The Wizardry Cursed

Twenty-seven: ENCOUNTER

Karin studied the stranger carefully without shifting the aim of the arrow. He was a big man, broad shouldered and apparently well muscled, although it was hard to tell through his clothing. He wore a drab green coverall with straps, pockets and strange black runes scattered over it. The thing in his hand was black and shiny and he handled it like a weapon, although Karin had never seen its like.

In all their patrolling, the dragon riders had never seen a human in this place. Indeed, they had been told there were only two humans among the enemy and they never left their castle. Where did this one come from?

He didn’t act like one of the enemy, she thought. In fact he seemed more confused than hostile. Still better to be safe, so she simply nodded to him without moving the bow.

"I’m Major Michael Gilligan, United States Air Force. I, ah, had a little trouble back there and I need to contact my unit." He stopped, as if expecting a response. "Um, I don’t suppose there’s a phone around here anywhere?"

"Air Force? You are a flier then?"

"Yes, ma’am. Only, as I say, I had a little trouble and came down in the water."

"And your mount?"

"Down at sea."

The poor man’s dragon had drowned! To Karin, who had only narrowly avoided the same fate, the tragedy was doubly poignant.

"I’m very sorry," she said, lowering her bow. "I am called Karin and I too am a flier."

Slowly and with exaggerated care, the man put the black metal thing in a pouch under his armpit. "Pleased to meet you, ma’am. Ah, about that phone… ?"

"I do not think you will find one here," Karin told him, not quite comprehending what a "phone" was.

"I kind of figured that," he said. "Where are we, anyway?"

"I am not quite sure," she admitted. "I think it is the western shore of the main island in the Bubble World."

"Bubble World?" he asked blankly.

"The World between the Worlds. I do not pretend to understand it, but our wizards say that it is connected at one end to our World and at the other end to the World from whence came the Sparrow."

"Sparrow? Excuse me, ma’am, but I’m just plain confused."

"Of course! You must be from the other World, the Sparrow’s World." She smiled. "This must all be very strange to you, I know."

"Yes, ma’am!" he said fervently. "It certainly is that."

"Well, come back to my camp then and we can talk. Oh, and stop calling me ma’am. I am neither a witch, a wizard nor an elder and I am called Karin."

He looked at her in a way Karin found rather pleasant. "No ma’am-I mean, Karin-you are definitely not an old witch!"

This, Major Mick Gilligan told himself firmly, has gotta be a hallucination. He was probably lying in a hospital bed somewhere drugged out of his skull after being fished out of the Bering Sea. He wondered if his nurse looked anything like Karin.

Still, he thought, hallucination or not, I’ve gotta play it like it’s real. So far it hadn’t been too bad. Stuck on a deserted island with a beautiful girl, even a beautiful girl who thought she was William Tell. No, that wasn’t half bad for a hallucination.

"My camp is just over there," Karin said, pointing toward an especially thick clump of trees.

"Where’s your vehicle?" Gilligan asked.

"No vehicle, only Stigi and myself," Karin told him as they stepped into the camp.

"But we’ve been following…" Gilligan began.

Then he saw the dragon.

Stigi was only average size for a cavalry mount-which is to say he was eighty feet long and his wings would probably span as much when fully extended.

An eighty-foot wingspan on an airplane wouldn’t have impressed Gilligan particularly. Eighty feet of bat wings on a scaled, fanged monster who looked ready to breathe fire at any second was very impressive.

Gilligan’s jaw dropped and he licked his lips. "That’s, that’s a…"

"That is Stigi," Karin supplied, strolling over to the monster and patting its scaly shoulder just in front of its left wing.

The dragon raised its head about ten feet off the ground and regarded Gilligan with a football-sized golden eye.

"Does it fly?"

"Of course he flies," Karin said. "How else would we get here?"

"Hoo boy," said Major Mick Gilligan. "Oh boy."

Karin’s camp was well off the beach, in a fold in the ground well-shaded by trees. The dragon took up a good half the space, but there was still room for a small fire and a simple canopy made with something like a shelter half.

"This is pretty cozy," Gilligan said as he looked around.

"I am a scout," Karin explained. "There is always the possibility of being caught away from my base and having to forage. So," she shrugged, "we are prepared."

"There aren’t many places we can land away from our bases," Mick told her. "If something goes wrong we have to bail out."

"Bail out?"

"Use our ejection seats."

"Ejection seats?"

He looked over at the dragon. "Yeah, I guess you don’t have much call for those."

"Now," Karin said, settling herself on a log by the fire, "what happened to you, Major?"

"It’s Mick, as long as we’re on a first-name basis."

Karin frowned prettily. "I thought you said your name was Major."

"No, that’s my rank. My first name’s Michael, but everyone calls me Mick."

"Ah," Karin said. "When Stigi and I are in the air we are called Patrol Two."

"That’s like a call sign. I was Eagle One on my last mission."

"What happened to you?"

Gilligan sighed. "Kind of a long story. Basically we were getting some peculiar-ah, indications-from an area out over the ocean and they sent us out to look. My wingman and I found something, but we couldn’t communicate with our base. I sent him back and went on in for a closer look. There was a little tussle and I came out on the short end."

It was Karin’s turn to sigh. "That is more or less what happened to me. I was out on single patrol, near the great fog bank where this World connects to yours, when I was attacked from behind. I managed to avoid the attacker and I even got a shot off at it, but in the maneuvering Stigi sprained his wing."

"Sprained it?"

"Our dragons seldom hurt themselves so, but this is a strange place and things are not exactly as they are in our world."

"They’re not as they are in our world, either," Gilligan said, looking over at Stigi. The dragon’s head was resting on the ground but one unwinking yellow eye was fixed on Gilligan.

"What jumped you, another dragon?" he asked as he turned so he didn’t have to look at the dragon looking at him.

Karin frowned. "Something strange. It was all gray and roared as it came. I did not get a good look at it."

Uh-oh, Gilligan thought. Gray and roaring and came at her from behind. Hoo boy.

To cover himself he asked the first non-personal question that came to mind. "You keep talking about different worlds. What do you mean?"

"There is our World, where magic holds sway. There is your World, where I gather magic works poorly or not at all?" He nodded and she went on. "And there is this World, where both the things of our world and the things of your world work after a fashion. But this World is new. Some say it was created by our enemies."

"Your enemies?"

"Powerful wizards who command legions of non-living beings," Karin explained. "It is said they prepare war against both your world and ours. But surely you know this?"

"All we know is that there’s something funny going on out over the ocean. We thought maybe it was someone from our world. That’s why I was sent to investigate."

The dragon rider frowned. "If that is all your people know then surely you must return to bear word to them."

"That’s my plan."

Karin sighed. "I wish I could contact my base, but my communications crystal stopped working just before I was attacked. I am sure my squadron commander would know what to do."

"You seem to be doing all right," Gilligan said, looking around the camp site.

Karin smiled. She had a wonderful smile, Gilligan noticed. Then she sobered. "Thank you, but I feel so inadequate. I have been a rider for just two seasons. I have never been in combat before. In that time there has been no one to fight."

"I know the feeling," Gilligan told her. "I’ve been in for ten years, I’ve got about 1800 hours in F-15s and I’ve never been in combat either." He had missed Iraq because he’d been in the hospital with hepatitis, but he didn’t tell her that.

Karin looked astonished. "Ten years and never a battle?"

"We’ve been at peace all that time," Gilligan said. Well, more or less. "Actually we’ve been at peace for almost twenty-five years and we haven’t had a major war in nearly fifty."

"Forgive me, but if that is so then why do you maintain fighting fliers?"

"Because for most of that time we’ve been close to war. My nation and another great nation were ready to go to war at a moment’s notice."

"Yet you did not? You must be remarkably peace-loving in spite of it."

Gilligan grinned mirthlessly. "Not peace-loving. Scared. We got too good at it. We developed weapons that would let us destroy cities in an eyeblink. Weapons we had no defenses against. All of a sudden a major war didn’t look real cost effective."

Karin shivered. "I do not think I would like to see war in your world."

"Neither would we," Gilligan told her.

"But," Karin said thoughtfully, "with such weapons you would be powerful allies against our enemies."

"Maybe. I don’t make policy, but I’m sure willing to carry the word back to the people who do."

"We must get you back to your World, then."

"You mean you can get me home?"

"The Mighty at the Capital certainly can. The Sparrow knows how."

"But first we’ve got to get to your Capital. Are they going to come looking for you?"

Karin shrugged. "Probably. But they dare not search too long or too hard. Magical methods work poorly here and we are too close to our enemies’ hold to risk many riders and dragons."

"So they aren’t likely to find us."

"No, but I do not think that will matter. Once Stigi’s wing is healed, he will be able to carry us back to my people."

Gilligan looked over at the snoring dragon. "You mean that thing can really get us out of here?"

"In easy stages, of course. Stigi can carry two for a ways and there are many reefs and islands where we can rest."

"That’s something to look forward to, anyway."

"Meanwhile," Karin said, getting up. "It is late and morning comes early. Let us to bed."

Mick Gilligan fell asleep that night and dreamed about flying and girls with blonde hair and freckles.