Still, he thought, fingering the cloak, there ought to be something I can do with this.
The garden was beautiful this early, Moira thought. The sun painted the towers of the Wizards’ Keep golden and made the colors of the pennons leap out against the blue of the sky. The dew still filmed the plants and made diamond sparkles on the grass and the occasional spider web. The air was cool and perfumed with the fragrance of roses.
Moira plucked a yellow one off the bush. Wiz had liked yellow roses on her. He thought they looked good against her red hair and fair skin and he especially liked her to wear them in her hair.
What was it he had told her? Some custom in his world where a woman wore a rose over the left ear to show she was taken and the right ear to show she was available. Or was it the other way around?
Moira smiled at the memory and bit her lip to keep from crying.
A shadow fell over her. She gasped and whirled to see Bal-Simba.
“Oh, Lord, you startled me. Merry met.”
“Merry met, Lady.”
“Is there any news?”
“None, I am afraid, but it is a related errand that brings me to you. Do you recall the three-demon searching spell Wiz created to seek news of you? I mentioned it to Jerry today and he says they have found no trace of such a spell in Wiz’s notes.”
Moira frowned. “None? I could have sworn he had something, at least the copies on parchment of the wooden slabs he wrote on at Heart’s Ease when he created the spell.”
“Jerry says there is nothing in the material he has. Is there anything they missed?”
The hedge witch shook her head.
“Nothing.” Then she brightened. “But Lord, what about the searching system Wiz set up to find me? Could we not direct the searching demons to seek out Wiz?”
“We thought of that,” Bal-Simba told her. “But it appears that the spell requires constant attention. The small searchers, the ones like wisps of dirty fog, are easily blown about by the wind. The larger ones drift as well, given time. A year’s storms have scattered the demons beyond recall.”
“And without the spell we cannot recreate the work.” Unconsciously she crushed the rose in her grasp.
“Wait a minute! Lord, what about the spell Wiz used to find me in the dungeon?” Moira asked. “The Rapid Reconnaissance Direction Demon?”
Bal-Simba slapped his thigh and the sound rang off the walls. “Of course! It could search the entire World in hours.”
A quick survey of the notes in the Bull Pen turned up the spell. With Jerry and several of the other programmers who hadn’t yet turned in at their heels, Moira and Bal-Simba went out into the courtyard to put the spell in operation.
“Now then,” Bal-Simba said to himself as he flipped between the pages where the spell was written, alternate lines on each page to prevent activating the spell by writing it down. “Hmmm, ah. Yes, very well.” He faced into the courtyard, squinted into the morning sun and raised one hand.
“class drone grep wiz,” he commanded in a ringing voice. There was soft “pop” and a squat demon appeared in the courtyard. Its cylindrical body was white, its domed top was blue and it supported itself on three stubby legs. “exe!” commanded Bal-Simba.
The demon emitted a despairing honk and fell forward on its face. A thin trickle of smoke curled out of its innards.
“Let me see that spell again,” Bal-Simba said to Moira.
Three repetitions produced no better results. Once the demon simply froze, once it flashed off never to return and once it ran around in tight little circles emitting little beeps and squawks. At last Jerry listed out the spell to see if he could discover the difficulty.
“I think I see what’s wrong,” Jerry said finally. “But it’s not going to be easy to fix.”
“What is the problem?” Bal-Simba asked.
“The problem is that this code wasn’t written for anyone else to use.”
“You mean this spell is protected by magic?” Moira frowned. Such protections were not unknown on powerful spells.