"What about a single magical creature?" Wiz asked.
Shiara smiled thinly, her lips pressed together in a tight line. "Believe me, Sparrow, I would know instantly of the approach of any magic."
From the corner where he had been listening, Kenneth snorted. "If all they can send against us are single non-magical beings then they stand a poor chance of getting either of you." He tugged the string of his great bow significantly. "Lady, I own the fault today was mine. I was not properly alert. But rest assured it will not happen again!"
"It would be well if it were so," Shiara said. "But I am not certain they expected to get anyone in today’s attack."
"They came darned close," Wiz said.
"Oh, had they killed or injured one of us the League would have been happy indeed, but I think they had little real expectation of it."
"Then what is the point?" asked Kenneth.
"In a duel of magics you seek at first to unbalance your opponent. To break his concentration and unsettle his mind and so lay him open to failure. I think the League’s purpose in such attacks is to upset us and hinder our work."
"Then they failed twice over," Wiz said firmly and stood up. "I’m dry enough and I’ve got work to do tonight. Kenneth, will you hand me my tunic?"
Another day, near evening this time, and Wiz had another creation to demonstrate to Shiara.
"Here, let me show you." Wiz made a quick pass and a foot-tall homunculus popped into existence. It eyed Wiz speculatively and then started to gabble in a high, squeaky voice.
"ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ1234567890," the creature got out before Wiz could raise his hand again. At the second gesture it froze, mouth open.
"What good is that thing?" Shiara asked.
"You told me wizards protect their inner secrets with passwords? Well, this is a password guesser. When it gets up to speed it can run through thousands of combinations a second." He frowned. "I’m going to have to do some code tweaking to get the speed up, I think."
"What makes you think you can guess a password even with such a thing as that?" Shiara said.
Wiz grinned. "Because humans are creatures of habit. That includes wizards. The thing doesn’t guess at random. It uses the most likely words and syllables."
"Ricidulous," Shiara snorted. "A competent wizard chooses passwords to be hard to guess."
"I’ll bet even good wizards get careless. You remember I told you we used passwords on computer accounts back home? There was a list of about 100 of them which were so common they could get you into nearly any computer and the chances were at least one person had used one of them.
"Look, a password has to be remembered. I mean no one but an idiot writes one down, right?" Shiara nodded reluctantly. "And you have to be able to say them, don’t you?" Again Shiara nodded.
"Well then, those are major limits right there. You need combinations of consonants and vowels that are pronounceable and easy to remember. You also can’t make them too long and you probably don’t want to make them too short. Right? Okay, this little baby," he gestured to the demon on the table, "has been given a bunch of rules that help guess passwords. It’s not a random search."
"But even so, Sparrow, there are so many possible combinations."
"That’s why he talks so fast, Lady."
They brought Moira on deck the day the Tiger Moth raised the southern coast.
With no one at her oars and no wind behind her, the Tiger Moth ghosted between the great black towers that guarded the harbor. From the headlands of the bay mighty breakwaters reached out to clasp the harbor in their grasp. Where the breakwaters almost touched, two towers of the black basalt rose to overlook the harbor entrance. Great walls of dark rhyolite enclosed the city with its tall towers and narrow stinking streets snaking up the sides of an ancient volcano.
Everywhere the southland was bleak and blasted. The earth had been ripped open repeatedly by magic and nature and had bled great flows of lava. Now it was dark and scabbed over as if the wounds had festered rather than healed. The sky was dark and lowering, lead gray and filled with a fine gritty ash that settled on everything. In the distance dull red glows reflected off the clouds where still-active volcanoes rumbled and belched. The chill south wind brought the stink of sulfur with it. Nothing lived in this land save by magic.
Moira was hustled off the ship and hurried up the street by a dozen of the false fishermen. After days in the cramped cubby it was agony for her to walk. But her captors forced the pace cruelly even when she cried into her gag in pain.
The street ended suddenly in a great wall composed of massive blocks of dark red lava. The party turned right at the wall and there, in a shallow dead-end alley, was a tiny door sheathed in black iron. The Shadow Captain knocked a signal on the door and a peephole slid back, revealing a hideously tusked unhuman face. Quickly the door opened and Moira was thrust through into the midst of a group of heavily armored goblins. The goblins closed in and bore her off without a word or backward glance.
"Only one magician, you say?" Toth-Set-Ra asked the Shadow Captain harshly.
"Only the woman, Dread Master. There were two other humans within the walls, the former witch they call Shiara and a man called Sparrow. She called him Wiz."
"And they were not magicians?"
"I would stake my soul upon it."
Toth-Set-Ra eyed him. "You have, captain. Oh, you have."
The Shadow Captain blanched under the wizard’s gaze. "I found no other sign of a magician there," he repeated as firmly as he could manage.
"There should have been at least one other magician, a man. You’re sure this Wiz or Sparrow was not a magician?"
"He had not the faintest trace of magic about him," said the Shadow Captain. He was not about to tell Toth-Set-Ra there had been something strange about that man.
"We shall see," Toth-Set-Ra said and waved dismissal. "Now return to your ship and await my pleasure." The Shadow Captain abased himself and backed from the room.
Toth-Set-Ra watched him go and drummed his fingers on the inlaid table. He was frantically anxious to know what this new prisoner could tell him, but he was skilled enough in the ways of interrogation to know that a day or two of isolation in his dungeons would do much to break her spirit. Question a magician too soon and she was likely to resist to the point of death. First you must shake her, wear away her confidence. Then she would be more pliable to magical assaults and more susceptible to pain.
Tomorrow would be soon enough. Let her lie a while in the dungeons. Then let five or six of the goblins use her. And then, then it would be easy to find out what she knew.
He smiled and his face looked more like a skull than ever. Yes, it would take a little time. But then, he had the time.
"(defun replace—variables (demon))" Wiz muttered, sketching on a clean plank with a bit of charcoal. "(let((!bindings nil)))"
"Lord."
"(replace—variables-with-bindings(demon))"
Wiz turned from the spell he was constructing to see Donal standing in the door, near blocking out the light.
"You made me lose my place," he said accusingly.
"Sorry Lord, but it’s Kenneth. He’s asked for you and the Lady."
Reluctantly Wiz put down the stick of charcoal and stood up, feeling his back creak and his thighs ache from sitting in one position on the hard bench too long. "What is it?" he asked. "More trouble?"
Donal regarded Wiz seriously. "I think he wants to sing a song," he said.
"A song?" Wiz asked incredulously. "He takes me away from my work to sing a song?"