Wiz followed Danny’s pointing finger and saw that the pipes were discolored where they came out of the cylinders.
"Heat did that. That sucker ran and it ran for a while."
"But if the engine worked, then the guidance system and the imaging stuff wouldn’t. They’re based on magic."
"Wait a minute," Wiz said. "Let me try something. emac!" he commanded.
"?"
"list"
The Emac took the quill from behind his ear and scribbled furiously in the air. Lines of fiery symbols appeared and scrolled upward from the Emac.
"carat S" Wiz pronounced and the Emac froze in mid-line.
"Hey, I recognize that!" Wiz peered closely at the glowing letters of fire. "Not only are they magic, they’re our magic. These spells were written with our magic compiler or something damn like it."
Four pairs of eyes met over the wreckage and no one said anything.
"This will do," Glandurg puffed, looking around the grove.
"High time too," Thorfin wheezed, coming up behind him nearly bent double by the climb and the weight of the enormous pack he carried.
One by one the other dwarves filed into the clearing and dumped their packs. The griffins had left them off at dawn on the other side of the forest and they had been walking ever since. The wooded land was a collection of craggy hills cut by little valleys and laced with brooks and streams. Generations of firewood gathering by mortals had left the woods open and parklike under the spreading trees, but it was still hard going, even for dwarves.
Glandurg had led his band almost entirely through the forest to a wooded bluff overlooking the river that ran by the base of the Capital mount. Just a few hundred yards and a stretch of placid water now separated the dwarves from the enormous bluff that bore the capital city of the North on its back and the Wizard’s Keep at its very tip.
As his followers rested behind him, Glandurg surveyed the scene. From here they could watch the Wizard’s Keep and the comings and goings of their quarry and stay concealed in the forest. A perfect spot to plan an ambush.
"How are we supposed to know this wizard when we find him?" Gimli asked from where he lay against his pack under a spreading tree. "Mortals all look alike."
"No they don’t," Snorri said with a superior air. "There’s men mortals and there’s women mortals. You can tell them apart easy."
"That only cuts it down by half," Gimli said. "We can’t go around killing all the male mortals we meet, can we?"
Glandurg turned back to his band. "That will not be necessary," he said loftily. "I thought of this before we left and I obtained from my uncle the King a means to infallibly identify this mortal."
He drew from his pouch a handful of hazelnut-sized lumps. "Each of you will have one of these. They will always point the way to this foreign sorcerer, be he a hundred leagues away."
Each of the dwarves came forward and took one of the seekers from his hand.
"It’s dark," said Thorfin, staring into his palm.
"Mine’s not pointing any way at all," Snorri chimed in.
Glandurg scowled and grabbed for the more powerful version of the device that hung around his own neck. Cupping his hands to shield it from the light he saw that it glowed only very dimly. The arrow within pointed waveringly south.
"He must be more than a hundred leagues from here," Glandurg said weakly.
"We aren’t going to fly after him, are we?" Thorfin asked with a dangerous edge to his voice. The other dwarves muttered in agreement.
"No. There is no need for that. He will return soon enough. Meanwhile we will scout around us and wait."
Bal-Simba was waiting for them at the crest of the dune. Outlined against the sky with sea breezes whipping the edges of his leopard-skin loincloth the big wizard was a most impressive sight. Wiz, who was a little chilly in spite of his traveling cloak, wondered how he managed to keep warm.
He heard their breathless report gravely and without comment. "We will have the thing taken back to the Capital for study," he told them. "Unless you think it is unsafe?"
"No reason to think that, Lord," Wiz said. "Although since we don’t even know where it came from I can’t guarantee anything."
Bal-Simba pursed his lips. "I think we may have a clue as to that. I have been talking to Weinrich and the other villagers. They say there has been a change in the weather recently."
"The weather?" Wiz said blankly.
"Folk who live by the sea are always sensitive to the weather. This far south on the Freshened Sea the pattern of wind and weather is constant, year to year."
"Village folk are usually wise in the ways of the immediate surroundings," Moira agreed. "But you say a change?"
"A fog bank about a day’s sail to the east. A fog that does not lift and does not move. A place where a sailor can get lost because neither compass nor magic works properly."
"And they think this thing came out of the fog?" Wiz asked.
"It seems to have come from that direction."
"Lord, if I were you I’d search the hell out of that fog bank."
"That is already in train, Sparrow," Bal-Simba said.
Dragon Leader looked over his formation again and then turned his eyes back to the sea below. Two days ago his entire wing of almost fifty dragons had been brought together from their scattered patrol bases and sent hurrying south to Oak Island. Yesterday had been spent frantically setting up a makeshift base among the fisherfolk and putting out the first hasty patrols to try to define the edges of this strangeness.
Now Dragon Leader was taking his flight into the heart of this new thing. Every rider and dragon was at the peak of alertness. He could tell from the way they were flying that none of them liked it at all.
Even the formation reflected that. Instead of putting his dragons in line abreast or an echelon to cover the maximum territory, he had his first element above and behind his main formation for top cover. The rest of the patrol was pretty much line abreast, but they were closer together than normal so they could support each other quickly in case of trouble.
Every man and woman in the patrol understood the significance of that. This was a fighting formation, not a scouting one. Dragon Leader was going into this strange place loaded for bear.
Dragon Leader and his troopers were used to flying into the unknown. In a world where maps were components of spells rather than guides to terrain, he had often struck out over uncharted territory. He was used to magic as well. Save for the death spells on their iron arrows and a few odds and ends, dragon cavalry did not use magic. But they dealt with it constantly and most of them had faced it on more than one occasion.
Not that they had seen any magic here. So far he had seen nothing but sun-dappled sea and the occasional wheeling sea bird. Just what they should have seen, in other words.