A motion above the buildings caught his eye. Wiz turned his head just in time to see a black-robed wizard drift lazily over the rooftops. The man’s robe fluttered about his ankles and his head moved constantly as he scanned the city.
Wiz shrank back against the wall. But he knew he stood out sharply against the dark volcanic rock of the street and buildings. There wasn’t even a shadow to hide in and the wizard was floating in his direction. He was as exposed as an ant on a griddle and he would be fried like one as soon as the wizard spotted him.
Wiz bit his lip and silently cursed the bright sun and the shuttered houses. He looked up and down the street frantically, but there was not an open door or window to be seen.
There was a storm sewer opposite. It didn’t look big enough to take him and it was covered with an iron grate, but it was the only chance he had. Wiz dashed across the street and levered up the grate with a quick jerk of his halberd. Then heedless of how deep the hole might be he thrust himself through.
It was perhaps eight feet from the street to the trickle of freezing slime that ran through the bottom of the sewer. The shock and the slippery bottom forced him to his hands and knees before he regained his balance. He looked up just in time to see the wizard float down the street housetop high.
Wiz dared not breathe as the man passed over the grating. The sorcerer looked directly down at his hiding place, but floated on by majestically. Apparently the shadows in the hole hid Wiz from him.
Once the man passed out of Wiz’s field of vision, he breathed a sigh of relief. Then he froze again. There was something moving in the tunnel behind him. Something big.
The tunnel was as black as the inside of midnight, but Wiz heard a splash-scrape sound as if something too large to move quietly was trying to do so. He listened more intently. Again the splash-scrape, nearer this time.
Wiz realized he was trapped. He couldn’t see the flying wizard, but he could not have gone far. Leaving the shelter of the sewer meant exposing himself to his enemies. On the other hand, whatever he was sharing this tunnel with was getting closer by the second.
For some reason it stuck in his mind that he had found no bodies in the ruins. Not even bones.
He listened again. There was no further sound from the tunnel except the drip, drip of water. The lack of sound reminded him of a cat getting ready to pounce.
With one motion he twisted around and lashed upward with the halberd. The spike caught on the edge of the hole and he swung himself up to grab the coping with his other hand.
Behind him came a furious splashing. He swung his leg up and rolled free of the sewer just as a huge pair of jaws snapped shut where he had been. Wiz had a confused impression of a mouth full of ripping teeth and a single evil eye before he rolled away from the opening.
Gasping, Wiz gained his feet and flattened against the building. There was no sign of the flying wizard and the creature in the sewer showed no sign of coming after him.
Muddy, chilled and thoroughly frightened, Wiz ran off down the street, looking for a place to hide.
“Well,” said Jerry Andrews, “what have we got?”
The team was crowded into the Wizard’s Day Room, which they were using as a temporary office while the last renovations were completed on the cow barn.
For the last two days the programmers had torn into Wiz’s spell compiler and the material he had left behind. By ones and twos they had pored over the Dragon Book, Wiz’s notes and conducted small and carefully controlled experiments.
Now Jerry had called a meeting to sum up, compare notes and plan strategy. He had set it for late afternoon, so most of the programmers were awake and functional. They had pushed the tables in the Day Room together to make a long table in the middle of the room and, heedless of tradition, pulled chairs from their accustomed spots up around it.