand and flicked his wrist in the direction of the window. Wiz had a glimpse of something silvery flying through the air. Instinctively he dove and rolled.
Behind him the stone wall exploded into flame. Wiz hugged the floor and squinted his eyes shut to block out the heat.
Dust! Wiz thought frantically. The dust gave me away! Seklos must have seen his outline in the sunlit dust motes. He raised his head and saw Seklos blocking the doorway, his staff extended in front of him. Behind him a wall of luminous blue blocked the doorway.
In desperation, Wiz hefted the halberd. He knew he couldn't get in under the staff with the shorter weapon, so he threw it at the wizard, sidearm so it spun horizontally.
As soon as it left Wiz's hands the halberd became visible. Seklos dodged it easily, swaying to one side like a snake. His face lit with unholy glee as he watched it sail past him.
"So you confirm your presence. Thank you, Sparrow. And now you cannot hide. Your cloak cannot save you." The wizard extended his staff and waved it from side to side like a blind man while he fumbled in his sleeve.
On tiptoe Wiz backed away from the questing staff. No good to try to get around him. Frantically he looked for someplace to hide.
The only possible place was under one of the benches. Wiz squeezed beneath the nearest one, face to the wall in a vain attempt to muffle his breathing. He clinched his eyes tight and waited to feel the lethal staff tip in the center of his back.
"Come out, little Sparrow," the hateful, hate-filled voice crooned. "Come out and face your end."
There was a hideous roar followed by a ringing scream cut short in mid-cry. Then there was a thrashing and horrible crunching noise. Wiz forced himself further back into the crevice.
Then all was silence. No sound from Seklos, no sound of anything else. As quietly as he could Wiz twisted around and looked out.
At first he thought it had suddenly turned to night. All he saw from beneath the bench was blackness. And then the blackness moved. The enormous black body hopped ponderously to one side, the huge head turned. Wiz went weak from sheer terror.
The thing looked at Wiz with burning red eyes and then turned away. It lumbered through the last dying vestiges of the blue fire and out the door. Wiz heard it make its way down the corridor.
It took a long time for Wiz to get his heart back under control. The monster had destroyed the wizard and it looked right at him, but it hadn't touched him. The way the thing looked at him Wiz knew it had to have seen him. But it hadn't made a move to harm him. Somehow Wiz did not think it was because the monster was a friend.
Wiz had never seen the huge black creature, but he recognized it from descriptions. It was Bale-Zur, the slaying demon which had brought Toth-Set-Ra to power in the Dark League and then destroyed him when Wiz attacked the City of Night.
There was something about that. Something he had learned. He cudgeled his brains, trying to recall that almost-remembered bit of knowledge. Something he saw? No, something someone told him. Before he used his new magic to travel to the City of Night and rescue Moira. Something someone told him about demons, or dragons, or . . .
Of course! True names. Humans weren't the only creatures with true names. Fully mature dragons had them. And so did some kinds of demons because it was only by knowing their true names that they could be controlled. That was how Bale-Zur found his prey. Unlike other demons, the great slaying demon did not need to know a thing's true name to destroy it. All it needed was for the being's true name to have been spoken somewhere in the World at some time.
And of all mortals in the world, William Irving Zumwalt was the only one safe from Bale-Zur. No one had ever spoken his full name—his true name—anywhere in this World.
Licking his lips, he stepped over the gruesome remains of the wizard. As he did so he kicked something that rolled across the floor.
Wiz was almost afraid to look down for fear his foot had touched some body part. But it was only a silvery sphere about the size of a baseball that had been clutched in what was left of Seklos' hand.
Seklos must have grabbed it when Bale-Zur attacked him, Wiz thought. Overcoming his revulsion, he bent down and picked up the sphere. He couldn't be sure but it looked like the thing that the wizard had thrown at him, the one that spread fire on the stones.
He forced himself to look at what was left of Seklos and realized his left sleeve was lumpy. Swallowing his gorge, Wiz reached into the blood-sodden sleeve and fished out two more of the spheres. He could have done it faster except he kept his eyes closed through the whole process.
The three spheres gave him weapons, his first real weapons that might be effective against the wizards of the Dark League.
The wizards . . . ! Seklos had sent his companion for help. Wiz stuffed the balls into his pouch, grabbed his halberd and dashed down the stairs. There were three wizards not more than a hundred yards up the street when he emerged from the building. Without hesitating, Wiz ran around the corner, leaving the black robes to wonder at the sound of footsteps with no sign of the runner.
Several blocks away, Wiz sank back against the wall of an empty storeroom and listened for any sound of pursuit.
The situation got worse and worse. His cloak of invisibility's spell had some loopholes. Wiz had no doubt at all that there were counter-spells that would render it useless.
Wiz forced himself to calm down and think. Through all the hunger and cold and terror, he had to think.
He had to summon help somehow and if he expected to live long enough for that he had to defeat or neutralize the Dark League. Two problems and both of them looked insoluble.
But maybe—just maybe—one problem could solve another again.
He needed magic to get out of here. If not magic to walk the Wizard's Way, then a burst of magic to attract the Watchers who stood guard over the whole of the World.
But it didn't have to be a burst of his magic.
Wiz looked at the three spheres in his lap and a plan began to form in his mind.
Dzhir Kar rested his pink scarred forehead in his one good hand and ground his teeth in frustration.
The Sparrow had slipped through his grasp again. They had been within a hairsbreadth of him this time, he knew it. Yet that damnable little bird had fluttered through his clutches once more.
And now Seklos was gone. Seklos the tireless, the indefatigable. Seklos who hated this Sparrow almost as much as he did. Torn apart by something in the upper city while the entire contingent of the Dark League came running to his rescue.
That hadn't been lost on the rest of his band. They had seen what had happened to Seklos and the sight had done nothing for their ardor in the search. Now most of them wanted to leave the City of Night and abandon the search. Only his overwhelming skill at magic and the loss of the natural leader of any opposition to him kept them here.
Still his demon lay coiled in an alcove of the chamber. Occasionally it would raise its head and the tendrils along its fanged mouth would quiver as the Sparrow considered using magic, but so far there was no magic from this most alien of wizards, nothing the demon could home in on.
It was enough, Dzhir Kar thought, to make a wizard cry.