But there were differences. The last time he and Moira had been fugitives, snatched from the pursuing army of the Dark League by Aelric’s whim. Now Moira was somewhere else and Wiz was… what?
And beyond that there was Lisella.
In the warm glow of the magic lights she was even more beautiful than she had been beneath the moon. Her presence reminded Wiz that before he met Moira he had been attracted to tall slender brunettes.
From time to time their eyes met across the table. Lisella looked at Wiz with a kind of intent interest that both stirred him and reminded him uncomfortably of the way a cat regards a baby bird it can’t decide if it wants to play with or eat immediately.
Although Aelric and Lisella were careful to include Wiz in the conversation, he had the distinct feeling that he was missing most of what was actually being said. They were playing some kind of game, he decided, some elaborate elven game with malice at its heart. Whatever these two were they were definitely not lovers.
Throughout dinner Aelric had kept up an easy conversation on inconsequential topics. Wiz had sensed that his host did not want to discuss serious matters, and still in awe of the elf duke, he had likewise avoided them. Finally, as light-footed servants placed bowls of nuts and decanters of wine on the damask-covered table, Lisella rose.
"Alas, My Lords, the hour grows late." She curtseyed to Aelric. "If you will excuse me?"
Aelric stood up and Wiz followed suit. "Of course, My Lady." He bowed and kissed her extended hand.
Then she turned to Wiz and fixed her green eyes on his. "Perhaps we shall meet again," she said softly and with a rustle of her brocaded gown she was gone.
"Remarkable, is she not?" Duke Aelric said. Wiz realized he was gaping and made a determined effort to shut his mouth. Aelric sat down and Wiz followed suit.
"I thought it would amuse you to meet her." He picked up his wine glass and again Wiz followed his lead.
"Uh, why? I mean aside from the fact that she’s beautiful."
Aelric cocked an eyebrow. "My dear boy, she has been trying to kill you for months."
Wiz choked, spewing wine across Duke Aelric’s fine damask table cloth.
The elf duke dabbed the wine drops from his sleeve. "You mean you did not know? Dear me, and I was about to comment you for your insouciance."
"How… I mean why? I mean I’ve never seen her before."
"That is immaterial, Sparrow. As to the how, she has been arranging little accidents’ for you for some time. So far you have been lucky enough to avoid them."
Wiz remembered the falling stone and the toppled viewing stand and felt sick. Then he looked closely at the elf duke. "Somehow I don’t think it’s been entirely luck."
Aelric smiled. "Your escapes were at least as much luck as your accidents were mischance."
Wiz absorbed that in silence. All of a sudden he felt like a piece on someone else’s chess board. He didn’t like it much.
"Thanks, I think. But why is she trying to kill me?"
"Oh, many reasons, I expect. The technical challenge for one. Penetrating a place so thick with magic as your Capital undetected and laying such subtle traps. That required superb skill, I can assure you."
He smiled reminiscently. "So did countering them. You’ve provided quite a diverting experience."
"And if I had missed that handhold on the parapet? Or hadn’t jumped the right way when the stand collapsed?"
Aelric looked at him levelly. "Then the game would have been over."
Wiz was silent again. "You said there were many reasons Lisella wanted to kill me," he said at last. "What are some of the others?"
Duke Aelric poured more of the ruby wine into a crystal glass with an elaborately wrought and delicately tinted stem. "Surely you can guess. When last we met, I said I would follow your career with interest, Sparrow." He smiled wryly. "I admit I did not expect it to be quite this interesting."
"I didn’t either, Lord."
"It is not often a mortal is sufficiently interesting to hold the attention of one of us. You have become interesting enough to fix the attention of quite a number of the never-dying."
The elf duke looked at his guest speculatively. "You have made yourself much hated, you know."
"Yeah," said Wiz miserably. "It wasn’t supposed to work this way. Things kind of got out of hand."
"Not unusual when mortals dabble in magic," Aelric said. "Lisella is a minor difficulty. You would do well to dismiss her from your mind—after taking proper precautions, of course. What you have done has deeper consequences."
"You mean the destruction of magic along the Fringe?"
"I mean the destruction of mortals everywhere," the elf duke said. "You mortals make this new magic and in the process you raise forces against yourselves you do not understand. For the first time in memory there is talk of a grand coalition of magic wielders, a coalition aimed at the mortals."
"That’s crazy!"
"That is mortal logic, Sparrow. None of these are mortals and many of them are not logical in any sense."
"But, I mean a war."
"They would not think of it as a war. Rather the extermination of a particularly repulsive class of vermin who have made themselves too obvious."
Wiz stared straight into the depths of the elf duke’s eyes. "Do you think you could beat us?"
Aelric shrugged gracefully. "I really do not know." Then he caught and held Wiz’s gaze. "But I tell you this, Sparrow. Whoever wins, the outcome is likely to be the utter destruction of the World."
Wiz dropped his eyes. "Yeah. But does it have to happen? I mean, can’t we prevent it?"
"It would be difficult at best," Aelric said. "That is not a consequence all of us wish to avoid. There are some who hunger for death and destruction on the widest possible scale. There are some who by their very natures cannot comprehend or appreciate the threat. And there are some who would find the end of the World merely diverting. A new experience, so to speak."
"What can I do?"
Aelric shrugged. "Remove the cause. The magical forces of the world make uneasy allies. If the threat were gone, the coalition would dissolve in an eye blink."
Wiz thought about that, long and hard. Aelric sipped his wine and said nothing more.
He didn’t know what the chances of heading this thing off were, but he didn’t think they were very good. Given the feelings of the people of the Fringe about magic, and given the power of the tools he had put in their hands, it wasn’t going to be easy to get them to quit wiping out magic wherever they found it. Keeping them from pushing into the Wild Wood in search of land would be harder yet.
And he was going to have to have a hand in finding a solution. Not only because he helped create the problem, but because he was the only one who really understood the new kind of magic that lay at the root of it.
Wiz was even less confident of his ability to solve those problems than he was of his capacity as a politician or a teacher, but dammit! he had to try.
"I’m going back to the Capital," he announced. "Maybe I can undo some of this mess."
"A wise decision," Aelric said. "When do you propose to return?"
"I should go back tonight, but I’m beat and there’s not much I could do there. First thing in the morning, then."
The elf duke nodded.
Wiz reached for his wine goblet. Then he froze in horror.
"Wait a minute! If Lisella wanted to kill me, she just had the perfect opportunity to poison me or something!" He stared at his goblet as if it had sprouted poison fangs and tried desperately to remember if Lisella’s hands had ever been near it.