Peering into the crystal he saw that there were a number of other things in the air, but little enough magic.
Fumbling in his other sleeve he produced a light hazel wand. It wasn’t as powerful or as impressive as his normal staff, but it was much easier to handle on dragon back. He kept his eyes fixed on the crystal as he raised his arm above his head and began to chant.
Craig’s screen started to fill with magically generated hash. He quickly applied a filter function to the image and some of the interference faded, but what was left pulsed rhythmically and seemed to beat against itself like a badly tuned instrument, creating irregular patches of dark and light on his screen.
The magical sensors were worse. The screen filled with glowing blobs of amorphous color that made it look like a neon lava light. Craig swore under his breath and started combining the output of various kinds of sensors and tinkering with filters until he got his best picture.
Vaguely Craig realized he hadn’t been smart in setting this system up. Everything flowed back to his command center, but he could only concentrate on a few facets of the battle at one time. There was too much happening for him to coordinate the defense. He would have to rely on the sensors and programming built into his warbots and other weapons. Which was fine, only there was no way for those weapons to coordinate without direct orders from his command center.
Still, he had a lot of weapons.
"What’s going on up there?" Gilligan demanded.
Karin shaded her eyes and squinted. "I cannot see. No, wait! Those are dragons. Ridden dragons and they are attacking." She looked at Gilligan. "Those are my people."
"Can we signal them?"
"They are too high and too fully engaged." She picked up her bow and started back toward the castle. "Come on. We must help them."
"How?"
She looked over her shoulder. "We will think of something, now come if you are coming." She trotted off with Stigi humping along beside her. Gilligan had to run to catch up.
Thorfin looked at his leader’s boot soles and scowled. It seemed as if they had been climbing for hours. First up the steep outer wall, then in through a gun port and finally up through the castle’s ventilation ducts. There was plenty of room, but the wind was almost strong enough to pluck a dwarf from the wall and every few hundred yards they had to unfasten a grating that blocked the duct. Twice they had narrowly avoided the whirling blades of huge ventilation fans that threatened to turn the whole expedition into dwarf tartare. And still they climbed onward. Glandurg stopped every few minutes to check his locating talisman, but it always told them the Sparrow was above them.
I never realized glory was such hard work, Thorfin thought as Glandurg missed a foothold and kicked him in the face.
"Look," said Jerry. "Do you have any idea where we are?"
The four of them were standing at the crossing of four identical corridors. There were no floor numbers, room numbers or anything else to give them a clue.
"One of the upper floors of the castle," Wiz told him.
"In other words we’re lost, right?"
"No, I know where we are. I just don’t know where the computer is."
Jerry growled. "Okay, let’s do this systematically. Lannach says the computer is in the room where you met Craig and Mikey, right?" Wiz nodded. "We know the room has an outside wall because it had a big window, right?" Again the nod.
"So let’s go to the outside wall, put our left hands against it and follow it around, checking every door as we go. Eventually we’ve got to find the right room."
"There are hundreds of rooms on this floor," Danny protested.
"All the more reason we need a system."
"Okay," Wiz said. "There’s the outside wall. Let’s do it."
All four of them put their left hands on the wall and started walking single file. The first room they came to was empty. The second held a mass of machinery that was obviously not the computer.
"This looks more like it," said Wiz as they came to the third door. It was wider than the others and almost as high as the corridor.
Wiz opened the door and looked inside. Ranked along the walls in the dark were a dozen heavily armed robots, all motionless. Suddenly the lights came on, the robots jerked erect and a dozen metal heads swiveled toward the door.
The programmers didn’t wait for the rest. Wiz threw fireballs, Danny threw lightning bolts and Jerry hit them with some kind of spell that made them crumble to powder. A couple of laser beams flashed over their heads and left burning furrows in the wall behind them. The heat activated the fire sprinklers, drenching all four of them with water.
June looked up at the rain magically coming from the ceiling and laughed at the wonder of it all. Wiz choked on the smell of fried, electrocuted, powdered robot and shook his head to get the water out of his eyes.
He glared up at Jerry. "You and your system."
"There’s nothing wrong with the system. It’s just that if you follow it you are certain to find everything on this floor."
"Most of which we don’t want to find. Okay, we’ll keep following the wall, but from now on we don’t open any doors unless they look really promising."
Karin stopped so quickly Mick almost ran into her. She turned, put her finger to her lips and gestured around the corner. Cautiously Mick peeked around. There was a door there, set at the end of a narrow corridor back into the wall. There were also six things out of someone’s nightmare guarding it. They were big, ugly, armored, and armed to the teeth.
He ducked back and looked at Karin. Go the other way? he pantomimed and Karin nodded.
Just then Stigi decided to see what was so interesting. He stuck out his neck, thrust his head fully around the corner and snorted in curiosity.
With a wild yell the guards charged forward.
"Shit," Gilligan said, fumbling for his shoulder holster. Before Karin could draw her bow, he stepped around the corner, dropped to a semi-crouch and fired two-handed.
Eight shots rang out in the confined space and all six of the guards were down.
Karin’s eyes widened at the sight.
"Well done," she said. "Now, shall we use the door they were guarding?"
At that moment the door flew open and a solid mass of the manlike monsters charged out waving swords, spears and other less identifiable, more nasty, weapons.
Instinctively Gilligan dropped into his shooters’ stance, but Karin grabbed his arm and pulled him down.
With a whoosh and a roar Stigi let go with a blast of flame.
The effect on the packed mass was instant and appalling. The things shriveled, screamed, burst into flame, and died in the ranks.
Again the whoosh and another lance of dragon fire struck the remaining attackers. Black smoke boiled off charred flesh and the stink was appalling. Here and there came a series of explosions as ammunition in guards’ bandoleers ignited.
And then there were no more attackers. Gilligan looked at the blackened mass in front of him and was almost sick. He’d seen people burned to death in air crashes before, but not on this scale. Karin had gone deathly pale under the layer of reddish dust.