Andrew twisted in his chair and pointed. "That!"
Wiz followed the mayor’s finger out the window. Hulking against the night sky was the huge granite hill, its mass and shape cutting off the stars near the horizon.
"The hill?"
"Aye, the hill. We have lived in its shadow too long."
Wiz realized everyone was looking at him and the mayor.
"Is it dangerous?"
"Dangerous enough," the mayor said grimly.
"What does it do?"
"It mazes people. Those who climb it are overcome by its power and stricken dumb. For days or even weeks they wander as if simple."
"Young John fell off it and broke his back," a slat-thin woman halfway down the table put in. "The healer said it was a wonder that he ever walked again."
Wiz toyed with the pork that had been heaped on his plate. "Uh, maybe this is a dumb question, but why don’t people just stay off the hill?"
There was stony silence all down the table. Philomen concentrated on his plate and everyone else glared at Wiz.
"Okay, so it was a dumb question," Wiz muttered.
"The thing is magic and I will not have magic so close to my village," Andrew said fiercely.
"Look, don’t worry. I’m sure that we can take care of this thing tomorrow so it will never bother you again."
Somehow the rest of the meal passed off without incident.
Deep in the Wild Wood a wren perched on a finger and trilled out its message. Seklos, now second in command of the Dark League, considered carefully the news the bird had brought.
So, he thought, our Sparrow leaves its nest. Very well, we will be ready when he seeks to return. He dismissed the wren with a flick of his finger and turned to his work. In concert with the others of the Dark League, he had a demon to create. A most powerful and special demon.
As he reached for a spell book Seklos wondered idly what that fool in the Capital meant about attempts on the Sparrow’s life. The Dark League would make only one such attempt. And when it came it would be crushingly, overwhelmingly successful.
Seven: Demon Debug
The three most dangerous things in the world are a programmer with a soldering iron, a hardware type with a program patch and a user with an idea.
The morning was bright and clear. The day promised to be hot, but by the time Wiz and Philomen emerged from the mayor’s house the whole village was astir.
"Oh, this is a great day," Mayor Andrew told them, rubbing his palms together. "A great day indeed."
"I am sure it is," Philomen said soothingly. "We are honored to be here to observe. Now, if you will excuse us, we must consult with your hedge witch before the ceremony."
As the villagers drifted in the direction of the monolith, Wiz, Philomen and Alaina retired to one corner of the meadow for some shop talk.
"Okay," Wiz said, looking over his shoulder at the enormous mass of granite. "Probably the best tool for this job is the Demon Deterrent Trap, ddt."
"Why not demon_debug?" asked Alaina.
"What’s that?" "A wonderful cure for magic of all sorts," the slatternly hedge witch told him. "It wipes it right out."
"Where did you get it?"
Alaina gestured vaguely. "It is being passed through the villages. Much better than ddt, I assure you."
"Well, let’s see it."
Alaina nodded and raised her staff.
"demon—debug exe!" she bawled at the top of her cracked voice.
There was a shimmering and shifting in the air in front of them and a squat demon perhaps three feet high and nearly as broad appeared on the grass before them.
Wiz looked the thing over and frowned. "This isn’t one of my spells."
"Of course not, My Lord," the hedge witch said. "This is better."
The warty green demon leered up at him, showing saw-like rows of teeth in a cavernous mouth. The thing looked singularly unpleasant, even for a demon.
"How does it work?"
Alaina shrugged. "It is magic of course. How else does a spell work?"
"No, I mean how does it function? Haven’t you listed it out to examine the code?"
"List?" Alaina said, puzzled. "Forgive me, Lord, but how do you make a spell lean? And what good would it do."
Wiz shot her a dirty look. Then he realized she was sincere. She didn’t have the faintest idea how a spell worked or how to find out.
He shook his head. "Well, let’s see then."
Philomen and the hedge witch hung back to watch the master work.
"Emac."
"Yes, master?" A small brown mannikin popped up at his feet. It was perhaps three feet high with a head almost grotesquely large for its body. It wore a green eyeshade on its bald brown head and carried a quill pen stuck behind one flaplike ear.
The Emacs were one of the first classes of demons Wiz had created when he declared his one-man war on the Dark League. They were translators and recorders of spells in Wiz’s magic language, magical clerks.
"backslash." Wiz commanded.
"$," said the Emac.
"list demon_debug," Wiz said.
The Emac pulled the pen from behind his ear and began to scribble furiously on the air in front of him. A mixture of runes, numbers, and mathematical symbols appeared in glowing green fire.
Wiz frowned as he studied the symbols.
"It’s based on ddt, but it’s been changed." He turned to the Emac again.
"backslash."
"$."
"dif demondebug/ddt."
Again the Emac scribbled and again the lambent characters hung in the air. But one section of spell stood out in violent magenta against the neon green.
Wiz bent forward over the Emac’s shoulder to study the magenta section. It represented the changes between the original ddt and this new version. He traced his finger along the lines and his lips moved as he worked out what the changes did.
"Jesus H. Christ," he breathed at last. "What a nasty piece of work!" He straightened up and glared at the other two magicians.
"Who’s responsible for this?"
"Ah, responsible for what, Lord?" Philomen asked.
"This!" Wiz shouted. "It isn’t a defensive spell. It’s offensive, a magic killer. You turn this loose on any kind of magical creature and it won’t just protect you, it will destroy the thing."
"So much the better," the hedge witch said firmly. "That way it will never come around to bother us again."
"But why kill it?"
Alaina set her jaw firmly and her eyes glittered. "Because it is magic and because it threatens us. Perhaps the Mighty do things differently in the Capital, but we are simple folk out here on the Fringe. We treat harmful magic the way we treat poisonous serpents."
Before Wiz could reply Philomen placed a hand on his arm. "Forgive me, My Lord, but perhaps we should discuss this. Will you excuse us, My Lady?"
Alaina curtseyed stiffly and withdrew to the other end of the meadow.
"My Lord, it is unwise to give an order you cannot enforce," Philomen said as soon as the hedge witch was out of earshot. "Were you to forbid this, she could simply wait until we are gone and use demon_debug herself."