The other waved a hand airily. “Oh, but that would not be sporting. Our Dread Master desires to have his amusement with this alien wizard before he dies. Think of it as a little something to pay him back for all that he has cost us.” He smacked his lips and his eyes sparkled. “And would it not be delicious to have this one slain by magic, unable to use magic in his own defense? You have to admit, Seklos, it has a certain piquancy to it.”
“Piquancy be damned! That—creature is dangerous and should be destroyed immediately. Do you play with a louse before you crack it between your fingers?” He looked narrowly at his companion. “Well, you might. And so might he. But it is still foolishness.”
The younger wizard shook his head. “No sporting blood. That’s your problem, Seklos, you’ve got no sporting blood at all.”
“What I’ve got,” the older wizard said, “is a cold from tramping all over this pest-bedamned city. If it weren’t for that, I could smell him even more sharply. Now come on. Let’s see if we can track him down and end this charade.”
He strode out through the other door with his companion still trailing behind, smiling tolerantly.
It was several minutes after they left that Wiz could even shiver.
Thank God I don’t snore! Wiz thought numbly.
For a long time after they left, Wiz stayed huddled in the rags. His bladder was full to bursting, but he did not abandon his shelter for nearly an hour after the wizards left.
They still should have seen me, he thought as he wiggled out of his cocoon. He had been snuggled into the pile of cloth, but he hadn’t been completely hidden. The storm had passed during the night and light in the room had been bright enough. But still the wizards had missed him completely.
He paused and listened at the door. The hall was empty and there was no sign or sound of the wizards who had come so close to him. It was full daylight now so he looked around one more time. The only thing he had missed was a cracked and broken mirror hanging askew on the wall. Most of the glass was missing, but the piece that remained reflected back the empty room.
Only it’s not empty! I’m here. He looked closely at the mirror. The mirror fragment showed the room, but there was no sign of Wiz. It was as if he was not there.
A cloak of invisibility! That was why the magicians hadn’t seen him. He looked in the mirror again, turning this way and that and admiring his lack of reflection.
He’d heard about cloaks of invisibility, but he had never seen one. What was it Moira called it? A tarncape. That was what he had found. He laughed aloud and spun in a full circle, the cloak standing out from his body from the speed.
Then he froze. Magic! Wiz thought, his heart pounding, I’ve been using magic! But the demon hadn’t come for him. He hadn’t even felt the quiver he felt when he tried to frame a spell.
Wiz slumped into the corner, his back against the cold stone wall, and tried to think. What was it the wizard had said?
Of course! The demon wasn’t looking for him, it was looking for the kind of magic he made. He knew that the output of his spell compiler “felt” different from normal magic, probably because each of his large spells was built up on many smaller spells—the “words” in his magic language.
But the tarncape wasn’t magic he had made. It was someone else’s magic he had found. It didn’t register with the demon even when he used it. And that meant that he could use magic after all! Provided it was magic not of his making.
Wiz thought about it, but he didn’t see how that helped much. Obviously most of the magical items in the City of Night had been carried off in the chaos that followed the Dark League’s defeat. There were undoubtedly some things left, but he didn’t know how to use them and magical implements did not come with users manuals. Worse, he wasn’t a wizard in the conventional sense. He had no training in the usual forms of magic so he probably wouldn’t recognize a magical object unless it bit him on the ankle.