Without one hell of a protection spell there was no way that anything magical could survive demon_debug. Idly he picked up a water-worn pebble and ran his thumb across it while he thought about the implications.
This must be what Einrich meant when he said he could destroy any magic he met in the Wild Wood. That, and the way Alaina talked, made Wiz pretty sure the spell was spread far and wide through the Fringe.
Wiz flung the stone into the weeds. He had screwed this up more thoroughly than he had ever messed up anything in his life. Before he had just affected himself, and perhaps the lives of a few people around him. Now he had managed to meddle in the lives of an entire world; to meddle destructively.
He wasn’t sorry he had invented the magic compiler. He thought of the last time he had come this way. He and Moira had stumbled over the burned ruins of a farm shortly after the trolls had raided it. He had dug the grave in the cabbage patch to bury the remains of the people the trolls hadn’t eaten after roasting them in the flames of their own homestead. He still had nightmares about that.
He didn’t want to go back to the way things had been. But looking down at the village and the scar where the rock creature had stood for time out of mind, he wasn’t at all sure what was replacing it was much better.
He stood up and looked down on the village. The evening breeze bore the faint sounds of drunken revelry up the hill to him. In the center of the village people were piling wood head high for a bonfire. Ding dong the witch is dead! Never mind that the “witch” had stood harmlessly for longer than the village had been there. Never mind that the people who killed it behaved like a wolf pack with the blood lust up. The witch was dead so let’s have a party. And if it’s a good party, maybe we can go out tomorrow and find some more witches to murder.
He couldn’t go back there. But he didn’t want to go back to the Capital with its packs of wizards and no Moira. All he really wanted was to be alone for a while. Say a couple of centuries.
Well, he decided, there really wasn’t any reason to go back. He had come to the village with only his cloak, staff, and a pouch containing a few magical necessities. He had his staff and pouch and the weather was warm enough that he doubted he would miss his cloak.
Turning his back on the village, Wiz headed down the other side of the hill, toward the Wild Wood.
He very quickly lost any sense of where he was. He might be wandering in circles for all he knew—or cared. If he wanted to go somewhere he could take the Wizard’s Way. What he needed was to be alone and to try to sort out the mess.
Once he stopped to munch handfuls of blackberries plucked from a stand of thorny canes. Another time he stopped to drink from a clear rivulet. Most of the time he just walked.
The evening deepened and the shadows grew denser but Wiz barely noticed. Finally, the second time he almost ran into a tree he sat down to think some more. As he sat the dusk darkened to full night. The last vestiges of light faded from the sky and the moon rose over the treetops. The night insects took up their chorus and the night blooming plants of the Wild Wood opened their blossoms, adding just a hint of perfume to the earth-and-grass smell of the night. Wiz fell asleep under the tree that night. He dreamed uneasily of Moira.
“You step more spritely this morning,” Shiara observed as her guest came into the great hall.
“Thank you, Lady, I feel better.” She joined Shiara at the trestle table beneath the diamond-paned window and began to help herself to the breakfast spread out there.
“You found a solution then?”
Moira frowned. “Part of a solution, I think.”