sensors recorded and transmitting it back to the castle.
There wasn’t much. This part of the island was mostly low hills covered
with open forest. It had been hours since the drone had seen anything even
as interesting as a herd of animals. Just the occasional bird, a motion in
the branches that might be an animal and the mixture of trees and grassy
clearings.
The sun was almost to the horizon and the shadows had lengthened and begun
to blend together into the beginnings of dusk. The drone was a already
headed north, back toward its home when its infrared sensor recorded a
patch of anomalous heat off to the right. True to its programming, it
turned away to investigate.
A quick scan found nothing in the visual band to account for the heat, no
sign of sun-heated rocks or hot springs. The machine was too simple-minded
to be puzzled, but it did have contingency programming for something like
this. It shut down its engine, switched on its full sensor array and
turned to glide over the hot spot.
Beneath the trees and magical camouflage a lone guardsman was shifting the
last of his troop’s equipment into a neat pile for transport back to the
Capital. He looked up as the shadow swept over him, caught a glimpse of
something like a large bird and then bent again to his task.
He didn’t even consider the incident worth reporting.
It took time for the drone’s report to filter up the chain of command at
Caermort. Craig had just finished a dinner of magically produced tacos and
Coke when the notification popped up in a box on his screen. He glanced at
it, frowned, and wiped the grease from his mouth and hands before he hit
the key to get more information.
A strong source of IR and magic emissions under what appeared to be a
perfectly ordinary hill at the far south of the island. Craig chewed at
his lip. That wasn’t that uncommon. There were a lot of centers of magic
in this world and some of them had funny effects on the non-magic sensors.
But this magic fell off fast. Right over the site it showed up strongly on
the drone’s sensors. As soon as the drone moved off the spot it faded
fast. A few hundred yards from the hill the magic was too weak to pick up.
Without taking his eyes off the screen, Craig balled up the taco wrappers
and threw them in the direction of the wastebasket. The basket sensed the
incoming object, saw that it would miss, and scuffled over to catch it.
Craig was too preoccupied to notice.
That kind of fall-off was unusual. Magic usually faded out evenly,
following a kind of inverse square law. Still, it was more curious than
anything else and a long way away besides.
“Ah, what the shit,” Craig muttered at last. He had plenty of drones and
besides, there were a couple of new types of recon robots he wanted to try
out.
“Well, that’s the last of them,” Wiz said, looking at the spot where the
guardsmen had just winked out.
“Gonna be lonely around here,” Danny said from where he was lounging
against the wall. June, who was standing at his side, bit her lip and
nodded. Shauna had taken Ian back four or five hours ago and it was the
longest June had been separated from her son since he was born.
The storeroom, which had been packed with equipment and supplies, was
mostly empty now. The departing guards and staff had taken much of the
material back with them. Two of the three residential wings of the complex
were completely shut down and only a few rooms in the other residential
section were still being used.
“Yeah, at least until tomorrow night,” Wiz agreed absently. Moira had gone
back earlier to reorganize the supply effort to fit the new and much
smaller operation. Only Wiz, Jerry, Danny, June and the brownies were left
in the complex.
And who-knows-how-many gremlins, Wiz added to himself.
“Well,” said Jerry, “now that we’re alone what’s for dinner?”
“Moira left us bread, cheese and cold roast beef in the kitchen,” Wiz