eyes searched right and left and the horned, scaled, fanged head swiveled
on the snakelike neck as it scanned for more prey. It stopped when it saw
Wiz standing perhaps twenty feet away, seemingly unprotected and reeking
of traces of the new magic. Without warning and without seeming to gather
itself it leapt at Wiz, jaws gaping and talons spread. Its bellows rang
off the surrounding stone walls.
Perhaps five feet from the human, the demon bounced. It stopped dead in
mid-air and with talons scrabbling for purchase it slid slowly down the
invisible barrier that lay between it and its would-be prey.
Again and again, the thing hurled itself against the invisible barrier
that separated it from its prey. In spite of himself Wiz flinched and
shrank back from its fury.
It was wasted effort. The demon clawed impotently at the barrier and
scrabbled frantically against it, but it could not come close to
penetrating it.
Wiz raised his staff and spoke. “demon debug begone exe!” he proclaimed.
The demon renewed its desperate attack on the magical barrier and its
screams rose to a crescendo. Then the spell took hold. The demon became
translucent. Its roars faded to the merely deafening, down through the
loud and then trailed away like a locomotive whistle disappearing in the
distance. It became transparent, faded to a mere outline and then it was
gone.
Wiz let out his breath in a great gasping sigh and sagged against his
staff.
“Okay,” he said into the communications crystal. “Phase one is
accomplished. Come on through and let’s get the rest of this thing over
with.”
There were two soft pops behind him and there were Jerry and Danny,
looking disoriented and a little sick, but clutching their staffs gamely.
They were burdened with packs and hung about with an assortment of
pouches, crystals, strangely shaped bits of metal and other less
identifiable things. In addition Danny carried a large leather sack that
pulsated and moved as if the contents were alive.
The contents of the sack were to help them in their search. Everything
else Danny and Jerry carried was for protection or defense. Looking them
over, Wiz reflected there was probably enough magical firepower between
the pair of them to defeat the Dark League ten times over. Far more than
they would need for anything they were likely to meet here.
Which was fine with Wiz. He had not the slightest intention of giving
anything in the City of Night an even break.
“You okay?” Wiz asked as his friends seemed to become aware of their
surroundings.
“Yeah,” Danny mumbled. Then he shook his head to clear it. “Boy that’s a
weird feeling.”
“It’ll be a good feeling when we get out of here. And the sooner we start
the search the sooner that will be.”
Danny nodded and bent to open the leather bag.
Hundreds of things like dirty gossamer handkerchiefs half-flapped,
half-floated out of the sack and wafted off in all directions. Behind them
came a half-dozen things of the same stuff about the size of a bath towel.
Finally Danny reached in and pulled out a crystalline object about a foot
high. The facets flashed in the pale light and the thing began buzzing
weakly as it started receiving data from the searching units.
“It will take them a few minutes to get some kind of search pattern set
up,” Wiz said into the comm crystal. “There’s not a lot we can do until
then.”
“Just be careful doing nothing,” Moira’s voice admonished them. “That
place is not safe.”
“No kidding,” Wiz said, thinking of the close calls he had when he was a
fugitive in the city.
“They’re spreading out fast,” Jerry said, craning his neck and shielding
his eyes with his hands to try to follow the searchers’ progress.
All the things in the sack were variants of the system of searching demons
which had been one of Wiz’s first projects with his new magic. The smaller
searchers had almost no intelligence or volition. They were passive
receptors which passed information back to the bath towel things for
concentration and interpretation. They in turn passed the information back
to the crystal object which did the final evaluation.