“You did very well indeed.” His eyes flicked to Lisella. “Much better than
some expected.”
He stopped speaking and he seemed to drift for a moment. Then his eyes
focused and he turned his attention back to Wiz. “You have my personal
thanks as well.” He sounded even wearier. “Ennui is part of the price the
ever-living must pay.” He smiled slightly. “Our association has been many
things, perhaps, but it has never been boring.”
“No, Lord.” Wiz smiled through his tears. “It was not boring.”
“No,” Duke Aelric muttered almost beyond hearing. “Not boring.”
Then he was still.
* * *
Silently Lisella placed a hand on Wiz’s shoulder and guided him away from
the bier. Behind him he saw other elves drape the linen over the body.
“It was the key, wasn’t it?” Wiz said at last. “That was what those others
wanted all along.”
“Of course,” Lisella said. “You did not realize that it could be used to
destroy a World as easily as to close it off?”
“Well, why the Hell didn’t he tell me the thing was that dangerous?” Wiz
blazed. “We came within an ace of losing it to Craig and Mikey and losing
the entire World with it.”
She looked at him with amusement. “Would you have dared to use your
Mousehole to construct it if you had known?”
“Then why . . . Oh! You can’t build one, can you? You can’t make a key on
your own.”
“Not so precisely as to be that powerful, no. Neither could the others. To
attempt to make it by magic is to warp the very fabric of the World.”
“So you used us,” Wiz said dully. “Just like those others were using Craig
and Mikey.”
“You disapprove, Sparrow?” the elf said coldly. “You find the price high?”
She tossed her head in the direction of the still form under the linen
draping. “Consider the price he knew he would pay.”
Wiz gaped. “He knew?”
Lisella cocked a raven eyebrow. “Why do you think he took such an interest
in you?”
“But why? I mean if he knew it was going to kill him . . .”
“Because he knew there was a better chance of success with you and your
alien magics than working only with the ways of his people. He chose a
road of certain destruction because it gave a better chance-not a
certainty, only a better chance-that the World would live.”
She looked at Wiz oddly. “It must be a strange and wonderful thing to be
so attached to a place you would willingly go down to non-existence for
it.”
Lisella raised her hand and made a gesture in the air. “Go in peace,
mortal. Our business is at an end.”
And suddenly they were back in the computer room.
????????????
For a long time neither of them said anything.
“Well,” Wiz said at last, “the prophecy was true. The mightiest among us
died and all of us lost.”
“Craig lost his life. Danny and June lost the chance for more kids. Mick
and Karin lost each other. Glandurg lost his quest. Judith lost months out
of her life and we lost . . .” He stopped and swallowed hard, unable to go
on.
Moira wiped her eyes. “Not everyone lost, I think. Mikey can be said to
have gotten his heart’s desire. So the prophecy was truly fulfilled.”
Wiz thought about that. “Yeah,” he said flatly. “You’re right. He did get
what he wanted.”
Sunlight streamed through the mullioned windows of the Wizard’s Keep in
golden shafts and painted warm bright patches on the floor. Dust motes
danced in the beams.
Mikey looked at the dust, fascinated. He stretched out his hand and tried
to catch the dancing specks in his fist. But they would not be caught and
he had more important things to do.
Very deliberately he plumped down on the floor and returned to the job of
arraying his army. With exaggerated care he added a new tin soldier to the
end of the first line of men. Then he took brightly painted wooden blocks
from the pile beside him and added a new building to the town behind his