"Crow, right?"
Her eyes sparkled. "Well, Lord, you did say…"
"I know," Wiz sighed. "I know." Deliberately he cut a slice of the breast, put it into his mouth and chewed a couple of times.
"You know," he said at last. "I think I finally understand that expression."
Wiz was dozing again when he got his next visitor.
"Wiz?" a familiar voice said gently. At first he thought he was dreaming. There was no way he could be hearing…
"Wiz?"
"Jerry!" Wiz sat bolt upright in bed. "How the hell…"
"Relax, I volunteered," his friend told him. "We’ve got over a dozen people here; programmers, systems analysts, documentation specialists. We’ve been working on your spell compiler and magic operating system. We call it WIZ-DOS. You’re famous, boy."
Wiz shook his head. "I… I don’t know what to say… except God, it’s good to see you!"
"I missed you too. ZetaSoft wasn’t the same after you left. Look, I know you’re supposed to be resting, but there are a couple of things that have been driving us nuts."
Without waiting for an answer he spread four scrolls out on the bed.
"Okay, now here…"
"Just what do you think you’re doing?"
They both looked up to see Bronwyn standing in the door, hands on hips and fire in her eye.
"This is a friend of mine," Wiz told her. "I was just helping him…"
"You are helping nothing!" Bronwyn said, advancing into the room. "You risk relapse My Lord! Especially with the healing spell. You are supposed to be resting and rest you shall." She turned to Jerry. "As for you, you will take your magics and you will go back where you came from." She gestured as if exorcising a demon. "Begone"
"Look, I need to talk…"
"Out," Bronwyn ordered.
"But this will only take…"
"Out!" She made shooing motions. "Tomorrow he will be released and he can work himself to death as he pleases. But he will have a good night’s sleep before he begins."
"Tomorrow, okay?" Jerry grabbed the scrolls and left.
Later in the afternoon Bal-Simba came to visit him.
"They tell me you are recovered," the huge black wizard said as he entered the room.
"They want me to stay here overnight just in case, but I’m fine."
"Arianne said you wanted to talk to me."
"Yeah. We’ve got a very serious problem." He outlined his conversation with Duke Aelric and what he had seen on his travels through the Wild Wood.
Bal-Simba nodded gravely at the end of it. "I have talked to Aelric and I already know much of it. Besides there have been some incidents." He told Wiz about the disappearing villages.
"So it’s already started," Wiz said heavily. "Shit! I should have gotten back sooner."
"Little enough you could have done about that, Sparrow. Now, what of Duke Aelric?"
"He thinks we can make some kind of deal. But we’re going to have to work fast."
"What would he require?"
Wiz looked uncomfortable. "It’s not him, exactly. The way he explained it to me, there are so many factions and kinds of non-mortals that we can’t just sit down and bargain. What we’ve got to do is remove the threat in their eyes so their coalition falls apart. Then maybe we can come to an agreement with the elves."
"And what would this take?"
"Hey, I don’t know, I’m just the messenger boy."
"Hardly," rumbled Bal-Simba. "It was obviously your idea. Further, the elves, or at least Duke Aelric, are willing to treat with you."
Yeah, Wiz thought, only one of them keeps trying to kill me. "You make it sound like I’m ambassador to the elves or something."
"Very nearly, Sparrow. You have had more success dealing with them than any living mortal."
"Great. Another job I don’t want and I’m no good at."
Bal-Simba sighed. "Sparrow, we would be much further along if you would stop prejudging what you are or are not capable of. You can do a great deal more than you suppose if you put your mind to it. Now I ask you again, what will it take to avert a war?"
Wiz thought. "At the very least we’re going to have to fix things so they don’t feel threatened. That means we’re going to have to do something about demon_debug."
"That falls within the purview of you and the team from your world," Bal-Simba said. "What else?"
"Well, we’re going to have to stop this mad dash into the Wild Wood. We may be able to work out some kind of homesteading arrangement later, but for right now we need to keep people from going further."
Bal-Simba stroked his chin and the little bones of his necklace clicked against each other. "As easy to sweep back the sea, I fear."
"Can’t you order them to stop?"
The giant wizard smiled wryly. "Sparrow, even at the height of our power the Council never had that kind of hold over the people. Were we to issue such an order it would be ignored and there are not enough guardsmen to post at every forest road and trail."
"You’ve got to do something."
"We can only try."
"I understand you’ve got a whole team of programmers here," Wiz said to change the subject.
"Almost a score of them, recruited from the Valley of Quartz."
"You mean Silicon Valley."
"That is what I said, is it not? In any event they have been working on your system of magic and making excellent progress—or so they tell me." He chuckled. "Meanwhile they have been, ah, enlivening things here to no end."
"I dunno," Wiz said. "You make me feel superfluous. I’ve been gone and you and Moira have been doing all the work. All I managed to do was get myself kidnapped and chased all over the City of Night."
"Hardly. Aside from wiping out the remnants of the Dark League, you were the one who approached Duke Aelric with the notion of a treaty."
"You could have done that."
Bal-Simba shook his head. "No, Sparrow, I could not. In the first place he never would have talked to me. In the second place I would not have had the courage to do something so insanely dangerous."
"Oh," said Wiz in a very small voice.
"Well, I do not wish to tire you, so we will leave these matters for the morrow."
"Fine. I’m pretty bushed. I’m going to get a snack and go back to sleep."
Bal-Simba made no move to leave.
"Is there something else?"
"There are questions we must answer and soon," he said at last. "Some things yet unclear about what happened to you."
"For instance?"
"Was your kidnapping connected with the attempts on your life?"
"No. That was someone else. I think I can take care of that."
"Ahh, I see," he said and then hesitated again. "I understand Ebrion is dead."
"Yeah. I was there when it happened."
The wizard looked closely at him. "Was he involved in your kidnapping?"
Wiz opened his mouth and then stopped. Telling Bal-Simba what had happened would definitely discredit Ebrion’s faction—the people who had been trouble ever since he arrived at the Capital. But discrediting them wouldn’t make them go away. They’d still be here and they’d be even angrier and more frustrated.
Always leave your opponent a line of retreat—unless you want a fight to the death.
Wiz realized Bal-Simba was watching him intently.
"Would it do any good if I said Ebrion was involved?" he said at last. "I mean in the long run?"
The giant black wizard considered. "In the long run? No, not really."