Rick Cook - Wiz 01 - Wizard's Bane.pdf - Rick Cook - margozap

Wizard’s Bane

Rick Cook

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 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

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?”

Rick Cook - Wiz 01 - Wizard's Bane.pdf

Plik z chomika:

Inne pliki z tego folderu:

Inne foldery tego chomika: