"If we are to be scouts we must needs report," Malkin said quietly. Wiz noticed that even when she talked her eyes kept searching up and down the tunnel. He hefted the special communications crystal. "Besides there’s no sign our enemy understands spread demon communications, much less knows bow to tap into the signal."
This guy seems to understand an awful lot we didn’t think he does," Danny pointed out.
Wiz ignored him and whispered into the crystal. The crystal glowed more brightly as the spell within it came alive. Suddenly there were twenty small demons floating in the air in two ranks before them. They hung silent and motionless. Wiz paused, cocked his head and whispered into the crystal again. Again the crystal glowed but the demons did nothing. Wiz frowned and tried a third time.
"What’s wrong?" Danny asked.
"I’m not getting any response. It’s like there’s nothing there."
"Jamming?"
"No sign of it." He tried again.
"Maybe the demons got out of sync," Danny suggested.
Wiz considered. Unlike a normal communications crystal, the "spread demon" crystals used many pairs of demons with the message split into tiny parts and switching from demon to demon in an apparently random but carefully calculated pattern. The system depended on having each demon listening at the right time and in the right sequence.
"Have you ever known anything like that to happen?" Wiz asked.
Danny shook his head. "In our stuff? No."
Malkin had been watching them intently. "If it is not working we had best assume that it is the result of malign action."
Wiz nodded "Probably best." Then he dismissed the demons and motioned his companions close around him.
"Now we’ve got to make a decision. If we can’t communicate, do we poke around some more or head back right away?"
"We have barely arrived," Malkin pointed out "Nor have we encountered anything dangerous."
"Nor have we seen anything interesting," Glandurg said. The way he pronounced the last word left Wiz in no doubt that "interesting" translated into "liquid assets."
"We haven’t learned anything either," Danny added. June just grasped her husband’s arm.
Wiz considered and drew a deep breath. "All right then. We’re going on." There were smiles all around, but somehow Wiz didn’t feel quite that cheerful.
"Ah, Fortuna, it’s cold!" Elias the wizard exclaimed.
"I need no magic to tell me that, My Lord," Malcolm said, never taking his eyes from the darkness beyond the castle walls.
Dark as it was and muffled as they were in their cloaks the only obvious difference between them was size. The guardsman was a good half-head taller than the wizard. Their cloaks hid both his chain mail armor and the wizard’s robe of office. Malcolm’s soldiers reserve hid his opinion of his companion. Full wizard this Elias might be, but in Malcolm’s eyes he was still a youngster, and a bumptious one at that. The guardsman wished for a more experienced magician, one who didn’t chatter so. But the Mighty and most of the journeymen were tucked warmly away, preparing spells against this new enemy. For duty on the walls he’d nave to take what he could get.
Malcolm, who had tramped these walls for a goodly number of years, had never seen colder weather. However talking about it made it no warmer. Besides, he wasn’t going to give this stripling the pleasure of hearing him say that. So he only shrugged and the pair continued on their way.
"Never like this at home," the young wizard added breathlessly as he tried to keep up with Malcolm’s measured stride.
The guardsman spared a glance for his companion out of the corner of his eye. Like Bal-Simba, Elias was a wizard and a black man from the hot lands to the north. But there the resemblance ended and as far as Malcolm was concerned it didn’t extend near far enough. It was said they bred mighty magicians in those lands, and in truth Bal-Simba was mighty enough. But either the line had run thin since Bal-Simba’s day or this was an unusually poor specimen.
In theory the castle was already guarded against enemy magic. Which might be well and good for them as put their trust in it, Malcolm thought. But to his mind a place wasn’t properly guarded until the sentries were at their posts and the sentinels patrolled the perimeter. In theory he even approved of adding magicians to the patrols. Give them something useful to do instead of idling about in their towers, he thought. Show them what the world is really made of. However after a couple of hours in Elias’ company Malcolm was beginning to change his mind.
If only this one wouldn’t talk so! To his way of thinking, talking distracted guards from their duties and many’s the time he had had a junior guardsman marching his post with a pack full of sand for a week for talking one-tenth as much as this wizard.
He peered out into the darkness, trying to pierce the night and roiling fog. The air was close and cold, inserting clammy fingers into clothing and pulling out heat It was said there was magic in it of no friendly sort and certainly the guardsmen were nervous and uneasy at their posts.
Not that that’s a bad thing, he thought as he strode along at a measured pace. Keeps them on the alert. Still, this fog and cold could get to a man. It was easy to start seeing things in the swirls of darkness out at the edge of the light. It was almost as if:
Malcolm stopped dead in his tracks. "What’s that?" he barked. ,
"What, why noth:" The words froze in the wizard’s throat as he peered out into the blackness. "No wait. Yes there’s something there! It’s magic."
But Malcolm needed no wizard to tell him that. Things were moving in the mist, dark things. As Elias gabbled into his communications crystal, Malcolm was already blowing the first blast on his whistle.
There was a note like a crystal bell and Juvian’s image appeared in the crystal ball on Bal-Simba’s work table. "My Lord, the magic fog! It changes."
"Raise the wards. Quickly," Bal-Simba commanded, "seal the castle against it." Juvian nodded and even as his image blinked out, he had begun to raise his staff.
Arianne looked at him and raised an eyebrow in question.
"Alert the others. Our enemy begins his move." His assistant nodded and spoke into her own communications crystal.
Dimly through the fog, the walls of the castle began to glow.
Bal-Simba studied other forms in his crystal as the reports began to pour in.
"Recall the guard into the shelter of the towers," he ordered.
"More of the fog things?" Arianne asked, looking up from her communications crystal.
"It appears our enemy begins his attack." Outside the wind began to keen and sing. "I think I know what it wants," he added grimly.
The adventurers slept that night in an empty room with a guard posted at the door. The stone floor was cold and uneven and everyone was so keyed up that in truth they got little enough sleep. But after a decent interval they ate a hurried breakfast, packed up and moved out again, following the magic indicator toward where Moira-or Moiras body-lay.