Suddenly Atros took his staff in both hands, raised it high over his head and brought it down with a vicious chopping motion. Wiz raised his staff to ward it off, but he was driven to his knees by the force of the blow. Blindly he raised his staff and gestured again. But the stroke was weak and ill-judged and Atros thrust it aside contemptuously. He stepped forward again and raised his staff for a final, killing spell.
From the cell door a blazing ball flew over Wiz’s head and straight at Atros’s face. The wizard dropped his staff and flinched aside from the burning sphere. He gestured and it swerved off to splatter in a flaming gout on the tunnel wall behind him.
Atros looked over Wiz and saw Moira standing in the door with her eyes blazing and her hands extended clawlike.
"Witch!" he said contemptuously and made a shooing motion with both hands. Moira screamed and flew back into the cell as if pushed by an unseen hand. Then the skin-clad giant stooped to pick up his staff. Inside the cell an explosion blasted out. A choking cloud of dirt billowed from the shattered door and a reddish light like a new-kindled fire burned within. Atros frowned and made a warding move with his staff. Wiz shook his head and climbed half to his feet.
Within the cell, obscured by the dust and lighted by the fire behind, a huge misshapen thing moved. Atros took a step back and a firmer grasp on his staff. What new sort of demon was this?
The light grew brighter as the fire took hold of the straw. Through the smoke and reddish backlight the thing resolved itself into a vaguely man-like figure. It groped through the smoke and dust, narrowing and resolving as it moved toward the door as though coalescing into something solid. Atros shifted uneasily. There was something familiar about that figure…
Then it came through the door and out of the smoke. "So," it rumbled in a familiar voice. "A bear chasing a sparrow, eh? Not very edifying Atros. Not very edifying at all."
"Bal-Simba!" Atros spat the name like a curse.
"Bal-Simba indeed," the great wizard agreed. He was disheveled and his hair and skin were powdered gray with dirt and dust, but his teeth showed white as milk and sharp as daggers as he smiled. "A worthier opponent than yon sparrow, mayhap?
"Sparrow," Bal-Simba said without taking his eyes off the southern wizard, "please put out the fire in the cell. Atros and I have wizards’ business to discuss."
"We discuss it on my ground, Northerner," Atros said with an evil smile.
"Oh, I think no one’s ground." Bal-Simba’s smile was no less evil. "Your protective spells are neutralized, your brother wizards are, ah, occupied elsewhere and Toth-Set-Ra is dead." He raised his eyebrows. "What? You did not know? Demon trouble I believe. Troublesome things, demons. Almost as much trouble as sparrows."
Their eyes locked and neither moved while Wiz scrambled on his hands and knees behind Bal-Simba’s trunk-like legs and through the cell door. Moira was waiting and they clung together like frightened children, heedless of the smoldering straw.
Finally Atros snarled and thrust his staff at the black giant. Wiz saw the air between them twist and contort into a half-sensed shape that flew straight at Bal-Simba’s chest. Bal-Simba turned his staff sideways and the thing disappeared in a shimmer of air.
He took a step forward. Atros gestured again and the bloody green slime in the center of the corridor massed and grew and rose up in a foul dripping wave in front of Bal-Simba.
Again Bal-simba gestured and the slime hung back. It recoiled, gathered itself and thrust forward like a striking snake. With an easy grace Bal-simba pirouetted to one side. The slime thing missed and fell into the center of the corridor with a hollow "splat." Before it could gather itself again the Northerner pressed his staff into the slime’s "back." It quivered for a moment and then lay still.
The giant turned to face his giant assailant. Atros’s lips were working as he prepared another spell. But Bal-simba didn’t give him the chance to use it.
"And now." Bal-simba tapped his staff on the flagging and stepped forward. Atros gave ground, pawing the air frantically with his staff.
"And now." Bial-Simba stepped and struck the pavement with a ringing blow as Atros blanched and flinched.
"And now," he bellowed and smote the floor so hard his staff shattered into three pieces. Atros screamed as a great chasm opened beneath him. He teetered on the crumbling brink for an instant and then toppled forward. He was still screaming ever fainter and further away when the earth closed with a clap of thunder, cutting off his screams forever.
The black giant sagged and put a hand on the tunnel wall to stay upright. "Whoo," he gasped and shook his head. "Whoo."
"Lord, am I glad to see you!" Wiz stepped out of the cell, leaning on Moira for support.
"Sparrow," Bal-Simba rumbled, "you are a great deal of trouble."
Wiz just laughed and hugged him.
"Lord," Moira hugged him from the other side. "Lord, I had lost hope."
"Always unwise, Lady," said Bal-Simba. He frowned. "My two guardsmen? Donal and Kenneth?"
"Here, Lord," croaked Kenneth, pulling himself erect on the frame of the cell door. "Donal is with me, but he is in a sore way."
"Then I suggest we take him someplace more comfortable," Bal-Simba said. "Sparrow, will you do the honors? I’m not sure I am up to walking the Wizard’s Way just yet."
"With pleasure," Wiz grinned. "Uh, it may take me four or five tries to get the spell right."
It actually took six.
Thirteen
The Beginning
Spring was returning to Heart’s Ease.
Except for the spots in deepest shade the snow was melting, exposing the wet black earth beneath. Here and there the hardiest plants thrust forth brave green shoots and the branches of the trees swelled with the promise of buds. The ground was soggy and chill, and there was still a skin of ice on the puddles in the morning, but the afternoon air was soft and the sun shone more brightly onto the warming land.
Wiz and Moira stood together in the door of his hut, sharing a cloak and looking out over the Wild Wood.
Heart’s Ease was still a gaunt blackened thumb against the blue sky, but the burned parts of the stockade were already down, removed by the forest folk. As soon as the paths through the Wild Wood dried out men would arrive, masons and carpenters who would begin rebuilding Heart’s Ease. As before there would be no magic in its construction.
"We don’t have to stay here, love," Wiz told Moira. "It will take time to make the place habitable and there’s no reason you should live in a log cabin. We could go someplace more civilized. Even the Capital if you prefer."
"I want to stay here, I think," Moira said, snuggling to him under the cloak. "Oh, I’d like to go visit my village after things thaw and dry. But I like it here." She turned her face to his for a kiss and Wiz responded enthusiastically.
"Besides," she went on after a bit, "I think Shiara likes having us." She turned to him. "But where do you want to live?"
"Anywhere you are," Wiz told her. "I’d be happy anywhere with you."
Moira bit her lip and dropped her gaze. "We need to talk about that."
"Fine," Wiz agreed, "but not now. We’ve got company."
Moira looked up and saw Bal-Simba picking his way across the muddy court.
"Merry met, Lord," Moira said as he came up to them.
"Merry met, Lady, Lord," the great black wizard replied as he came puffing up, his bone necklace jangling. "Merry met indeed."
"What’s happening at the Capital?" Wiz asked once they were seated around the log table in the tiny cabin. Wiz and Moira sat holding hands on one side and Bal-Simba seemed to fill the rest of the dwelling.