The Wiz Biz (39 page)

Ten: The City of Night

Whenever you use a jump, be sure of your destination address.

—programmers’ saying

Something had gone wrong! Wiz felt as if he had been spun around and tackled by a lineman. He was dizzy, pointing in the wrong direction and everything was wrong. His vision blurred, his head hurt and he was on the verge of throwing up.

As his sight cleared, Wiz saw he was in a low stone room. It was cold and lit by torches, not magic globes.

Ebrion stood before him.

“Merry met, My Lord,” Wiz said instinctively. Ebrion looked uncomfortable.

“Merry met, Sparrow,” came a cackling voice from behind him. “Merry met indeed.”

Wiz turned and saw a bent man in the black robe of a wizard of the Dark League. He hobbled forward, leaning heavily on his staff.

The black-robed one smiled, not at all pleasantly. “Welcome, Sparrow. Welcome to your final resting place.”

###

“Stayed behind?” Bal-Simba demanded. “What do you mean he stayed behind?”

“He departed into the Wild Wood when we had finished,” Philomen told him.

“And you let him?”

Philomen hesitated. “We had words earlier that morning. I fear he was not well-disposed toward me. Then it turned out this rock creature was in some way sentient and that disturbed him even more. The Sparrow has an unusually tender regard for magical creatures of all sorts. He seems to feel that even the useless ones should be protected.”

“So he went off into the Wild Wood. Alone.”

“Lord, I tried to reason with him, but he would not listen. I am sorry, Lord.”

“No need for that,” Bal-Simba said flipping his hand dismissingly. “Perhaps our Sparrow needs some time by himself. And in any event, the longer he stays away the better for the situation here.” He sighed. “I only wish he had gone through the settled lands rather than into the Wild Wood. But, no, you did nothing wrong.”

“Thank you, Lord,” said Philomen and withdrew with a bow.

Bal-Simba stood at the window looking out over the rooftops of the Capital toward the east as the shadows groped their way toward the horizon. Then he sighed again, shook himself and turned away to his desk.

At least he will be in no danger,
Bal-Simba told himself. As
long as he stays away from elves he is certainly more powerful than anything he is likely to meet on this wandering.

###

Wiz looked around desperately. The chamber was low but wide and long, with rough stone for the walls and floors and a couple of smoking torches to light it. Standing back in the shadows he saw even more black-robed wizards of the Dark League.

“We are going to send you back where you came from, Sparrow,” Ebrion said finally. “Back to where you belong.”

“But I don’t want to go.”

“Then you shall not,” the other, black robe, said as he hobbled more fully into the light.

Wiz gasped.

The man’s eyes glinted like chips of obsidian in a pink hairless mass of scar tissue. His nose was a slit and his ears shriveled like dried apricots. The hand clutching the staff was reduced to a claw, with only the thumb and forefinger remaining. Like the face, the hand was pink with scars.

“That was not the agreement,” Ebrion protested.

“The agreement has changed,” the other flung over his shoulder as he closed in on Wiz, thrusting his face so close Wiz could see where his eyebrows had been.

“Look upon me, Sparrow. I am called Dzhir Kar and I am your death.” His breath stank in Wiz’s face. “My form does not please you?” he said, looking up at his captive. “A pity, Sparrow. For you caused it. A ceiling fell on me when you attacked the City of Night. There was a fire as well and I lay within the flames, slowly roasting and unable to move.”

His face split into a hideous grin. “But I do not hold that against you, Sparrow. Oh no, not at all. For as I lay there and burned I discovered new strength within me. As I struggled to recover, I honed that strength. It made me Master of the Dark League, Sparrow.”

He grasped Wiz’s chin with a clawlike hand and pulled his face close.

“Look at me, little one! For I am your creation.”

Wiz twisted his chin from the other’s grasp and flinched away.

“Then look at
my
creation, Sparrow. My creation and your doom.”

He gestured and two of the black-robed wizards moved forward into the fitful light. Each of them held a heavy chain and on that chain was a thing that made Wiz catch his breath.

It was long and lean, with a body made for coursing. The legs were a hound’s legs, although the three ripping talons on each paw were like no dog that ever lived. The head was narrow with ivory fangs protruding from the heavily muscled jaws. Dzhir Kar made a gesture toward Wiz with his staff and the thing lunged and snapped at Wiz. The sound rang like a rifle shot in the gloomy chamber.

“Do you like my pet?” the black-robed wizard crooned, laying a gnarled hand upon the scaly head. “I made him especially for you, Sparrow.”

The demon remained impassive under the caress, its yellow eyes fixed hungrily on Wiz.

“Not nearly as powerful as Toth-Set-Ra’s demon, but he has seen you and that is enough. He is attuned to your magic, Sparrow. Make magic. Oh yes, please make magic. He will be upon you and your end will be truly wonderful to watch.”

Wiz started to form a spell mentally. Instantly, the creature’s yellow eyes flicked open and its ears pricked forward.

“Go ahead,” the wizard was almost dancing in anticipation. “Oh my yes, go ahead. We
want
to see
this new magic up close, don’t we?”

The man was insane, Wiz realized. Crazy and full of spite and malice at the same time.

“No?” said the wizard in a disappointed tone. “Well, we will have to persuade you then. Flaying alive for a start. With salt rubbed well into the flesh to preserve it as the skin is peeled off. Toth-Set-Ra was right; there is
so
much one can do with a wizard’s skin.”
 

“No!”
Ebrion bellowed.

Dzhir Kar stopped and regarded him as if he were an insect.

“I told you I would not have him harmed! We are to return him to his place only. That was our bargain.”

“Bargains are made to be broken,” Dzhir Kar said. He gestured to the surrounding wizards. “Take this one away.”

“Fools,” Ebrion shouted. “You seal your own doom.”

“We will see who is doomed when the Council is deprived of its most powerful member,” Dzhir Kar retorted. “And when it becomes known that one of the most powerful wizards in the North had a hand in the deed.”

As the wizards of the Dark League closed in on him, Ebrion stepped back and raised his arms. With a crash and a roar, a dozen bolts of lightning struck him where he stood. Wiz flinched from the noise and the light. So did the two wizards holding him. Instinctively, Wiz twisted in their slackened grips and broke free. Before anyone could react he was across the room and out the door.

“Get him!”
screamed Dzhir Kar and the others leapt past the still-smoldering corpse of Ebrion to comply. But Wiz was halfway down the rough flagged passageway and running for his life.

He turned the corner so fast he slipped and a bolt of lightning exploded on the stone behind him. He scrambled to his feet and ran on as the wizards came clattering out behind him.

He ran on at random, turning this way and that on panicked whim. The place seemed to be a maze of low stone passages with rough flagged floors. Behind him always he heard the sound of pursuit, sometimes close at hand and sometimes further away, but always there.

He ran out into a rotunda where five or six corridors came together and dashed down one to his left. Down another corridor he saw the bobbing gleam of torches.

The corridor was long and straight and Wiz ran down it full tilt. He was going so fast he almost ran straight into the wall ahead. Blind alley! He whirled and pounded back the way he had come, ribs aching and breath burning in his throat.

Again out into the rotunda and down another corridor. No sign of the lights now, but he was sure they were not far behind. Halfway down the corridor there was a place where the wall had collapsed. He slowed to avoid the pile of stones and saw lights before him and behind him, distant but coming his way. Without a thought he darted up the rubble pile and through the hole in the wall.

Suddenly, he was outside on a narrow street between two- and three-story buildings of rough black stone. It was night, he realized, and the moon was hidden by clouds. There was little enough light, but Wiz didn’t slow down. He turned right and pounded down the street, heedless of the stitch in his side.

The empty windows of the upper stories gaped down at him like accusing eyes. Here and there an open doorway yawned like a devouring mouth. He ran without purpose or direction, on and on until a red mist fogged his vision. Finally, chest heaving and staggering with exhaustion, he turned into one of those open doorways in. search of a place to hide and catch his breath.

Once through the door he sidled to the right, hugging the wall. After a dozen steps he stumbled, over the bottom landing of a stone staircase. Still gasping for breath, he picked his way up the stairs.

The narrow twisting staircase had no railing and the steps were uneven and slick with wear. Wiz hugged the wall and made as much speed as he dared. At last he came to the top of the tower—or what was now the top. The entire upper section was missing, the walls bulged outward and the stonework was disrupted as if someone had- set off an explosion inside it. Wiz looked out over the blasted, fire-blackened stone and for the first time he knew where he was.

The harbor with its encircling jetty, the ruined towers and the volcano bulking up behind him told him. The City of Night! The capital and base of the Dark League before their power had been broken.

A gibbous moon cast a sullen, fitful light over the landscape, picking out the tops of the ruined towers and the acres of rooftops below him. Wiz looked out over desolation and shivered.

Puffing and blowing, he sank down to sit on the stair, his back against the ruined wall and his feet dangling over emptiness. He tried to remember what he knew about the geography of this place.

Almost none of it was first-hand. He had been here only once before, when he mounted his great attack to free Moira from the League’s dungeons deep beneath the city. He had come along the Wizard’s Way and departed in the same fashion. In the hours he had been here he had never seen the surface.

The City of Night was on the Southern Continent, he remembered, separated from his home by the Freshened Sea. It was a bleak, barren land, locked in the grip of eternal winter.

Supposedly the city had been deserted after the Dark League had been defeated. Large parts had been destroyed by the forces unleashed in the final battle. The League wizards who had survived had been hunted from their lairs, their slaves had been freed and returned to their homes and the goblins and most of their other creatures had departed as well.

But the land itself was ruined beyond reclamation by decades of exercise of power with no thought to the consequences. For the people of the North, the city was a place of fell reputation where no one but would-be apprentices of the Dark League went willingly. There was nothing to attract anyone to the place and even maintaining a watchpost on the Southern Continent had been considered too difficult and not worth the effort. The City of Night had been left unrestored and uninhabited.

If there was anyone here besides the League wizards, they were unlikely to help Wiz.

Wiz ground his teeth in frustration. All he had to do to get help or to go home was to use magic. One single simple spell and it was done.

Of course, before he could ever finish that spell the monster in the dungeon would be on him. He remembered the eagerness and ferocity burning in the thing’s evil red eyes and he shuddered. He had no doubt at all the wizard had been telling him the truth.

He listened to the wind whistle through the broken tower and tried to decide what to do next.

A clattering in the street below drew his attention. Peering out through the shattered wall, Wiz saw a dark shape cross a silvery patch of moonlight. Then another and another.

“He came this way.” The voice floated up to him from the street nearly a hundred feet below.

“He must be near here,” the other wizard called out from the shadows. “Down this way.”

Wiz could not see which way he pointed, but several pairs of feet pattered off away from his hiding place.

So they weren’t waiting for him to use magic! Those searchers were as dangerous to him as the monster. They knew the; city and he did not. How many of them were there? Wiz wracked his brain trying to remember how, many wizards had been in the room when he appeared. A dozen? Certainly that. And more besides.

And Ebrion. A traitor to the Council and now dead at the hands of his erstwise allies.

Well,
Wiz thought grimly,
you brought this on yourself. If you hadn’t been so high-handed with the Council, Ebrion never would have gone to the Dark League.

Somehow the thought didn’t make him feel any better.

The wind gusted and Wiz shivered harder. He didn’t remember any part of the city being this cold. Perhaps the Dark League had warmed it by magic when they held it. Now there was slick black ice in patches on the streets and occasional piles and drifts of snow in the corners and sheltered spots.

Wiz shifted position and listened again. Save for the moan of the wind down the deserted streets and about the ruined tower, there was no sound. Slowly and cautiously, he rose and started back down the steps. He couldn’t stay here and if he didn’t find some kind of shelter soon the wind would do what the Dark League and their pet monster hadn’t yet been able to.

The moon cast a pale light on the steep, narrow street below when it was not obscured by scudding clouds. The City of Night was built on the flank of a volcano and the whole town sloped up from the harbor. Wiz hugged the side of the buildings and headed downhill. Not only was it easier walking, it was away from the underground room where he had appeared and where the wizards and his demon waited for him.