"We asked little enough," the small creature said. "A bowl of milk now and again. A bit of bread on Midsummer’s Day as a sign of respect."
"But now mortals have their own magic and they need us no more."
"Need us no more," the little one crooned. "Need us no more. Need us no more. Need us no more." His mother hushed him and he trailed off into babbling.
"You mean they chased you out?" Wiz asked incredulously. Dangerous magic was one thing, but he’d never heard anyone accuse brownies of anything worse than mischief. People were supposed to be glad for the help brownies provided with the chores.
"Chased us out?" Meoan hissed. "They kill us if they can." The little woman was white and shaking with fury. "Look at us, mortal! We are all that are left of the Little Folk of our village."
"She was handfast to one who is no more," Lannach said. "The father of the child."
"They laid in wait for my Dairmuirgh," she said. "When he came to the stable to groom their horses, they set their demon upon him and made him no more." She was crying openly, the tears trickling down her tiny cheeks, and rocking back and forth. "Ay, they murdered him as he sought to help them."
Back in Silicon Valley Wiz had known a few programmers who refused to work on weapons systems or any other kind of military job. He’d always thought that was a little peculiar. The programmer’s job was to deliver software on time, in spec and functional. It was the job of the designers and managers to worry about what would be done with it. Now he was confronted by the results of his work and those people didn’t seem peculiar at all.
"Oh shit. Look, I’m really sorry." He stopped. "I’m, well I’m responsible in a way," he confessed miserably. "It was my spell they took and hacked up to make that thing."
"We know," Lannach said. "We also heard what happened when that bitch from the village destroyed the Stone." He placed a tiny hand on Wiz’s forearm. "Lord, you cannot be responsible for the uses mortals choose to make of your magic."
That made him feel even worse. "Thanks, Lannach. Where will you go now?"
The brownie shrugged. "We do not know. Unlike dryads and some other creatures, we are not tied to one place. But it was our home." He looked up and his limpid brown eyes gazed into Wiz’s. "It is hard to lose the place which has been your home for so long."
"I know," Wiz said miserably, thinking of smoggy sunsets over Silicon Valley.
"We would not leave even now save for the little one," he nodded to Meoan’s baby. "He must be protected."
Wiz understood. Children were rare among the manlike immortals. An infant was a cause for great rejoicing and such children as there were were carefully protected. The adults might be willing to stay and die in a place they loved, but they would not risk the baby.
"Lord," said the little man tentatively, "Lord, could we impose upon you further and travel with you?"
"I’m not really sure where I’m going."
The brownie shrugged. "Neither are we, Lord."
The Wild Wood was still a tangle of ancient forest that abounded with dangerous magic, but Wiz wasn’t afraid. His own magic was potent and very frankly he wasn’t sure how much he cared.
"Sure," he said, "come on."
They spent the rest of the morning travelling. In spite of their size, the brownies moved quickly and had no trouble keeping up with Wiz. They found berries to eat along the way and once the brownies located a tree bearing small wild plums, just going ripe.
It was shortly after noon when they topped a rise and looked down into the heavily forested valley beyond. Six or eight thin curls of smoke arose from scattered locations on the valley’s floor and merged to form a thin haze over the whole valley.
Wiz remembered the last time he had come into the Wild wood. The forest valleys had been an unbroken sea of green. Mortals were not welcome in the Wild Wood and the few who came were not gently treated.
"I didn’t know there were so many people out here," Wiz said, looking down on the scene.
"Mortals, spread quickly," Lannach observed.
"Aye," agreed Breachean in a rusty voice. "Give them a few harvests and they’ll carpet this valley like flies on meat."
"I don’t think we want to go that way," Wiz said. "Let’s follow the ridge and skirt that place."
It was harder going along the ridge and they used game trails rather than the well-trod footpath that led down into the valley, but it was more pleasant for all of them. The trees here were huge and old, unscarred by woodsman’s axe. The birds sang and the squirrels dashed about as they had for centuries. Most of the time there was neither sight of a clearing nor smell of wood smoke to remind them of what was going on in the valley.
Still, it was slower going. It was almost evening when they came down off the ridge and into the next valley.
They made their way down the trail in the deepening twilight, looking for a place to camp.
"What’s that?" Wiz asked pointing to a strange glow moving though the woods ahead of them.
"Off the trail," Lannach whispered. "Quickly!"
Wiz took a firmer grip on his staff. "Hide?"
"No, just do not stand in their way."
The light came clearer and brighter through the wood, like sky glow at dawn. Then the first of the procession rounded the bend and Wiz saw the light emanated from figures on horseback.
Elves, he thought, a trooping of elves.
They came by ones and twos, riding immaculately groomed horses of chestnut, roan and blood bay. They were tall and fair of skin, as all elven kind, and dressed with the kind of subdued magnificence Wiz had come to associate with elves.
They passed Wiz and the brownies by as if they were not there, looking straight ahead toward a distant goal or talking softly among themselves in their own liquid tongue.
Last of all came the lord and the lady of the hold.
The man wore green and blue satin with an embroidered white undertunic. Instead of a simple filet to hold his long cornsilk hair, he wore a silver coronet. He had a hawk on his wrist, unhooded.
The woman was as fair and near as tall as her lord, with hair the same cornsilk color flowing free of her coronet and down her back to almost touch her saddle. She wore a long gown of deep, deep purple with a train that flowed over her saddle and her horse’s rump.
The woman turned her head to look at Wiz where he stood beside the trail. The combination of beauty and sadness clutched at his heart.
Wiz stood open-mouthed in awe long after the party had disappeared.
"They go East," Lannach said. "Beyond the lands of men."
"I didn’t think the elves would be bothered," Wiz said numbly. "They’re too powerful."
"Not all the Fair Folk are as powerful as your friend Duke Aelric. Oh, doubtless they could protect their hills and a few other spots most dear to them. But what then? The lands they called their own would be changed utterly by the mortals.
"As all the land changes," he added sadly.
Pryddian came into the room a trifle uncertainly.
"You sent for me, Lord?"
Bal-Simba ignored him for a moment and then looked up from the scroll on his desk.
"I did," the great black wizard said. "We have no further need of you here. You are released from your apprenticeship."
Pryddian started. "What?"
"Your presence here is no longer required," Bal-Simba said blandly. "You may go."
"That is a decision for my master!"
"You have no master, nor will any of the wizards here have you." He turned his attention back to the scroll.