Moira took his hand in hers. “I think I can manage that.”
He reached up, pulled her down to him and kissed her again.
“In fact I will do better than that,” she said with an amused glint in her sea-green eyes. “If you ever ignore me again, or treat me like a piece of furniture, I will make you very sorry indeed.” Moira made a quick little motion with her hand and the air in front of her sparkled with shards of the rainbow. “And believe me, My Lord, I am just the witch who can do it.”
Wiz looked at her openmouthed. “You wouldn’t do that to me, would you?”
Moira smiled sweetly. “Try me.”
There was a discreet knock at the door. They turned and saw a servant carrying a covered tray.
“Your, ah, dinner, Lord,” the man said with an odd expression as he laid the tray on the table beside Wiz’s bed. He removed the warming cover and withdrew.
Sitting on the plate, neatly trussed and roasted, was a small bird. The odor from the platter had unappetizing overtones.
Wiz looked at it dubiously. Then he poked at it with his knife. Then he looked up at Moira.
“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?”