The Wizardry Cursed

Ten: WRECK’S WARNING

The programming team was up to its elbows in source code when Arianne came into their workroom.

"Forgive me, my Lords, my Lady," the tall blonde lady said as she entered the room. "Are you occupied?"

Wiz turned toward the door. "Occupied, but not super busy. What’s up?"

"Bal-Simba sent me to request your presence."

"Sure. In his office?"

"At Oak Island off the south coast. A strange thing has washed ashore at the village. Bal-Simba asks that you examine it."

Wiz looked over at the pile of scrolls and the shimmering letters hanging above his desk and paused. A summons to meet Bal-Simba here was one thing. A jaunt to a distant village to look at something was another matter. Even walking the Wizard’s Way, such a trip would probably eat the rest of the day.

"Can’t we just send one of our searching units?" he asked. "We do have to get this stuff done before-"

Arianne hesitated. "Lord, I think you had better see this personally."

"What is it?"

"We do not know. But from the description I think it owes more to your world than ours."

Wiz smelled salt and mud. They were in a hollow between two sand dunes. Gray-green sand grasses and little twisted shrubs grew here and there around them and even in this sheltered spot a breeze ruffled the vegetation and their clothing.

There was a man waiting for them, a rough, grizzled fellow dressed in the bulky knit sweater and canvas trousers favored by the folk who made their living upon the Freshened Sea.

"My Lords, welcome," he said, bowing perfunctorily, as if unused to the exercise. "I am Weinrich, the mayor of Oak Island."

Moira curtsied and the rest bowed. "Well met, Lord. I am Moira and these are the wizards Sparrow, Jerry and Danny."

Weinrich’s face cleared, as if a burden had been lifted from him.

"Ah, well met indeed. They said you might come."

"Well, we’re here," Wiz said a trace sharply. "Let’s see the thing that’s causing all the fuss."

With the growing importance of Wiz’s new magic, and the spreading word that he was from beyond the World, there was a growing tendency to ascribe anything out of the ordinary to the new magic. Normally Arianne and Bal-Simba did not take the villagers’ reports this seriously, still…

As they climbed the dune Wiz saw four dragons flying complex figure eight patterns off the beach, obviously on guard.

"If this is another piece of driftwood," he muttered to Jerry as they toiled up the sand dune, "I’ll…"

Then he came over the rise and saw what was down on the beach.

The villagers had dragged it further up the beach, above the tide line. Now they clustered in knots at a respectful distance.

Off to one side the village hedge witch conferred nervously with a blue-robed wizard of the Mighty. Occasionally he would look over at the thing as if to make certain it had not moved under its own power.

It was worth looking at, Wiz had to admit. To the fisherfolk of this isolated island it must have seemed strange beyond all imagining.

One wing was crumpled under it and the other canted into the air. The front of the body was stove in, apparently from hitting the water. As they got closer Wiz could smell the sharp chemical reek of gasoline.

"An airplane," Danny said.

"Perhaps, but there is magic here as well," Moira said.

Wiz didn’t have his wife’s nose for magic, so he fished out the magic detector he carried in his pouch. The crystal glowed a strong green as he pointed it at the craft.

Magic all right. But gasoline as well. He felt the hair begin to rise on his neck. Whatever this thing was, it was very, very wrong.

"Moira, you and the others stay back. Jerry and I will go in for a closer look."

Moira nodded. "Be careful, love."

"Very careful."

Wiz and Jerry half-stumbled, half-slid down the seaward face of the dune, oblivious to the sand that was trickling into their shoes. As they got onto the beach, they split up. Wiz approached from the tail and Jerry eased toward the crushed nose. There was no sign of movement.

The sea breeze swished through the grasses at the edge of the beach, drowning out the villagers’ whispers and dulling the wizards’ conversation to an unintelligible murmur.

"Look at this!" Jerry called. "It’s got a gasoline engine."

As Wiz ducked under the wing of the plane to join him, Jerry reached out and gave the cowling fasteners an expert twist. Then he flipped the cowling back to expose the power plant.

"High output two-stroke," he said looking it over. "That thing probably puts out ninety horses in spite of its size." He looked further. "No muffler. If that thing was a two-stroke the villagers should have heard it coming for miles."

"It had to be running," Wiz said. "But that’s impossible."

"Maybe not," Jerry pointed to the front of the plane. "Look at the prop. Only one blade bent. That means it wasn’t turning when it went in."

Wiz knelt down beside the propeller. "If it crashed here it’s not surprising. That engine couldn’t possibly run in this World."

"Do you think it was sucked through from our world?"

Wiz shrugged. "Maybe, but how? And why? Anyway, the thing’s obviously not dangerous now. Let’s get the others down here."

Moira and Danny quickly joined them at the wreck. The other wizards kept their distance.

"It’s our technology, all right," Wiz said as the others came up. "No cockpit, so it was a drone of some kind."

"What about the magic?" Moira asked.

Wiz looked at his magic detector. "That seems to be concentrated in the boxes in the mid-section."

"If I didn’t know better I’d say that was an instrument bay," Jerry said, ducking under the up-tilted wing and squatting down beside it.

"Don’t be too sure you know better."

Jerry popped the fasteners and lifted the covering. Inside was a wild tangle of wires and printed circuit boards leading back to several oddly carved lumps of pearl-gray material.

"Cute," Jerry said at last. "Some of this stuff is obviously electronic, but the guts of it," he pointed to the pearl-gray lumps, "are obviously magical."

"We can probably untangle the electronics, but the magic?" He looked over at Moira.

"That is likely to be difficult, my Lord. We do not know who made those things or what they are supposed to do." She frowned and concentrated. "I can tell you that the spells are most powerful, however."

"So the magic’s fine," Jerry summed up. "It’s the engine that doesn’t work."

"Of course the engine doesn’t work," Wiz said irritably. "It couldn’t work here. The whole thing’s impossible."

"Oh yeah?" Danny retorted. "Take a look at those exhaust pipes."

Wiz followed Danny’s pointing finger and saw that the pipes were discolored where they came out of the cylinders.

"Heat did that. That sucker ran and it ran for a while."

"But if the engine worked, then the guidance system and the imaging stuff wouldn’t. They’re based on magic."

"Wait a minute," Wiz said. "Let me try something. emac!" he commanded.

"?"

"list"

The Emac took the quill from behind his ear and scribbled furiously in the air. Lines of fiery symbols appeared and scrolled upward from the Emac.

"carat S" Wiz pronounced and the Emac froze in mid-line.

"Hey, I recognize that!" Wiz peered closely at the glowing letters of fire. "Not only are they magic, they’re our magic. These spells were written with our magic compiler or something damn like it."

Four pairs of eyes met over the wreckage and no one said anything.

"This will do," Glandurg puffed, looking around the grove.

"High time too," Thorfin wheezed, coming up behind him nearly bent double by the climb and the weight of the enormous pack he carried.

One by one the other dwarves filed into the clearing and dumped their packs. The griffins had left them off at dawn on the other side of the forest and they had been walking ever since. The wooded land was a collection of craggy hills cut by little valleys and laced with brooks and streams. Generations of firewood gathering by mortals had left the woods open and parklike under the spreading trees, but it was still hard going, even for dwarves.

Glandurg had led his band almost entirely through the forest to a wooded bluff overlooking the river that ran by the base of the Capital mount. Just a few hundred yards and a stretch of placid water now separated the dwarves from the enormous bluff that bore the capital city of the North on its back and the Wizard’s Keep at its very tip.

As his followers rested behind him, Glandurg surveyed the scene. From here they could watch the Wizard’s Keep and the comings and goings of their quarry and stay concealed in the forest. A perfect spot to plan an ambush.

"How are we supposed to know this wizard when we find him?" Gimli asked from where he lay against his pack under a spreading tree. "Mortals all look alike."

"No they don’t," Snorri said with a superior air. "There’s men mortals and there’s women mortals. You can tell them apart easy."

"That only cuts it down by half," Gimli said. "We can’t go around killing all the male mortals we meet, can we?"

Glandurg turned back to his band. "That will not be necessary," he said loftily. "I thought of this before we left and I obtained from my uncle the King a means to infallibly identify this mortal."

He drew from his pouch a handful of hazelnut-sized lumps. "Each of you will have one of these. They will always point the way to this foreign sorcerer, be he a hundred leagues away."

Each of the dwarves came forward and took one of the seekers from his hand.

"It’s dark," said Thorfin, staring into his palm.

"Mine’s not pointing any way at all," Snorri chimed in.

Glandurg scowled and grabbed for the more powerful version of the device that hung around his own neck. Cupping his hands to shield it from the light he saw that it glowed only very dimly. The arrow within pointed waveringly south.

"He must be more than a hundred leagues from here," Glandurg said weakly.

"We aren’t going to fly after him, are we?" Thorfin asked with a dangerous edge to his voice. The other dwarves muttered in agreement.

"No. There is no need for that. He will return soon enough. Meanwhile we will scout around us and wait."

Bal-Simba was waiting for them at the crest of the dune. Outlined against the sky with sea breezes whipping the edges of his leopard-skin loincloth the big wizard was a most impressive sight. Wiz, who was a little chilly in spite of his traveling cloak, wondered how he managed to keep warm.

He heard their breathless report gravely and without comment. "We will have the thing taken back to the Capital for study," he told them. "Unless you think it is unsafe?"

"No reason to think that, Lord," Wiz said. "Although since we don’t even know where it came from I can’t guarantee anything."

Bal-Simba pursed his lips. "I think we may have a clue as to that. I have been talking to Weinrich and the other villagers. They say there has been a change in the weather recently."

"The weather?" Wiz said blankly.

"Folk who live by the sea are always sensitive to the weather. This far south on the Freshened Sea the pattern of wind and weather is constant, year to year."

"Village folk are usually wise in the ways of the immediate surroundings," Moira agreed. "But you say a change?"

"A fog bank about a day’s sail to the east. A fog that does not lift and does not move. A place where a sailor can get lost because neither compass nor magic works properly."

"And they think this thing came out of the fog?" Wiz asked.

"It seems to have come from that direction."

"Lord, if I were you I’d search the hell out of that fog bank."

"That is already in train, Sparrow," Bal-Simba said.

Dragon Leader looked over his formation again and then turned his eyes back to the sea below. Two days ago his entire wing of almost fifty dragons had been brought together from their scattered patrol bases and sent hurrying south to Oak Island. Yesterday had been spent frantically setting up a makeshift base among the fisherfolk and putting out the first hasty patrols to try to define the edges of this strangeness.

Now Dragon Leader was taking his flight into the heart of this new thing. Every rider and dragon was at the peak of alertness. He could tell from the way they were flying that none of them liked it at all.

Even the formation reflected that. Instead of putting his dragons in line abreast or an echelon to cover the maximum territory, he had his first element above and behind his main formation for top cover. The rest of the patrol was pretty much line abreast, but they were closer together than normal so they could support each other quickly in case of trouble.

Every man and woman in the patrol understood the significance of that. This was a fighting formation, not a scouting one. Dragon Leader was going into this strange place loaded for bear.

Dragon Leader and his troopers were used to flying into the unknown. In a world where maps were components of spells rather than guides to terrain, he had often struck out over uncharted territory. He was used to magic as well. Save for the death spells on their iron arrows and a few odds and ends, dragon cavalry did not use magic. But they dealt with it constantly and most of them had faced it on more than one occasion.

Not that they had seen any magic here. So far he had seen nothing but sun-dappled sea and the occasional wheeling sea bird. Just what they should have seen, in other words.

But it wasn’t right. There was something odd about this stretch of ocean, something that made his eyes hurt to look at it and made him queasy the deeper the patrol penetrated. It was like trying to look at two things at once, he decided. Two pictures that were almost but not exactly alike.

His dragon sensed it too. Whatever there was about this place, his mount didn’t want anything to do with it. He signaled his patrol to extra alertness and pushed on. Then he reached for his communications crystal to report.

There-again there was strangeness. He managed to reach the Watcher on Oak Island, but the voice was weak and there were gaps, requiring several repeats to get the message through.

Interference? he thought as he replaced the crystal. But that didn’t seem right either. He knew the effects of jamming spells on communications crystals. He had felt them often enough during the years of war against the Dark League. But this was more as if someone had substituted a poorly ensorceled crystal for his own. It was as if the spell on the crystal had suddenly become much weaker, less competent.

He noticed that the rhythm of his mount had changed as well. The dragon’s wingbeats had increased, as if they were climbing instead of flying level. The beast wasn’t exactly laboring, but he was definitely working harder. He did a quick calculation and decided that if this continued, the extra effort would reduce his patrol’s flying time by one-third.

Down below the sea seemed the same, but this place was definitely different.

Off to his right one of the dragons flying top cover waggled its wings to attract attention. The riders on the right wing caught it as soon as Dragon Leader did and used hand signals to pass the information on to their commander.

Dragon Leader kneed his mount gently and his dragon banked gently left and right to acknowledge. Craning his neck he saw the rider rise in her saddle and raise both her arms above her head in the signal for land.

Dragon Leader hesitated for an instant and then signaled the entire patrol to turn toward the land.

The patrol was barely halfway into their turn when three gray shapes hurtled down on them out of the clouds.

"Break! Break!" Dragon Leader screamed into his communications crystal. The warning was unnecessary, already the squadron was scattering like a flock of frightened chickens as the screaming intruders dived on them. Riders fumbled for their war bows as they twisted and dove in every direction, trying desperately to get away from their attackers.

In the end it was biology rather than maneuvering that saved them. Dragons have poor radar returns and the targeting radars on the robot fighters were unable to get a lock. Craig hadn’t thought to equip his creations with cannon, so the planes were impotent against the dragons.

Of course the dragons were equally impotent against the planes. The aircraft were too fast and too unexpected. They swooped through the formation before a single rider could draw a bow or a single dragon could breathe fire. The planes made a tight curving climb back into the clouds and then they were gone.

The dragons didn’t hang around either. The entire squadron dove for the wavetops and ran for home as fast as their wings could carry them.

"That," said Wiz grimly, "is definitely a jet fighter."

The recording had been frozen at the moment that the plane was climbing away from the dragon squadron. The view was almost from directly above and the outline and details were unmistakable.

"Looks like it was drawn by a fourteen-year-old," Danny said contemptuously. "It’s a combination of a bunch of different planes."

"Notice that it’s unmanned," Jerry said, sticking his finger into the image to point at the place where the cockpit should be. "Either these guys are real cautious about risking their necks or there aren’t very many of them. Maybe only one or two."

"The main thing," Wiz said, getting up from the table, "is that we’ve got both dragons and jet fighters in the same air at the same time." He turned to Arianne, who had brought them the recording.

"You say the dragon riders were having trouble communicating?"

"Their voices were weak. And they said their dragons tired easily."

Jerry gestured and the image started moving again.

"Those planes don’t look like they’re doing any too well, either."

"Basically then," Wiz said, "both magic and technology work in that place, they just don’t work very well."

"Sounds like an IBM shop," Jerry said.

"Whatever. Anyway that explains the drone. It was only designed to work in that world and it got in here by accident."

"But it does not tell us who sent it," Moira said. "Or why. Those are the things we most need to know."

"It seems to me," Bal-Simba rumbled, "that we have two ways to find out. We can sit here and wait for whomever or whatever is sending these things to come to us or we can send our own scouts through to spy out this new world."

"Lord, that’s not much of a choice," Wiz said. "So far these things aren’t hostile, but they’re sure not friendly. If we wait we may not like what we get."

"My thinking precisely, Sparrow. So we must go and see."

"Forgive me, Lord," Moira said, "but might that not be taken as an unfriendly act? True, they have not sent us embassies, but they have done us no harm either."

"Unfriendly, perhaps. But no more so than what they have done already. If you have a better suggestion, Lady, I am anxious to hear it."

"No, none, Lord. But I would not have us blunder into war unnecessarily."

"Fear not, Lady. We shall be very circumspect."