"Do not worry, love," she said softly. "The spells are as simple and foolproof as we can make them. What was your phrase?-’Idiots-and-English-majors’ simple."
Wiz didn’t object to the characterization. In spite of the power his spell compiler gave him, he had absolutely no talent for this world’s magic. It had taken Moira and Bal-Simba weeks to teach him what he would have to do today.
Wiz was much more warmly dressed than necessary for the Council chantry where he stood. But the clothing didn’t entirely explain the sweat beading on his forehead.
He was standing in the middle of a circle traced in white powder on the flagged stone floor. Around him stood eight of the blue-robed wizards of the Mighty, each of them at one of the points of the compass. Late morning sunlight pouring in through the stained glass windows cast gaily colored patterns on the floor and the wizards, but beside each of them burned a pair of tall wax candles. Apprentices bustled around the edges of the room putting the finishing touches on preparations and sometimes conferring in hushed low tones. On the dais at one end of the room, Arianne, Bal-Simba’s second in command, was overseeing three Watchers hunched over their communications crystals. Next to the tall blonde woman stood a pudgy little man in the blue robe of the Mighty, his lips moving silently and his eyes focused far away as he maintained contact with others of his fellows at their assigned tasks.
"Are we prepared then?" asked Bal-Simba from his spot on the circle.
"Lord, the patrols are off the beach," Arianne told him, pushing back a stray lock of blonde hair.
"The other wizards are standing by," reported Malus, the wizard next to her.
"Operation 500-Pound Parakeet is ready to go," Jerry called from his place at the side of the room. Everyone looked to the sun stick which cast a shortening shadow on the marks on the opposite wall. The tip of the shadow was inexorably approaching one of the marks.
Danny and Jerry stepped into the circle to clap Wiz on the back and wish him well.
"I never did understand why you call this after a giant parrot," Moira said as they waited for the last minutes to pass.
"Parakeet," Danny corrected. "It’s how you get rid of cats. You get a 500-pound parakeet and teach it to say ’here, kitty kitty kitty.’ "
Moira started to frown and then laughed as she caught the joke.
"So you call this Operation 500-Pound Parakeet."
"They call it Operation 500-Pound Parakeet," Wiz said sourly. "I had nothing to do with the name."
"Hey man, it’s gonna be easy," Danny told him lightly. "All you gotta do is zip back to the City of Night, off a demon who’s waiting to toast you, and then call for the cavalry-us. We handle the rest." He made a palm-down gesture as if sweeping aside minor details. "Nooo problemo."
"It is indeed simple if you remember your spells and execute them correctly," Moira agreed.
"I rest my case," Wiz said sourly.
"Crave pardon?"
"Almost time," Bal-Simba called from his place at the head of the circle. "Make ready."
"I mean you just proved my point. Oh well, if we’re going to do this thing, let’s get on with it."
He kissed Moira long and hard.
"Okay," he said. "Places everyone."
Moira, Jerry and Danny stepped back and out of the circle, being careful not to scuff the chalked lines. The seven other wizards looked at Bal-Simba and he watched the sun stick as the shadow crept the last fraction of an inch along its track.
Then all the wizards raised their hands and began chanting. Wiz gripped his staff and tried to breathe slowly and evenly as the chant rose around him and the air seemed to fill with smoke. The sound became louder and louder, then began to fade as the air around him became thick and opaque.
There was a flash of darkness and suddenly the air was so cold it burned his lungs.
Wiz Zumwalt clung to his staff and pressed his eyes tightly shut as waves of dizziness washed over him. When he opened his eyes he found he was nose to nose with a wall of crudely dressed black basalt.
He turned and nearly fell when he stepped on a patch of ice in the wall’s shadow. He scraped his palm as he caught himself against the rough wall. Then his vision cleared and the dizziness receded as he looked out over desolation.
Even at its height the City of Night had not been attractive. Its builders, the wizards of the Dark League, had cared much more for power than for beauty. Most of the city had been crudely built out of the volcanic stone of the Southern continent with no regard to appearance or city planning.
But when the Dark League had ruled here at least there had been a kind of sinister vitality to the place. In its ruin and abandonment the city was simply ugly. The cobbled street fell away steeply and over the roofs of the close-huddled buildings Wiz could see the steel-gray harbor merging at the horizon into steel-gray sky. Behind him the volcano on whose flank the city stood curled a thin plume of smoke to the leaden sky. Even the snow that capped the mountain was dirty gray.
Studded here and there around the city were gaunt black towers, several of them with their tops blown off. A few yards ahead of Wiz the street was blocked by rubble where one of the buildings had collapsed. Many of the buildings between him and the harbor were ruined, roofless or in a couple of cases simply melted.
He reached inside his shirt and pulled out a tiny bit of blue crystal he wore on a thong around his neck. "I’m here," he said into the communications crystal. "Start Operation 500-Pound Parakeet."
Then he looked out over his handiwork again and shivered, not entirely from the cold.
Directly or indirectly, Wiz was responsible for most of the destruction. In his first great battle with the Dark League he had used his mixture of computer programming and magic to rout the League and destroyed a good part of the city in the process. In the second confrontation, he had been kidnapped to this place by the remnants of the League. For weeks the enemy wizards had hunted him through the freezing ruins of the City of Night while a tracking demon waited to destroy him if he used the least of his new magic.
He had been rescued after he had incited a magical battle between the wizards and Bale-Zur, the invincible slaying demon who had once served them. The effect of so much magic unleashed had attracted the attention of the Council’s Watchers and brought a patrol of dragons south over the City to his rescue.
However the battle had stirred up the slaying demon. Instead of staying in one place and killing whatever came to him, the Watchers reported Bale-Zur now roamed the City of Night ceaselessly looking for victims. Worse, it had begun to range beyond the City itself. If this kept up it was sure to use its powers to travel across the Freshened Sea to the lands of men.
Wiz knew he was safe enough, but he kept his back to the freezing wall anyway. The communications crystal used the old magic of the Mighty, not his new spell compiler that would activate the tracking demon. Even though it needed eight powerful wizards and a complicated ceremony, Bal-Simba had sent him along the Wizard’s Way by conventional magic so he did not have to use his own spells.
Of all the mortals in the World only three were safe from Bale-Zur. The demon would not touch Wiz, Jerry and Danny because their full names-their true names-had never been spoken anywhere in the World. To Bale-Zur they were no more prey than a rock.