Wizards At War

11: Acceptable Losses

The cave in the outcropping on Rashah had become a busy place. The fifth of seven Yaldiv-shaped mochteroofs stood on the floor on its delicate walking-legs, at the center of a circle of bright floating wizard-lights. All the mochteroofs’ underlying spell structures were exposed, a wire-frame of wizardry. Filif was looking it over, checking all the fine details to make sure everything was in place. The other four mochteroofs stood complete—images of giant bugs all still and shining, each one waiting for a wizard to step into it and bring it to life. Off to one side of the circle of lights, Dairine and Kit and Roshaun and Ronan and Ponch sat or sprawled on blankets or pads from the pup tents, waiting for Filif to finish.

“Each one of these is going to have to be a little different,” Filif said, drifting around the mochteroof and poking the occasional frond into it here and there to test its disguise routines. “After all, if we all looked exactly identical, that could provoke as much attention as all of us just walking around in our own shapes.”

Dairine smiled. Filif was fussing, and typically for him, he seemed not to have noticed that no one was paying much attention. But Dairine didn’t think he minded. Also typically of him, he had understood about the Hesper more quickly than any of them, even Ronan. Ronan was having problems, and Dairine was getting increasingly tempted to kick him, except that it wouldn’t have helped.

Then again, maybe it’s not just Ronan, she thought. His invisible friend may have reason to feel odd about all this, too…

“Fil?” Dairine said. “How much longer, do you think?”

“Perhaps twenty minutes,” Filif said, poking another frond into the mochteroof. “Planet dusk is coming. When it does, we’ll be ready for it.”

“‘Enthusiasmic,’” Ronan said, shaking his head. “You sure it didn’t say ‘enthusiastic’?”

Dairine glanced over at Spot. Spot grew some legs and toddled over to where Ronan sat cross-legged with the Spear across his lap. The mobile flipped his screen open and showed Ronan the word that had appeared under the surface of the mobiles’ world.

“See,” Dairine said. “It’s got the root word for a spirit, not just a mortal soul but one that’s a lot more powerful. One that can confer immortality on its vessel, once it gets properly seated.” She shook her head. “And ‘incorporation,’ over there—it doesn’t have anything to do with industry. There’s the ‘ensoulment’ root, but with that procedural suffix. It’s not something that’s finished with; it’s an ongoing process.”

“One that could get derailed,” Kit said.

“We’d better hope not,” said Spot.

“But think of it,” Roshaun said. “A new Power, never seen before. Not just a redeemed version of the Isolate, but something truly new. A version of the Lone Power that never fell.”

He crumpled up the wrapper of the fifth or sixth of Dairine’s trail-mix bars, and tossed it away. Dairine smiled half a smile. He had been eating more or less constantly since they got here: first a lot of his own food, and then (without having asked permission) one after another of Dairine’s trail-mix bars. She was putting up with it because he seemed distracted, but also because she had used this opportunity to push off on him a lot of the bars that contained dried cranberries, which she hated.

“This moment has been a very long time coming,” said the Champion after a few moments. “If the embodiment survives long enough to come to Its full power, then the universe is truly changed.”

“If it does,” Kit said. “But no wonder the Pullulus is happening now. If It knows about this, the Lone Power must be completely freaked. A completely new Power is coming into the game. One that’s going to be the Lone One’s very own dedicated enemy…”

Ponch lifted his head, and his tail banged against the floor. I told you I smelled something brand-new! he said. That’s part of what I was following.

If It knows, the Champion said. Great efforts have been made to keep It from discovering all the details. Or any of the other Powers, for that matter. If, as seems to be the case, the efforts to keep the secret have been successful … then our job is to make sure that the ensoulment goes through without a hitch.

“All we have to do now is find out who’s going to be the Hesper,” Kit said. “Get to it, and find out what we have to do to help it.”

“Probably get it past being physical, and out the other side,” Dairine said. “The soul inside the Yaldiv body might belong to a new Power, but all its strength’s going to be trapped inside, useless, until it gets clear about who and what it is. It’s got to make the connection to the part of it that lives where the other real Powers do, outside of time. And there’s no telling what that’s going to look like.”

“Probably like a bomb going off,” Kit muttered, and threw Ronan a slightly amused look. The area on the mobiles’ world where the Champion had exited its former, merely physical form had looked like a war zone afterward. “This neighborhood may not be the safest place to be.”

“Who cares?” Dairine said. “It’s what we’ve got to do!”

Ronan nodded. “But the odd thing,” he said, “is that this seems such an unlikely place for this to happen. I mean, a major power for good turns up incarnated in somebody from this species? They’re all supposed to be aresh-hav, all ‘lost.’”

“Then this is the very best place for that Power to do it,” Kit said.

Dairine’s eyebrows went up. All the others, except for Filif, busy with the sixth mochteroof, looked at Kit.

He looked a little abashed by all the sudden attention. “Well, think about it,” he said. “If the Lone Power thinks that it owns this planet and everyone on it, thinks It has a foothold in every living soul—”

Roshaun’s eyes were suddenly alight; Dairine suspected his thoughts had been trending in the same direction. “Then It will be far less suspicious of what happens here,” Roshaun said. “It will perhaps hardly be suspicious at all. And more—” He reached into one of the pockets of those baggy trousers of his and came up with a lollipop. Dairine rolled her eyes. “What if the Isolate has had some whisper of news that this event was about to happen somewhere in our space-time?”

Crunch! went the lollipop. Dairine winced. “And not Itself being sure of the location, the Isolate would desire above everything that no one else, most especially wizards, should find out where the Hesper’s embodiment was to happen. If they did, they might be able to help it.” His expression went grimly amused.

“So It creates this big distraction,” Kit said.

“This diversionary tactic,” Roshaun said. He waved the shattered lollipop on its stick in a little circle that indicated their whole home universe being pushed apart by the dark matter of the Pullulus. “So that no wizard has time to waste following up any rumors that they might hear.”

“And the Lone Power’s looking all over the place for the Hesper,” Kit said. He was starting to grin. “But It doesn’t know that Its plan’s already backfired. The Hesper’s about to manifest right under Its nose.”

“In one of the places It thinks It doesn’t have to worry about,” Dairine said. And she grinned. “You think the Powers That Be read Sherlock Holmes?”

To hide something in such plain sight, the Champion said, and Dairine was oddly excited by the amusement in its voice as Ronan looked over at her. The One is such a gambler.

Something about the Champion’s tone made Kit begin to wonder. Had the other Powers That Be been kept away from here on purpose, to make sure that the secret was kept? Don’t make a fuss, he could just hear the profound silences of the heavens whispering among themselves; don’t act as if anything’s going on there. Wait for the ones to get there who won’t attract undue attention, who can do the job without raising the alarm. Or at least not until it’s too late—

“Just one more to do now,” Filif said from the work area in the middle of the cave. “The mochteroof for Ponch. Then we’re ready.”

Dairine turned to Ponch, who was lying on the floor with his feet in the air. “While we were back on the mobiles’ world,” she said, “I saw things here, just for a moment, as if I were inside the Hesper itself. I guess those ‘personal’ coordinates will have changed now—if it’s a member of this species, it has to move around—but its other characteristics will be the same. Spot should be able to pass that set of coordinates to you. If you can read it your way, as smell instead of sight—”

I can do that, Ponch said.

Filif stepped back from his work, looking over the shining row of mock Yaldiv. “That’s it,” he said. “There are spares for Nita and Sker’ret when they get back; I’ve left them a note in each one on how to use them if they want to follow us. And the advice that possibly they should wait until we get back.”

“Fil,” Dairine said, “you’re a smart guy. Let’s suit up.”

Everyone got up and went to the mochteroofs that Filif had labeled for them. Dairine watched for a moment as Kit fastened Ponch into his. It was a goofy moment: the dog vanished, a large gleaming green-blue Yaldiv suddenly became real, and then started spinning around and around in the middle of the floor, trying to catch a tail that wasn’t there.

Half in and half out of his own mochteroof, Kit sighed. “Let him get it out of his system,” he said.

They all helped one another get into the shape-change routines. Dairine slipped into hers, held up her hands, and wriggled the fingers; the huge claws clashed. Behind her, Roshaun came over to examine the wizardry. “Elegantly built,” he said. “Filif is an artist.”

“Yeah,” Dairine said. For the moment she wasn’t so much paying attention to the artistry of the spell as she was to Kit, off on one side, and Ronan, off on the other, as each got into his own mochteroof. They were both looking at Dairine and Roshaun, and both of them were trying not to look like that was what they were doing.

I see it, Roshaun said.

Dairine made an annoyed face as she put Spot down. Filif had built a virtual shelf inside the mochteroof for him, so that Dairine could keep him close to eye level and still have her hands free. The problem is, she said silently, there isn’t a word for what we’ve got. Whatever that is.

“Friendship” might possibly suffice as a description, Roshaun said.

But it seemed insufficient. You know what I mean, Dairine said. And no one ever believes that’s all it is. Everybody starts trying right away to put their own labels on it. And then they run into the age thing.

Roshaun turned away to check his own mochteroof‘s status. And then start thinking the worst.

Whether there’s even the slightest evidence…

They both fell into an annoyed silence.

Filif—no longer a tree but a Yaldiv—glanced over at Ronan. “Are we clear outside?”

“No one’s within half a mile,” he said.

“Then let’s go,” Kit said.

They all filed onto the transit diagram that Sker’ret had left for them…

…and stepped out into the green light of day.

At least that was the way the mochteroofs rendered the infrared component of what Yaldiv daylight filtered down between the wrestling, striving trees. Dairine saw that the space between those trees defined a slightly meandering loop of pathway, broader than the one they’d first approached; this, in turn, flowed into the bigger path that would lead to their destination. Ronan glanced from one side to the other, the Champion in him making sure that no Yaldiv was in any position to see that they had appeared from nothing. Then he stepped aside to let Ponch and Kit lead the way.

The surface was fairly level even on the minor path. Once they reached the major one, it was easy walking. This was good, because within minutes they saw coming down the path toward them what Dairine was suddenly less than eager to get close to—a group of Yaldiv, some of them bearing leaves torn from the trees.

The wizardry is functioning correctly, Spot said. There should be no problems.

Dairine really hoped that was true. Kit and Ponch kept right on going, and the Yaldiv who approached them suddenly all moved to either side of the path. As Kit came up close to the foremost Yaldiv, they lifted their claws to him as he passed, even those who were carrying leaves in them.

“The Great One be gracious to these,” said the foremost Yaldiv.

Dairine could see that Kit wasn’t sure what the right response should be. He lifted his claws but didn’t say anything. On he went, with Ponch in tow, and the others followed him.

Soon they came to another group of Yaldiv, all smaller than their mochteroofs. Workers, I think, Dairine said silently. These, too, lifted their claws to Kit as he and the others approached. “The Great One be gracious to these.”

Once again Kit lifted his claws and passed by. No personal pronouns, I’ll bet, she heard Ronan say. “This” and “these,” not “me” or “you.”

Ahead of their group, Dairine could see some bigger Yaldiv coming, warriors. She watched a further group of workers reacting to them, and saw that the warriors simply lifted their claws and walked on. So far, so good, Dairine thought. Let’s see what happens when they meet us.

The warriors drew closer. Kit didn’t do anything right away, waiting for them to give him a lead. When they were perhaps five meters distant, the lead warrior looked at Kit and held its claws up in a slightly different way, crosswise instead of vertical. Kit held his claws up the same way as they passed. “May these do the One’s will,” said the lead warrior.

“May these do the One’s will also,” Kit said, and went by. Dairine started to relax as they went on, meeting more groups of workers and warriors. It’s not going badly so far, she said silently to Spot. I just hope they’re able to communicate in more than these rote phrases. Otherwise, we’re going to have a lot of trouble telling the Hesper why we’re here.

They walked on, examining their surroundings. It was hard to see much terrain through the trees, but they got a sense that they were approaching the city-hive as the path they were walking was joined by more paths from either side. The main path broadened out, and the traffic on it increased considerably, until they were all lifting their claws every ten seconds or so to salute some new band of workers or warriors.

This place could give you cramps in the arms pretty quick, Kit said. He was managing not only his own claws but Ponch’s as well, and he sounded a little uncomfortable.

Maybe we won’t have to do it inside, Filif said.

Dairine looked ahead. Over the bodies of the many Yaldiv who were now sharing the path with them, she could see the forest around them thinning slightly. Beyond it, the trees, no longer so gnarled and tangled, were starting to be replaced by bigger-trunked ones, darker-colored, leafless—perhaps stripped of their leaves by the depredations of thousands of Yaldiv. But then, as the trees lining the path began to give way to a much more open area, Dairine saw that she had been mistaken. As the line of Yaldiv immediately ahead of their group poured out from the narrow path into a space easily a mile wide, she found herself looking up and up at a structure she could hardly make sense of. A roughly conical central tower speared upward out of a wide, dark, shining surface in a random patchwork of beiges, reds, and rose colors. Hundreds of feet high it rose, toward a forest ceiling far higher and less claustrophobic than the one under which they’d been traveling until now. Close around the central tower, several smaller towers rose from the dark surface, which Dairine could now see and smell was tar—an immense pool of the stuff, all slicked with rainbowy oil. It was a city of paper, at least above ground; probably it had been built of the chewed leaves that they had seen the workers tearing off, and dyed with the unfortunate trees’ sappy blood.

Across the lake of tar and oil a number of causeways had been built; they were made of stones and rubble underneath, and paved with more of the chewed-leaf paper. Kit led the way in the wake of many, many more Yaldiv who were making their way toward the city in the fading light of day’s end. At the end of the causeway was a great tunnel guarded by warriors, and even from halfway across the causeway, Dairine could see the words written above it in the Yaldiv language.

THE COMMORANCY IS ONE THE COMMORANCY IS ALL

It seemed like weeks since she’d first heard the word. Commorancy. A home, a “place inside the walls”—

Every Yaldiv who approached the door was stopped, and there was an exchange of some kind between the entering Yaldiv and the guards. Other warriors were entering the tunnel in front of them, and Dairine watched to see what they did. They raised their claws crosswise in the same kind of greeting as had been used on the outer path. But at this distance, she couldn’t hear what they were saying. She hoped Kit could.

Kit came up to the warriors and saluted them. Before he could speak, Dairine heard two of the warriors chorus, “Within or without?”

“Within, absolutely,” Kit said.

The warriors stared at him briefly, their little scent-detecting antennae working. Then one of them waved him past. “Pass, and go about the Great One’s business.”

They walked through the guarded door. As they went, Dairine saw Ronan elbow Kit warningly with one foreleg. Don’t get cute!

Strikes me that the one thing it’d be smart not to lose around here is your sense of humor, Kit said.

They followed Kit in, and for a good while simply walked around and tried to get a feeling for the size and structure of the place. Dairine quickly realized that, on a first visit, this was going to be impossible. It was too complex. Tunnels led into tunnels, into archways and galleries; ramps led up and down between levels, up into the spire and down into dug-out galleries and arcades beneath ground level. We’d better not get lost, Dairine said silently.

I am saving everything we see and all the paths we walk to memory, Spot said. Even if manual functions are not able to build us a more complex map, at least we will know where we’ve been, if not always where we’re going.

At least Filif was right, Kit said, also sounding relieved. You don’t have to do the claw thing in here.

Probably there’s not a great deal of room for it everywhere, Roshaun said. And these people seem quite rigid, very regimented … so what can’t be done everywhere inside isn’t done at all.

Regimented is right, Dairine said as they walked. Look at all the rules.

Darkness had fallen as soon as they’d entered, but there was no need for artificial light: the Yaldiv saw by heat, and so everything glowed, or seemed to, more or less brightly. The walls were no exception. In infrared, their rough-paper patterning showed up every change in texture. But what also showed was a never-ending flow of words and phrases and instructions and diktats written on the tunnel walls in scent, and woven into the structure of them in mile after mile of papier-mâché bas-relief. Some of these were quite graceful, even beautiful… but the sentiments expressed made Dairine even uneasier than she’d been to begin with. The Commorancy is the world. The world is the Commorancy’s. Everyone should be like us. Everyone will be like us. All who will not are the enemy. Whoever is not with us is against us. There were hundreds of other mottoes and maxims, but they all came down to the same thing: the only purposes of the Yaldiv were to build the city greater or dig it deeper, to make more Yaldiv, to kill their enemies; and by doing all these things, to honor the Great One.

Three guesses who that is, Dairine said silently.

No need to guess, Ronan said. Dairine couldn’t see much of his expression, but the tone of his thought was more than usually angry, even for Ronan.

It’s all too familiar. It was the Champion’s thought this time, and though it, too, was angry, there was something challenging about the emotion. All too often I’ve seen this kind of thing, in other shapes and styles. The places where a species’ Choice has gone wrong and we’ve lost the fight.

But you keep coming back, Kit said as they kept walking deeper into the spire.

Someone has to, said the Champion. Someone has to go down to the souls in prison, down in the dark, and try to bring them the fire—even just a spark of it, just enough to light a candle and find the door. No matter how many times they’ve rejected it, no matter how many times It catches you sneaking in and chucks you out, we have to keep trying—

Through Ponch’s mochteroof, Dairine could see his head suddenly go up. Do you smell that? he said.

Dairine sniffed. It wasn’t so much a smell he was describing but a change in the air, and the Yaldiv senses in the mochteroof immediately knew what it meant. The guards have sealed up the door-tunnels for the night, she said. Unless we gate out, we’re stuck in here.

That’s no problem, Filif said. Even in here we should be able to find somewhere private long enough to gate.

But then something else started to happen. The workers and warriors, and the more slender Yaldiv whom Dairine had also started to spot in the tunnels, now all paused where they were. After a second, they all began to head in the same direction, deeper into the city.

Kit and Ronan and Filif and Dairine and Roshaun all looked at one another. When in Rome, Ronan said.

They turned and followed the others. The tunnels, like the paths out in the forest, widened as they went in deeper. Soon the group was hemmed in by other Yaldiv, pressing against them, starting to hum a chorus of sounds deeper and more rhythmic than the ones heard outside. Carried along by the wave of Yaldiv, the wizards were swept into higher-ceilinged spaces, wider hallways and colonnades—and finally through a tunnel opening into the biggest space of all.

It’s like one of those skyscraper hotel atriums, Dairine thought. The hollow space speared upward into what was probably the highest reaches of the city-hive. In the vast open space, thousands of Yaldiv were already crowded together, and still more were crowding in.

Kit plainly didn’t mean to be caught in the middle of them all, which was an idea Dairine approved of. He and Ronan started pushing and forcing their way closer to one of the farther walls of the great space. The other Yaldiv, workers mostly, let them pass. Shortly they found themselves close to the wall across from the tunnel by which they’d entered. The space was somewhat bowl-like, like their cavern. By being near the wall, they were slightly higher than most of the other Yaldiv. They turned to look out across the tremendous gathering … and saw what they had not been able to see before because of the crush and press of Yaldiv bodies.

The space was shaped more like an ellipse than anything else. At what would have been the farthest focus of the ellipse, on a dais maybe a hundred feet in diameter, lay a huge and swollen form, glowing with heat. Dairine instantly knew what it was from her earlier look at the species précis in Spot. It wasn’t a Queen; it was a King.

The original carapace of a Yaldiv body was now almost the smallest thing about it. The organic structures inside that carapace had long outgrown it, burst out of it, pushed it up and away; the whole original sloughed-off body, now split in two, clung to the top of the much-enlarged thorax like a little shriveled pair of wings. Down near the floor of the dais, the head of the King was almost invisible in the shadow of its vast bulk. The mirror-shade eyes were two tiny dots nearly lost in the upswelling of the vast, puffy body.

Near the head, on each side of it, stood a line of slender Yaldiv, smaller and lighter than the warriors. Handmaidens, Dairine thought, watching them come and go. She’d had a chance to check Spot earlier for some of the details on Yaldiv physiology, and immediately thereafter she’d really wished she hadn’t. These handmaidens, though, weren’t doing any of the things that had grossed her out. They were bowing before the head, feeding it, then moving away again. But Dairine found that this grossed her out differently—the mindless, endless munching of the mouth-mandibles as the handmaidens put food into it, bowed, moved away. She gulped and quickly turned her attention elsewhere.

It was hard. This whole gigantic space seemed to direct one’s eye back to the swollen thing lying at the heart of it, the apparition before which, as if before some indolent living idol, the whole mighty congregation of Yaldiv lay bowed down in abject worship. And of course I’m anthropomorphizing, Dairine thought. It’s not like your toenails or your spleen worship the rest of you. These guys don’t even see themselves as separate from the King. But the air was thick with feelings, and she was having trouble keeping her own reactions in order.

This was a problem that recently had been getting worse for her. Is this Roshaun’s fault somehow? Dairine wondered. Or something to do with Spot? Whatever the cause, the feeling of sheer evil that flowed off the King, and was reflected back to it by its worshippers, was horrifying to Dairine, and familiar. She’d felt it before, on the mobiles’ world, during her Ordeal. This was the sentiment behind the terrible gloating laughter she had kept hearing back then—the amusement of the Lone Power, darkly entertained by the pitiful struggles of mortal life in the universe in which It went from door to door selling Its invention, Death, to the unwary. But here there was something different about the silent laughter. There was a sense of smugness. There’s nothing more to do here, It seemed to be saying. Everything’s just the way I want it. Now all there is to do with eternity is take it easy and enjoy what I’ve accomplished.

It’s not the whole Lone Power at all, Dairine thought. It’s an avatar, like all the others. Maybe a more aware one. But, otherwise, it may not have a lot of autonomy.

A warrior with strange glowing patterns laid out on its carapace came forward and was joined by several others. It abased itself before the dais, along with its compatriots. The King never gave it even a glance, as far as Dairine could tell. Though whether it can move at all is the next question, she thought.

The crowd began slowly to press toward the dais. “The day is done! Let the Arch-votary speak!” a Yaldiv said, lifting up its forelegs. Others began to chime in: “Let the Arch-votary tell us the Great One’s will for tomorrow!”

More and more Yaldiv began to chant together: “Speak! Tell us the Great One’s will! Speak!” This went on until the warrior with the glowing patterns on its shell, the Arch-votary, lifted its own forelegs.

The assemblage swiftly became quiet.

“All praise to the One!” the Arch-votary said.

“All praise to the One, the Great One, the King, the Lord of All, the Master of Creation!” said all the gathered Yaldiv together. They all bowed to the swollen mass on the dais. It annoyed Dairine, but she bowed, too, as Ronan and Kit and everyone else was doing.

“Let the sacred story be told!” said the Arch-votary.

“Let it be told,” the immense crowd whispered in awe.

“In the beginning was the One,” said the Arch-votary. “And all things were well. But then, from outside, came Another. That Other said to the One, ‘Your way is wrong, and this other way is right; bow down to me and admit your wrongness!’”

“Down with the Other! Death to the Other!” the crowd answered.

“And the One rose up and said, ‘Evil Other, old shadow-ghost that haunts the ancient darkness, you have no right to question my creation or my will! I will never bow down to you.’”

“Never!” the crowd cried. “The One is all! These are in the One, and no Other!”

“And the Other spoke in pride, saying, ‘If you will even now bow down and admit your wrongness, you shall be forgiven!’ And the One spurned this craven word. Then the Other spoke in threat, saying, ‘If you do not bow, you shall be punished and driven out!’”

“The One must not bow! The Other is evil, the Other is outside!” chanted the crowd.

“But the Other could not frighten the One, or move It from Its purpose!” said the Arch-votary. “And when it realized this, the Other came with its minions and made everlasting war on the One. But it could not prevail. And while these are Its faithful servants, the evil Other can never prevail, not until worlds’ end and beyond!”

“Praise to the One! We will always be loyal! We will fight the Other until the ends of the worlds!” cried the crowd, and bowed down before the King.

Dairine kept doing what everyone else was doing. But she was both infuriated and disgusted. It takes the truth and twists It around to serve Its own purposes. But It doesn’t take any more of the truth than It absolutely has to … because truth’s essentially good, and It hates it for that.

“Now the One in our King gives commands for the next stage in the new war against the Other’s minions in our world,” said the Arch-votary. “Tomorrow a great force of warriors will be sent to intercept marauding warriors who are coming to attack our hive and devour us and our children. By bringing them the gift of death, we will turn their evil to good. By ending their miserable lives, we bring them peace, inside us, inside the King.”

“Glory to the great King! Glory to the One in the King!” the crowd shouted.

“The One in our King commands that we allow the attackers to cross the Great Ravine,” the Arch-votary said. “When enough of them arrive on our side, we will attack and destroy them. Their flesh will feed our King, and be the beginning of thousands of new children. Those children will grow into mighty warriors and fertile handmaidens, who will labor until their breath fails them for the destruction of the Other!”

“Let the Other be destroyed forever!” the crowd cried in anger and joy. “Death to the enemy of the One!”

“Go now and prepare the Other’s death,” said the Arch-votary, “and the glory of the One!”

“We go for the One’s glory!” cried the assembled masses.

The warriors stepped away from the dais, leaving that huge bloated shape lying there tended unendingly by its handmaidens. The assembled Yaldiv began streaming out the many entrances to the heart of the hive.

So there you have it, Dairine thought. Not just a declaration of war on the other hive, but on all the other “Others” in the universe, everything that’s not the Lone Power’s … or the Lone Power Itself.

What now? she heard Filif say to Kit.

We follow everybody out, I guess, Kit said. Ponch, did you scent anything we’re looking for while they were all in here?

I got something, Ponch said. The scent was familiar. He sounded uncertain, though.

Which tunnel did they go out?

I think—Ponch sniffed the air for a moment—I think that one. Ponch indicated one of about ten tunnels off to their right. I’ll be more certain when I get closer to it.

Okay … let’s go.

As the crowd in front of them lessened, the wizards started heading in the direction of that tunnel: first Kit, with Ponch close behind him, then Ronan, Filif, and Roshaun and, bringing up the rear, Dairine.

So now what? Ronan said.

Well, Kit said, we can spend some more time looking around here. If Spot’s saving data to help us find what we’re looking for, we should get some more.

You won’t need that much more, Ponch said. I should be able to bring you to where we can find what we’re after.

Assuming, Filif said, that the one Ponch is tracking is located in a place warriors are allowed to go.

So far, that’s been everywhere, Kit said. But his tone of thought suddenly sounded strained. Dairine looked ahead to see what the problem was.

Until now, there’d been only intermittent traffic through the doorway for which they’d been heading. Now, though, there was no traffic there at all. That doorway was completely blocked by warriors with the same kind of markings that the Arch-votary had worn. And between the group of wizards and the door, the Arch-votary itself stood and waited, watching them.

Suggestions? Roshaun said.

Just play it cool, Kit said.

They walked in line up to the Arch-votary. Kit stopped. Dairine, watching him, broke out in a sweat. The Arch-votary lifted those huge claws, but the gesture was not immediately threatening. It was more like the gesture it had used when calling the assembly to order. “This one is commanded to bring these before the King,” the Arch-votary said.

Oh, God, it knows! Dairine thought, and sweated harder. Kit merely said, “These obey the command.”

The Arch-votary led them across the rapidly clearing hall toward the dais. Dairine was having trouble looking at it steadily. The closer she got, the more she felt that vast glowing mass on top of it was somehow sucking her toward it—sucking her attention into it, maybe even sucking out her will. But then the thought occurred to her that the sensation might have something to do with the mochteroof. And I’m still me in here, she told herself fiercely. No refugee from a dime-store ant farm is going to make me forget that!

The feeling of ebbing will backed down a little bit, but as they got closer, Dairine found she had to expend more effort to stave it off. If we don’t have to be here too long, I’ll be okay. But if it knows what we are—

“The warriors are brought to you according to your command, Great One,” said the Arch-votary.

Dairine watched Kit to see what he would do. He bowed, as the Arch-votary had done, and Dairine and all the others followed suit.

For a long moment, no one said anything. Then the King spoke.

“You are minions of the Other,” he said.

There was something about the voice that Dairine instantly found repulsive. The voice was very slow and rich, very deep; and somehow it hardly sounded conscious—as if it was not a living thing but some kind of recording, like the kind of thing you might associate with a very high-end in-car GPS system.

“We are servants of the One,” Kit said.

Inside the mochteroof, even through her nerves, Dairine smiled at the steady sound of Kit’s voice. He was fighting to keep his anxiety out of it, and it was working.

“Your appearance is that of servants of the Great One,” the King said. “You have the scent of Yaldiv, and the look of Yaldiv. But your souls betray you. They smell of the Other.”

Dairine broke out in a sweat again, and glanced ever so briefly in Roshaun’s direction. Kit said nothing, just met what he could see of those tiny, empty black eyes.

“What is the Great One’s will with these?” the Arch-votary said.

Here it comes, Dairine thought silently to Spot. Get something ready. Slowly, inside the mochteroof, she reached sideways into her otherspace pocket and felt around for one of the more deadly wizardries she had at hand.

Then, in the silence, the King laughed.

Dairine actually had to suppress the desire to retch, for the sound was truly revolting. It was full of the casual amusement of someone who has you completely in his power, and can do anything he likes with you. “Let them go about my business as they have done,” the King said. “They have no power here.”

Dairine’s eyes went wide.

The laughter began again, sounding even more self-assured and unconcerned. “Many other such minions are traveling among the worlds in these days,” said the King. “They seek to undo the great gift of the greatest and final Death. They cannot undo it. Now that Death is coming, inescapable, for them all.” The King chuckled as if at a particularly nasty joke. “They have no power to stop it—least of all here, where my strength is most strong.”

The Arch-votary, bowing, looked completely puzzled by all this. “To what labor shall they be put, Great One?” it said.

“They labor already,” said the King, his voice lazily, wickedly amused. “They labor to no purpose. And when their labor comes to an end, and the gift of Death comes to them all—very soon now—they will know that all their work, from the first to the last, has been in vain.”

It laughed again. Dairine gritted her teeth. “Let them go, Arch-votary. Whatever they do here, they will be doing my business. And it will amuse me to watch them doing it.”

The Arch-votary bowed down. Much against her will, Dairine bowed along with Kit and Roshaun and the others. “The Great One bids you go about Its business,” the Arch-votary said, and then turned away and ignored them.

Kit glanced at Ronan; then the two of them turned away from the dais and started to make their way across the vast hall. The others followed, and Dairine came last of all, heartily wishing she had an excuse to blow King Bug up. It’d mess everything up, of course. Our chances of doing what we came here to do would become about zero. But, boy, it’d be so much fun.

None of the others said a word as they made their way across the hall. As they approached the tunnel for which they’d originally been heading, the warriors who had been standing guard over it moved away.

Silently the wizards headed into the tunnel. Dairine was alert for whatever trap might be on the far side, but there was none. As Kit led them around a curve into the next tunnel, lined with many more tunnel exits and a number of chambers, all Dairine saw before them was the normal steady traffic of Yaldiv, going and coming about the Great One’s business.

We should find somewhere quiet, Kit said at last, get out of here, and figure out what to do next.

No argument, Ronan said. To Dairine’s ear they both sounded as if they’d been in a fight that they felt they’d lost, and couldn’t figure out why.

Ahead, Dairine saw Kit turn a corner into another tunnel. Behind him, Ponch paused, looking back, then went after Kit.

And then something unexpected happened to Dairine, something as literally shocking as when she’d brushed up against an exposed wire in the Christmas tree lights the year before last. One of the chambers they passed had a long line of Yaldiv waiting outside, and another line going out. More of these handmaidens, Dairine thought, glancing in as they passed. Getting food for King Bug. She was beginning to recognize the slender look of the handmaidens, the smaller foreclaws. One handmaiden in the incoming line, as Dairine looked in, turned to glance out at the Yaldiv “warriors” passing in the corridor.

As she met that Yaldiv’s eyes, a jolt went straight through Dairine like that shock from the Christmas lights. She knew those eyes. On the mobiles’ world, she had looked out through them. And she saw herself looking out of them now.

Hastily Dairine glanced away. But it was too late; she had seen the Yaldiv’s reaction. It was one of recognition… and then alarm. Those eyes had not seen the mochteroof, the Yaldiv shape. They had seen what lay under it. They’d seen Dairine.

In front of her, Roshaun felt Dairine’s shock. What is it? What’s the matter?

Don’t stop. We’re in trouble. Just keep going!

They headed down the tunnel at the same steady pace. Dairine reached into her otherspace pocket and got out the wizardry she’d been prepared to use earlier to give them time to escape. She was hoping even now that she wouldn’t have to use it. Time-stops were expensive in terms of energy, even in the present circumstances. But I’ll use it if I have to, she thought. The spell burned cold and ready in her hand, a rigid lattice of frozen temporal variables, all set to let go. Every moment she expected the shout from behind: “The Other! The minions of the Other are here! After them! Kill them!”

But the shout never came. Everything around them went on exactly as it had. Dairine hugged Spot to her and kept walking, too, terrified, and moment by moment increasingly confused. She saw me. Why isn’t anything happening?

Greatly daring, Dairine glanced behind her. The lines were still there, Yaldiv going in, Yaldiv going out. And in the doorway, a single Yaldiv, looking after them—

Dairine looked away before she could meet those eyes again. All the same, they were looking at her. The Yaldiv watched them go, silent, still. Then it vanished again.

Dairine hurried after the others, eager to get someplace where they could talk. Things were going terribly wrong…

…but possibly, just possibly, in the right kind of way.

***

Nita appeared among the trees at the far end of her backyard. For a long moment she just stood there, getting her breath. It wasn’t that the transit from the Crossings put you through much in the way of physical difficulties. It was just that, now that she was here, she was almost afraid to go into the house and see what she would find.

She took a deep breath and walked out from among the trees. Nita fished around in the pockets of her vest to find her house keys, but as she got close enough to the backyard gate to see the driveway, she saw her dad’s car there. The sight both reassured and scared her. If he was home before, why wasn’t he answering the phone?

She ran up the steps to the back door, got her keys out, and bumped the screen door aside with one hip to keep it open while she unlocked the inside door. “Dad?” she said, walking into the kitchen. It was clean; no one had eaten any meals here recently. “Daddy?”

She went into the dining room. The table was clean; it was almost as if no one had been here for a while.

Nita turned her head, hearing the TV in the living room. “Daddy?” she said, going in. The living room was tidy; the newspapers, usually left in a casual heap, were stacked neatly by her dad’s easy chair.

“—Tension continues to build in the Caucasus as the government of Ossetia maintains its hard-line stance against the paramilitary group that claims to have stolen between ten and twelve kilograms of weapons-grade plutonium,” the TV said. Nita saw several different shots of men in military uniforms rushing around— Some kind of SWAT team, she thought. “—rumors of a nuclear briefcase weapon, and has threatened to sell the material to terrorist organizations in the area—”

Nita swallowed, and picked up the remote to change channels. But even on the nonnews channels, she kept running into screens that said NEWS BULLETIN or SPECIAL REPORT. Even the main cartoon channel had a news crawl running along the bottom of its screen. Are the network people crazy? Nita thought, annoyed. Don’t they realize how scared little kids are going to get when they see that? Do they think that just because they watch cartoons, they can’t read? She changed the channel again, finding herself looking at another BULLETIN screen. What the heck’s going on around here?

But she knew. It was the local effect of the Pullulus, which Tom and Carl had predicted: people being pushed further and further away from one another. She threw the remote down on the hassock by her dad’s chair. “Daddy?”

And then Nita jumped nearly out of her skin, because he was right behind her; she’d been so preoccupied with the TV that she hadn’t even heard him. She grabbed her dad and hugged him, hard, and said, “What were you doing there?”

“I live here,” her dad said. “This is my house. And yours, when you have time to get home to it.” He hugged her back, looking over her shoulder. “I didn’t expect you to come home just to watch TV, though.”

“I didn’t,” Nita said. “Daddy, where were you? I was worried sick! I tried to call you, and I couldn’t reach you on the cell phone, and you weren’t in the shop, and you weren’t at home—” She was almost babbling, and she didn’t care. “I started thinking maybe you’d been in an accident—or, or—”

Her dad kissed Nita on the forehead and hugged her harder. “What is it they say,” he said, “about living long enough to worry your children? Guess I’ve done at least that.” He held her away from him. “I had to be out of the shop this afternoon,” he said. “I had to take Mike to the hospital.”

Nita stared at him. “What’s the matter with Mike?”

Her dad laughed a little, though the sound was rueful. “He had an allergic reaction to some lilies,” he said. “He swelled up in the most incredible hives. He couldn’t see to work, or even get himself to the hospital; I had to drive him.”

“Is he going to be okay?”

“Yeah, they pumped him full of antihistamines and cortisone,” her dad said. “He’ll be all right in a couple of days. Meantime, I have to handle the shop by myself and make the deliveries, so the place’ll be closed while I’m gone. It’s no big deal.”

“But your cell phone—”

“Oh, that,” her dad said. “Everybody’s been having trouble with their phones the past day or so. We had another of your solar flares. Didn’t Roshaun say we might get some more of those after he and Dairine and the others fixed the Sun?”

“Oh my gosh,” Nita said. “I forgot. So much has been happening, and I thought—” She sighed. “Never mind.”

“It’s a pity you weren’t here last night,” her dad said. “We had a really nice aurora. You’d have loved it.”

An aurora, she thought. When did I last have time to look at the sky for fun? “Daddy,” she said, “this is going to sound really strange, but what day is today?”

“It’s April thirtieth,” her dad said.

“Oh, no!” Nita said. “We have to be back at school on Monday; that’s as much time as Mr. Millman could get us! What if we can’t, what if…”

Her dad sighed and sat down in his easy chair, though he didn’t lean back. He looked at Nita, concerned, and then glanced at the TV. It was still discussing wars and rumors of wars. “I know this sounds unlike me,” he said, “but don’t worry about that right now. How are you doing with what you left to do?”

“It’s too early to say,” Nita said. “But things are really messed up.”

“Yeah,” said her dad. He threw another glance at the TV. “The news is so bad right now.” He shook his head. “Let’s not get into it. Sweetie, you should get back there and concentrate on your job.”

“But what about you?” she said. Sker’ret’s ancestor was on her mind, and Dairine had left a précis in the manual about her meeting with Roshaun’s family. All Nita could think of at the moment was her father, alone in an empty house at a bad time.

“I’m doing okay,” he said, looking her in the eye. “Don’t distract yourself. I can cope.”

“But—”

“Honey, things here may be going to hell in a handbasket,” he said, “but after what you’ve told me, I know why. So when I feel awful, at least I’m privileged to know what’s causing it. For the meantime, you let me worry about this planet, and I’ll let you worry about all the others. If what you’re doing works, we’ll all have less to worry about here.” He smiled, though the smile was pained. “Dairine’s all right?”

“As far as I know.”

“Good,” her dad said.

“I have to call Kit’s mama and pop and tell them that he’s okay, too.”

“I can do that for you,” her dad said. “I need to talk to them anyway. In case the school decides to give us any trouble, we’re going to want to present a united front.”

“Okay,” she said. “I have to go check in real quick with Tom and Carl. As soon as I’ve done that, I’ll be going back.”

“Have you got enough stuff in your pup tent?” her dad said.

“Loads,” Nita said. “I’ll come back if I need anything.”

“Okay,” her father said. He looked at the TV, picked up the remote, and very pointedly turned off the TV. “At times like this,” he said, “you can pay too much attention to the news. Either they’ll blow up the world, or they won’t. Meantime, our job is to get on with life.”

“I think you’re right,” Nita said. “Daddy…”

She went to him and hugged him again. He hugged her back, hard. “You be careful,” he said. “But do what you have to. Don’t worry about me.”

She looked up at him. “I’m going to anyway,” Nita said. “But I will do what I have to.”

“Good,” her dad said, and pushed her gently away. “Don’t worry about the phones. Get in touch when you can, or just leave me voicemail. Okay?”

“Okay.”

“Then I’ll see you later.” He smooched her on the top of her head, and went into the kitchen, and outside.

“Bye-bye,” Nita said.

Standing there in the living room, she heard her dad start the car up and back out of the driveway. Everything was suddenly very quiet.

Hurriedly, Nita headed out the back door, locked it, and set out on the short walk to Tom and Carl’s.

***

She hadn’t had to ring the doorbell more than once before the door opened. Tom peered out at her. “Oh, hi, Nita. How’re you doing?”

He looked so perfectly normal that she could have wept. “Oh, wow, it’s great to see you!”

“It’s always good to see you, too,” Tom said. He stood in the doorway and looked at her quizzically.

This conversation somehow wasn’t going quite the way Nita had imagined it. “Where’s Carl?”

“At work. Where else would he be?”

That calm reply ran a chill down Nita’s spine. Wrong, this is all wrong.

“Uh,” she said. “Yeah. Listen, I thought I should touch base about where we’ve been.”

Tom raised his eyebrows. “School, I thought,” he said. “Spring break would have ended, I don’t know, last week sometime?”

Nita opened her mouth and closed it again.

“Listen,” Tom said, “I’d love to chat, but I’m on a deadline. I’ve got to get this article to the magazine by Friday.”

Magazine? What’s going on with him?

“Tom,” Nita said. “Uh, this is kind of important. Do you have guests or something?” She leaned a little past him to try to see into the house.

“Guests? No, I’m just working.” His tone was polite, but a little cool now.

Nita was beyond understanding what was going on. “Okay, I won’t keep you. But this is an errantry matter.”

He blinked at her, actually blinked. “Errantry?”

Then he laughed. “Oh, wow, you had me going there for a minute. I remember how serious we used to be about those role-playing games. Wizardry. Spells. The magic Speech that everything understands. It’s great that you still like thinking about that kind of thing even when you’re in junior high.”

Nita stood there absolutely speechless. Tom’s laugh was kind, but he wasn’t playacting.

We’ll lose our wizardry, he’d told her himself. All of us. And also, Wizardry does not live in the unwilling heart… or the heart that’s come to believe that it’s impossible.

Nita had to give it one more try. “Tom,” she said, “the universe is tearing itself apart, and we’ve been out trying to repair it. I just didn’t want you to worry about where we were.”

He sighed. “You’ve been listening to the news, too, huh?” he said. “It’s enough to make anyone want to take their second childhood early.” He glanced over his shoulder. “Look, sweetie, I have to get back to work. Was there anything else? Anything serious, I mean. How’s your dad?”

“He’s fine,” Nita said. Her heart was breaking, and there was no way she could take time to deal with it now. “Uh, where are Annie and Monty?”

“Carl had to drop them off at the groomer’s this morning,” Tom said. “Their fur was getting out of hand again. You can stop in and play with them later if you like.”

“Okay,” Nita said. She knew it was irrational to try to prolong the conversation, but she desperately wanted to. What am I going to tell Kit? This is so awful. And we’re really on our own now. “Do you mind if I go around back and see how the fish are doing?” she said.

“Sure. Anything else? I have to get back to this.”

She looked into Tom’s eyes, desperate to find there the one thing she wanted to see, but it wasn’t there. “Nope,” she said. “Thanks.”

“Come back anytime,” Tom said. “Best to your dad.” And he shut the door.

Nita stood on the doorstep feeling utterly shattered, bereft in a way she hadn’t felt since her mother died. The bottom had fallen out of her world again, and this time what had gone out from under her was something that had seemed too solid, too important, ever to go away. Not even just wizardry itself, but the memory of having been a wizard, party to the most basic glories and tragedies of the universe, was now suddenly reduced in Tom—her role model, in some ways her hero, a figure of power and competence—to a cute memory of some kind of friendly “let’s pretend.” The thought was almost too painful to bear.

But bearing pain, and learning how to deal with the weight of it, was something at which Nita had been getting a lot of practice lately. She went down the front steps and around on the little path that ran down the side of the house to the backyard.

It was tidy as always. Across the lawn, near the back wall, was the koi pond. Carl had spent considerable time rebuilding it over last summer, widening the edge of the pond so there was a place to sit while he fed the fish.

Nita wandered over to it, looking toward the sliding doors at the back of the house. They were closed; it was still chilly for the time of year. From inside, just very faintly, she heard the machine-gun fast clicking of Tom typing super fast on his laptop. For a long time she and Kit had teased Tom about his typing speed, claiming that it almost certainly had something to do with his wizardry. Apparently not.

Nita sat down on the pond’s edge and gazed into the water. It was clear enough, but lily pads hid about half the surface. The koi are probably hiding, Nita thought. If they even remember who they are any more.

She let out a long, unhappy breath. There was no point in her spending any more time here. She should get back to the Crossings, and then to Rashah, and get on with work. But Nita couldn’t bring herself to move just yet. Walking away from this house, where there was suddenly no wizardry, was going to hurt. She would delay that pain for just a little longer.

As she looked down into the pond, an old memory stirred. She felt around in her pockets, looking for a penny, but couldn’t find anything but a dime. Nita gazed at her reflection in the water for some moments, waiting, hoping, but no fish came up to look at her. Finally Nita dropped the dime into the water.

The tiny plunk! sounded loud in the silence. Nothing happened.

Nita let out a long breath. It’s like everything that’s happened was a dream.

And what if it was? What if it was all a game—nothing but a fantasy?

That terrible thought hung echoing in her mind. Nita shivered. I wouldn’t want to live in a world where what I am isn’t real anymore! she thought. A world with no room in it for wizards—what kind of place would that be?

Very slowly, a drift of white and orange came up to the surface of the dark water. The koi looked at her, blank-eyed, almost with a sad expression—

—and spat the dime back at her.

It hit Nita in the chest, surprisingly hard. The koi eyed her with an annoyed expression. “Boy, are you people ever slow learners,” it said. “I thought we told you no throwing money on our living room floor! Seriously…”

Another koi, bigger and more silvery, with bright scales like coins scattered here and there down its body, drifted up beside the first. Nita was practically gasping with relief. “You’re still you!” she said. “You haven’t lost wizardry!”

“We’ve got less to lose,” the marmalade koi said. “Or more. Humans are always sort of in the middle when it comes to magic; they’re always trying to talk themselves out of it.”

“They’re always trying to talk themselves out of whatever power they’re given,” said the koi with the mirror-scales. “Just listen to them! Whatever happens to humans is always somebody else’s fault. It’s almost, pardon the phrase, magical.”

“But the magic’s going away, all the same,” Nita said softly.

A third koi, one of the calico-patterned ones, drifted up to the surface. “Night falls,” it said,

“and all things

Go too silent for me; my

Heart’s chill with starfall.”

Nita sighed. The sentiment sounded as sad and full of foreboding as she felt. “Do you guys do anything but that?” she said.

The calico koi gave her a look. “Everybody’s a critic,” it said. “You prefer sapphics? Those are hard.”

“You want hard,” said the mirror-scaled koi, scoffing, “you want sonnets. Sonnets are tough—”

Nita rolled her eyes. “I meant, do you do anything besides predict the future,” she said.

The calico koi gave her a morose look. “We’re talking to you, aren’t we?”

“Not a lot of future to predict at the moment, anyway,” said the marmalade koi. “Normally there are billions of branchings from one second to the next. Right now, though…”

“Everything’s started to look like mushroom clouds,” the mirror-scaled koi said.

Nita thought of her dream: of Della, brushing her hair aside. The news all sucks. She shivered in the chill. “But there’s something else,” she said. “It’s darker than usual on the far side of the Moon.”

“You saw that, too?” said the calico koi. “And the moon is no dream.’ Interesting.”

Nita swallowed. “Was it real?” she said. “Is that really going to happen?”

The koi all looked at her with eyes that were unusually unrevealing, even for fish. “Depends,” said the calico koi.

“On whether you can make it happen,” said the mirror-scaled koi.

“And whether it’s a good idea,” said the marmalade koi.

Nita grimaced. “And here I was thinking maybe it was you guys I really came back here to see,” she said. “A lot of help you are.”

“But we are,” said the calico koi. “We’re just not supposed to do it directly. That’s not part of being oracular. Our job is to make you think.”

“It takes some doing sometimes,” said the mirror-scale koi, its expression clearly scornful now.

Nita mulled that over. “So there’s still hope?”

“Always hope,” said the mirror-scaled koi. “But you can’t just sit there and stare at it. You have to do something with it.”

She nodded. “I wish there was something I could do for them.” Nita said, glancing back at the house.

The mirror-scaled koi looked at her with compassion. “Save the world,” it said. “And don’t get hung up on the details.”

“A world of dew,” said the mirror-scale koi,

“And within every dewdrop

A world of struggle.”

Nita nodded. She was learning to take her time with these utterances. They worked better if you let them unfold slowly than if you tried to crack them open like cracking a nut with a hammer. “I should get back,” she said. “You guys take care of yourselves.”

The fish bowed to her.

“And take care of them,” Nita said, looking back at the house.

“We’ll do what we can,” the mirror-scaled koi said. “But if anyone’s going to fix this, it’s going to have to be you.”

Nita nodded and got out her manual. A moment later, she was gone.