Moira looked up and saw Bal-Simba picking his way across the muddy court.
“Merry met, Lord,” Moira said as he came up to them.
“Merry met, Lady, Lord,” the great black wizard replied as he came puffing up, his bone necklace jangling. “Merry met indeed.”
“What’s happening at the Capital?” Wiz asked once they were seated around the log table in the tiny cabin. Wiz and Moira sat holding hands on one side and Bal-Simba seemed to fill the rest of the dwelling.
Bal-Simba smiled “Ah, they are still as roiled as ants whose hill has been kicked over. From the ditherings of the Council you would think it was the Capital which had been destroyed, not the City of Night.” Then he sobered.
“But that is not why I am here, Lord. I came to tell you that with the Dark League’s power broken, we may be able to send you home again.”
Wiz frowned. “I thought that was impossible.”
“With the League in ruins many things are possible. Their wizards are scattered and cannot interfere if the Mighty band together for a Great Summoning. I have consulted the Council and we are willing to perform a Great Summoning to return you to your world.”
Wiz felt Moira’s hand tighten in his and caught his breath.
Home!
A place with pizza, books, movies, records and music. A place where someone or something wasn’t trying to kill him all the time. A place where he didn’t have to be dirty or cold or frightened. And computers again.
But a place with no Moira. He saw she was staring intently at the table top. Was all the rest of it worth that?
There was something else too. He could help people here. Back home it didn’t matter if he worked on a project or not, not really anyway. There were other programmers who could do what he did, although maybe not as well. Here he did matter. He could make a big difference. And that was worth a lot.
“I will not lie to you, Sparrow,” Bal-Simba said. “There will be an element of danger. It will be hard to locate your world out of the multitude and even with all of us working together we are not sure we can send you back. But we believe the chances are very good.”
“I don’t think I want to go,” he said firmly and drew Moira to him. “Not now.” The hedge-witch came close, but he could still feel the tension in her body.
Bal-Simba grinned. “I thought that would be your answer. But I had to make the offer. And remember Sparrow, you can change your mind. The North owes you a great debt.”
“You owe a greater debt to Patrius,” Wiz said. “It was his idea.”
The wizard nodded. “I wish Patrius had been here to see it.”
“I wish he had too,” Wiz said gravely. “He should have been here to see it. It really was his victory. Besides, I would liked to have known him.”
“But you made it happen,” Moira insisted. “You did the work. And Patrius made a mistake. He said you were not a wizard.”
Wiz sighed. “You still don’t get it, do you? I’m not a wizard. Most likely I never will be.”
“There are those among the League who would dispute that—were they still alive to do so,” Bal-Simba said, showing all his pointed teeth.
“They’d be wrong.” Wiz sighed again. “As wrong as you are. Look, you still don’t appreciate what Patrius did. It wasn’t that he found me and brought me here—and I’m not unique, by the way. In fact I was probably a poor choice if things had gone as Partrius intended them. But he wasn’t looking for a wizard at all.”
“I did not know you had added necromancy to your talents, Sparrow.”
“No magic, just logic. Although I didn’t work it out until everything was all over.” Wiz took his arm from around Moira’s waist and leaned both elbows on the table.
“Your real problem was that you had a magical problem that couldn’t be solved by magic. Every great spell was vulnerable to an even greater counterspell and as the League waxed you inevitably waned. Individually, the League’s magicians were stronger than the Council’s, they had to be because they didn’t care about the consequences of their actions. Patrius knew that a conventional solution, a bigger magician, would only make matters worse in a generation or so when the League learned the techniques.”