Диана Дуэйн - Wizards At War

Something else stuck itself in her ear. Nita's eyes narrowed; she started to simply think the twenty-third word of the force-blast spell instead of saying it. It was a long one. Light twined around it, paired serpents of fire– Don't do it! And abruptly the thing in her ear was a tongue, one she knew entirely too well. Ewwwww, Nita thought, opening her eyes. Kit stood at the head of the couch, looking down at her anxiously; he'd just removed his hand from her mouth. Ponch, meanwhile, had finished washing her ear and was now enthusiastically working on her face. "Thanks for not blasting me," Kit said. "Good thing you moved fast, 'cause I didn't know it was you," Nita said, pushing Ponch away. "Did I oversleep? It's morning already?" "It's not just morning. It's Monday morning." "What?" Nita's eyes went wide. She sat straight up, or tried to; as usual, the crocheted throw had wrapped itself around her like a cocoon. "It can't be! We were only gone-oh, four or five hours, there was the stuff on the Moon-and then we did the transit, and we slept here, yeah, but it should still only be-" "Normally it should still only be," Kit said. He looked at Ponch. Ponch looked guilty. / brought us straight here… "But it took longer than usual," Nita said, struggling to get out from under the throw. "Ponch, don't worry! It wasn't your fault. It's got to be the expansion-it's throwing everything off." "Tell that to your dad," Kit said, sounding rather grim. "I get to do it with mine in a minute. Or if my luck runs out, with my mama." Nita swallowed. Her dad-who knew if he'd been trying to reach her? And if he had, why hadn't her phone gone off? Tom and Carl did the wizardry on it, she thought, it should he okay! But if wizardry wasn't behaving correctly in some of the places they were going– And then again she saw it, the shimmer of a hand that was a claw, and eyes that willingly blinded themselves behind a sheen of darkness– She covered her face with her hands and tried to pull everything together so that it made some kind of sense. This may take a while… "Okay," she said to Kit, pushing her hair back, "give me a minute or two to kick my brains into shape. What's everybody else doing?" "Getting up," Kit said, "like they had a choice." He glanced in Ponch's direction with a slightly exasperated look. "I kept him out of here as long as I could. But Ponch had himself a good time with everyone else first. Don't even ask what he tried to do to Filif." Ponch, who had spent the past few moments investigating everything in Nita's pup tent that he could stick his nose into or under, now bounded back wearing an vpression of complete innocence. / wasn't really going fa that! he said. It was just kind of funny for a moment… Kit gave Nita a skeptical look. "Let me get the humorist out of here," he said. "You want something to eat before we go?" "I'll grab something," Nita said. "You go ahead." Kit and Ponch went out. Nita finally managed to get completely free of the throw. She got up, folded the throw and chucked it over the back of the sofa, then pulled on jeans and sneakers and a soft shirt, shrugged into the vest-with-too-many-pockets that she'd brought along, and started going through the pockets in search of a candy bar. Sugar, she thought, / really need some sugar. Nita turned up, in rapid succession, a wad of shredded facial tissues, an empty gum packet, a clear plastic mint box with one lone mint left rattling around in it, an extremely sticky ice-cream wrapper, and, finally, a slightly squashed chocolate-and-peanut bar. She unwrapped it and ate it in three bites. Hand. Claw. An eye goes dark– Nita crumpled up the wrapper of the candy bar and shoved it in yet another pocket. Making notes on what she'd seen was going to have to wait, but at least she wasn't likely to forget that image in a hurry. She went fishing among the pockets for her cell phone, and finally turned it up. Nita hit the "dial" button and waited. The somewhat altered dial tone of a cell phone running wizardly routines came on, and then cut out… and Nita broke ^ out in a sweat. Oh, please don't let this be broken. This really needs to work right now– "Hello?" "Daddy!" Nita said. "It didn't ring." "It rang here," her father said, "which I've been waiting for it to do for four days\ You said you were going to keep in touch-" Nita could understand how annoyed and upset he sounded; she was annoyed herself. "Dad, I'm sorry, but for once it's not our fault," she said. "For us it's just been eight hours or so since we left. It looks like the dark-matter expansion is screwing up our transit times." "Well, that's just great," her dad said. "Is this going to keep happening?" "I don't know," Nita said, and rolled her eyes. / wish somebody would ask me a question I know the answer to. "I'll call you as often as I can, but if time's running weirdly for us, I don't want to wake you up in the middle of the night and worry you even more." "I'll take my chances with that," Nita's dad said. "Has anything bad happened? Are you all safe?" "We're fine," Nita said. "We're just getting up… we had a few hours' sleep. Not as much as I would've liked." "Well, I didn't get as much last night as I'd have liked, either." Nita made an unhappy face. "Daddy, what time is it for you?" "It's twenty-five after six." "Did you have a bad time in the shop today?" "Why?" Just as it had sounded like he was calming down a little, her dad sounded angry all over again. Nita's eyebrows went up. "Uh, you just sound… really on edge." She heard her dad take a long breath and let it out again. "Not that I wouldn't have reason to be," he said, "what with what's going on with you, and the way everything else is here at the moment… but-" He paused. "Yes, you'd be right to say that I've been feeling the strain a little more than I usually would." Nita swallowed. "Us, too," she said. "I'm sorry. That's all I wanted to say, I guess. I'm sorry all this is happening this way." "It's hardly your fault," her dad said after a moment. "And I shouldn't have snapped at you. I'm sorry, too. But I'm really relieved to hear from you." Nita had to admit that the relief was mutual. Her dad's matter-of-fact groundedness was one of the things she'd come to count on to help keep her on course when everything else in her life seemed to be going to pieces. "Look," Nita said, "I'll call as often as I can. But we may get to places where it won't be safe to do that. When that happens…" There was a silence at the other end. / wish I could see his face, Nita thought, feeling a little nervous. "I'll try to give you advance warning," she said. "But I may not be able to. When we get where we're going, we may have to operate undercover for a while." She swallowed. "And if wizardry starts acting up, too, the phone connection might just stop working until we fix what's broken." Until. Just keep thinking "until." "You're telling me that I'm just going to have to tough this one out," her dad said. "We all are, Daddy." He sighed. "Well, if that's all we can do, I guess we may as well get on with it," her dad said. "Speaking of 'all': Have you heard anything from Dairine? I haven't heard from her, either." "Nothing so far," Nita said. "Okay. Well, if you do, tell her to get in touch." "I will." "I know that tone of voice," her dad said. "You've got something to do. Go do it, sweetie." "Okay, Daddy. Love you." "Love you, too, kidlet. Go kick old What's-Its-Face around the block for me." There, at least, was a flash of her dad's normal humor. "First thing on the list, Dad. Talk to you later." "Bye-bye." Nita hit the hang-up button and stared at the phone. Finally she shoved it into one of the vest's many pockets, then reached sideways into her otherspace pocket and pulled out her manual. "You need to be a lot smaller," she said. Obediently the manual reduced itself to the size of a pocket notebook, and Nita shoved it in another of the vest's pockets. As she did, she glanced down at the lightning-bolt charm on her bracelet, the slight glow around it showing that it was still undischarged. As she did so, she got a sudden flash of that image of intertwining light. "You stopped me the second time, didn't you," Nita said. Yes, the peridexis said. It sounded almost abashed. You were in transit between states of consciousness, and possibly unready to decide whether to destroy another wizard. Nita laughed. "'Possibly'? No kidding. Thanks." Then she glanced sidewise, though she wasn't quite sure what she was glancing at. "You're not going to make a habit of that, are you?" / have no such ability when you 're fully volitional, the peridexis said. And in transitional states, only as a fail-safe. "Okay," Nita said. She touched the bubble-charm that was shorthand for her personal air-handling spell; it came alive around her, and she stepped out the door and pulled the tab that collapsed the entry to the pup tent. She was left holding nothing but the tab, like the pull of a zipper; she tucked it into her pocket. Kit ambled over to her, tucking his manual out of the way, while Ponch ran around with the wizardly leash flapping along behind him. Sker'ret wandered after him in a casual way, pausing every now and then to pick up a rock, turn it over in his front "handling" mandibles, and eat it. "Did you talk to your dad?" Kit asked. Nita nodded. "He sounded really messed up," she said. Kit gave her a sympathetic look. "He's not the only one," he said. "You should have heard my mama." "She go ballistic?" "Suborbital at least." Kit sighed. "But eventually she r Active Defense realized that it wasn't just me being thoughtless … and there really wasn't anything I could do." "Yeah." Nita sighed. She glanced over at Filif, who stood off to one side with his branches lifted up, all the eye-berries looking up at the darkness. "We should get moving. The sooner we find what we're looking for, the sooner we can get back home and sort out the parents. Where'd Ronan go?" "He's still there behind his hill," Kit said. "Okay," Nita said. "You go collect Ponch and Sker'ret." She went off in the direction of the little rise. Filif was on her way. "You get some rooting done?" Nita said as she went by. "A little," he said, turning various berries toward her. "But it's hard, without a star." "Tell me about it," Nita said, grabbing a few of his fronds and tugging them affectionately. "Hang in there. We'll get you out of here shortly." She went on around the rise. Ronan had just stood up and was stretching; he looked around and raised his eyebrows. "Are we ready?" "Just about," Nita said. "You feel okay?" "Not a bother on me," Ronan said. "I'll assume that's Irish for 'yes-'" Nita glanced down the rise, where Sker'ret was munching on a last few rocks while Kit caught up with Ponch. "Everything's been happening so fast, I've hardly had a chance to talk to you." "Everybody's been busy," Ronan said, leaning the Spear against the front of him and shoving his hands into his pockets. L 231 "How are things back home?" "Pretty much as usual," Ronan said. "With a few changes. Your friend Tualha? She gave up being a bard when they made her Queen of the Cats. Now she's having kittens." "Wow," Nita said. "But she was so little…" "Cats grow up faster than we do," Ronan said. "They've got a real short latency, which is why you don't see any of their Seniors here. Anyway, not even an emergency like this is going to make the Powers That Be put an oracular in Tualha's situation on active duty. The kittens come first." That made sense to Nita, but it also made her nervous. "If the cat Seniors aren't on the job right now," she said, "who's handling the worldgates on Earth? That's their specialty." "There are some very new feline wizards, just past Ordeal, who're taking up the slack," said Ronan, though it wasn't quite Ronan. Something else shivered around the edges of his voice, a sense of more power, more age. "It's as if they were born just in time for this.Читать дальше