“Perhaps the elves could tell us.”
Bal-Simba snorted like a bull. “You grasp at straws.” Then his expression softened. “Besides, I have climbed all over that notion and can find no way in. The elves will have nothing to do with any mortal except Wiz. And even if they would, I doubt I could convince them of our sincerity.”
“Will not your word suffice as president of the Council of the North?” Arianne asked him.
“You know the answer to that, Lady,” Bal-Simba rumbled. “I am not the mightiest magician among us, and the Council’s power ebbs as people realize they do not stand in constant need of us. Wiz may be the most junior member of the Council, but he is our most powerful magician and our best hope for correcting what is wrong.”
Arianne shuddered. “So if we do not find him, we face war.”
“We must do more than find him, Lady,” Bal-Simba said. “We must find him alive and sound.”
Seventeen : Everything Wild
Magic is real—unless declared integer.
—from the collected sayings of Wiz Zumwalt
“Okay, deal.”
Karl, Judith, Mike and Nancy were seated around the table in the Wizard’s Day Room, settling in for a quiet session of bridge. Ignoring the glares of the half-dozen or so wizards present, they had pulled a table from its accustomed place and brought chairs in around it.
Mike opened a fresh pack of cards and dealt the first hand with his wife Nancy as the dummy.
Nancy organized her hand and frowned. Every card she held was a heart. By some weird happenstance, she had drawn the entire suite of hearts!
“Damn, what a time to be dummy!”
Then she looked up and saw the strange expressions on the other players’ faces.
“What’s wrong?”
Wordlessly, Mike laid down his hand, face up. Karl and Judith followed suit. Mike had gotten every club, Judith had all the diamonds and Karl had all the spades.
“Jesus!” Nancy breathed. “Are you sure you shuffled those cards?”
“You saw me,” Karl said. “My lord! I wonder what the odds are on that happening?”
“Astronomical,” Judith said softly. “Simply astronomical.”
They all looked at the cards for a minute.
“Well,” Mike said finally. “Let’s shuffle and get down to play.”
He raked in the four hands and took great care to shuffle the deck thoroughly. Then he dealt them out again.
Nancy picked up her hand, looked at them, and threw them down. “Shit,” she said informatively.
The others followed suit. This time Nancy had gotten all the clubs, Karl had the diamonds, Mike had the hearts and Judith had the spades.
“This isn’t working,” Karl said finally. “Somehow the magic in this place is interfering with the shuffle.” He looked at the four piles of cards on the table and made a face. “Do you still want to play?”
“If we can find something that we can play,” Judith said. “I don’t think bridge is going to do it.”
“How about poker?” Mike asked. “We could play for matches or something.”
“I don’t really know how to play poker,” Judith protested.
“We’ll make it easy,” Mike told her. “Five-card draw.”
This time Karl shuffled the cards and dealt the first hand. Then he picked up his cards and looked at them.
The hand was assorted, but it was a dog. Not even a pair and no card higher than a five. Well, that was okay too. Karl played poker for the long haul and the first hand of the game was a good place to find out how the other players would react to a bluff.
Suddenly the top of his head felt wet.
Karl looked up and saw that a tiny thundercloud, no bigger than his hand, had formed above his head. A miniature bolt of lightning flashed from peak to fluffy gray peak and a fine mist of rain settled on him.
“Let me guess,” Nancy said. “You got the low hand.”
Karl threw down his cards in disgust. “I don’t think this universe is designed for card playing.”
“Wait a minute,” Mike said. “Let’s try something that’s more strategy and less pure luck of the draw. You ever played Texas Hold ’em?”