“That’s the one who was trying to kill you?” Jerry asked Wiz.
“Yeah. She kept trying to set up magical accidents.”
“Why?”
“Who knows? I met her once at Duke Aelric’s but by that time she’d been
after me for months. I think it was some sort of cat-and-mouse game
between her and Aelric-with them as cats and me as the mouse. She’d try to
kill me by accident and Aelric would help me escape by the skin of my
teeth.”
“Do you think she’s after you again?”
Wiz looked apprehensively at the place on the wall where Lisella had
stood. Then he shrugged. “Maybe.”
Jerry followed his gaze. “It sounds like we’re in for some real trouble.”
“If she’s right, maybe.”
“Well, elves can foretell the future, can’t they?”
“Foretelling and true speaking are two different things,” Moira said
firmly. “Elves can see truly but they are as false and tricksome as a
piskhie maze. Clearly she means us no good and we had best ignore what she
has said.”
It would have been more convincing, Wiz thought, if her knuckles hadn’t
been white on her staff.
“Well anyway, I think we’d better wind up here and get back to the
Capital,” Jerry said. “Bal-Simba needs to know about this.”
“I don’t think he’s going to like it much,” Wiz predicted.
Wiz’s prophecy, at least, was correct. The enormous black wizard heard
them out and then led them back through their story time and again with
sharp questions. At last he had no more questions and simply sat with his
head sunk into his hamlike hands. The group of programmers sat clustered
around the table, unsure what to do next but unwilling to depart without
his leave.
“What do you think it means, Lord?” Wiz ventured at last.
“I wish I knew, Sparrow.” He lapsed into silence again.
“There have been other elven prophecies to mortals,” Moira said. “Or so
the stories say.”
“Not like this,” Arianne said from her place behind Bal-Simba’s chair.
“Those stories speak of chance meetings and a prophecy given either as a
reward or punishment.”
“This was neither,” Bal-Simba said. “She asked for nothing. More, she
obviously sought you out at a time when you would all be together and away
from the Capital and its protections.”
“What should we do?”
“There is nothing we can do. The future may be open to elves, but to us it
is closed and hidden. We can only live our lives as best we can and see
what comes of all this.”
“I wish I knew what her game was,” Wiz said.
“I wish I knew why she wanted you dead,” Moira replied.
“She hasn’t tried to kill me since I was kidnapped to the City of Night.
That’s something anyway.”
“True,” Bal-Simba said. “It is something. I only wish I knew what.”
Six: QUEST COMPANION
Good help is so hard to find nowadays.
-Personnel manager’s lament
Craig paused at the foot of the stairs and went over his spiel again. He
wanted to get this just right, otherwise Panda would think he was crazy.
For two weeks he had visited Judith every night, even missing two Friday
gaming sessions in a row. Slowly and patiently he had worked the story out
of her; where she had gone and what she had seen and done.
It was unbelievable. It was fantastic. Except that it made sense. When you
put it together with other little things over the last year, it had to be
true!
The exultation grew until a lump rose in his throat from sheer joy. There
were other worlds where magic worked! It wasn’t all just game scenarios
and science fiction. Those places really did exist and you could get there
from here! He shivered again at the wonder of it all.
Only-now he needed help.
Out on the street the traffic rushed by unheeded. Craig stared unseeing,
while he went over his dilemma one more time.
Somehow he had to find a way to open that door into the other world. He
wanted that more desperately than he had ever wanted anything in his life,
even, he realized with a guilty start, more than he had wanted his mother