confidently this time. “Okay, let’s do it.”
With Arianne and Moira trailing, he stepped out into the bright sunshine
of the courtyard. He was particularly proud that he didn’t trip over the
raised sill of the workroom.
Jerry was waiting in the chantry with Bal-Simba and a couple of other
blue-robed wizards. They had decided to have someone else send the
simulacrum to the castle because Wiz was afraid he might transport himself
instead of his image if he tried to walk the Wizard’s Way unaided.
As “Wiz” and the others came into the room Jerry squinted at him.
“Gee, it really isn’t you, is it? I can’t tell even this close.”
“Let us hope no one else can either.”
Bal-Simba reached out and clapped the image on the shoulder. Then he
grinned broadly at Arianne, showing all his pointed teeth.
“It even feels right! A work of art, Lady.”
The usually unemotional wizardess dimpled and dropped a curtsey in return.
One of the other blue robes, a lean man with thinning dark hair named
Juvian, bustled forward. “Everything you see and hear will be recorded.”
He tapped the glowing blue sphere he held in his palm. “It will not be
necessary to stare or to overtly memorize anything. Keep your eyes moving
and try to see as much as you possibly can.”
Arianne stepped up beside him. “You know the recall signal. Use it at any
sign of danger. We will be watching and if we see anything we will pull
you back.” She laid a hand on his shoulder and her brown eyes bored into
his.
“Remember Sparrow, even though your body remains here you can be hurt. Do
not become careless.”
Wiz gulped and nodded.
A flash of darkness and Wiz found “himself” standing in front of the huge
gate of the castle.
The doors were gigantic. Throwing his head back and squinting up, Wiz
estimated they were at least a hundred feet high. They were made of some
greenish metal with a zig-zag crack down the center where they met. The
portal they were set in was made of some smooth pale blue substance with
softly rounded forms and no joints anywhere, as if it and the walls of the
castle had been cast in a single piece. The whole thing reminded Wiz of
something out of a 1930s’ comic strip.
There was no sign of a knocker or a doorbell. He thought about knocking,
but if the thing was as thick as it looked he doubted he would be heard
inside.
Well, nothing ventured . . .
He stepped up to the door and pounded three times with his fist. The door
boomed and rang from the blows in a way that made Wiz’s whole body shiver.
For a minute nothing happened. Then he stepped back from the door and a
motion on the portal caught his attention.
What he had taken as parts of the rounded decoration were futuristic gun
turrets. The barrels poking out of the turrets were equally futuristic,
with cooling fins and streamlined muzzle brakes. There were at least six
of them and all of them were pointing directly at him.
Okay, so now they know I’m here. He decided the best thing to do was to
act nonchalant, as if he went calling on strange castles every day. He
thought about trying to whistle, but he wasn’t sure he could. So he
settled for folding his arms and looking around.
Around him the red sand desert stretched away in gentle folds. The
landscape was dotted here and there with dark green spindly bushes and an
occasional clump of something that looked like it might have been cactus
if it had known what a cactus was supposed to be. The sun was high in the
sky and the reflection off the greenish metal of the gates was enough to
make him squint.
Oddly, when you got this close to it the castle wasn’t very impressive.
Standing next to it was like standing next to a mountain instead of
something manmade. Even the gate was huge and impersonal. Somehow that
made it less imposing, not more.
Well, it’s not their taste in architecture I’m concerned about.