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  Wizard's Bane

  Rick Cook

  This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

  Wizard's Bane copyright © 1989 by Rick Cook.

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form.

  A Baen Books Original

  Baen Publishing Enterprises

  P.O. Box 1403

  Riverdale, NY 10471

  ISBN: 0-671-87846-8

  Cover art by Tom Kidd

  First printing, October 1997

  Distributed by Simon & Schuster

  1230 Avenue of the Americas

  New York, NY 10020

  Typeset by Windhaven Press, Auburn, NH

  Printed in the United States of America

  THE THINGAMAJIG THAT DOES THE JOB

  With a roar, four trolls charged into the clearing. They were huge and foul-smelling, clad in skins and leather and rags. One brandished a rusty two-handed sword in one hand and others carried clubs.

  A troll closed in on Moira, arms extended and fanged mouth agape. Wiz grabbed a burning faggot from the fire and charged. With a casual, backhanded swipe, the creature sent Wiz sprawling through the fire.

  Wiz rolled out as the beast got a hand on Moira. Without thinking, he reached back into the fire and grabbed a burning brand. He pointed it at the troll and yelled, "bippity, boppity, boo."

  The troll was unfazed but the tree behind it exploded into flame with a crackle and roar. The astonished troll weakened its grip and Moira twisted free.

  "Moira! Run!" Wiz yelled and ducked under the grasping arms of another troll. He twisted about and pointed the stick at it. "Bippity boppity boo!" Another tree blazed up and the troll cringed back.

  Whirling in a circle, Wiz pointed the branch and yelled, "BippityboppitybooBippityboppitybooBippityboppityboo." Trees all around the clearing turned to fiercely burning torches and the confused trolls cowered and whimpered in the ring of light and heat.

  BAEN BOOKS by RICK COOK

  The Wiz Biz

  The Wizardry Cursed

  The Wizardry Consulted

  The Wizardry Quested

  Mall Purchase Night

  Book One:

  Wizard's Bane

  For Pati.

  Who has her own

  special brand of magic.

  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."

  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 a
broad 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 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 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?"

  "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.