seen.”
Mikey smiled. “Wanna bet?”
Then his expression softened. “But maybe you’re right. Maybe we should
negotiate this thing like adults.” He smiled again, a more relaxed, gentle
smile. “After all, there’s plenty for both of us. Two whole worlds,
right?”
“Well . . .” Wiz didn’t want to break the moment, but he didn’t like the
idea of giving away half the World. “I’m not empowered to negotiate
directly, but I can take an offer back to the Council of the North.”
Mike nodded and his smile grew wider, almost radiant. “Of course. So
here’s the offer I want you to take back to your Council.”
He flicked his hand up and a wave of fire washed over Wiz.
Wiz screamed as the flames hit him. He dropped to his knees and then fell
to the floor, the center of a white-hot ball haloed in orange. Thick black
smoke roiled off the body and disappeared.
Then the inferno vanished and nothing remained but a tiny blackened thing
lying on the laboratory floor.
Craig was white with shock at what his friend had done. “It wasn’t him,”
he said dully. “He wasn’t really here after all.”
“Shit!” Mikey picked up the charred bit of root and threw it against the
wall. “Shit, shit, shit!”
Fifteen: FIRE WITH FIRE
Reverse engineering is the sincerest form of
flattery.
-Engineers’ saying in Silicon Valley
Wiz screamed.
His very eyes were on fire. Heat singed his hair and beat on his brain
through his skull. The flesh melted and ran off his face. The palms of his
hands and the soles of his feet throbbed with pain as the awful, searing
heat destroyed the nerve endings.
Somewhere far beyond the wall of terrible pain he was aware of Arianne
gesturing wildly. Then waves of coolness washed over his body.
“Oh my God,” Wiz moaned. “Oh my God.”
Arianne held him in a way that combined professionalism and compassion.
“You will be all right, my Lord,” she said soothingly. “Try to relax.”
Wiz relaxed one tiny, knotted muscle. The expected flare of pain did not
come. He relaxed a few more muscles and still no pain.
“Jesus,” he breathed out raggedly. Arianne released him to another’s arms.
Moira. Instinctively he reached out to touch her hair.
“I warned you that the psychic effects could be painful,” Arianne said.
“Yeah, but . . .” He gasped for breath again. ” . . . my God.” Moira
hugged him to her and he felt her tears on his cheek.
“I’m all right now, darling,” he said with a smile he did not feel.
“They will not be if ever we meet,” his wife said fiercely.
“I am sorry we did not get you out sooner, my Lord,” Arianne told him,
“but we did not realize what was happening.”
Wiz sucked another racking breath. “Sucker punched. That son-of-a-bitch
sucker punched me.”
The tall blonde sorceress shrugged. “Name it as you like. They have no
honor.”
Wiz was still shaking a few minutes later when the programmers and such of
the Mighty as were in the castle assembled hastily in the chambers of the
Council of the North. They took their places haphazardly around the long
oak table without regard for the carefully established rules of place and
precedence. That alone told Wiz how seriously the wizards took this.
“They’re programmers, all right,” he told the group. “From our world or
one very much like it.”
“Do your people make war against us?” demanded Juvian.
“Definitely not. I could tell that much just by looking. But they’re
trained in the same discipline we are.”
“That’s bad,” Jerry said.
“Worse than you know, perhaps,” Bal-Simba rumbled. “They have some
powerful magical force behind them.”
“The Dark League again?”
Bal-Simba snorted. “Much more powerful than that. Non-human I think, and
mighty even for non-humans.”
“Elves?”
“Perhaps.”
“That must be what they’ve been up to,” Danny said. “They’ve been stalling
the negotiations while they got this thing set up.”
Wiz frowned. “I don’t know. There was magic all over the place, but it
didn’t feel like elf magic.”
“May I remind you, Sparrow,” Bal-Simba said, “that you have not met many
elves?” Then he shook his head. “But you are correct. Elves can make time