Moira dropped him a slight curtsey from her position in the center of the floor. “Merry meet again, Lord.”
The chant swelled up in six-part harmony as the wizards sought to bend the forces of the Universe to their will. Moira stood straight-backed at her place in the growing maelstrom of magical energies. As the grayness swirled up about her Bal-Simba thought he saw her lip quiver.
Jerry Andrews rattled off the sequence to start compiling the program. Then he leaned back and the chair creaked. He sucked a lungful of the chill, air-conditioned air and rubbed his eyes. The after image of the screen was burned into his vision.
The fix he had just installed was a fairly elegant piece of work. He would have liked to show it to someone, but he was alone. His new cubicle mate was a day person and they seldom met unless Jerry was going home late while he was coming in early.
Whole damn company’s going to hell, he thought sourly. Next thing you know we’ll be doing weekly project reviews with input from marketing. When that happened Jerry intended to bail out. He was an old hand and he knew the signs.
Besides, he thought, this place hasn’t been the same since Wiz Zumwalt went away.
Wiz’s disappearance had shaken people up plenty. There were lights in the parking lot at ZetaSoft now and security guards patrolled the grounds and the buildings.
It wasn’t unknown for a late-working programmer to be robbed or killed in company parking lot, but it still struck hard when it happened close to home. Especially since they never found the body.
Besides, Wiz had been his friend. If it hadn’t been for his taste for truly rotten puns, he would have been the perfect work companion.
Well, he thought, just link this module in and . . .
There was a sudden blurring of the world and Jerry Andrews realized he had a girl in his lap.
Since most of Jerry’s lap was already taken up by his rather ample stomach, she promptly rolled off and landed on the floor.
She shook her mane of red hair and looked up at him, her green eyes wide. “Oh! Crave pardon, My Lord.”
Jerry stared at her, stunned.
Moira rose quickly and clutched at the edge of the desk as the room spun around her. Even with Bal-Simba’s improved technique she was still dizzy and weak from the aftereffects of the Summoning.
“Uh, hi,” Jerry said for want of anything better to say. Not only was this totally unexpected, but she was gorgeous—if you liked busty redheads. Jerry liked busty anything.
“Greetings, My Lord,” Moira said, still clutching the edge of the desk. “I am called Moira.”
“I’m Jerry Andrews.”
Her eyes widened again. “Oh, well met! Wiz has told me a great deal about you.”
“Wiz? Wiz Zumwalt?”
“Yes. He is in trouble and he needs help.”
“Wiz is alive?”
“Oh yes, but he is not here. There was a Great Summoning and Wiz . . .” she trailed off. “It is a rather long story, I fear, and perhaps a complicated one.”
Jerry nodded. “That sounds like Wiz.”
They couldn’t stay here, he decided. Moira didn’t have a badge and sooner or later the guard would come by. But it was early in the morning and there wasn’t any place to sit and talk.
* * *
Jerry decided to fall back on his first instinct whenever he had a problem. “Let’s get something to eat.”
The Capital of the North did not so much end as it trailed off in a dispirited gaggle of buildings, set ever further apart along the high street as the rocky promontory slanted down to the surrounding plain. At the upper end of the town, the Front, the houses and shops of the well-to-do crowded close to the walls of the Wizards’ Keep. The further you moved down the spine of rock, the meaner and poorer the town became.
Pryddian was no stranger to the Back of the Capital, but this was an area he had little occasion to visit. Down a twisting side street, so narrow the overhanging houses almost blocked the sun, there was a stable. So small and dark was the entrance Pryddian nearly passed the place before he realized it was what he sought. He kept the hood of his cloak up and looked up and down the street before ducking through the low door.