Wizards At War

5: 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. “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 nearly 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 wizardly, 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 that 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 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 trouble. But nothing now was as easy as it had been in the beginning. Knowing that this was the fate of wizards everywhere didn’t make it any easier. I thought I wasn’t wizards everywhere. I thought I was 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 bare-chested except for 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 cropped jeans and T-shirts and the long black tunic-y T-shirt that said “THERE’S NO PLACE LIKE 127.0.0.1”. “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.

Dairine sighed. “Oh, all right.” she said. “Spot?”

He came ambling over and she picked him up, flipped his screen open, called up the manual functions and started paging through the menus for what she wanted.

“It cannot be a seeming,” Roshaun said. “He will see through that.”

Dairine frowned. “You’re such a stick-in-the-mud sometimes.”

“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, closed Spot’s lid again and put him down. “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?”

“Sure, 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 velvety substance as green as grass and as light as fog. 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, scrolling 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 might have gone out of fashion again after their recent brief period as a fashion accessory, but Dairine paid only so much attention to fashion as pleased her, and right now it pleased her to wear the thing, if only for shock value. 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’s gonna 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. Or two, for all I know, Dairine thought. Since I don’t know a thing 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 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! “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 Dairine. She 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 ke Seriv am Teliuyve am Meseph am Veliz am Teriaunst am Antev det 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 Dhairine ke 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 a given 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 I say is hardly one of his favorite things.”

Nelaid gave Dairine a look that was genuinely amused. “Forgive me, hev ke 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 Dhairine’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 will 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 her jeans pocket… then remembered that there was no pocket there anymore, not to mention no jeans. 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?”

“Dhairine’s associate is affiliated to 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 stihó,” 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 conditioner 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 Dhairine ke 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 excursus,” 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. I 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.