Диана Дуэйн - Wizards At War

"Hi, guys, who are you all?" Introductions got under way. As they did, Nita saw Dairine giving Roshaun an unusually intense look. Roshaun put his eyebrows up, and then took them right down again. Any wizard in Darryl's vicinity would notice an atypical intensity of power. But once you realized what it meant, it wasn't something you discussed with Darryl, ever. He didn't know about it, and wasn't meant to. The situation was like knowing a superhero with a secret identity. But the difference here was that everybody else knew about the secret identity, and the superhero didn't… which was a good thing, because if Darryl ever found out he was a direct chan nel of the One's power into the world, the discovery– would kill him. Darryl turned back to Kit after a few moments. "I looked you up in the book, saw you were off joyriding halfway across the galaxy." Darryl looked Kit over approvingly. "Got yourself some tan." "Nearly got myself a scorched hide," Kit said. "Our old 'friend' again." Darryl nodded, his grin fading a little. "Well, we're just going to have to screw up Its plans one more time." "Yeah, and then we can get back to business," Kit said, and looked up at the sky. "Like the Mar-" "The Martian thing!'' Nita and Dairine and Darryl more or less shouted in chorus, leaving Sker'ret and Filif and Roshaun and Ronan all looking confused. "You crack me up," Darryl said, and whacked Kit in the shoulder in a friendly way. "Here we've got the whole universe going to pieces around our ears, and all you can think about is going hunting for ancient Martian princesses in skimpy clothes." He guffawed. "Will you cut it out? It's not about princesses! That's just in a book!" Kit said, but no one was listening. There was too much laughing going on. "Come on, Darryl, give it a rest!" "Okay, never mind," Darryl said, "you're off the hook till we get present business sorted out. I can't believe how full my manual's gotten in the past few days. Just look at it-" To Nita's surprise, Darryl reached not into a nearby space pocket for his manual but into the front pocket of his jeans. Dairine stared at what Darryl brought out. To all appearances it was a sleek rectangular white and silver MP3 player, but as he turned it toward them, Nita could see that the apple on its little blue-glowing screen had no bite out of it. "That is too slickl" Dairine said. Spot came up from behind and put some eyes up to goggle in a friendly way at the WizPod. "Yeah," Darryl said. He pulled it open-which shouldn't have been possible-until it looked like a little book, and then opened it out again, and again, and yet again, until it was more like a flat-screen monitor than anything else, but one you could hold in your hands. Manual data started scrolling down its surface, imagery and spells together. "It's got all the usual spell-storage and display options," Darryl said. "And it carries my tunes. Like I've got time for music when this thing's got twenty times the content, all of a sudden …" He grinned as he folded it up again. Nita looked over at S'reee as a thought occurred to her. "Are there any other Seniors on Earth who were Seniors before but'll still be functioning when things go bad?" "No," S'reee said. "Oh, wow," Nita said. "How that must be making you feel…" "Yes. And just when I was starting to relax about being a Senior," S'reee said, sounding briefly mournful. "But all we can do now is dive deep and do the best we can on short notice, even if we're not sure we have enough data. That said"-S'reee looked less troubled– "we've been given access to a lot more power than we've ever had. It's hard to feel so uncertain when you do a wizardry and it just jumps out of you like a waterspout." "Yeah," Nita said, "I noticed." Thirty minutes or so ago, when they'd built the wizardry to transit the group to the Moon, it had gone together in record time, and had left no one even slightly tired-unusual for a fairly complex spell. Nita's first reaction had been exhilaration. But then she'd started feeling uneasy, as if something she'd always been used to paying full price for was now suddenly on sale. What if it's actually a sign that the thing you're getting is about to go permanently out of stock? "Well, we're going to need that extra power, because things are already happening out there," S'reee said. "The effects of the unnatural expansion are spreading fast." She looked across the crater at the jumble of bubbles of air; they were splitting and moving around, bumping into each other and merging, as wizards got together to lay their plans. "There are already pockets of space where wizardry isn't working… and it's only a matter of time before those pockets start occurring here. About half these people are heading off-planet, following various leads toward ways to stop the expansion. The rest will head back home to try to keep things running steadily for as long as we can. We're going to be spread pretty thin." She sounded wistful. "I don't suppose you're going to be staying?" "No," Nita said, "we're outward-bound, in two different directions. Right now we just wanted to check in and see what people up here were doing." "It's all in your manuals," S'reee said. "Check those to see if anything comes up that has any bearing on what you're about to do." Kit turned to Darryl. "What about you?" Kit said. "You gonna sit tight?" Darryl nodded. "I'm too new at this," he said. "I've got lots of power, but I'm not sure what to do with it yet. S'reee's taken me under her fin; she's full of good advice." Nita smiled slightly, privately pleased. She had the idea that Earth might be safer if this one of its precious few abdals stayed home. When she looked back at Darryl, though, he was eyeing her a little strangely. "But, listen, I saw something the other day," Darryl said, "just when I was waking up." "Lucid dreaming?" Nita said. It was one of a number of techniques that visionary wizards used to more clearly hear what the universe was trying to tell them. "Not like that," Darryl said. "I just get these hints, you know? Like something whispering in my ear. So far it's turned out to be smart for me to pay attention. But I don't think this hint was for me." "Why? Do you get 'wrong numbers'?" Nita said. "I get them sometimes." Darryl shook his head. "First time," he said. Nita found that interesting, in an uncomfortable way. "What did you see?" "Bugs," Darryl said. "Giant bugs." Kit and Nita looked at each other. "Like him?" Nita said, nodding past S'reee. Over that way, Sker'ret and Filif were discussing something. Darrell gazed over at Sker'ret for a moment. "No, not really. He's a nice guy; you can feel it from here. These bugs"-he shivered-"I don't know where they are, but running into them wouldn't be fun. Our 'old friend' owns them, body and soul." Darryl actually shivered. "They're deadly. And I think if you hang around where they are, somebody's going to get killed." "No problem," Kit said. "If we see any giant bugs, we'll give them a miss." Nita swallowed. "Now," she said to Darryl, "you're going to tell us a way to beat this, right?" Darryl's expression was stricken. "I don't know for sure that there is one," he said. "Like I said, it was just a hint. It felt like someone could have said more… and wasn't saying." "Okay," Nita said. "Thanks. We'll keep our eyes open." She looked around again, out toward the center of the crater, where hundreds more wizards were milling around. "Ronan?" she said. "Yeah," Ronan said, and glanced over at Kit. "We should get started. Where's your adjunct talent?" Kit looked around, then ducked to look under S'reee. "Playing with rocks, as usual," he said. "Hey, Ponch!" Moondust flew up in a cloud as Ponch ran underneath S'reee to Kit. I'm here! "Let's go hunting." Oh boy! "You going to be here later?" Kit said to Darryl. "I'll be one of the last ones out," Darryl said. "Somebody has to clean up all the footprints when we're done." Nita squeezed his shoulder. "Later," she said, and went off to where Dairine and Roshaun were deep in conversation and, to judge by their expressions, having one more disagreement. As Nita bounced over, they looked up at her almost in relief. "You heading out now?" she said. "Yeah," Dairine said. "Roshaun's carrying his subsidized portal; we'll use that. We're going back to his place on Wellakh first." "All right," Nita said. "Message me when you're done there. But meantime, listen-" "Yeah, I'll be careful," Dairine said. She turned away. Nita took her sister gently by the arm, turned her back toward her. "Dair," she said. "Giant bugs." "Huh?" Dairine turned to glance over at Sker'ret. "Not cute bugs. Nasty ones," Nita said. "Darryl says they're bad news, and some of us are probably going to run into them. If you do, avoid them. Understand?" Dairine gave her a dry look. "With all this extra power we've suddenly got, I think can handle it." Nita let out an annoyed breath and turned to Roshaun. "I'm not kidding," she said. "Watch your backs, okay?" "We will do nothing obviously foolhardy," Roshaun said. "But under the circumstances, no situation any of us goes into is likely to lack its dangers." He looked down at Nita from that regal height of his, an effect still somewhat altered by the big floppy Tshirt he hadn't changed out of yet. "Yeah," Nita said. "I know." She glanced at Dairine. "Take care of yourself." "You, too," Dairine said. She hesitated, and then she came over and gave Nita a hug. Nita hugged her back, then pushed her away, trying to make it look casual. S'reee was now talking to Filif and Sker'ret; Nita turned back to them. "What about you guys?" "We'll go with you and Kit and Ronan," Sker'ret said. "Great. Let's move out…" Kit stood just past the boundary of S'reee's force field, having detached his own; inside it, beside him, Ponch was gazing upslope. At first Kit thought Ponch had seen someone coming, but then realized that it was the setting Earth that held his dog's attention. Ponch was staring at the world the way he might watch a tree after he'd seen a squirrel go up it. "What?" Kit said. "What's the matter?" It's small, Ponch said. I never thought it was small before. Kit nodded. "That's the way the astronauts saw it," he said. "Like a little thing… fragile. I never thought the world was small until I saw it that way myself. It surprises everybody when they see their own world that way for the first time, all by itself in the dark." Kit looked curiously at Ponch. "But you've been here before." I didn't notice it then, Ponch said. Now I do. He sounded concerned. "It's okay," Kit said. "It's a point-of-view thing. You get used to it." I wonder if that's wise… Kit wasn't quite sure what to make of that. He looked up and saw Ronan heading over to bump his own now-detached force field against Kit's. "You two ready?" Ronan said. Kit nodded. Ronan stepped through the interface between their two force fields and went over to Ponch. "So, big fella," Ronan said. "You ready for it?" He got down on one knee by Ponch. Kit hunkered down across from him. Ponch sat down, his tail thumping. Show me what you want me to find. Ronan and Ponch locked eyes. Since the time that Ponch began to reveal his ability to find things-stepping between realities, even sometimes out of his own home universe to track them down-Kit had started trying to use the wizardly link between them to "overhear" what Ponch was seeing and hearing. It wasn't always easy. Even a dog who had become much less doggy than usual-because of the frequent use of wizardry in his neighborhood-still sometimes had trouble explaining to Kit just what was going on with him. Now, as Ronan looked into Ponch's eyes, Kit listened hard. What flowed into Ponch's mind-tentatively at first, and then with more assurance as the Winged Defender became clearer about how to communicate– affected Kit in two different ways at once. Half the message came through as a blinding, confusing series of images overlaying one another: light forms and dark ones, strange shapes that seemed to have too many sides, colors Kit couldn't name. But the rest Kit experienced as Ponch was experiencing it-as scent. And this perception left Kit half dazzled, for Ponch's sense of smell was endlessly more powerful and complex than any human's, making Kit feel like a blind person who's suddenly been given new eyes. The complex of scents was a strange mixture, and Kit could make nothing of it. He thought he smelled metal, flowers, strange green scents like those of growing things, a smell like dry cocoa and another one like old motor oil, those two aromas strongly overlaying many more. Kit was aware that to Ponch, these scents weren't evidence of concrete things but of conditions, thoughts, emotions. The acrid taste of fear, a distant smoky frustration and anger mingling with that fear, concealing itself within it. It's not so much that he can smell emotions, Kit thought. From his point of view, emotions are scents. There was information of all kinds buried in the miasma of odors-particularly in one that got stronger by the moment. Kit was unnerved to realize that Ponch had classified this scent as being very like dried blood. But blood on the surface of an old wound. Something that's not over with yet. Something that's waiting… Whatever was waiting sizzled behind it all like electricity: powerful, dangerous, yet also suppressed, muzzled– Kit blinked himself back to the here and now: the powdery gray soil underfoot, the Earth setting over the rim of Spring Lake crater. He looked down at Ponch. Ponch had his head cocked to one side; he was whuffling at the air. Ronan sat back on his heels. "Can you track that?" Ponch glanced up once more at the Earth hanging low by the crater's rim. / can find what you're looking for, he said, craning his neck back to look at Kit and Ronan. But we have to go closer to where it comes from, and get away from where there are so many people. "How come you can't just 'walk' us there?" Kit said. Ponch stood up and shook himself. Because it's a real place with life in it, he said, looking across at Kit. Finding a place that's already there is different from just making one up. And it's inside the same universe with us. There are a lot of other places that smell sort of the same way: I have to make sure I find the right one. Once we're away from here-Ponch looked around and down at the wizards-/ can do a lot better. "Okay," Kit said. He thought for a moment; then said to Ronan, "I have an idea." "Yeah?" Let's hear it, said the other version of Ronan's voice, the one both older and edgier. Ronan, Kit said silently, you said your… partner was going to he able to protect us from being overheard. Are you both sure? "Yes," and Yes, they said. Okay. A custom worldgating from here would be pretty easy for You-Know-Who to trace. Let's lay a false trail, and go out through the Crossings. Some of the wizards here'll be going that way. And if Ponch's prob lem is that all the life here and on Earth is drowning out the scent, then Rirhath B will he a good place for him to try again. Their population's a lot smaller. "Makes sense," Ronan said. He looked down at Ponch. "That suit you?" Ponch was already wagging his tail. Blue food!! Ronan looked at Kit, confused. "Am I missing something?" Kit had to laugh. "Uh, he thinks that when we hit the Crossings, he's going to get a treat." Ronan nodded and stood up. "All right. Well, let me know when you're ready." He disengaged his forcefield bubble from theirs, and headed off toward the center of the crater. Nita came up behind Kit and bumped her bubble into his. As she slipped into his bubble, she glanced the way Kit was looking. "Got a problem?" "I don't know. Does Ronan seem kind of abrupt to you sometimes?" Nita laughed silently. "More like always. But more now than before. Probably it's something to do with his passenger." "I guess so." "Look, we should think about where we're going, and how. Dairine and Roshaun are heading off by themselves, so it looks like our group is you, me, Ponch, Ronan, Sker'ret, and Filif." "Okay. Did S'reee mention if anybody around here has a gate to the Crossings running already?" "No," Nita said. She reached into her otherspace pocket for her manual. "Let's do a scan…" "In a minute. Did you ask anyone else to meet us here?" Nita looked surprised. "No." "Then who's that?" Kit looked toward the center of the crater. One force-field bubble was moving toward them. As the bubble got closer, Kit could see that the occupants were two kids of maybe twelve or thirteen, a boy and a girl. The girl was wearing a short cropped T-shirt and baggy cargo pants, more or less in Dairine's style, and had very long, straight, dark hair worn loose; the boy's hair was cropped very short, and he was wearing something that at first glance looked like a suit-though as they got closer, Kit saw that it was actually one of those dark Far Eastern collarless jackets, worn somewhat incongruously over denim flares. Both of the kids looked slender, lean, and perhaps a little small for their ages. They were Asian, delicately featured, handsome, though there was something a little fierce about both their faces. They bumped their common bubble up against Kit's. "Can we come in?" the girl said. "Uh, sure." Their bubble merged with Kit's. "You're the ones who did the Song of the Twelve, right?" the girl said. "Dai Stiho" "Dai," Nita and Kit both said. And Kit laughed, and said, "Well, maybe you both know who we are-" "I'm Tran Liem Tuyet," said the boy. "I'm Tran Hung Nguyet," said the girl. "We're a twychild," they said together. Then they both burst out laughing. "Sorry, it's a bad habit." "Twin wizards!" Kit said. "Yeah, I guess you would hear each other think most of the time." "Constantly," they both said. "But twychilding is more than just being twins, isn't it?" Nita said. "I read about it in the manual a while back. You guys bounce spells back and forth between you, right? And they get stronger." And then Kit was surprised to see Nita blush. "Sorry, I don't know which of your names it's okay to use." "The last one's like the Western first name," said the girl. "Nguyet's fine for me. But as for the spells, yeah, that's how it goes. The output multiplies, sometimes even squares." Kit grinned. "You sure you aren't breaking the laws of thermodynamics or something?" Tuyet snickered. "Probably," he said. "Nguyet breaks most things." Nguyet glared at him. "I do not!" "Oh yeah? What about that lamp last week?" "That was an accident!" The ground under all their feet suddenly began to vibrate. Kit and Nita looked at each other in alarm. "Guys!" Kit said. The ground's shuddering stopped. The twins looked at each other. "Uh, sorry…" "It's him doing it," Nguyet said. "He's younger." "Oh, yeah, right, two minutes younger!" Tuyet laughed. "That makes me more powerful." "Are you two going out, or staying in?" Kit said. "Staying in," Tuyet said. "That's what we wanted to check with you. We're putting together a notification list in the manuals so that wizards who're staying home can cover for the ones who're going on the road when the trouble starts. S'reee told us you guys were probably going off-world, so we added you to the list. You going through the Crossings?" "Yeah." "We've got a custom gate wizardry set out in the middle of the crater," Nguyet said. "Been a lot of traffic through there in the past few hours, in both directions. You can never tell… it might confuse Somebody." She grinned. When she did, that fierce look in Nguyet's face got fiercer. Kit liked it: It made her otherwise extremely delicate, "porcelain" prettiness look more like the kind of porcelain that's made into high-tech knives. "I hope so," Kit said. Tuyet's grin was even more feral than his sister's. "We'll keep an eye on things here," he said. "Get out there and make It crazy." "That's the plan," Nita said. "Good luck, you two." The twychild waved and headed on out of the force field, making their way down toward S'reee. "That was interesting," Kit said. "Yeah," Nita said. "Imagine how it must have been for them. Joint Ordeals … never having to find someone to help you with a spell…" She shook her head. "Having another wizard in your head with you all day, instead of by invitation?" Kit said. "A little too weird for me." "But if you've been used to it all your life," Nita said, "even before you knew you were wizards, then maybe we're the ones that would seem weird to them." She tucked her manual away. "Never mind. Here come the others." The center of Spring Lake Crater was empty except for one thing: a large hemispherical force-field bubble. Inside it, laid out on the pockmarked, dusty gray surface, was a huge circle of blue light; and that outer circle was subdivided into about twenty smaller ones of various sizes. The diagram was a duplicate in pure wizardry of the more concrete and "mechanical" gating circles and pads of the worldgating facility at the Crossings. Everyone knew the drill, at this point, and one after another, Filif and Sker'ret and Nita and Ronan went out into the diagram and stood in the middle of one of the subsidiary circles. With Ponch bouncing along behind him, Kit made his way out to an unoccupied circle and stood in it. "Everybody ready?" Sker'ret said. "I'll do the master transport routine-" He began to recite a long phrase in the Speech, rattling it off with the assurance of someone who'd done it many times before. As Sker'ret spoke, and that familiar silence of a listening universe began to build around them all, Kit gazed back the way they'd come for a last look at the near-full Earth, the edge of its globe just touching the edge of Spring Lake Crater. A thought came unbidden: What if this is the last time you see that? He shook his head. Silly idea. We've been in bad places before and made it home, even when we thought we wouldn't. But there's something about this time that's different, the back of his mind said to him. Everything's changing. The things you thought you could always depend on aren't dependable anymore. Maybe it's smarter not to take anything for granted now. Kit swallowed as the glow of the working worldgating wizardry rose all around them like a burning mist, beginning to obscure the view. See you later, he said silently to the fading Earth… and hoped very much, as they all vanished, that he would. Target of Opportunity Dairine stepped through the brief darkness of Roshaun's portable worldgate into the huge, high– ceilinged, overdone space he called home, and waited for Roshaun to come out behind her. Sunlight poured through those tall crystalline "patio" doors off to the left, but it was a fainter color than it had been when she was here before. This light was a weary, dulling, late– afternoon orange that burned, but burned cool. In it, every bright surface in the room gleamed coppery, and the silver gilt of Roshaun's long flowing hair briefly matched the red of Dairine's as he came out of the worldgate. Dairine put Spot down. The laptop put out legs and quickly crab-walked out into the middle of everything, producing as many eyes as Dairine had ever seen him come up with at one time. He settled himself down flat, pointing every eye in a different direction. Apparently the architecture had him fascinated. This Dairine understood, since Roshaun's living space in the palace on Wellakh closely resembled a three-way collision between an antique furniture warehouse, a jewelry store, and a Gothic cathedral carved and decorated by the artistically insane. Rich overlapping carpets covered the floor everywhere; sofas and wardrobes and tables and chairs ornate enough to be thrones were placed here and there under rich canopies. Delicately wrought lamps hung down from a ceiling almost lost to sight in an opulent gloom, through which the occasional gemstone gleamed down like a lazily observant eye. Roshaun stood there looking around for a moment, then glanced over at Dairine. "I wish we did not have to make this stop," he said. "Family stuff," Dairine said. "It's always a mess. You're just lucky to have parents who're wizards." "Am I indeed," Roshaun said. "You shall judge. For the moment, I have to change." "Really?" Dairine said in amusement. "You mean there's somewhere in the galaxy that won't immediately buy into Carmela's fashion statement? She'll be horrified." Roshaun gave her what was meant to be a cutting look, and with apparent regret pulled off the floppy T-shirt that had been covering him to his knees. Has Carmela got a thing going for him? Dairine wondered. But no, now it's Ronan. She had to smile a little. Wait till she figures out the ramifications of that one. Dairine spared a second for an entirely clinical appreciation of the lean look of Roshaun's upper body above the soft golden-fabric "sweatpants" he was wearing. How old is he in "real" years, I wonder? If there's even an approximation that makes any sense. Officially, as his people see age, he can't be much older than Nita or Kit. Roshaun carefully draped the T-shirt over an ornately carved chaise longue. "I shall return momentarily," he said. "Do you require refreshment?" Somehow Dairine didn't think Roshaun was likely to have a supply of her favorite soft drink on hand. "I'm okay," she said. "You go do what needs doing." He vanished behind an intricately carved and gilded screen. Dairine glanced over into the middle of the floor, where Spot was still watching everything with all his eyes. "How are you feeling?" she said. "Peculiar." That made her twitch a little. "Is that something new? "Not since this morning, if that's what you're asking," Spot said. "I don't feel like I'm losing my mind. But then again, I haven't 'felt' any of these strange fugues you tell me I'm experiencing, either." That was one of the things bothering Dairine the most. A computer that was losing memory or files was enough cause for concern by itself. But when the computer was sentient, and at least partly wizardry, and was forgetting things it was saying or thinking from one moment to the next– "I haven't lost any spell data," Spot said, sounding to Dairine's trained ear faintly annoyed. "I've been running diagnostics constantly since this started to happen." "And they haven't been showing anything?" "No." Spot sounded even more annoyed. Dairine sighed. "In the old days, we wouldn't have had these problems." "These are not the old days," Spot said. "You are no longer half human, half manual. I am no longer just a machine with manual access. Both of us have become more, and less. And the new increased power levels do not make us who we were again. They only make us more powerful versions of who we are now." Dairine looked out the doors at the setting Wellakhit sun. It looked like a huge shield of beaten copper, sliding down toward the sea-flat horizon. It seemed like an age ago, now, that time when she'd come home from her Ordeal with the constant soft whisper of a whole new species' ideation running under all her conscious thought, like water under the frozen surface of a winter stream. They had always instantly had the answers to any question-or had seemed to, the mobiles' time sense being so much swifter than that of the human kind of computer which was built of meat instead of space-chilled silicon. And the answers they'd come up with, she had always been able to implement with staggering force, since she'd come into her power so young. But slowly that power had faded to more normal levels, and the connection to the computer wizards of what Dairine thought of as the "Motherboard World" had stretched thin, carrying less power, less data. It never entirely failed; that whisper of machine thought still ran at the bottom of her dreams, and if she listened hard while waking, she could find it without too much ouble. But nothing now was as easy as it had been in he beginning. Knowing that this was the fate of wizards everywhere didn't make it any easier. But I thought I wasn't wizards everywhere. I thought I was something different. Roshaun came out from behind the screen. Dairine's jaw actually dropped. And I thought he looked a little too formal before. Those long golden trousers had been exchanged for others completely covered with thousands of what looked like star sapphires but were orange-golden and as tiny as beads. The upper garment was, by contrast, a simple gauzy thing, like a knee-length vest of pale golden mist. Under it Roshaun was wearing a massive collar of red gold with a huge amber-colored stone set in it, a smooth and massive thing the width of Dairine's clenched fist. The stone shifted as Roshaun swallowed. "How do I look?" he said. Between the realization that he was actually nervous and the total effect, Dairine was for once sufficiently impressed to tell him the truth. "Great," she said. "Tiffany's would want you for their front window. Why is it always gold with you people?" "It's Life's color," Roshaun said. "In this way we do Life honor. What about you?" Her eyebrows went up. "What about me?" "Are you going to meet my father dressed like that?" "Like what?" Dairine looked down at her own cropped T-shirt and baggies. "I look fine." "Surely something more formal…" Dairine made a face. Of various things she hated, dressing up (except at Halloween) was close to the top of the list. "Why not just tell him this is formal wear on my planet?" "I could tell him that," Roshaun said, "but it would not be true." He frowned at her. Dairine sighed. "Oh, all right," she said. She pulled out her manual. "It cannot be a seeming," Roshaun said. "He will see through that." Dairine frowned. "You're such a stick-in-the-mud sometimes," she muttered. "And you are so intransigent and disrespectful," Roshaun said, "nearly all of the time." "What? Just because I don't let you walk all over me, Mister Royalty?" Roshaun let out a long breath. "He is waiting," he said. "This is going to be difficult enough as it is. Please do something about the way you look. Something genuine." Dairine grimaced. Still… she couldn't think when he'd last said "please" to her; for a while she'd thought his vocabulary didn't even contain the word. "Oh, all right," she said. "Spot, what're the coordinates of my closet?" "Here are the entath numbers," he said, and rattled off a series of numbers and variables in the Speech. "Do you want me to set it up?" "Go ahead, knock yourself out." A straightforward square dark doorway appeared in front of her. The darkness cleared to reveal the inside of the closet in Dairine's bedroom. As usual, its floor was a tumble of mixed-up shoes and things fallen off hangers; her mother had always said that when the Holy Grail and world peace were finally found, they would be at the bottom of Dairine's closet, under the old sneakers. Dairine sighed and started pushing hangers aside. Last year's Easter dress and the dress from the year before looked unutterably lame. Lots of jeans, lots of school clothes … but none of them suitable for meeting a former king. "This doesn't look promising," Dairine said under her breath. "Hurry," said Roshaun. The tension in his voice cut short all the acid retorts Dairine could have deployed. "Oh, the heck with this," she said, irritable. She turned her back on the closet. "Spot, close that. Do we have a routine for making clothes?" "Searching," Spot said, as the darkness went away. "Found." In her mind, Dairine looked down the link between them and saw the wizardry he'd located. It was a matter-restructuring protocol which would use what she was wearing and turn it into something else. She glanced at Roshaun. "How unisex is what you've got on?" she said. He looked surprised. "'Unisex'?" "Do girls wear that kind of thing where you live?" "Well, yes, but-" Surprise became confusion. "What is the problem with your own clothes? What do your people usually wear when meeting your leaders?" "If we've got any guts at all, a real annoyed expression," Dairine said. "Never mind, I can come up with something. Spot, hit it." "Working." A second too late it occurred to Dairine that this process might show Roshaun more about her than was anybody's business but her own. A sudden chill ran over her body as every stitch of clothing on her pulled an inch or so away and resolved into its component atoms, then started to reassemble in new shapes. Her first urge was to duck behind the nearest sofa, but it was too late; any movement could possibly result in a dress that came out her ears. She closed her eyes, gritted her teeth, and held still. The chill faded. Cautiously Dairine opened one eye. Roshaun's expression was confused but not scandalized. Not that that means anything in particular. Does his culture even have a nudity taboo? Never mind, mine does! She looked down at herself. "Whoa," Dairine said. She was wearing a simple, scoop-necked, short– sleeved, floor-length dress, in a velvet as green as grass. Around her left wrist, where her watch usually went, was a bracelet of emeralds the size of quail's eggs, held together with nothing but a series of characters in the Speech-a delicate chain of symbols in softly burning green smoke, which scrolled through the gems as she watched. Another chain just like it held a single similar stone at her throat. "Nice," Dairine said. Then she realized there was something on her head. She put her hands up to feel it. Her eyes widened, and then she grinned. Tiaras were back in fashion; no reason she shouldn't wear one. She turned toward Roshaun. "That okay?" she said. Roshaun looked impressed. "There are likenesses to our own idiom," he said. "To what land of your world is such raiment native?" "Possibly Oz," Dairine said, "but I doubt the Good Witch of the North is going to come after me for stealing her look." "Good," Roshaun said. "This way-" They headed toward those crystalline doors, Spot spidering along behind them. Out beyond the doors lay a goldstone terrace with a broad stone railing, and beyond that, a huge formal garden full of red and golden flowers and plants. Past the garden, the surface of the "sunside" of Wellakh spread: miles and miles of unrelieved flatness reaching straight to the horizon on every side-the everlasting reminder of the catastrophic sunstorm that had blasted half the surface of Wellakh to slag all those centuries ago. Just in the doorway, before stepping out onto the terrace, Roshaun suddenly paused. He stood there for some seconds simply looking at the setting sun– straight at it, blinding as it was. Finally he dropped his gaze. "This is not good," Roshaun said softly. "Still, let us go." They walked through the doors and out across the terrace, and as they did, Dairine thought she saw something stirring out there, a waving movement. Her first thought was that she was seeing the motion of wind in the garden plants. But there isn't any wind, she thought as they came closer to the rail. Is there a– She froze. There were people out there… about a million of them. Maybe two, Dairine thought. I don't know anything about counting crowds– Two million, six hundred and eight thousand, four hundred twenty-four, said Spot silently. The multitude of Wellakhit men and women started just past the formal garden and went on and on, seemingly all the way to the horizon. The slight motion Dairine had seen was the million-times-multiplied tremor of people shifting a little in place as they stood waiting for someone to appear. Roshaun walked up to the railing and just stood there, resting his hands on the broad rail. As he came to where everyone could see him, a sound started to go up from the crowd nearest the balustrade, and rolled back across it like a wave: a murmur of comment, curiosity.. .and straightforward hostility. These people wanted to see Roshaun, but not because they liked him. The murmur sounded to Dairine like the thoughtful sound an animal makes deep in its throat when it sees something it considers a threat, an utterance just short of a growl. Roshaun simply stood there with his head up and let it wash over him. The sound got not necessarily more angry, but more pronounced. Roshaun moved not a i muscle, said nothing. Very slowly the murmur began to die away again. Only when the crowd was quiet did Roshaun move at all, to look over his shoulder. "Don't stay hiding back there," he said. "They know you are here. Come out and let them see you." At the moment, it was the last thing Dairine wanted. No one could ever have called her shy-but not being shy in front of a classroom full of kids, or a crowd of wizards, was one thing. Not being shy in front of a couple of million pairs of staring, hostile eyes was something else entirely. Dairine swallowed and stepped forward to stand beside Roshaun at the railing. She couldn't think of anything to do with her hands. She put them down on the balustrade as Roshaun had, and held very still. She had thought it was quiet before, but she was mistaken. A silence fell over all the people at the edge of the garden, rolling back from them right across that vast multitude. The stillness became incredible. Dairine didn't move a muscle, though she desperately wanted to bolt. The pressure of all those eyes was nearly unbearable. The faces closest to the two of them wore a look very like Roshaun's normal one: proud, aloof, very reserved. They were all as tall as he was, or taller, which made Dairine feel, if possible, even smaller than usual. And the expression in the eyes of the closest people held a hostility of a different kind than what they'd turned on Roshaun. Alien, it said. Stranger. Not like us. What is that doing here? Dairine manufactured the small the-hell-with-you smile that she usually applied just before getting into a fight with somebody. "You might have mentioned this beforehand," she said under her breath. "Why?" Roshaun said. "Would you have worn something different?" Maybe a force field, she thought. "Who are they all?" "My people," Roshaun said. "They have come to look at their new king." "How long have they been here?" "I have no idea," Roshaun said. "Perhaps since the time they heard that my father had abdicated." Dairine tried to figure out when that might have been. A couple of days ago? She wasn't sure. "What do they want?" "What I do not think I can give them," Roshaun said. He turned his back on the great throng of people. Reluctantly-for to her it felt somehow rude– Dairine did the same. "Our transport will be here in a moment," Roshaun said. "We have very little time. However casually you may enjoy speaking to me, believe me when I tell you that such a mode would not be wise with my father. He may have resigned his position, but he keeps his power as a wizard-" "However much of that anyone his age is going to have for much longer," Dairine said. Roshaun looked at her, and for the first time Dairine understood what it was like to see someone's eyes burn. That sunset light got into them and glowed, impossibly seeming to heat up still further in Roshaun's anger. "I would not put too much emphasis on that if I were you," he said. "Not with him, or with me. He and I may have our differences, but anybody who would find humor in a wizard losing his power should probably consider how it would feel to them. Or does feel." Spot came spidering along to her. Dairine bent down to pick him up, glad of the chance to get control of her face, for she was blushing with embarrassment at how right Roshaun was. "Sorry," she said. "Yes," Roshaun said. And more quietly, over the upscaling scream of an aircar that Dairine heard approaching, he said, "I, too. Now stand straight and properly represent your planet." Dairine stood straight. Between them and the crystalline doors of Roshaun's residence-wing, the egg– shaped aircar, ornately gilded like everything else here, settled onto the terrace and balanced effortlessly on its underside's curve without rocking an inch to one side or the other. Dairine looked up past it to what she had partly forgotten-the mountainous bulk of the rest of the Palace of Wellakh, bastion upon bastion and height above height, all carved from and built into the one peak that had survived the solar flare that slagged down everything else on this side of the world. The palace was not only a residence but a reminder to the kings who lived in it. Your family saved us all once, it said in the voice of the people of Wellakh, and you showed such power then that now we fear you. We keep you in wealth and splendor now; just make sure you protect us. Because if the Terror by Sunfire should ever come again, and you don't– And the message was far stronger than usual with them all standing there, silent, watching. What will you do now, new young king? We are waiting… Manservants dressed in quieter versions of Roshaun's "normal" clothes, the Wellakhit long tunic and soft trousers, appeared from the front of the aircar and came around to bow before the two of them and touch the car's surface. It opened before them, and Roshaun turned to Dairine and nodded; she picked up Spot and stepped in. Inside were luxurious cushioned seats that followed the curved contour of the aircar, and as Dairine sat down and Roshaun sat across from her, she saw that the aircar's surface was selectively transparent-they could see out, but no one could see in. As the car rose, Dairine looked out past the palace and toward the horizon, clutching Spot to her, gazing out a little desperately across the widening landscape to see where the people ended and the landscape began. It took a long time before she got a glimpse of the plain stone of the "sunside," golden colored or striated in blood and bronze, barren and desolate. Turning back to Roshaun, she was surprised to see him looking at her with concern. "Are you all right?" "They scare me," Dairine said after a moment. "You would not be alone," Roshaun said. The aircar kept rising past the face of the palace; terrace after terrace, building after building fell away beneath them as the peak into which the palace was built narrowed almost to a needle. Beneath the final height was one last terrace, and the aircar made for this, lifting just slightly above it and settling down onto the polished paving. The door opened for them. Roshaun got out first, and then turned to help Dairine down. She was surprised to feel, as he took her hand, that his was sweating. Without warning, she found herself starting to get angry. Here's one of the most arrogant, self-assured people I know, she thought, and just the thought of going to see his father has him freaked. That's not the way things should be! As she stepped onto the paving, she squeezed his hand a little. He gave her a look she couldn't read. Dairine dropped the hand, unsure whether she'd misstepped, and followed him toward the pair of huge bronze doors that faced the sunset and were emblazoned with the sun. That sun split before them as the doors ponderously swung open. Dairine put Spot down, and they all walked in. Their footsteps rang in the huge and echoing space they entered, and their shadows ran far before them down the length of the polished floor, to merge with the dimness at the far end of the severely plain great hall. Use the time to compose yourself, Roshaun said silently. Like you're doing? said Dairine. She could feel all too clearly what was going on inside his head. But then that had started to be a problem lately. Roshaun didn't reply. But by the time they were actually getting close to the throne, the racket inside his head had started to die down somewhat. Throne was not the best word for the chair in which that very tall man sat waiting for them. It was backless and had arms that rose from its seat on curving uprights; it sat not on any dais, but on the floor. However, the man sitting in it made it look like a throne by the way he sat, both erect and somehow completely casual about it. He watched them come without moving a muscle, and as they got close enough to get a decent impression, Dairine tried to size him up. His clothes were like Roshaun's, though in a darker shade of red– orange; his red hair was shorter than Roshaun's by a couple of feet, and he wore it tied back, so that the angles and planes of a face very much like Roshaun's, sharp and high-cheekboned, were made more obvious. His eyes, as emerald as Roshaun's, were more deeply sunken, a little more shadowed by the brows; his face looked both more thoughtful and more dangerous. Roshaun stopped about six feet from the throne. Dairine half expected him to bow, but he simply stood there, silent, waiting. Slowly the man stood up. Roshaun locked eyes with him as he did so. His height astounded Dairine; meeting this man's eyes for long would give even her father a sore neck. "You came more quickly than I thought you might," said the man. The voice was like Roshaun's, a light tenor, somewhat roughened by age. "This promises to be a busy time for us all," Roshaun said, "and it seemed discourteous to keep you waiting any longer than necessary." Roshaun nodded, and glanced at Dairine. "I would make you known," he said, "to Nelaid he Seriv am Teliuyve am Meseph am Veliz am Teriaunst am Antev jet Nuiiliat; Brother of the Sun, Lord of Wellakh, the Guarantor-" Roshaun fell suddenly silent, as if not knowing quite what to say next. "Guarantor that was," Nelaid said, looking at Dairine. "It does sound strange, the first time one says it." And now his eyes were on Roshaun again. Roshaun swallowed. "Father, this is Dairine he Khallahan," he said, "wizard." It's title enough for me, she thought. She gave Nelaid a very slight nod, thinking that between wizards, even if they were royalty, that was gesture enough. Besides, if I nod too hard, this crown could fall right on the floor. "I am on errantry," Dairine said, looking up at Nelaid, "and I greet you." "I greet you also," Roshaun's father said in the Speech. He stepped away from the throne, looked at Roshaun. "Well, son," he said, "you were not long in donning the Sunstone, as is your right. This only remains to complete the accession." And he glanced at the chair. Roshaun swallowed again. "I wanted to talk to you about that," he said. His father tilted his head a little to one side. "I fail to see what could still need discussion," he said. Roshaun turned to look back down the length of the hall, toward the doors and straight into the light of the Wellakhit sun, still slowly setting. The light caught strangely in the great gem at his throat, washing out its amber fire and leaving it as colorless as water. "I will not be staying," he said, turning back toward his father. "Errantry takes me elsewhere." Nelaid nodded, just once, very slowly. "What the Son of the Sun says is, of course, law." But Dairine could hear something else coming. "From the sound of it, however, you came not to ask me what you should do, but to tell me what you had already made up your mind to do. I suspected as much." "Royal sire," Roshaun said, "I would hardly make such a choice without consulting with the Aethyrs." It was Roshaun's name for both his people's version of the manual-a small sphere of light into which the wizard gazed-and for the Powers that spoke through it. "The Aethyrs speak to you in a different voice than they do to me," Nelaid said, "which is perfectly normal. But I must question your interpretation of their position." "Royal sire," Roshaun said, "once you could question that. But you gave up that right when you abdicated as Sunlord in my favor." "I remain the ranking Senior on Wellakh," Roshaun's father said, "and that right of questioning I have not abdicated. You have yet to satisfy me as to how much of this decision is yours." And he looked at Dairine. Dairine instantly flushed so hot that she knew she must be clashing horribly with her dress. "If you assume I've been unduly influenced in my decision, royal sire," Roshaun said, "you're in great error." "Better believe it," Dairine said softly. "Paying attention to anything / say is hardly one of his favorite things." Nelaid gave Dairine a look that was genuinely amused. "Forgive me, bev he Khallahan, but I have known my son longer than you have." He turned back to Roshaun, the look in his eye more challenging now. "It's the mark of a noble heart to want to help friends in trouble. But when that help distracts you from those you already have a duty to help…" He glanced toward the great barren plain outside, all covered with people. "Father," Roshaun said, "staying here in obedience to our people's insecurities will solve no problem that faces us now. We must not waste precious time doing the same old things; they will not avail us. I will be protecting our people, regardless of how it looks to them." "They will not ask you for explanations," Nelaid said. "They will simply watch what you do. And if they do not like your actions, they will keep their counsel… until one of them finds a way to come at you on some visit to the liveside. An energy weapon, a bomb or a knife, an unguarded moment…" Roshaun's father shrugged. "Even you must sleep sometimes. As must I. And your mother." Roshaun's eyes were on the throne. "I know the fear you've both lived with, all these years," he said. "The knife that almost took you. The bomb that missed you and nearly took the queen. Do you think I'm trying to shirk my turn?" Dairine could feel the slow burn beginning. "Excuse me," she said to Nelaid, "but in case you haven't heard, your son put his life on the line to fix our Sun while he was on excursus. He saw the problem with it before any of us did. He helped us design the wizardry to deal with it. And when stuff got rough up there, he walked straight into my star wearing not much more than a force field and a smile. That looks like 'brave' to me, so if you're seriously suggesting he doesn't have what it takes to deal with being king here-" Roshaun's father put up his eyebrows. "You are outspoken," he said. "Speaking truth to power," Dairine said, "is never 'out'" The slightest smile appeared on Nelaid's face. "There are problems associated with this course of action-" "Royal sire," Roshaun said, "you were the one who taught me that sometimes, as wizards, we have to make choices that fly in the face of what looks like common sense. 'Reason is not always everything,' you'd say. There remains that other voice that speaks, sometimes, in accents we don't understand. Or understand perfectly well, and violently disagree with." "My words exactly," Roshaun's father said. "Unusual to hear you agreeing with them. This would not have been your normal mode… before you went away." "Nor would it have been your mode to produce so sudden a surprise as your abdication," Roshaun said, "when I left thinking that everything here was going smoothly, and an excursus would do no harm." "Things change," said the former Sunlord, "as we see." And once again he looked at Dairine. "You arrive for your people's first sight of you as Sunlord, and what do they also see, standing at your side? An alien, garbed in raiment much like that of Wellakhit royalty, wearing some other world's life-color, gemmed like a Guarantor. The rumors are flying already. Does another world have designs on the rule of ours? Either by straightforward conquest, or more intimate means?" Dairine's eyes went wide as what he meant sank in. "You mean they think that we-that I– You tell those people that they are completely nuts! Even if I were old enough to think about stuff like this, which I seriously am not, I have zero interest in being anybody's queen! Especially not his-" And then Dairine stopped short as she saw the peculiar look that had appeared on both Roshaun's and Nelaid's faces. "Uh," she said then, and blushed again. "Maybe there was a less tactful way I could have put that…" That small smile reappeared on Nelaid's face. "Well," Nelaid said after a moment, "I perhaps am reassured. But as for our people-" "Father," Roshaun said, "you taught me that a wizard turns away from the Aethyrs' guidance and his heart's at his peril. Yes, our people may misunderstand either Dairine's presence here or the fact that I will now immediately leave. For either eventuality, I'm quite prepared. And when we come home from this errand, perhaps they will assassinate me for what they consider a betrayal. It would not be the first time that kind of thing has happened-or the last." "And, meanwhile, you mean for me to assume the burden of Sunwatch once more, even though I've formally laid it down." When Roshaun spoke at last, his tone was surprisingly gentle. "You said it yourself, Father," Roshaun said. "What the Son of the Sun commands is law. As a wizard, you know where your duties lie. But if I must-" Nelaid stood there silently for a few moments. "No," he said. "A king's first command should be less painful. I will stand the Watch… though Thahit is once more showing signs of instability." "That I saw when I returned," Roshaun said. "I examined the star briefly a little time ago, while testing the Stone to see if it interfered with my perceptions. The instability is the one we predicted together before I left." "What we did not predict was the increased acceleration of the stretching effects in space," Nelaid said. "The sun's instability is increasing accordingly." "I noted that, Father," Roshaun said. "So while I am gone you must intervene if necessary." He paused. "That said, I should not be taking this into harm's way. I prefer that you keep it for me while I am gone." And Roshaun reached up and started to unfasten the great golden collar around his neck. Roshaun's father stood silent for a moment, and then made a sidewise gesture with one hand, which Dairine read as "no." "Wizardry is the reality at the heart of the Watch, my king," he said. "I have no need of a mere symbol to do what needs to be done." The tension in the air fell away very abruptly as Roshaun's father spoke. "But the Stone makes you king… so its place is with you. If you young ones fail, it will not matter for long whether the Stone is lost or not. We ^vill all follow you into the dark soon enough." "And if the star stammers, what of it?" said a voice from the floor. Startled, the three of them looked down. Spot was regarding Roshaun's father with several eyes. "Lean times of barren hope Wait on the composite's daughter, Sharpening the edge of life." Spot fell silent. Roshaun and Nelaid exchanged speculative glances. Dairine felt like swearing. "Couldn't you have waited half an hour?" she said under her breath, and looked up at Roshaun and his father. "Would you two hold that thought?" She felt down toward where the memo pad should have been, in the pocket of her cargo pants… then remembered that there was no pocket there anymore, not to mention no pants. She let out an annoyed breath. "Spot-" "What?" "The notepad!" "In your claudication, along with everything else that was in your pockets." "Thanks." She reached sideways, pushed her hand into the empty air, and groped around, coming up with the pad and a pen. Roshaun's father was looking at Roshaun in mild confusion. "When one has manual access, even in alien idioms," he said, "can one not usually take notes by-" Dairine looked up from her scribbling to throw Roshaun's father a look that should have singed even a Sun King around the edges. "Everything changes-?isn't that what you were just saying? You were right. So don't rub it in." The two Wellakhi looked at Dairine with exactly matching expressions of superior amusement, then turned back toward each other. Nelaid said, "Where will you go now?" "Dairine's associate comes of a species of sentient, wizardly computing devices," Roshaun said. "Mobiles, they call themselves. Both their reasoning power and their wizardry are tremendous, according to the Aethyrs. We go to consult with them on ways to attack the expansion. Meanwhile, the people outside should be told that I am gone on their business-and the universe's. I will come back as soon as I can." Roshaun's father held his son's eye for a few moments, then bowed slightly to him. "As the king commands," he said. He glanced at Dairine as she finished with her scribbling, nodded to her. "Dai stiho," he said, and with a soft clap of displaced air, he vanished. Roshaun let out a breath and turned back toward the doors. "Come on," he said. Dairine turned, too-and then stopped, hearing footsteps. She paused, looked over her shoulder. Coming toward them was a woman-not as tall as Roshaun's father, but so beautiful that the sight of her made Dairine simply stop where she was. She wore the Wellakhit long overtunic and soft trousers, but in flowing hazy blue; and her hair was the original of Roshaun's, except longer and fairer, and so feathery light that it seemed to float around her as she came toward them. Dairine was immediately devoured by a desire to have hair like that, even though taking care of it would leave her with no time for a social life, and buying the necessary amount of shampoo would destroy her college fund. "Uh," she said, "Roshaun-" He had already brushed past her, hurrying. Dairine had never seen Roshaun hurry before. He went straight to the woman, reached out, and took both her outstretched hands and pressed them against his forehead. The woman smiled and pushed Roshaun a little away. "Are you taller?" she said. "Motherrrrr…!" Roshaun said. She smiled past Roshaun at Dairine. "Roshaun tekeh," she said. "What about your friend?" "Ah," Roshaun said. He let go of his mother's hands and glanced over at Dairine. She smiled, too, and headed over to them, immediately impressed by anyone who could make Roshaun sound like he wanted to roll his eyes. Roshaun looked at Dairine as he put an arm around his mother and said, "I would make you known to Miril am Miril dev ir Nuiiliat, the Sister of the Sun, the Lady of the Lands of Wellakh. Mother, this is Dairine he Khallahan." Her smile was so friendly and kind that Dairine was tempted to simply say, "Hi, Roshaun's mom." But for the moment she did what Roshaun had done, and took the hand held out to her, pressing it to her forehead. "You're very welcome, young wizard," Lady Miril said in the Speech. "And you also, sir," she said to Spot, who was peering out from behind Dairine. "I heard you say you were in a hurry, Roshaun, so I won't keep you." "You heard all that?" Dairine said. "If the queen of Wellakh doesn't keep her ears open," Lady Miril said, "things deteriorate… especially around this one and his father." She hugged Roshaun a little harder. Roshaun squirmed, but only slightly. "There was a little… uh…" "Friction?" said Lady Miril. "Always. These two stalk about in all directions doing good… and then hardly have a kind word for each other. If there's a way for either of them to rub the other one the wrong way, he'll find it. And in recent days the intensity of the game has increased somewhat." "Mother," Roshaun said, looking at her with a surprised expression, "you saw all this coming…" "It hardly takes a wizard to tell what's going on with your royal sire, my son," said Lady Miril, "when you've known him since he was just a badly behaved prince." She grinned. "And as for you-" Roshaun actually blushed. Lady Miril, though, went quite sober. "But the weariness has been growing on your father, Roshaun. And then while you were away, there was another attempt…" Roshaun looked at his mother… and then the expression on his face went very strange. "That was meant for me, was it not?" he said. "I believe so," said his mother. "That was why you wanted me to go on the excur sus," Roshaun said softly. "You wanted me out of the way, on Earth." "The thought of a vigorous new power in charge of the planet would annoy some people," Lady Miril said, glancing at Dairine. "They prefer the status quo to an unknown." "And then," Roshaun said, "Father was caught up in an attack meant for me…" He turned a shade that even for him was pale. "And now… what I just did-" Was the most idiotic thing I could possibly have done, Dairine heard Roshaun think. / have thrown my father straight back into the situation from which he thought he had finally been freed. I have– Roshaun disentangled himself from Lady Miril. "Mother-" He held a hand out to one side. In it, blinding, appeared the little globe of white fire that was his manual. He slipped his other hand into it, feeling around for something. "We should go." "No, royal son," said Lady Miril, and the fire-globe vanished. "Not in here. If you will be king in name, you must be king in action as well, or you leave your father in greater danger than before. A king does not sneak away. If he leaves, he does so where his people can see him." Roshaun looked over at Dairine. "We can teleport, if you like," he said. "I don't mind the walk," Dairine said after a moment. "I can use it to compose myself." Lady Miril flashed Dairine an amused glance. "When will you be back, Roshaun?" He paused. "I am not sure. Father has told you about the expansion…" She looked grave. "Yes," she said. "Go do what you must. We'll wait. Dhairine" Dairine took the Lady's hand again. "Go well," Lady Miril said. She turned away. Roshaun headed for the door; Dairine went with him. About halfway down to the doors, she said, "I can't wait to get out of these clothes." "The way you did before?" Roshaun said. "That was entertaining. And informative." Now what the heck is that supposed to mean?! Dairine thought. "Probably not what you think," Roshaun said. "But when you do resume your usual guise…" He reached out toward her as they went, and very casually tapped the cabochon emerald at Dairine's throat. "Not that," he said. "That I think you should keep. It becomes you." "Uh, okay," Dairine said, and blushed again, she hardly knew why. "It's just-I'm hard on jewelry. It gets busted, or…" The expression on his face was so strange that she said, "All right, sure, I'll keep it." "Good," Roshaun said. "Meanwhile-" They were at the doors. Roshaun stepped through them. Dairine hung back, waiting. Out beyond the mountain of the palace, all across the plain, the two million Wellakhit people still stood, their quiet now more hushed than before because of the great height; and before them, near the slender rail at the highest terrace's edge, stood Roshaun's father. Roshaun went directly to Nelaid and stood beside him at the edge of the terrace. Dairine watched Nelaid's face, set and proud, as he turned it toward his son. After a few moments, Roshaun stretched out a hand. His father took it. They stood there in the view of that great assemblage, and slowly an uncertain murmur went up at that gesture that Dairine guessed suggested more a joint kingship than one vesting solely in one party or the other. "You told them?" Roshaun said. "I did," said Nelaid. "Then by your leave, royal father," Roshaun said, "I go. And, Father, I am sorry." "My son," Nelaid said, "the Aethyrs go with you." And carefully, as if he wasn't sure how to do it in front of all these people, Nelaid embraced his son. The sound from the crowd swelled, still confused, but somehow approving. Roshaun let his father go. "I have to attach this to a substrate," he said, as he produced his manual again and reached into it, pulling out the compressed darkness that was the subsidized worldgate. "Go ahead, son." As Roshaun made his way back toward the wall near the doors, Dairine saw Nelaid throw her a look that was much less stiff than his regard had been earlier. She bowed her head to him again, not too far for fear of what the tiara would do, and then turned to join Roshaun, with Spot spidering along behind her. "You were going to have some coordinates for me?" Roshaun said. "Here," Spot said. Roshaun flung the darkness of the worldgate up against the wall; it spread out into a black circle a few meters wide. "One thing," Dairine said, as Spot fed the temporospatial coordinates of the Motherboard World to the worldgate wizardry. "Yes?" "Something you said back there," Dairine said, as the worldgate's vacuum-warding subroutine snapped to life. " 'When we come home from this errand'?" "It was a slip of the tongue," Roshaun said after a moment. "And therefore not true?" Dairine said. Roshaun wouldn't answer. Dairine smiled and led the way through the gate. Nita looked around her as they materialized inside the vast space of the Crossings Worldgating Facility. It was night there; as usual after sunset, the vast, remote ceiling had apparently vanished, and the milky turbulence of the upper atmosphere had cleared, letting the extravagant night sky of Rirhath B show through. Automatically Nita did the first thing you do in the Crossings when appearing out of nowhere: She looked down to check whether the transport surface they were all standing on was "dedicated" or not. Fortunately, it wasn't. "Come on, guys," Nita said, "everybody out of the zone." Filif followed Nita over the line as Kit and Ponch and Ronan were crossing over in a slightly different direction. Ponch bounded past them, lolloping off down the wide central corridor of this part of the Crossings. "Don't run!" Nita called after him, concerned that he would go crashing into some unsuspecting alien; but there wasn't much point. They were easily a quarter mile from the nearest other beings who were catching late (or early) gates to their destinations. Ponch galloped along, oblivious, tail wagging, and no one paid him any attention. Nita looked at her watch as Sker'ret poured past her, heading for one of the many bluesteel information kiosks that rose ten or twelve feet from the floor at intervals all along the length of the concourse. It really is later than we've usually been in here before, Nita thought. To her watch, she said, "Crossings time, please?" The face of the watch restructured itself to show her the thirty-three-hour Crossings day. It's nearly twenty– nine o'clock, Nita thought. Probably no surprise that traffic's a little down. Ronan had stopped just the other side of the line and was standing there staring up at the vast starry darkness overhead. Rirhath's neighborhood of space was full of variable stars that slowly but visibly shrank and swelled while you watched. "It's like they're breathing," Ronan said. Beside him, Kit nodded. "You haven't been here before?" Kit said. "Once," Ronan said. "It wasn't anything like this then." Kit smiled. "The daytime view's interesting, though I always wonder what'd happen to all that levitating stained glass up at ceiling level if they had a power failure. This is a lot less tense." He looked after Ponch as Nita and Filif came over to them. "You know what he's after," Nita said, looking after Ponch. Kit shrugged. "Give him a moment to run," he said. "When he comes back we'll get down to business." Then he yawned. "You and me both," Nita said, rubbing her eyes. "It's getting late back home. We ought to think about where we'll stop for the night." "Wherever Ponch leads us," Ronan said. "My passenger'll stand guard while we're sleeping. Everybody's got their pup tents with them, so they'll be comfortable enough." "And I've got my cell phone," Nita said. "If my dad needs to get in touch, he won't have any trouble." She sighed. "I still wish we could sleep at home… I'm getting nervous about what's going on there." "Going back and forth wouldn't be smart," Ronan said. "For one thing, it'd make us a lot easier to track. Might as well just send the Lone One an invitation to follow us straight to wherever it is we're going." "Yeah, I know." Nita knew he was right; she just hated to admit it. Sker'ret was reared up against the nearby kiosk, using numerous upper legs to work its controls. Nita went over to him and looked over a couple of his topmost shoulders. Below the kiosk's translucent surface, in which Sker'ret's topmost two pairs of legs were partially embedded, several layers of patches of light flowed with characters in the Speech. "Find what you're looking for?" she said. Sker'ret curved a couple of eyes backward to meet hers. "Not yet," he said. He's never this terse. What's going on? She rested a hand on that beautiful candy-glazed metallic-purple carapace, just behind the head segment. "Sker', are you okay?" He sagged a little. "Not entirely." He turned some eyes up to gaze at the deep red charactery now running up and down the kiosk-pillar's length. "If you need help-" "Not at the moment. But thank you." Sker'ret curved back another couple of eyes toward her. "What about Ponch?" Down the concourse Nita could see the shiny black shape wandering along toward them, still wagging his tail. "I'll see if he's ready to start work," she said. Kit was standing there with his arms folded, shaking his head, watching Ponch head toward them. You were trying to overhear what he was smelling, Nita said privately. Any luck? Kit gave her a resigned look. Motor oil, he said. Cocoa. Motor oil? Nita turned to look up the concourse at Ponch again; he had paused to sniff at another of the information kiosks. / guess for him those smells symbolize what Ronan and the Champion are after? That's my guess, Kit said. He thinks he's on the right track. All we can do is let him get on with it. Ponch came ambling over to Kit, looked up at him, and nosed his hand. I'm hungry! Ronan came back to them and looked down at Ponch. "So when are you going to get started?" ponch gave Ronan a slightly scornful look. I've been working ever since we got here. But I'll need a little more time to sort the scents out. For the time being, you two just talk among yourselves. What amused Nita was that he was looking only at Ronan while he said it. Ronan looked a little taken aback. Ponch turned his back on him. And while I work on the scent-sorting, he said to Kit, wagging his tail, we might as well get something to eat! "I don't know," Kit said. "Maybe it's not good for some people to be full of food when they're supposed to be really sharp and heading out on the trail." Ponch gave Kit a very cool look. Oh, I get it. Deprive me and I'll function better? Let's see how that works. He sat down. Hmm, I feel strangely weak… Ponch fell over on one side with his tongue hanging out one side of his mouth; one eye looked pitifully at Kit. Can't… seem to… move… Kit looked over at Nita. "Blackmail," Kit said. Nita shrugged. "Oh, all right," Kit said. "Come on, let's see what we can find." Ponch sprang to his feet, spun around in three fast, tight circles where he stood, and then shot off down the concourse. Kit jogged after him. Behind them, ostentatiously by himself, Ronan strolled away. Filif came up next to Nita, also looking after them, but mostly at Ronan. "And to think that the One's Champion is hiding in there." "One version of it," Nita said. "An avatar, I guess we'd say, sort of a splinter of the whole Defender… as much as could fit inside a human being, anyhow." She reached out to readjust Filif's baseball cap. "The con cept doesn't seem to surprise you much." "Why should it? The One's Champion does that kind of thing all the time, the Wind says. Seems like It loves to dress up." Nita grinned. "Well, you haven't seen it the way we have," she said. "It lived at Tom and Carl's for a long time, disguised as a bird." She rubbed one ear thoughtfully. "It had some issues then, too. Kind of a temper…" She could feel Filif's amusement. "Such was the De fender's way with us, as well. It was the Great Tree, the Star-Reacher, that first caught the Wind in its branches and shared the sound of it with us." Filif turned most of his eye-berries to look down the other end of the concourse, and upward toward the vast and splendid Rirhait sky. "Before that, the Wind was just another noise. After that, it became the sound of words and wizardry, the power to change our world…" Nita glanced around them. "Fil, did you see where Sker'ret went?" "Uh, no." Filif rotated in place. "He was working at that kiosk." "We can always message him," Nita said. "Come on, let's see what they're up to." The two of them headed in the direction that Kit and Ponch had gone. The Crossings might have been quieter than usual, but Nita didn't mind that, since it meant that you had less chance of being run over by aliens and their luggage while rubbernecking. The place was nearly half the size of the island of Manhattan, and besides the actual worldgates-set into the floor all down the length of the concourse, as their entry gating area had been-it was also full of endless haphazardly stacked modular bluesteel "cubes" containing shops, lounges, living areas, food courts, and every other kind of facility necessary to cater to the needs of the thousands of species that used the Crossings as a vital transportation link among several major galactic and transgalactic civilizations. Even at a "quiet" time like this, there were any number of fascinating beings to look at as they wandered from place to place, gazing into the windows of stores or restaurants. Though not as many as usual…, Nita thought. "Is that Kit coming back?" Filif said to Nita. "Who's he with?" Nita peered down the concourse. "Doesn't look like him." She took another look. "But they're human." There were three people there, heading in their direction-two boys and a girl, Nita thought. "Other wizards," she said to Filif, as they got closer and it became plain that the approaching three were Earth-human and not some other variety. One of the boys, with shaggy fair hair, was wearing dark pants and a matching dark sweater that might have been a school uniform; the other one, a dark-haired kid, was in jeans and a windbreaker, close enough to what Kit was wearing and close enough to his height that Nita could see why Filif might have made the error. The girl, who had short brown hair, was wearing what seemed to be a short, richly patterned silk kimono over jeans and low-heeled boots, a look that Nita admired as soon as she saw it. The newcomers were a hundred feet or so away from Nita and Filif when Kit and Ponch appeared from one of an array of cubicles over to the left. Over here, Nita said silently to Kit. We've got company. Ponch came bouncing up to Nita, who reached down to ruffle up his ears. "So how was it?" she said. We didn't even go to a restaurant, Ponch said, in profound disappointment, throwing a reproachful look over his shoulder at Kit. He just went to a machine and put words from his manual in it and food came out. But there was only one blue thing. That was hardly enough. Look at me! You can see my ribs. "Later," Kit said. "We need to find Ronan and Sker'ret. And talk to these guys, I think." "Dai stiho!" the girl said, as they got close. "Dai," Nita and Kit and Filif said more or less in unison. "You're just up from the Moon?" said the boy in the school uniform, in a broad Australian accent. "Is the gate still open there?" "It was a few minutes ago," Kit said. "Great," said the boy. "We're heading back." "Where've you been?" Nita said. "If it's not private." The second boy shook his head. "Edge of the Local Group," he said. "Over by IC 1613." "How are things there?" Nita said. The first boy looked grim. "That galaxy was always kind of thin and spread out to begin with," he said. "But it's a lot thinner now. You know the Katahn empire there?" Nita and Kit both shook their heads. Filif said, "I know of it. How does it fare?" "Badly. Its systems are being pushed away from each other so fast that the empire's falling apart," said the boy in the jeans. "The big crowd of blue-white stars in the middle of that galaxy is being ripped up; the whole thing could turn into a blazar." Nita sucked in her breath. The boy shook his head. "We're going back to get some help. There are a few really young kids back on the Moon right now. Might be we can get together enough raw power to slow down the expansion." "Even if we can't do that right away, we should be able to keep the blazar from igniting," the girl said. "We think," said the Aussie-sounding boy. All of them trailed off. They looked terrified, but determined. Nita thought, And that's how we look to them, I'll bet. "Good luck," Kit said. "If there is such a thing," said the girl. Her look was defiant. "But we're not going to wait to find out. Come on. Dai." The three of them waved and went back the way Nita's and Kit's group had come. Nita turned to watch them go as Ronan came out of another of the cubicle shops over on the right and rejoined them. "So," he said, "the big gut here finish stuffing himself?" Ponch gave Ronan a dry look. / wouldn't talk if I r Collateral Damage were you, he said. That greaseball hamburger you were eating was nearly strong enough to drown out the scent of what we're tracking. "Which you've finally got nailed down?" Kit said. The scent's faint, Ponch said, but I can find the way from here, or at least get us headed in the right direction. How do you want to go? "Using a fixed gate would be better right now," Ronan said. Then I can show you the way in my head, Ponch said to Kit. "And I can use the manual to convert those into coordinates the Crossings gating system can use," Kit said. "But we'll need to go talk to the station staff to get them to allocate us a gate." "Yeah. Let's message Sker'ret." I can smell where he is, Ponch said. This way. Ponch galloped off down the concourse toward the intersection where the secondary concourse wing met the major one they were in. Just past the spot where the two wings met rose an open structure of blue-green metal, looking like a cross between an office cubicle and a set of monkey bars. Around it a number of Rirhait people were gathered, making a noise like a lawn mower having an argument with a rock it had found hiding in the grass. Sker'ret was there, the front half of him reared up off the floor as he worked at one of the subsidiary kiosk-columns that made up the body of the structure. The column had extruded a control console covered with patches of embedded light, which Sker'ret was tapping at with great speed. Three of the gathered Rirhait were looking over one or another set of his shoulders; two others were rushing around the cubicle as if they were looking for something. With a wizard's ear, Nita could hear Sker'ret saying to one of the Rirhait looking over his shoulder, "See, this is all you need to do. It's easier than you think. If you just make sure that the equations for the hypersphere balance have the same asymptotic expansion variables laid in-" He looked up as Nita and Kit and Filif and Ronan stepped up to the cubicle. "Oh," Sker'ret said. "We're about ready," Kit said. "Can you finish up here?" "I'm trying," Sker'ret said. He cocked about three eyes each back at the two other Rirhait who were looking over his shoulders. "So are we clear about this, sibs? This is going to hold you just fine for the meantime." "I'm not sure exactly where to go after that, though," said one of the Rirhait who was watching whatever he was doing at the console. She sounded nervous. "What about the spin foam variables?" asked the other Rirhait. Sker'ret reached out some spare legs to the column on the other side of him. It extruded another floating keyboard structure toward him, which he poked until it displayed the keying pattern he wanted, and started tapping on while still typing into the first one. "You do it like this," he said. "Let the software handle the brane issues; it's built for that. Ignore the zonotope and the polar sine relationships. All you have to do is intuit the way the spin foam variables are sliding, and add about a radian and a half-" "You following this?" Kit said to Nita under his breath. "You kidding?" Nita muttered. "It's math, Kit, but not as we know it." "-and then you pull in the last twenty sets of figures from the leech-lattice version of the hyperspherepacking readings, paying special attention to the kissing number. Then you just massage the string density quotient-" Sker'ret was too intent on simultaneous input at both consoles to notice the sudden frantic wreathing of eyes of all the Rirhait surrounding him, and the way the two who had been pacing now froze in place with all their eyes pointing over Sker'ret's shoulders. "And that'll hold you for the next two standard periods at least." "Good," said another Rirhait voice from behind Sker'ret… and now it was Sker'ret's turn to freeze. All his eyes held quite still, looking at what he had been keying in… and then very slowly one of them curled up and around to look behind him. The Stationmaster of the Crossings, a Rirhait somewhat bigger than Sker'ret and of a lighter, more silvery– blue shade, poured into the cubicle and arranged himself among and over some of its interlocking rails and bars, peering with various eyes at the keypads where Sker'ret had been working. "So you've changed your mind," he said. "I'm glad you've come to your senses. We need you here." Nita wasn't sure how someone so smoothcarapaced could seem to bristle, but as Sker'ret curved some more of his eyes around in the Stationmaster's direction, he was managing it. "Unfortunately, you're wrong," Sker'ret said. "I haven't changed my mind." "What?" The Stationmaster pointed all his eyes at once at Sker'ret. The other Rirhait around him all pulled their eyes in close to their bodies. "You need me more where I'm going," Sker'ret said. "I've spent all the time I can here. This fix will deal with the problem at hand… and now we're going to head out." "Are you insane?" the Stationmaster said. "Look at this place!" Nita looked. She couldn't see anything wrong with it, except that it did seem much emptier than usual. Sker'ret glanced around with various eyes. "This is only a symptom," said Sker'ret, "of what's coming. And no one with all their brains in place wastes time treating symptoms. A cure's what's needed… and that's what we're dealing with now." The Stationmaster flowed a little closer to Sker'ret and did something that Nita found briefly alarming: It reared up and grasped Sker'ret's front end with some of those many little clawed legs. "Listen to me, broodling," the Stationmaster said. "What's happening out there is far too big for any species to cure. The world is changing! And there's nothing we can do. How do you seriously expect to keep space from expanding?" "But wizards-" "If wizards could have stopped it, they'd have done that already," the Stationmaster said. "We've just got to teach our mechanisms to handle the new distances and vectors in the long term… or all this is going to come to a halt, and with it the transport and commerce of three galaxies!" More of the Stationmaster's legs waved around them at the travelers of many species who were hurrying by, ignoring them. "Your sibs have better sense," the Stationmaster said. "They're not running off on some fool's errand at a critical time. But you've been hard to reason with lately." The Stationmaster glared with many eyes past Sker'ret at the gaggle of humans and others who were uncomfortably watching all this unfold, and one eye stared straight at Nita. "Something to do with the company you've been keeping." Nita went very hot and opened her mouth. Before she could say anything, Sker'ret shook off his ancestor's forelegs and bent every eye on him. "I'll thank you not to malign wizards of goodwill and friends of mine," he said. "And as for the long term, there'll be no long term for anyone or anything if we don't move to alter what's happening." "And so you'll go off and abandon the place to which you owe the most responsibility." "We can't turn inward now!" Sker'ret nearly shouted. "This is no time to try to find ways to dig our own burrow deeper! Turning outward to solve the bigger problem is the only way for us to save ourselves!" "I have been Master here for nearly two hundred circuits of our sun," the Stationmaster said, very quietly. "And it's amusing to hear someone barely out of his fifth decade claim that he understands better than I how to handle the threat that-" "You don't understand a tenth of what you think you do!" Sker'ret said. "You're too scared to raise an eye or three to peer past the obvious conclusions. And your job description has changed, but you haven't even noticed-even though the truth's staring you in the head and waving all its eyes at you. You saw the Station's stats! Gating across the three major galaxies is down almost thirty percent! Everyone's turning inward, from fear, and that's just what our old Enemy wants! To drive us apart, each into his own burrow, to keep us away from the interaction that keeps us in touch with the Prime Mover and makes us one-" "I don't have time for metaphysics right now," the Stationmaster said. "I need to keep this place running. If you're going to forget where your real place is and go running off Mover-knows-where, there's nothing I can do to stop you. But you're jeopardizing your positions here. All of them." There was an unnervingly final sound to that. Nita swallowed, waiting to see what Sker'ret would do. He disentangled himself from the support framework and dropped back to the horizontal position. 'Perhaps I am," he said. "But at least, when we succeed what we're doing, there'll still be a place for my replacement to have a position at. And a place for my sibs to learn whether you value them as you do me." All his eyes were fixed on all his ancestor's. There was a terrible silence. Then slowly, one after one, the Stationmaster turned those eyes away. Sker'ret didn't flinch. "We need a gate," he said after a moment. "The one-seventies are all idle," said the Stationmaster, in a tone of voice that made Nita wonder how she'd ever thought it sounded rude before. "Use one of them. And don't let us delay you." He turned and swept off down the far side of the concourse. With reluctant backward looks, Sker'ret's sibs went pouring after him. A few seconds later, only Nita, Kit, Filif, Ponch, and Ronan stood there. "Wow," Kit said softly. Sker'ret glanced over at Nita with some of his eyes; the rest of them were still on his esteemed ancestor and his sibs as they hurried away across the shining floor. Nita shook her head as Sker'ret flowed out of the cubicle structure, and hunkered down beside him as he paused, still looking down the concourse. She rested one hand on the carapace-segment just behind his head. "What I said about our basement," she said, "I meant it." "Thank you," Sker'ret said, and the strange eyes that Nita had previously had so much trouble reading now seemed full of gratitude and weariness. "But everything is still all wrong." "Wrong how?" Sker'ret paused. "None of that sounded like what my ancestor would say," he said at last. "You don't get to be Stationmaster of the Crossings by saying how things can't be fixed. You find ways to fix things, no matter what it takes. 'Broken' isn't an option. And the Sieger the problem, the more committed you are to fixing it-" Sker'ret shook his head, and the ripple of it went all the way down his body. "That's the kind of thing he would always say to me. And all of a sudden, to hear him sound like he did just now-" Sker'ret sounded confused. "He'd given up. He didn't sound… like him, somehow." Kit looked at Nita. "Tom warned us," he said, "that there would be changes because of the way space was stretching. Ethical changes, personality shifts." Everyone looked uncomfortable. "It's going to get worse," Nita said. "We've just got to get on with what we're doing. Though it really is freaky." She glanced at Kit. "You see any adult human wizards here while you were on your own? I didn't." Kit shook his head. "Sker', where are the one– seventies?" "Hang a right, thirty stads down on your left," Sker'ret said. "It's one of the bigger clusters." "Let's go," Nita said. Their group left the cubicle and followed Sker'ret as he led the way around the corner and down yet another of those seemingly endless, shining white corridors, all the gate hexes and squares lining either side of 't alight… and many of them empty. For someone who knew the Crossings as well as Nita did, the effect was unnerving. "This way." Sker'ret turned off into a large circular area, maybe a quarter mile across, that budded off the transverse concourse. The area was completely surfaced with gate hexes, nested fairly closely together, outlined in many different colors depending on the species intended to use them. "Here we are," Sker'ret said. He led them over to the large gate at the center of the hex grouping, went to its kiosk-column, reared up against it, and tapped his uppermost legs against it. The column extruded a console like the ones he had been working with at the central resource station. The embedded outline of the largest hex came alive with a clear fierce blue. Sker'ret turned to Kit. "What have you got for me?" Kit looked at Ponch. Nita could feel something of the communication between them; it was like watching someone whisper to someone else, while not being able to hear what they were saying… and, still, at one remove, it smelled of cocoa and motor oil. Weird, she thought, as Kit turned to Sker'ret. "I'm not sure I can handle this keyboard," he said. "Just speak it to me in the Speech," Sker'ret said. "I can do the input." Kit recited a long string of words, numbers, and variable statements to Sker'ret. Sker'ret's little end-of-leg claws danced over the keypad. "Done," Sker'ret said. "Everybody into the zone, please. Thirty seconds to the transit." He pushed the keypad away from him; it vanished into the column. Sker'ret headed into the middle of the biggest hex, and they all followed. Nita was half amused, half scared to see how everybody put them elves as far into the middle of the hex as they could, so that at the end of the exercise three humans, a dog, a entjpede, and a Christmas tree all stood back to back, facing outward against whatever might come at them. "Twenty," Sker'ret said. "Ten." Nita looked around her at a section of the Crossings that had no one in it but them, no one at all. It was unnerving. "Five." Her heart was pounding. She glanced over at Kit. "Zero-" Everything went dark. Nita had to blink a couple of times to get used to the darkness. There was air, at least-Crossings gateways had a vacuum-guard on them, so they wouldn't dump you out into an inimical or absent atmosphere without warning. As usual, she looked up first at the sky. There wasn't one. They stood on a small, arid, empty world, and Nita had known it was empty the moment they came out of nowhere. The lack of life has a specific feel to which any wizard past Ordeal quickly becomes sensitive, a sensation of something missing that ought to be there, but isn't, like a pulled tooth. Above them, there should have been stars. But there weren't. Nita tried to make sense of what she was seeing as she looked up. It was like when you stare into the dark for a long time and start imagining that the dark itself is moving. But this movement was real. It was as if the darkness was heaving with small shapes, no bigger than grains of rice-but all darker even than the blackness where they grew. Nita had a sudden thought of the mealworms she'd once found all through a bag of bad flour-heaving, rustling against each other, like a live thing that was also a lot of little live things. The darkness of space above them stirred and heaved with little darknesses. They were there. And Nita very much did not want to think what they would start to be like when they were bigger. She swallowed, righting the thought of being sick, which wouldn't have helped. Before this, space might have been inimical, bitterly cold, airless, arid, but it was at least clean. Suddenly that innocent, unselfconscious deadliness had been taken from it. Something was trying to squirm through the crevices of reality and fill that calm dark emptiness, void of everything but stars, with something heavier than starstuff, darker than the longest night, and horribly, mindlessly alive… with no interest in any other kind of life except squeezing it out, pushing all the native life more and more apart, filling everything so full with itself that there was no room for anything else. This was what the dark-matter expansion looked like, up close and personal. But the dark matter, innocent enough in itself, had had something added to it… something terrible. She looked over at Kit: His expression was as shocked and horrified as hers must have been. She wondered how all the wizards there were could possibly stop such a thing. And we don't even have all the wizards there are. Old age and experience can beat oath and power every time, Dad always says. Now all we've got is youth and power. Is it going to be enough? And what if it isn't? Kit put out a hand and said a few words in the Speech. A moment later, a small bright spark of wizard– fire materialized above his hand. Nita followed suit, telling hers to hover over one shoulder and just behind her. Around them, the others brought light about as well-Sker'ret's carapace came alive with it, and all of Filif's berries blazed. Ronan took that clip-on ballpoint pen out of his pocket and gave it a shake. A moment later he was holding the Spear of Light in its full form-the seven-foot Spearshaft glowing softly, the head of the Spear wreathing itself in a chilly white– golden flame. Kit was looking up into the darkness, and to Nita's eye, he looked faintly unwell. "That has to be the creepiest thing I've ever seen," he said. Ronan stood leaning on the Spear, his free hand resting on his hip, his shadow lying pooled black behind him from the Spear's radiance. It might have seemed a casual stance at first. But as Ronan gazed up into that unhealthy, seething dark, Nita started to sense how tightly he was controlling himself, like someone working hard not to run away. His face was very still, though, and Nita for the first time actually saw someone else look out of Ronan's eyes. The expression was one of recognition coupled with a very controlled anger. The one who looked out had seen something like this before. She went over to him. "Something familiar about this?" she said. Ronan nodded. "From a long, long time back," he said. "When the Lone One first revealed that new thing it had invented, entropy, this was one of the early side effects." "And the Champion stopped it?" Kit said, coming over with Ponch to join them. Ronan shook his head. "No. It's weird, but when the Pullulus first began to occur, it was the Lone Power Itself that stopped it." Nita found that bizarre. "Something too dangerous for even It to manage?" Ronan shook his head. "I used to think I knew My brother's mind," said the Champion with Ronan's voice, "but that issue was never clear to Me or any of the other Powers. Whatever, this perversion of dark matter hasn't been seen since. To see it again now… I find that troubling." "Troubling" didn't come close to describing Nita's feelings. "I am really not wild about the idea of sleeping here," Nita said. She looked down at Ponch. "Couldn't you walk us a little way, just enough to get us out of here?" I'm tired, Ponch said. And he lay down and put his head down on his paws, though Nita saw him watching the sky with an expression of concern. Nita let out an annoyed breath. "Look, we've got our pup tents," Kit said. "We'll be comfortable enough for a few hours." Nita nodded. "Yeah," she said. "Right." No point in making a scene about it. I'll cope. Sker'ret and Filif came over to them, getting out their pup-tent interfaces. Sker'ret reared up on his rearmost legs, hung the silvery rod of the spell interface on the empty air, and pulled on the little string of characters in the Speech that hung down from the rod. A subtle shimmer of wizardry a few feet wide followed it down, like a roller shade following its pull cord. Sker'ret "fastened" down the spell-surface that acted as gateway to the room-sized pocket of space, waggled a few eyes at Nita and Kit, and poured himself inside, vanishing. Past him, Filif was doing the same; he slid in through his own doorway and was gone. Nita let out a long breath. "Ronan?" she said. He shook his head. "I'm okay," he said. "My partner's got energy to spare. We'll stand guard." Nita set up her own pup tent, then glanced at that awful unstarred sky again. For some time now she had been getting into the habit of trusting her hunches, and her hunch right now was to be worried. What's going on back home? she thought. What's going on with Daddy? And Tom and Carl? And Dairine, what's she getting into? Is she under a sky like this someplace? And is she as freaked out as I am? Nita stepped into her pup tent and looked around, checking out the space that had become her home away from home while she and Kit had been away before. Everything was as it should be. There were a few pieces of spare furniture from home-a TV table and a spare desk chair, along with a beat-up old sofa that had been down in the basement until her dad had it recovered and suggested she move it into the pup tent; over the back of the sofa, a multicolored wool throw that her mom had crocheted a few years back; off to one side, some boxes of dry snacks and cereal, some six-packs of fruit drinks and mineral water. A pile of books to read at bedtime, some notebooks and assorted school supplies. It all should have been very comforting… except it wasn't. She couldn't get rid of the image of the darkness outside. Then suddenly Nita got angry. / may be freaked, but I'm not going to just roll over and let the fear run the way I act! She turned around and put her head out through the interface again, staring defiantly up at that evil sky. Above her, the dark Pullulus seethed and heaved against itself, blocking away the stars. Looking at it a second time didn't make it any easier. It probably isn't ever going to be easy, Nita thought. And I don't care. She glanced to one side and saw Kit leaning out through his own pup-tent interface. Past him, Ronan stood leaning on the Spear, looking up at the darkness. He, too, turned his gaze away from it now, looking at Nita. "You, too, huh?" Kit said. Nita looked at him for a moment, then gave him a quick, angry smile, and vanished back into her own space… feeling, once again, not quite so alone. High –Value Target Dairine became conscious that she was lying curled up on a chill, smooth surface. She then became conscious that she had been unconscious, and had no idea for how long. Obmygosh, the shields! she thought. But as she took an involuntary breath, she realized that the force field protecting her and Roshaun was running exactly as it should. Otherwise, the two of them would have been freezing cold, not to mention smothering in a next-to-nothing hydrogen atmosphere. She opened her eyes and blinked to get focus. The only thing to be seen at the moment was the ground on which she lay: almost perfectly smooth and flat, shining like a polished floor, softly dappled with subdued shades of gold and rust underneath the slick surface. Well, we're where we ought to be, Dairine thought. But how come every time I arrive here, I do it flat on my face? glory. "We seemed to be in that one for… quite a long time. How long?" Dairine glanced at her watch. It said eight thirty, but she'd forgotten to set it to handle gating-transit time, and now its second hand wasn't moving. "I've got to reconfigure this thing," she said. "I'll get a reading off Spot and let you know in a while." "How far from your own world is this one?" "At least forty trillion light-years," Dairine said. "Maybe more, but I've never done the math. I don't know about you, but when I start getting into the trillions, I find that forty and forЧитать дальше