Perhaps Dzhir Kar was playing with him, stretching out the agony. Through his exhaustion, Wiz realized he could not win. Sooner or later, he had to use magic or fall to the searching wizards or the danger of this place.
Well, not yet. He was still alive and still free. At this minute finding food and warmth were more important to him than his ultimate fate. Moving as quietly as he could he moved down the corridor to the next door.
This place must have been pleasant once, or as pleasant as any in this benighted city ever had been. The building itself was mostly underground, a gloomy mass of tunnels and small rooms dimly lit by slowly fading magic globes. But this wing was built into the face of a cliff. The rooms on the outside had long narrow windows that looked out over the city. Judging by the shattered, soaked junk that remained they had been richly furnished as well.
But shattered, soaked junk was all that remained. What had once been rich fabric lay in sodden rotting piles. Scattered about were pieces of furniture, all hacked, broken and upended.
He looked at the wood regretfully. There were the makings there for a warming fire—if he could figure out how to light one without bringing the demon down on him and if he didn’t mind attracting every wizard in the city.
Aside from that, there was no sign of anything useful. No food, no clothing, nothing. He turned to leave when something caught his eye. He bent and plucked it from the litter.
It was a halberd, its head red with rust and its shaft broken to about three feet long. Looking at the end of the shaft, Wiz could see it had been cut halfway through before it snapped, as if the owner had warded a stroke.
Wiz hefted it dubiously. He knew nothing about halberd fighting and this one was broken, useless for its original purpose. But it could still serve as a tool to pry open chests and boxes. Perhaps with it he would have a better chance of finding food.
Clutching his prize, Wiz crept back out into the corridor.
"Wiz kept notes on how his spell compiler worked," Moira explained to the gaggle of programmers who followed her into her apartment the next morning. "He did most of that here rather than in his workroom. I think it would be best if you removed them yourselves, lest I miss something."
"Thanks," Jerry said as he went over to the desk, "we’ll get some boxes and…"
Then he saw the dragon sitting on top of the leather-bound book. A small, but very alert and obviously upset dragon. The dragon hissed and Jerry realized he, Karl and Moira were suddenly two paces ahead of everyone else in the group.
"What’s that?"
"That is the demon guardian Wiz created to protect his spells, especially the book holding most of his secrets. He called it the Dragon Book," Moira explained.
Karl looked at Moira, Jerry looked at Karl and the dragon eyed them both.
"That had to be deliberate," Karl said finally.
Jerry made a face as if he had bitten into something sour. "Believe me, it was."
"Crave pardon?"
"There’s a standard text on writing compilers called the dragon book." Jerry explained. "It’s got a picture of a dragon on the cover. A red dragon."
"It was orange on my edition."
"As protection of the contents?" Moira asked.
"More like a warning of what the course is like. It’s a real bear."
"Then why not put a bear on the cover?"
"Bears aren’t red," Karl put in before Jerry could answer. "They’re not orange either."
Moira frowned. "Oh," she said in a small voice.
"Anyway, how do we get rid of him?"
"Easily enough. Wiz taught me the dismissal spell." She stepped to the edge of the desk and spoke to the demon.
"puff at ease exe."
The dragon crawled off the book and retired to the corner of the desk.
"That is a spell in Wiz’s magic language," she explained, turning back to the programmers. "The word exe is the command to start the spell, at ease is the spell and puff is the name of this demon."
"Well, it is a magic dragon," Karl said. A couple of the programmers groaned and Jerry winced again.
"Okay," Jerry said. "We’ll get this stuff out of your way and moved to our office as soon as possible. Uh, do you know where we are going to be?"
"The under-seneschal is waiting to show you to your workrooms," Moira said. "He is in the courtyard, I believe."
"Great. Let’s go then." Everyone moved back toward the door, except Danny Gavin who was lounging in a chair.
"Are you coming?" Jerry asked.
"No, I think I’ll stay here," Danny said. "Unless you need me?"
Jerry looked at Moira and Moira shrugged.
"Just don’t wander off."
Almost as soon as the door was closed Danny was out of his chair and over to the Dragon Book. The guardian demon raised its head when he opened it but made no protest.
Now let’s see what this magic stuff is like. Danny scanned the first few pages quickly, picking up the basics of the syntax as he went. Then he flipped further back and looked at a few of the commands.
Shit, this is a piece of cake. He went back and re-read the first part of the book more carefully, already mentally framing his first spell.
"We had to prepare workspace for you on short notice," the under-seneschal said apologetically as he led the group across another courtyard. "I’m afraid all the towers are taken and Lord Bal-Simba doubted you would prefer caves. So to give you a place where you can all work together, we ah, well, we cleaned out an existing building."
He was a small, fussy man who seemed to bob as he walked and kept rubbing his hands together nervously. He had been given an impossible job on very short notice and he was very much afraid his solution would insult some very important people. As they moved across the courtyard he became more and more nervous.
"We weren’t expecting so many of you, you see and we are so terribly crowded here…" His voice trailed off as they approached the building.
It was sturdily built of stone below and timber above. As they drew nearer, a distinctive aroma gave a hint of its original purpose and once they stepped through the large double doors there was no doubt at all as to what it was.
"A stable?" Jerry said dubiously.
"Well, ah, a cow barn actually," the man almost cringed as he said it.
"Wonderful," Cindy said, "back in the bullpen."
"Oh wow, man," said one of the group, a graying man with his hair pulled back into a pony tail, "like rustic."
"Hell, I’ve worked in worse," one of the programmers said as he looked around. "I used to be at Boeing."
The room was good-sized, but as cold as every other place in the City of Night. A mullioned window, its tracery in ruins, let in the sharp outside air. Piles of sodden trash and pieces of broken furniture lay here and there. On one wall stood a tall black cabinet, tilting on a broken leg but its doors still shut.
Wiz came into the room eagerly. Maybe there was something in the closed cabinet he could use.
Cold and hunger dulled his caution and he was halfway across the room before a skittering sound behind him told him he had made a mistake.
Wiz whirled at the sound, but it was too late. There, blocking the only way out, was a giant black rat. It was perhaps five feet long in the body and its shoulder reached to Wiz’s waist. Its beady eyes glared at Wiz. It lifted its muzzle to sniff the human, showing long yellow teeth. Wiz stepped back again and the rat sniffed once more, whiskers quivering.