Free The Wiz Biz II: Cursed & Consulted by Rick Cook

from behind him. There was a scrabbling sound and a griffin leapt lightly down into the center of the ledge.
    There was a gasp from Glandurg's followers and they shrank away from the apparition which had appeared in front of them. Glandurg gulped, terribly aware that the griffin was between him and the door to safety. But he put on his best leader's manner and strode toward the beast in what he hoped was a good imitation of fearlessness.
    The other dwarves were under no such burden. They moved back against the doorway, ready to vanish down their tunnel to safety at the first sign of a hostile move.
    The griffin managed to look smug, amused and dangerous all at the same time. The dwarves were on her turf and they all knew it.
    Dwarves and griffins shared the mountains in an uneasy truce. The griffins nested on the uppermost crags and the dwarves tunneled through the rock. Dwarf mothers frightened their children into obedience with tales of dwarf children who had wandered away and been seized and eaten by griffins. By the same token dwarves were known to enjoy the occasional griffin egg surreptitiously taken from the nest.
    "I told you we would ride," Glandurg said as he strode to the griffin.
    The griffin hissed loudly and backed away.
    "But you agreed to take us to the human wizard," Glandurg protested.
    The griffin nodded.
    "Well," said an exasperated Glandurg, "if we don't ride how will you get us there?"
    The griffin smiled—as much as a creature with the beak of an eagle can smile—and flexed its claws.
     
    Craig scowled as he riffled through the papers spread out on Mikey's coffee table. The clock display in the upper-right corner of the television set showed it was after midnight, but he paid no more attention to that than he did to the old movie on the screen. He took another pull on the can of grape soda and slammed it down, slopping sticky purple fluid on Judith's notes.
    "We got a problem."
    Mikey looked up from the recliner where he was curled up with Judith's notebook. "Like what?"
    "How are we going to get to this other world?"
    "Judith got over there, didn't she?"
    "Yeah, but someone took her."
    Mikey considered for a moment. "What about that first guy, the one she called Wiz? He got there on his own, didn't he?"
    "No, he was taken over too. By one of their wizards." Craig drained the last of the soda and threw the empty can in the general direction of the wastebasket. "Great! So we've got all this magic and stuff and we can't do anything with it."
    Mikey laughed and shook his head.
    "What's so goddamn funny?"
    "You. You're talking like a system administrator. If it's not obvious or it's not in the manual, it can't be done. What you need to do is chill out and keep working on this stuff."
    "What good does that do?" Craig asked, half-sullen.
    "The more you learn, the easier it is to make things happen. That's the secret of hacking. You don't worry if something seems impossible. You just keep watching and learning and pretty soon it's not impossible."
    He stood up and stretched on tiptoes, leaning far back to work the kinks out of his spine. "Now here, we can't get over ourselves, but maybe we can get someone to bring us over."
    "How?"
    "We make something like a beacon. Something that says 'here we are, come get us.' "
    "Can we do that?"
    "Your friend thought so. She worked out a way to do it."
    He flipped open the notebook and put it on the coffee table. "See?"
    Craig studied the block diagram scribbled on the page. "I don't think that's gonna be easy."
    Mikey grinned lopsided. "So? Nothing that's worth having is."
    Craig was right. It wasn't easy. Judith's notes had no more than outlined the beacon spell. It was broken down into modules, but half the modules hadn't been written and several of the ones that had been needed modification.
    Worse, they were flying blind. They had no way of testing anything because the magic compiler didn't work in their world. All they could do was check and re-check their work