As soon as it left Wiz’s hands the halberd became visible. Seklos dodged it easily, swaying to one side like a snake. His face lit with unholy glee as he watched it sail past him.
"So you confirm your presence. Thank you, Sparrow. And now you cannot hide. Your cloak cannot save you." The wizard extended his staff and waved it from side to side like a blind man while he fumbled in his sleeve.
On tiptoe Wiz backed away from the questing staff. No good to try to get around him. Frantically he looked for someplace to hide.
The only possible place was under one of the benches. Wiz squeezed beneath the nearest one, face to the wall in a vain attempt to muffle his breathing. He clinched his eyes tight and waited to feel the lethal staff tip in the center of his back.
"Come out, little Sparrow," the hateful, hate-filled voice crooned. "Come out and face your end."
There was a hideous roar followed by a ringing scream cut short in mid-cry. Then there was a thrashing and horrible crunching noise. Wiz forced himself further back into the crevice.
Then all was silence. No sound from Seklos, no sound of anything else. As quietly as he could Wiz twisted around and looked out.
At first he thought it had suddenly turned to night. All he saw from beneath the bench was blackness. And then the blackness moved. The enormous black body hopped ponderously to one side, the huge head turned. Wiz went weak from sheer terror.
The thing looked at Wiz with burning red eyes and then turned away. It lumbered through the last dying vestiges of the blue fire and out the door. Wiz heard it make its way down the corridor.
It took a long time for Wiz to get his heart back under control. The monster had destroyed the wizard and it looked right at him, but it hadn’t touched him. The way the thing looked at him Wiz knew it had to have seen him. But it hadn’t made a move to harm him. Somehow Wiz did not think it was because the monster was a friend.
Wiz had never seen the huge black creature, but he recognized it from descriptions. It was Bale-Zur, the slaying demon which had brought Toth-Set-Ra to power in the Dark League and then destroyed him when Wiz attacked the City of Night.
There was something about that. Something he had learned. He cudgeled his brains, trying to recall that almost-remembered bit of knowledge. Something he saw? No, something someone told him. Before he used his new magic to travel to the City of Night and rescue Moira. Something someone told him about demons, or dragons, or…
Of course! True names. Humans weren’t the only creatures with true names. Fully mature dragons had them. And so did some kinds of demons because it was only by knowing their true names that they could be controlled. That was how Bale-Zur found his prey. Unlike other demons, the great slaying demon did not need to know a thing’s true name to destroy it. All it needed was for the being’s true name to have been spoken somewhere in the World at some time.
And of all mortals in the world, William Irving Zumwalt was the only one safe from Bale-Zur. No one had ever spoken his full name—his true name—anywhere in this World.
Licking his lips, he stepped over the gruesome remains of the wizard. As he did so he kicked something that rolled across the floor.
Wiz was almost afraid to look down for fear his foot had touched some body part. But it was only a silvery sphere about the size of a baseball that had been clutched in what was left of Seklos’ hand.
Seklos must have grabbed it when Bale-Zur attacked him, Wiz thought. Overcoming his revulsion, he bent down and picked up the sphere. He couldn’t be sure but it looked like the thing that the wizard had thrown at him, the one that spread fire on the stones.
He forced himself to look at what was left of Seklos and realized his left sleeve was lumpy. Swallowing his gorge, Wiz reached into the blood-sodden sleeve and fished out two more of the spheres. He could have done it faster except he kept his eyes closed through the whole process.
The three spheres gave him weapons, his first real weapons that might be effective against the wizards of the Dark League.
The wizards… ! Seklos had sent his companion for help. Wiz stuffed the balls into his pouch, grabbed his halberd and dashed down the stairs. There were three wizards not more than a hundred yards up the street when he emerged from the building. Without hesitating, Wiz ran around the corner, leaving the black robes to wonder at the sound of footsteps with no sign of the runner.
Several blocks away, Wiz sank back against the wall of an empty storeroom and listened for any sound of pursuit.
The situation got worse and worse. His cloak of invisibility’s spell had some loopholes. Wiz had no doubt at all that there were counter-spells that would render it useless.
Wiz forced himself to calm down and think. Through all the hunger and cold and terror, he had to think.
He had to summon help somehow and if he expected to live long enough for that he had to defeat or neutralize the Dark League. Two problems and both of them looked insoluble.
But maybe—just maybe—one problem could solve another again.
He needed magic to get out of here. If not magic to walk the Wizard’s Way, then a burst of magic to attract the Watchers who stood guard over the whole of the World.
But it didn’t have to be a burst of his magic.
Wiz looked at the three spheres in his lap and a plan began to form in his mind.
Dzhir Kar rested his pink scarred forehead in his one good hand and ground his teeth in frustration.
The Sparrow had slipped through his grasp again. They had been within a hairsbreadth of him this time, he knew it. Yet that damnable little bird had fluttered through his clutches once more.
And now Seklos was gone. Seklos the tireless, the indefatigable. Seklos who hated this Sparrow almost as much as he did. Torn apart by something in the upper city while the entire contingent of the Dark League came running to his rescue.
That hadn’t been lost on the rest of his band. They had seen what had happened to Seklos and the sight had done nothing for their ardor in the search. Now most of them wanted to leave the City of Night and abandon the search. Only his overwhelming skill at magic and the loss of the natural leader of any opposition to him kept them here.
Still his demon lay coiled in an alcove of the chamber. Occasionally it would raise its head and the tendrils along its fanged mouth would quiver as the Sparrow considered using magic, but so far there was no magic from this most alien of wizards, nothing the demon could home in on.
It was enough, Dzhir Kar thought, to make a wizard cry.
Twenty: Forcing a Fight
Never give a sucker an even break.
Especially not if he’s a big, mean sucker.
Wiz tiptoed down the corridor, convinced that the sound of his heart must be giving him away at every beat. Over and over he repeated to himself the route out of this maze.
It was unfamiliar ground to him. This was the one part of the City of Night he had been striving to avoid ever since he was kidnapped. This was the path to the lair of the Dark League.
There were no guards and no sign of magic protecting this place, which only made Wiz more nervous.
Finally he turned a corner and saw a brightly lighted doorway not thirty feet ahead. There were two black robes standing in front of it talking. Through the open door he could see others moving around.