the time.”
“Furp?” Moira asked.
“FRP-fantasy role playing games,” Wiz explained absently.
“What’s happened? What’s wrong?”
“Craig and this Mikey character are here. They’re raising all kinds of
hell.”
Judith went even whiter. “No! I couldn’t have!”
“That is enough,” Bronwyn said firmly. “She needs to rest.”
“Right,” Wiz said. “Listen, you just concentrate on getting well and don’t
worry, okay.” He patted her hand and left.
“Moira?” Judith said weakly as the hedge witch turned to go.
“Yes, my Lady?”
“I screwed up, didn’t I? I really screwed up.”
Moira smiled and patted her shoulder. “It is all right,” she told her. “It
doesn’t really matter.”
Then she turned away so Judith would not see how much that statement cost
her.
Seventeen: A NEW ALLY
Wiz was in the middle of analyzing a module from the crashed recon drone
when Bal-Simba found him in the Bull Pen.
“My Lord, you have a visitor.”
There was something in the way he said it that made Wiz snap around, the
intricacies of the code forgotten.
“Who?”
“Duke Aelric.”
Wiz’s jaw dropped. Only once before had the elf duke sent his image into
the Wizard’s Keep. The times Wiz had met him it had been in his own elf
hill. No mortal understood how the elf hierarchy worked, but Aelric was
called “duke” and stood high among the elves. Whatever this was, it had to
be important.
Without another word Wiz left his code and hurried out the door of the
Bull Pen, but when he turned toward the main keep and the Watcher’s Hall,
Bal-Simba placed a hand on his shoulder.
“Not there. The main gate.”
“Why did he send his image there?”
Bal-Simba looked at him strangely.
“He did not send his image, my Lord. He is here in person.”
* * *
There was no room in the Wizard’s Keep deemed grand enough for receiving
an elf, but the Wizard’s Day Room was quickly put right, Malus was
awakened from his afternoon nap and shooed out, and Wiz and Duke Aelric
retired there.
Even in leather breeches, boots and a simple tunic of dark blue velvet
brocaded in silver, Duke Aelric was as out of place as a president in a
pig sty. But he contrived to put Wiz so much at his ease in the short walk
from the main gate that Wiz didn’t notice-almost.
“What can we do for you, my Lord?” Wiz asked after his guest had been
seated and refused refreshment.
“It is more a question of what I can do for you, Sparrow,” Duke Aelric
said. “Or perhaps what we can do for each other.”
“Oh?” was all Wiz could think of to say.
“You have already met the new arrivals from your world?”
“Mikey and Craig?” Wiz said grimly. “Yeah, I’ve met them.”
“Then you agree they must be dealt with?”
“Yeah. That’s what you might call at the top of my to-do list.”
“I also want to see them dealt with. And what is behind them. Better to
work together on this, do you not agree?”
“I’d be honored, Lord. But why . . . ?”
Aelric cocked a silvery eyebrow. “Why am I interested? Because what you
are doing is important. And because I think you will need my help. In
fact, you will need all the help you can get.”
The way he said it made Wiz’s blood run cold. He knew the business with
Craig and Mikey was serious, but if Duke Aelric was interested it had to
be even more serious than he imagined.
You will meet your greatest challenge, Lisella had said. He forced the
rest of the prophecy out of his mind.
“Okay, what do you suggest?”
“First, I think, we must pool our knowledge. There are things I can tell
you which will help and other things I wish to learn from you.”
“Sure.” Wiz reached for the silver bell to summon a servant. “Let me get
the rest of the team in here.”
Duke Aelric made small talk while they waited. Wiz was too astonished by
the whole situation to do more than respond half-heartedly. He was very
glad when Jerry burst into the room.