depend on us in this and I am depending on you.”
Glandurg’s face glowed.
“Thank you, Uncle. I will strive to prove myself worthy.” He bowed deeply
and then whirled and raced out the door, slamming it behind him.
As the door reverberated behind his young relative, King Tosig allowed
himself a tight little smile.
A debt was a debt and debts must be paid, even to trolls. On the other
hand, he thought, nowhere it is written what coin they must be paid in.
Clearly there must be an effort to crush this Sparrow, but if the effort
failed and one of his blood relatives perished in the attempt, why, who
could blame the king or his people? Even mortal magicians were not without
defenses after all.
He shifted and the pain in his stomach came back, but not so bad this
time. Maybe he wouldn’t need the ground chalk after all.
“Dammit, they’re stalling!” Danny said as the group picked its way along
the trail in the moonlight. “They’re just keeping us hanging.”
“Why?” asked Jerry. “It doesn’t get them anything.”
“I dunno why,” Danny said stubbornly, “but we’re being stalled.”
Wiz walked beside his fellows, too tired to join the argument. Pointless
anyway, he thought. No matter what their motives are we’ve got to keep
negotiating with them. It’s the best we’ve got.
Behind them Ian made a tentative whimper. June quickly hushed him.
“I thought you were going to leave her home,” Wiz said in an undervoice as
he jerked his head back at June.
“Well, I tried,” Danny said defensively. “But she came anyway. You can’t
argue with her. It’s like she doesn’t hear.”
“If you can’t keep her at home maybe it would be better if you didn’t come
to these things.”
“No way, man. This is where stuff is happening. Besides, she’s not a
problem. She just sits with me.” Wiz saw the angry jut of his jaw and
decided to try a different approach.
“Okay, but it can’t be good for the baby to be out in this weather. And it
will be even colder next full moon.”
Danny’s expression cleared as he thought about it. “Yeah. You’re right.
Maybe I should stay home.”
Wiz nodded. The new Danny could be just as obnoxious as the know-it-all
kid who had come to this world a little over a year ago, but at least you
could reason with him.
More or less, Wiz reminded himself.
At the base of the enchanted hill Bal-Simba motioned the party to halt in
a clearing. They clustered together while he began the chant to transport
them back to the Capital on the Wizard’s Way.
A quickly spoken spell, a flash of familiar darkness and they were
standing on the flagstones of the Outer Court of the Wizard’s Keep, just
inside the main gates of the castle.
Wiz blinked at the brightness of the lantern-lit courtyard after the
moonlit forest clearing.
“You know, this is still wrong,” Jerry said as the guardsmen hurried to
open the inner gate that separated the Outer Court from the Keep proper.
“Looks fine to me,” Wiz said as his wife Moira came through the gate to
meet him. The mellow glow of the lanterns caught the coppery highlights in
her red hair and warmed the creamy tones of her freckled skin. She was
easily the best thing Wiz had seen all day and he hugged her tight and
kissed her soundly.
“No, think about it,” Jerry persisted as Wiz and Moira broke the clinch.
“We just teleported in here. But what about the velocity differences
caused by the rotation of the planet? There should be a speed difference.
And there’s the energy gradient, and . . .”
Moira’s green eyes gleamed with amusement. “Has he been like this all
evening, love?”
“Just since we got back,” Wiz told her.
But . . .” Jerry interjected.
Wiz was in no mood for one of Jerry’s attempts to apply the finer points
of physics to this world. “It’s magic, okay?”
“Yeah,” Jerry persisted as they went through the inner gate, “but magic
has rules.”
“But that doesn’t mean we understand them.”
“Still . . .”