Worse, there was nothing you could do to them. Magic didn’t seem to work and physical objects passed completely through them. Mayor Andrew was nursing a broken hand after trying to hit one of the little creatures that happened to be standing in front of a post. He was so angry at Alaina he wouldn’t even come to her for healing.
"I am sorry about the wait," Wiz told her. "We are very busy here and none of our service representatives, ah wizards, were immediately available." Out of the corner of his eye, Wiz could see all the communications positions in the great hall filled with wizards talking to people just as he was. But this one was special. Part of the reason Alaina had to wait was he wanted to handle this village himself. "Now, about these little green men. How did they appear?"
"First there was a plague of banshees and when I tried to exorcise them, we got—this." She waved her hand helplessly. "Oh, I would rather the banshees," she moaned.
"We have not been able to re-create your problem here," Wiz told her. "There is nothing in ddt that could produce an effect like that."
"I didn’t use ddt, I used demon_debug," Alaina said.
Wiz frowned and pursed his lips. "Well, as you know, demon_debug was not our spell. We cannot be responsible for the consequences if users attempt to apply spells with unauthorized modifications."
Alaina moaned again.
"However," Wiz went on, "we have encountered this problem before. The spell you used was not thoroughly tested before release and contained some serious bugs that interact destructively with certain kinds of magic. In fact, we find it actually attracts those kinds of magic. You were quite fortunate, you know."
"Fortunate?" Alaina asked miserably. Now three of the little green menaces were dancing a jig between her and Wiz’s image. They were accompanying themselves with their own singing and none of them had the slightest sense of pitch or rhythm.
"Fortunate," Wiz said solemnly. "It might have been dragons."
"Eh?" said Alaina, straining to hear over the caterwauling.
"I said it might have been dragons," Wiz shouted.
Now the green creatures had split up. Two of them were playing nose flutes which droned together like out-of-tune bagpipes while the third took center stage to perform a solo—and extremely rude—version of the Highland fling.
"Help us, Lord," Alaina shouted hoarsely over the racket of the demons. Wiz winced and muted the sound from his crystal.
"As it happens we do have a beta version of ddt Release 2.0. It should be very effective against these secondary demons." He pursed his lips severely. "However I would strongly suggest that you do not use any unauthorized spells from now on. The incompatibility problems are likely to become much more severe."
"Anything," Alaina said fervently. "Anything at all. I’ll burn every copy of demon_debug I can get my hands on. Just rid us of these monsters!"
"I’ll get a messenger off with ddt Release 2.0 right away," Wiz told the hedge witch. "And remember, no unauthorized spells."
He left Alaina blubbering thanks as the image faded.
"That’ll hold her," he said as he turned away from the now-dead crystal to Moira. "What’s the matter?" he asked as he caught her look.
"Wiz, this is cruel."
"What they did to that rock creature was ten times worse," Wiz said. "At least these demons won’t hurt them and they’ll vanish at a touch of Release 2.0. Besides, I want to make sure that new spell gets spread to every part of the human inhabited world—and that no one tries to use demon_debug again."
"Still, you make them suffer needlessly."
Wiz rose and held her close. "Not needlessly. If we don’t stop them there won’t be any magical beings at all left anywhere inside the Fringe."
"And would that be such a bad thing?"
He took her arms. "You don’t mean that. Magic is just as much a part of this World as humans are. You don’t handle something by destroying it. You come to terms with it and learn to use it."
Moira sighed and Wiz felt her relax in his grip. "Oh, you are right, of course. But I wish there were some other way."
"So do I," Wiz said. I don’t like this either." Except in certain selected cases.
"Well, what do you think?" Jerry asked the group gathered around the long table in the Bull Pen.
Moira gave a little gasp. "It is beautiful."
"It should be accurate enough to do the job," Wiz said judiciously as he looked over the map.
The little red dragon wandered over, sniffed at the map, decided it wasn’t good enough to eat or interesting enough to play with, and returned to his nap on top of the nearby books.
He was the only one in the room who was not impressed. It was a very special map. The parchment it was drawn on was made from the skin of a wild ox from the Wild Wood. The inks used in the drawing were made of pigments taken from the wood itself. Black from the oak galls, browns and full reds from the earth of the Wild Wood and the blues and the greens from minerals taken from its rocks. The pens and brushes used to draw the map were also made from Wild Wood products. Hairs from the tails of forest martens and squirrels, pens from the quills of forest birds and elder bushes. Even the water to mix the inks and the pumice to pounce the skin had come from the Wild Wood.
Unlike any other map ever seen in the World it was also accurate and to scale, thanks to modified versions of Wiz’s searching demons and an Emac Jerry had hacked to do the cartography.
The effect was breathtaking. The mountains seemed to rise up out of the parchment and the brooks and rivers appeared to flow in their beds. Even the forests seemed to be alive.
They all admired the map silently for a moment. Then Jerry picked up the wand that lay beside the map. It was made of ebony and ivory and was about the size and shape of a conductor’s baton.
"I still feel silly waving a magic wand around," he said to no one in particular.
"Just think of it as a funny looking mouse," Wiz advised.
"Okay, phase two." Jerry took the wand and drew it along the line on the map. Where the wand passed a trail of glowing green remained.
There was a stirring in the air, but nothing else changed.
"That’s it?" Judith asked.
"That’s it," Jerry said. "You wanted lightning bolts maybe?"
"Is it permanent?" Moira asked.
"Until it’s reversed," Jerry said. "But we can reverse it any time."
"This will work until the Council can come up with some kind of policy they can enforce," Wiz said. "It also establishes our good intentions with the elves and the other non-mortals. As long as the barrier’s in place I don’t think we will have a war."
Einrich topped the rise and stopped. The path ahead of him lay clear, but he could not go that way. His ox whuffed and stamped nervously, catching his master’s indecision.
The peasant scanned the forest. The trees here were no different than the ones in the valley behind them. The same huge old giants sheltering an undergrowth of ferns. But it was different and he could not go that way.
The trail ran on ahead as it ran behind, winding between the big trees, skirting logs and avoiding the thickly grown patches where a tree had fallen and saplings and busy new growth competed for the light. But he could not follow the trail on.
Einrich frowned and without knowing quite why, turned back. The valley behind was far enough.