Wizards At War

14: Catastrophic Success

Nita’s ears roared with her panic. All she could hear herself thinking was Oh no, oh no, not this, not now! And is it my fault?

The idea shook her. “The greatest challenge of your life,” she’d said to him. Why did I say that? Except somehow I knew it was true. All this while she’d been treating the peridexic effect as if it was something cute, rather than what it was, the manual suddenly inside her head, making what she said truer than usual. And now she could hear her voice saying to Carmela, “Enjoy him while you can. He won’t be here for long.” No, oh no, please don’t let it be that I made this happen—

Everything inside her started to go cold, and the coldness, a kind of distant, freezing calm, was exactly what was needed. Nita looked down at Ronan, lying there bleeding nothing but blood now, and he seemed as remote to her as something showing on TV while she was paying attention to something else in front of her. “Okay,” she said. “I know what to do—”

Kit was looking at her with a shocked sort of expression: Nita assumed it had something to do with her voice, which even to her sounded like it belonged to somebody else. “What? A healing spell?”

Nita shook her head. “No time for that now,” she said, glancing down at her manual; its pages stopped riffling. “We have to get back to Earth as fast as we can.”

“But the Pullulus! If it’s getting closer to Earth, wizardry might not be working right—”

“See if the manual tells you anything about that,” Nita said. The page she’d wanted in her manual, containing the spell she’d prepared days earlier, lay there waiting in front of her. “But we have to take the chance. You heard the Hesper! We need to head back now.”

“But if you don’t heal him—” Kit looked past Nita at her manual, peering down at the details of the spell.

She shook her head again, shoving the rowan wand back into her belt for the moment. “Stasis,” she said. “After the little chat we had with Darryl, I thought I’d better have one ready.”

“Send me a copy!” Kit said, flipping his manual open.

“Did that already,” Nita said. She glanced around them. “Dair, Roshaun, Fil, when this is finished we need to transit back to the Crossings and home from there. A straight-in gating might derange this spell, especially if something is wrong with wizardry back home.”

“I will contact Sker’ret,” Roshaun said, “and make sure they’re ready for us.”

“I will set up the transit spell,” Filif said. “Will you need further assistance with that one?”

“Shouldn’t,” Nita said. “Kit?”

He nodded, and together they started to recite in the Speech. The old reassuring fade-out of sound started to set in around them as the words of the Speech seized on the fabric of the universe and started to bend it into a new shape, one that would absolutely freeze time for Ronan. It was a particularly “hard” stasis, its emphasis on completely stopping all activity in a living being, right down to the motions of electrons around their atoms’ nuclei.

Okay, Nita thought to the peridexis. If you’ve got extra power for me, let’s have it.

Nita’s whole mind went up a flare of sheer power that rushed out through her and into the spell with tremendous force, scorching her as it passed. Now Nita started to understand why wizards were so rarely allowed to channel power of this intensity: the “power limit” was a safety valve. Do this too often and it would scar the conduits of mind and spirit through which it flowed, leaving the wizard too sensitive to bear wizardry’s flow. Even lesser wizardries, afterward, would feel as if your own blood was burning you. Not my problem right now, Nita thought. Right now there’s exactly one thing to concentrate on—

The first long passage of the spell was done. Nita paused, taking a long breath as she got ready for the second passage. Even the simplest and most temporary stasis spell wouldn’t operate until you correctly described the physical object it was meant to freeze, and this one was neither simple nor particularly temporary. The lockdown was always the worst part of the work. But if I can’t handle this now, I’ll never be able to.

She caught Kit’s eye: he nodded. Ronan’s name in the Speech was already laid into the spell. Nita looked across the burning pattern the spell made in her mind, expecting to see the reality of what was going on with Ronan, probably a swirl of pain and shock.

But there wasn’t any pain, and the emotional context she sensed was very far indeed from shock. It was utterly serene. And off in the distance, getting more distant by the moment, Nita caught sight of a growing glow of light.

Oh, no, you don’t! she shouted inwardly. Not that way! You don’t get to do that right now! Kit!

I can’t get at him! He won’t listen, he’s not—

Typical, Nita said, furious. Ronan!

She poured more power into the spell. Don’t let me down now, she said silently to the peridexis. Now’s when I need it! Come on, let me have whatever you’ve got.

The new access of power burst through her with terrific force, leaping away from her across the spell diagram and past her and Kit to the dwindling figure that stood silhouetted against the faraway light. Nita hung on, though the scorching at the back of her mind got worse and worse. No—you—don’t!

The form walking away from them began to slow … and second by second, moved more slowly still. Nita closed her eyes and concentrated on being simply something for the power to pour through into the wizardry. Her brain felt like it was shaking itself apart, but Nita hung on, hung on. Not—another—step! Not—another—

In the distance, between one step and the next, Ronan froze.

Gasping, Nita opened her eyes again and looked at Kit across the spell diagram. He was still reading from his manual, finishing the last few phrases that would lock the stasis down. All around, the others were staring at her.

She looked around at them all. “What?”

Kit said the last couple of words of the spell, added the shorthand version of the words of the wizard’s knot, and then slapped his manual shut and dropped it in front of him, next to Ronan’s inert and unbreathing form. “You were kind of on fire there,” Kit said.

Nita rubbed her eyes. “Tell me about it,” she said. “I really need an aspirin.”

“No, I mean on fire on fire,” Kit said. “A lot of light…”

“I was?” She found it hard to care. At least the spell had worked.

“Yeah. And who else were you talking to?”

“Oh.” She laughed. “My invisible friend.”

Dairine looked horrified. “Oh, jeez, not Bobo!”

Nita laughed again. These days she couldn’t remember the invisible friend she’d blamed for everything that went wrong around her when she was five or six, but her mom and dad had told her endless stories about “Bobo’s” escapades. “Uh, no,” she said. “Just wizardry.”

Kit stared at her. “Wizardry talks?” he said. “Is this something new?”

Nita closed her manual and chucked it into her otherspace pocket. “Yeah,” she said. “It took me by surprise, too.” She looked down at Ronan. He wasn’t breathing, but now that was normal. If he suddenly started breathing again, that would be a real sign of trouble. “Come on,” she said, “we need to get back. This should hold for a few hours at least.”

“Question is,” Dairine said, “is that going to be enough?”

“Let’s go find out.”

Filif came gliding over to them with something held in his fronds. It was a drift of what looked like smoke, but it was shot through with glints of the dark green fire that characterized his wizardries. This is a version of the mobility routine I use to get around on hard surfaces, he said. It will make Ronan a little more manageable until he’s able to get around by himself.

“Great,” Nita said. Filif shook the cloud of smoke out like someone shaking a sheet out across a bed; the cloud thinned, drifted down over Ronan, and shrouded him like a see-through blanket. As soon as it had draped completely down over him, Ronan levitated gently up into the air to about Nita’s waist.

“Handy,” Kit said. He reached out and nudged Ronan’s shoulder a little with one hand: he moved weightlessly through the air. “Okay, let’s get him into the transit diagram.”

The Yaldiv crowding around them made a little space for the wizards to pass over to where Roshaun had laid out their transit circle. As they made their way over to the diagram, one Yaldiv came up to them through the gathered crowd. To Nita’s slight surprise, it was the Arch-votary. She could just barely see the old patterns on its outer shell, which had burned themselves pale in the overflow from the Hesper’s transformation. “Friends of the Queen of Light,” it said, “will you return?”

“If we can,” Nita said. “There’s a lot going on at home right now.” It occurred to her then that there was something she wanted to do right away. She rooted around in her pockets until she found her cell phone. “But if we don’t come back ourselves, we’ll make sure somebody visits you when things quiet down.”

Kit floated Ronan into the diagram. “Can he go vertical?” he said to Filif. “He takes up a lot of room in here.”

“Certainly. I’ll help.”

While they were standing Ronan upright, Nita punched the “last dialed number” button on the phone, put it to her ear, and waited.

Nothing happened. She took the phone away from her ear and looked at it. Its dialing screen cleared and showed her a little message: DIALED PLANET UNAVAILABLE.

Nita’s blood instantly ran cold. “Planet unavailable?!” Nita said. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

She looked over at Kit, then at Dairine. Kit looked pale. Dairine’s eyes were worried. “If it means that wizardry’s failed completely back there—”

“I really, really hope that’s all it means,” Nita said.

“Unavailable?” Carmela mused, looking over Nita’s shoulder at the phone. “I think you need to change your service provider.”

“I want the old one back first so I can yell at it,” Nita muttered. She shoved the phone in her pocket, feeling herself starting to shake again. “You guys ready?”

“Ready now,” Filif said.

To the Yaldiv surrounding them, Kit said, “Take care of yourselves, people, and go well. Meanwhile, stand clear—”

The Yaldiv crowded away. Nita took a last look around in that great dimness, which just a short time ago had been so bright. Things looked really bad here, too, she thought. Just keep telling yourself that!

They vanished.

***

The group came out into a Crossings that wasn’t quite as frenetic as Nita had seen it last; and there seemed to be fewer Rirhait around … but she wasn’t sure whether that was a good sign or not. The group got off the transit pad on which they’d arrived and looked around.

“Which way?” Kit said. “We should check with the Master before we head out.”

“That won’t take long,” Nita said, and smiled just slightly. Away down the long shining corridor she saw a vividly purple shape pouring itself along toward them, followed by about thirty other Rirhait.

“You’re back!” Sker’ret shouted at them, long before he got anywhere near them. The urgency of his manner was so much unlike Sker’ret’s usual soft-spoken diffidence that Nita couldn’t do anything but get down on one knee and grab him as he came up with them. Then she wheezed a little, because being hugged by someone with twenty or more pairs of legs can leave you a little short of air. “Oh, Mover without us and within,” Sker’ret said, “I didn’t know if we were going to see you again! …I mean, ‘when!’”

Nita just hugged him, then let him go. “We weren’t real sure about that ourselves,” Kit said, “so don’t sweat it.”

“The ceiling looks better,” Carmela said, looking up.

“It’s mostly back up where it belongs,” Sker’ret said. “There’s still some of it we need to regrow, but we’ve got other things to think about right now.”

“Is wizardry working properly here?” Roshaun said.

“For the moment,” Sker’ret said. “Though the manual functions went very strange there for a little while.”

“‘Strange’ has taken on many new meanings over the past sunround or so,” Filif said, pushing his baseball cap around so that the front went frontways for a change. “We should be grateful that we’ve lived to see it do so. What about the Pullulus?”

“Its density in our neighborhood increased very noticeably a couple of hours ago,” Sker’ret said. “Our star’s not endangered yet, but the increase continues.” He sounded nervous. “The odd thing is that Rirhath B seems to be affected much more severely than any system for hundreds of light-years around.”

“Somebody’s paying off a grudge,” Kit said, “and it’s going to take a lot of power to defuse it.”

“So I thought,” Sker’ret said. “All the wizards we have who’re still functional are assembling to defend this facility and our star; and help is coming from the nearest inhabited systems where the Pullulus isn’t any longer a threat. The local intervention force is assembling on one of our outer satellites, to distract attention away from the Crossings proper—because we’re going to be using that to evacuate the planet.”

Nita swallowed hard, wishing there was a way to do something similar for Earth. And you will know it was all your fault, said that cruel voice in the back of her mind. “Okay,” she said. “We’ll clear out of here and let you get on with it.”

“I checked your local news not long ago,” Sker’ret said. “Your world’s wizards are doing something similar—those who’re still viable. Not many, the manual says.”

“Thanks,” Nita said. “At least our planet’s still there. We’ll get going. But Sker’, are you sure you’re all right here? What about your ancestor?”

His eyes wreathed in barely concealed distress. “Still missing. There are many places yet to search. As for the rest of it, I’m not sure any of us are going to qualify for ‘all right’ any time soon. But we’ve all just got to cope.”

“What is the status of the Pullulus beyond your local area?” said Roshaun.

“Its expansion has either slowed or stopped completely in most places,” Sker’ret said. “Whatever you did seems to have worked.”

“Believe me, it wasn’t anything we did,” Dairine said. “Or not directly.”

Sker’ret pointed a couple of skeptical eyes at her. “I wouldn’t be too sure,” he said. “Never underestimate how connected things are: ‘All is done for each.’ But I suspect we’ve all got better things to do than start tallying up our scores just yet.” He looked past Nita and Kit to where Ronan hung in the cloud of Filif’s levitation field. “So come on over to this gate cluster and I’ll reprogram as many as you need. Roshaun, Filif, what are your plans?”

“I think I should return home,” Filif said. “My people have few enough wizards that they will need all the ones they have. The Pullulus is holding steady there, but there’s no telling whether it might not soon increase.”

Roshaun was once more holding in one hand the fierce little core of light that was his manual. He looked up from it with a slightly relieved expression. “So far,” he said, “nothing untoward seems to be going on in or near Wellakh’s system. In fact, the Pullulus seems to be receding.” He looked over at Dairine. “I will therefore return with you and have a look at your star before making my way home, just to be sure the repairs we did are holding.”

Dairine looked at Roshaun and opened her mouth as if about to say something, then closed it again and nodded. Nita found this weird enough that she would have liked to get a closer look at her sister, but Dairine had turned away to put Spot down.

She let out a long breath and turned to Filif. “Fil,” she said, and hugged him. His fronds tickled her back. “When you know that everything’s safe at home, come on back and let us know. My dad likes having you in the garden.”

“When I know,” Filif said. He was as uncertain of the near future as Nita was, but he wasn’t going to show it. He paused to look at Ronan. “Take care of him,” Filif said. “He stood strong: he does not deserve to fall.”

“We’ll do what we can,” Nita said.

The others crowded in close to say their good-byes. Finally Filif stood away from them. “Cousins,” he said, “you’re needed at home, and so am I. Till the journey brings us together again, dai stihó!”

“Dai,” they all said, and Filif made his way to the gate that Sker’ret had programmed for him. He glided out onto the pad, all his berries alight, and a second later he flicked out of view.

Nita let out a breath. Will we see him again? she wondered. And more to the point … will he see us again?

“There’s one main area of activity on your world’s satellite right now,” Sker’ret said. “Should I drop you there?”

Kit stepped over to the console pad at which Sker’ret was working and looked over his top few sets of shoulders at the coordinates. “We know the spot,” he said, and glanced over at Nita. “Let’s go.” He put an arm around Sker’ret, grabbed a fistful of eyes and wobbled them around a little. “Sker’—”

“Cousin,” Sker’ret said. He looked up at the others. “Go do what needs doing for your own world. One way or another, we’ll meet again.”

They all headed onto the same pad from which Filif had departed, and Roshaun and Dairine guided Ronan along behind them. At the control pad, looking very uncertain, very alone, even while surrounded by all his people, Sker’ret raised a single foreleg to them.

One way or another, Nita thought as she looked at him. He hit a control on his console. Which doesn’t necessarily mean while we’re still alive.

The Crossings disappeared from view.

***

There is no “dark side” of the Moon. In the course of its monthlong day, all of it eventually sees the Sun. But on the side of the Moon that the Earth never sees, just a shade below the spot where the lunar equator and its central meridian cross, there’s a crater called Daedalus; and many of Earth’s wizards know it well.

Almost dead center in the far side, the three-kilometer-high rim of the crater rises into the black and starry night. Normally Daedalus is where a moon-walker goes when he or she needs peace and quiet for some reason—in this case, “quiet” meaning complete isolation from the radio noise that Earth spills out into space. It’s not a big crater—barely sixty miles wide, with a floor surprisingly flat and smooth for any feature on the far side of the Moon. But in the crater’s broad center stand three small mounds, each about three miles wide, arranged in a triangle pointing southeast. At the top of the southernmost mound is a tiny crater, barely a half mile wide. There are many names for it, but most wizards call it the “Dimple.”

Nita and Kit and the others came out just above where the smaller bowl of the Dimple dropped away before them, and paused, looking around. It was dark, the Sun well down behind the western horizon, and Earth, of course, was nowhere to be seen. Nita did a moment’s calculation in her head. The Moon had just gone new when they’d left. Now, as seen from the Earth, it would be just past first quarter. In “real time,” we’ve been gone ten days, almost eleven—

Just the thought started to make her feel shaky again, but she had no time for that right now. The Dimple below them was absolutely crammed full of wizards, faintly illuminated by hundreds of sparks or globes of wizard-light. Behind Nita, Roshaun and Dairine and Spot made their own lights, while Carmela looked around her in astonishment.

“Don’t go more than six feet from us,” Kit said to her, as Ponch went running and half bouncing off down the slope, scattering gray-white dust in all directions. “That’s where our air stops.”

“Doesn’t seem to be stopping him,” Carmela said.

“Ponch plays by his own rules,” Kit said, looking down into the crater as Nita did. “So unless you can create your own universes, either stay close or get vacuum-dried.”

“Kit, it’s not a problem,” Dairine said. “Look…”

He glanced up as Nita did. Over the entire crater a faint dome of wizardry was shivering. “Somebody down there roofed the whole thing over with an auto-maintaining life-support wizardry,” Dairine said. “We can let the personal shields go as soon as we pass the boundary. Probably somebody didn’t care to sweat the small stuff while there were bigger things to be doing.”

“Makes sense,” Kit said. “Come on.”

They all stepped through the brief shiver of the spell’s outer boundary and onto the downward slope of the crater. “Big crowd,” Kit said. But the look on Kit’s face reflected the worry that Nita was feeling. He’d noticed that though there might be hundreds and hundreds of wizards down there, there wasn’t even one who looked adult.

“They’ve all lost it, haven’t they?” Kit said. “Every single one.”

Nita nodded, her mouth feeling dry again. It got drier when she looked up. Out in space, in what should have been a vast expanse of bright, unblinking stars, there was a huge blot of darkness, as if someone had spilled ink. At the edges of that huge, irregular patch, the stars twinkled and went faint.

Nita shivered all over. She had seen this in dreams, fleetingly, even before they got back from their trip to Alaalu—this darkness gradually and inexorably drawing across the stars. I was hoping it was just a nightmare, she thought. I should have known better. “So there’s still nobody to deal with this but us,” she said. “Question is, who’s in charge?”

Kit shook his head. “Not sure it’s the right question to be asking,” he said. “Let’s get on down there and see.”

However, someone had seen them appear at the crater’s rim and was already heading up toward them. Nita looked down, spotting the tropical-print tunic and the miniskirt and leggings, and that long, long dark hair that she’d admired so much, and immediately knew it was Tran Hung Nguyet bouncing upslope.

“You guys!” Nguyet said, shaking her head in astonishment as she came up to them. “You dropped right out of the manuals for a long time. We thought we’d lost you.”

“Were you waiting for us?” Nita said.

Nguyet shook her head. “A little too busy, sorry,” she said. “But I felt the power pop out all of a sudden.” She glanced over at Dairine, who was putting Spot down so that he could put his legs out and make his own way. “Is it him? He feels a lot different from before. Which is good, because we need all the power we can get right now.” She looked up at Ronan, hanging there in stasis. “What happened to him?”

“The Spear of Light,” Kit said.

Nguyet looked stunned. “And he’s still here?”

“I think he got some kind of special dispensation,” Dairine said.

“Boy, he must have,” Nguyet said. “Come on, we need you. Almost all of us are back in-system now—the ones who were away hunting a solution for the Pullulus as a whole got word through the manuals that its power supply had been ‘withdrawn.’ Then all of a sudden that changed to ‘abrogated.’” She gave them a look that was peculiarly admiring. “You got lucky again, didn’t you?” Nguyet said.

“I don’t know if lucky’s the way to put it,” Nita muttered.

“Well, that’s how my brother keeps putting it,” said Nguyet. “You should take it up with him, because he keeps going on about how your part of the world is ruining everybody’s statistical averages. Though just what Mister Number Cruncher means by that, I have no idea. If we all live through this, maybe one of you can stay awake long enough for him to explain what he’s talking about.” She rolled her eyes. “Bring some caffeine or a stay-awake spell.”

Dairine looked bemused. “What statistical averages?”

Nguyet shook her head. “This would not be my department,” she said. “You want to know about skateboarding or weather wizardries, I’ll tell you everything you want to know. Math is Tuyet’s problem. Meanwhile, let’s get down there.”

They all headed downslope together. “Where is Tuyet?” Nita said.

“Down there helping coordinate the group,” said Nguyet. “There are maybe three thousand of us.” She shook her head. “Not as many as I wish we had … mostly human, and a few of the heavy hitters from the Affiliate species. Anyone Senior who’s still functioning, and everybody else with any special skills, is down on Earth. They’re all busy keeping things from blowing up. Literally.”

It was surprising how grim such a delicately pretty face could look, and Nita felt increasingly uneasy as they made their way down to the fringes of the huge crowd. Wizards of every height and shape and color were there, and of every age between eight or nine and maybe sixteen. There were several dolphins and small whales hanging in force-field–confined water jackets, and a very few cats scattered about. Though it all looked disorganized, Nita could see a lot of the most central group standing around the huge spell diagram in the middle of the crater. Its characters and arcs were rippling with the subdued fire of a wizardry on “hold,” completely implemented except for the starting command and the attachment of power sources.

Dairine and Roshaun and Carmela took a moment to guide Ronan off to one side of the crowd and put him carefully down. Then they made their way back to where Nita and Kit and Nguyet were examining the spell. “Complicated,” Dairine said as they came up to the edge of the spell and everyone could get a good look at it. “A repulsor?”

“That’s right,” Nguyet said, as Tuyet came bouncing along to join them. “Seemed like the smartest thing to do was to concentrate on pushing the Pullulus as far out into space as we could. Increasing its distance minimizes its effects, and we may be able to buy ourselves enough time for it to lose power and die off, the way it’s doing a lot of other places.”

Nita wasn’t sure how effective this was going to be, bearing in mind what the Lone One had said to them before the Hesper had embodied. “You try anything a little more proactive?” Kit said.

Nguyet looked frustrated. “Are you kidding? Three or four times. We tried a couple of long-range transports, but you might as well bail out a leaky boat with a sieve. More of the Pullulus just flowed right back into the same space. Then we tried just frying it, a wholesale denaturing of the dark matter out to about the orbit of Mars—”

Tuyet shook his head. “We didn’t have anything like enough power. Leave even a grain of that stuff and it starts regenerating itself. And the kids who tried to channel that much power are just one big mental bruise. Seems like even though the Powers That Be can hand us nearly infinite power, the very biggest spells still have to be handled in groups to keep people from burning themselves out. They can change the rules, I guess, but not the way our brains work.”

“Listen,” Nita said, “do you have anybody else down here who’s sensing the peridexis directly?”

Nguyet looked at her. “The what?”

“Oh, great,” Nita said. “I guess it’s just me, then.”

“If I had the slightest idea what you were talking about, I’d be happier,” Tuyet said. “Anyway, check the manual and see if anybody else here has what you need. Then find a place to plug your name in so you can feed the spell power, because we need to get it running. The main body of the Pullulus is already just outside Mars’s orbit, and we really don’t want to let it get any closer. Its mass is already starting to screw up the Sun.”

Nita glanced back at Roshaun. He had been standing and gazing, not at the spell, but at the ground. Now he looked up and nodded. “I thought that was what I was feeling when I arrived,” he said. “You are right, and the effect is increasing every moment.”

“That’s right,” Nguyet said, “you’re one of the team who settled it down before when it started to act up. Can you do anything about it now?”

“I can try,” Roshaun said.

“We can try,” Dairine said, somewhat more forcefully than usual.

“Great,” Nguyet said.

“Okay, pay up,” said a voice from behind her.

Nguyet turned. “What?”

Darryl McAllister was standing behind her, with something folded and glowing in his hands. “You owe me a quarter,” he said.

“I owe you a smack in the head,” Nguyet said, “if you start bothering me with small stuff right now!” Nonetheless, she fished around in her pocket and handed Darryl a coin.

He stared at it. “What’s this?”

“That’s a whole two hundred dong, and right now you should count yourself lucky that our money doesn’t come any smaller. Now tell me you’ve got the appendix for that spell ready!”

“Had it five minutes ago,” Darryl said, flashing Kit the briefest grin. He opened the WizPod he was carrying, pushed it into Nguyet’s hands, and turned to the others. “I had a feeling you’d be back around now.”

“Should you be making money off that kind of thing?” Kit said.

“It wasn’t a Feeling,” Darryl said. “Just a feeling.” He glanced at Ronan and bit his lip. “Sometimes I don’t like being right, though.”

“It’s okay,” Nita said. “It could have been a lot worse. And what you told us helped. How’re you doing?”

“Busy,” Darryl said. “I’m not as good as some people at writing new spells from scratch, but I’m getting good at taking them apart and putting them back together in new ways if they’re not working.”

“Troubleshooting,” Kit said as they moonwalked around the spell, carefully avoiding stepping or bouncing on the many other kids who were kneeling around the rim of the diagram and adding, or checking, their names in the Speech.

“Yeah. And this one’s needed it, because we’ve been artificially increasing the spell’s output.”

Nita had already noticed the two large circles enclosed within the main one, each smaller circle bumped up against the outside of the diagram. “Nguyet goes in one,” she said. “Tuyet goes in the other. And then they take the power that everybody else puts into the pool, and bounce it back and forth.”

“You got it. Took us a few times to get it right when someone came up with the idea.”

“‘Someone’?” Kit said, looking at Darryl with good-natured skepticism.

“Oh, okay, it was me,” Darryl said.

“I’m beginning to think you were worth the trouble,” Kit said, sounding impressed.

“It’s the way a laser works,” Nita said. “But with all these separate power sources, it must get complicated.”

“It did,” Darryl said. “It does. Which is why I gotta go give them a hand with the final setup.”

“Got any ‘feelings’?” Kit said.

Darryl looked at him, and that small sharp face that was almost always smiling now lost its smile. He shook his head. “We’re on our own,” he said. “Later.”

“Dai,” Kit said. Darryl headed off.

The wizards milling around the edges of the spell were now moving in closer to it. Kit knelt down and tucked his name into one of the open receptor sites; Nita did the same. Across the diagram, she saw small, trim Tuyet in his long jacket stepping into the diagram and carefully picking his way among the various statements and routines to stand in the farther of the two inner circles. Just in front of them, Nguyet was making for the other circle as Nita straightened up. “Nguyet,” she said, “aren’t there some other pairs of twins up here? You could increase the power feed to this even more—”

“Won’t work,” Nguyet said. “We’ve got three pairs of identical twins, but if identicals try to bounce a spell back and forth between them, it just cancels out. Only two-egg twins are far enough out of phase to keep the spell from canceling and close enough to make it augment. You ready?”

Nita nodded, and Nguyet headed off for her circle. Nita glanced down to her left along the outer arc, past Kit, and saw Dairine and Roshaun kneeling about a hundred yards down, with Spot crouching just outside the circle, between them. A movement behind her caught her attention, and Nita looked over her shoulder to see Carmela sitting down cross-legged a little ways behind them. “I’ll sit this one out,” she said, looking out across the spell diagram with an intrigued expression.

Kit glanced at Nita with a resigned look. Take my advice, Nita said silently. If any of us walk away from this… at your earliest convenience, get her another curling iron!

He smiled slightly. Yeah. And, Neets—if we don’t walk away from this—

Normally she would have said something reassuring right away. But she was desperately tired, and very nervous… and the darkness above them continued to grow. There’s always Timeheart, she said.

Yeah.

Kit turned to look at Ponch, who was now sitting beside him, looking out alertly over the spell. Big guy, he said silently, you need to promise me something.

Okay!

If something bad happens to us, you need to get Carmela out of here.

Sure. And you, too—

I don’t know about that, Kit said. But make sure you get Carmela out, hear me? Take her home, and then get Mama and Pop, and Nita’s dad, and take them away from Earth. Take them somewhere safe.

Ponch blinked. But why?

Look, explaining’s going to take too long. Just promise me!

Ponch started to look upset. Nita blinked hard at the distress in his face and in his thought. All right, but—

“Okay,” Nguyet said to all the wizards gathered around the circle. She didn’t need to raise her voice: anyone whose name was written into that spell could hear her as clearly as if she were standing next to them. “Let’s do this just like the last time, but let’s have this one work. Start with the knot, end with the knot… now!”

All the voices beginning to recite the spell—either from the manual in front of each wizard’s eyes or from the larger diagram in front of them—made a silence that swiftly drowned out all the lesser sounds associated with so big a group. All the many voices started to sound like one gigantic one, and the universe leaned in to listen, not once but a thousand times, three thousand times, and more. Nita read along with everybody else as far as she needed to, but her attention was on the line of light that ran from where she’d put her hands down on either side of her manual, out into the spell itself. Next to her, she could see the light of donated energy running into the spell from Kit. Responding to the growing silence, Nita could feel the peridexis moving at the back of her mind, growing, pouring energy out into her for her use, and ready to give as much as she asked of it. But remember, if you ask it for too much, it’ll give you too much, and you’ll burn yourself to a crisp…

Nita watched Nguyet over at her side of the circle, and Tuyet at the other. Both of them stood still as statues, their hands held out toward each other. There was no other physical sign of what was going on with them, but Nita could feel the power that she and all the other wizards were pouring into the spell as they spoke, and could feel each half of the twychild taking that power, sending it along to the other one, standing briefly empty to receive what the other sent; then sending it back again, and again.

The power grew. The wizards finished speaking the spell, which was, after all, a fairly simple thing, describing how one wanted something to be farther away. Three thousand voices and minds, or more, said the last words of the wizard’s knot together, and fell silent. But between those two out in the middle of the spell diagram, the power kept going back and forth. Nguyet’s and Tuyet’s outlines began to shimmer as if Nita were seeing them through a haze of heat. The sense of something actively dangerous going on started to build inside Nita, so that she very much wanted to get up and back away. But there was nowhere to back away to, and, anyway, everybody else, no matter how alarmed they looked, was holding very still. She shot a glance at Kit, who was sitting there with his fists clenched, tense but unmoving. Behind him, Ponch had begun to whimper softly.

Back and forth between the twychild the power went, back and forth. Between Nguyet and Tuyet, the air had begun to burst out in small sparks of power, wizardly energy looking for somewhere to discharge itself but not finding any way to escape. The power trapped in the air inside the spell-circle built and built, until Nita’s hair started to stand on end and her skin prickled with it. They can’t possibly hold it in any more! she thought. It’s going to blow! They can’t possibly—

Inside the circle, the reflected and re-reflected power just kept building and building; the sparkles and flares of its attempted discharge got brighter and brighter, spreading away from the corridor between the twychild and right through the circle, beating right up against the boundaries of it like waves against a storm wall. The power climbed the invisible walls, held in by them and raving against them; it arched up and over until it completely filled the spell’s dome. Inside the dome, the fog of concentrated, concentrating power thickened, the discharge flashes filling every cubic foot of air until Tuyet and Nguyet couldn’t be seen at all. Whether she could see them or not, Nita concentrated on not even twitching, not doing anything that might distract the wizards inside the circle.

And then the spell boundary directly above them vanished.

Everything inside the dome went furiously, blindingly white. Nothing could have prepared Nita for the huge flare of wizardly fire that poured up and out of Daedalus crater, up and out into space, and fled, faster than any normal light, out past Earth’s orbit—three thousand wizards’ worth of wizardry, multiplied who knew how many times. Nita sensed rather than saw the wavefront of the wizardry spilling out across local space like the expanding surface of a blown bubble, speeding away, spreading, pushing before it everything it met. A storm of the micrometeorites that followed Earth around in its orbit vaporized as it impacted them; the ions themselves glowed and sheeted across the surface of the outward-speeding sphere like flattened-out auroras.

Nita tried to rub some sight back into her eyes, craning her neck upward. The spell went blasting outward, a rainbow bubble half the width of the sky, growing fainter as it went but not getting any less strong; it was accelerating as it got closer to the Pullulus. All around her, the other wizards were looking up, watching the spell get closer and closer to its target. A murmur of excitement started to go up among them as some of them started to feel what Nita did—a strange roiling out in the darkness, a sense of something that was darkly alive reacting with fear to something threatening that was coming at it faster and faster.

Nita looked out across the spell diagram, saw Nguyet and Tuyet standing there in their circles, shaking with effort, but watching what was happening with all the others. Out in the darkness, something was furious, something was frightened. Come on, Nita thought, come on!

She held her breath. There was a long, long pause, and then the outflung boundary of the wizardry flared as it struck the substance it had been intended for. Everyone who had been connected to that wizardry felt the resistance of that target in their bones. But the wizardry kept going. The light of it flared in all their minds as it hit the Pullulus, pushed it outward, farther outward. A second later, the wizards started to cheer—

—and the wave front flared out, vanishing.

Nita stared up, unbelieving. No!

The Pullulus was still there. That darkness swallowed the last of the rainbow, snuffed it out, absorbed all the power that had been poured into it…

…and plunged inward through the orbit of Mars, faster than light, faster than darkness, heading for the Earth.

Beside Nita, Kit looked up at the rapidly darkening sky in complete shock.

Ponch put his head under Kit’s arm. Was that it? he said. Can we go home now?

Nita was hiding her face in her hands. Out in the spell diagram, Tuyet and Nguyet collapsed. Along with numerous others, Kit scrambled to his feet and ran across the diagram, heading for Tuyet. Ponch galloped after them. Darryl was one of those who wound up closest to Kit and who got to Tuyet first. Kit slipped an arm under his head, and Darryl boosted him from behind. It was shocking how light Tuyet felt, almost as if the power he and his sister had been channeling had burned him out from inside.

“Tuyet!” Darryl said. “Come on, guy.”

“What about Ngu—,” Tuyet said weakly.

Kit glanced over his shoulder. Others were helping Nguyet. “I think she’s okay,” he said.

“No, she’s not,” Tuyet said. “I can feel it. Burned. Burned out.”

Kit shook his head. “It didn’t work,” he breathed. “With all that power, how could it not work?”

“It did work,” Tuyet said, hardly above a whisper. “It just wasn’t enough.” He sounded desperately tired. “Look,” he said. “It’s coming back.”

Kit absolutely didn’t want to look. He could feel perfectly well what was happening. He looked at Darryl. “Now what?” he said.

“Now, this,” said a voice from the side of the circle. “And perhaps this will be enough.”

Everybody looked over that way. Roshaun had stood up from beside Dairine and Spot. There he stood in that long, floppy T-shirt, his expression grim but not desperate. Around his neck, in the collar he had worn ever since coming back from Wellakh with Dairine, that great orange-amber stone burned like fire. As they watched, he slipped the collar off and held it in his hands.

Dairine got up, looking at him warily. “What’re you thinking of?” she said, sounding slightly panic-stricken.

“It is what I did earlier,” Roshaun said, “to fill in the cavern floor back on Rashah. But here there is no need to be so restrained.”

“Are you nuts?” Dairine said. “Restraint is the only way to treat that spell! Moving little amounts of matter around is one thing, but you can’t just pull out the kind of energy you’d need to deal with that and—”

“I have done it before,” Roshaun said. “Not with a strange star, granted. But yours is no longer so strange. Also, this is your world’s best chance now. If time is all we need to buy—”

“You’re not doing it alone!” Dairine said.

His look got wry. “It had not occurred to me that I’d be able to stop you,” Roshaun said. “And perhaps Spot will also participate.”

“Naturally,” Spot said.

Kit threw a look back at Nita as he pulled off his jacket. What are they up to now? he said.

Nita shook her head.

Kit folded the jacket up and tucked it under Tuyet’s head. Roshaun had stepped a little distance away from the spell diagram, and now was simply standing and looking down at that huge gem in his hands. A moment later he straightened up, settled the collar about his neck again, and began to speak quietly in the Speech. Dairine stood up a few feet away from him with her arms folded, her eyes half closed, as if trying to remember something; crouching on the dusty ground between the two of them, Spot put up a number of eyes, enough to watch them both at once, and held very still.

The silence of a listening universe came down on all the wizards near them. Kit watched, but for a long while nothing seemed to happen; Roshaun and Dairine spoke in unison, more and more quietly, as if they didn’t need to hear each other speaking out loud. And, slowly, Roshaun began to stand out from his surroundings.

At least that was the way it looked at first. For the first minute or so, Roshaun simply looked more definite than the other wizards around him. But then it became plain that there was more light about him than what fell on him from the various wizard-lights hovering about. Then the glow became more obvious. The effect was strange, for it wasn’t as if Roshaun himself was glowing; rather, he was merely the vessel for something else inside him that was the true source of the increasing light.

The light strengthened, slowly gaining a dangerous quality. Roshaun was less a vessel, now, than a crucible, resisting the power inside him, glowing as a result of that resistance. Kit found himself remembering the way the Champion had looked back on Rashah, like a statue of molten metal. This, though, was different, scarier, for at all times the Champion had seemed to be in control of what was going on. Looking at Roshaun, Kit got a clear sense of Roshaun’s struggle with the terrible force inside him, something he was holding in check only with the greatest difficulty. That force was ready every moment to burst free, but Roshaun was spending all his energy to contain it until the moment was right. Behind him, Dairine was beginning to burn with some of that same fire, less violently, but also with a look of less concentration. Her attention was all on Roshaun now; Kit could tell it was, even though Dairine’s eyes were squeezed tightly shut.

Very slowly, like someone afraid to lose his balance, Roshaun lifted his arms. All that hair of his was beginning to stir around him now, as if in a growing wind. His eyes were closed, too, and a look of utter concentration had taken possession of his face. He brought his arms around in front of him, put the hands together, and within them materialized the little globe of burning light that was the way he communicated with the Aethyrs; but for once it was the least bright thing about him, dim by comparison with the fire that burned in him.

Roshaun and Dairine both looked up at the sky. At the same moment, Spot’s eyes all turned upward.

The little spark of Roshaun’s manual-globe went out, and light burst upward from him.

It was like being hit in the face. Kit had to turn his head. The whole lunar landscape was lit as if by the light of day. But it was the light of day, the Sun’s own light, borrowed, channeled, concentrated, and aimed like a spear at the inward-pressing tool of their enemy. That fire burned upward and outward and struck straight through the Pullulus.

It screamed. Where that beam struck, the Pullulus vanished utterly. Elsewhere, on either side of it, the darkness shrank away and left clean space and starlight showing. The beam moved slowly through the bulk of the Pullulus, shocking it backward and away, cutting through it like a knife.

But it’s not wide enough, Kit thought, desperate. This isn’t going to do it, either. It needs—

It was almost as if Roshaun had heard him thinking. Above them, the beam broadened out. Roshaun’s expression and stance didn’t alter in the slightest, but Kit could feel the strain on him increase. Dairine was perfectly still, but she was sharing more vividly now in that inward burning, and down on the ground, even Spot was beginning to glow from inside. The beam broadened. The silent screaming of the Pullulus got louder.

Roshaun’s eyes opened wide. It was a look of complete surprise and, a second later, of regret, for something that should have worked, really should have—

Roshaun!

The cry was soundless. One moment he was standing there, a statue of burning gold. The next moment, the statue was a searing white, and the moment after that, there was no statue at all: just something falling through one-sixth gravity to bounce into the dust—a collar of yellow metal with a great colorless stone in it, as clear as glass.

The fire was all gone out of Dairine now. Spot’s eyes had vanished; he lay as flat against the ground as if he wished he could bury himself in it. Dairine slumped to her knees. “Where is he?” she was whispering as she looked all around her, desperate. “What happened to him? Where is he?”

And the Pullulus began crawling back into the space that had been carved free of it, once more flowing toward the Moon.

Beside Kit, Ponch let out a single cry that wasn’t so much a bark as a yelp of pain. He ran over to where Roshaun had been standing, and started frantically sniffing around the spot. He ran back to Kit, a horrified look in his eyes. Where did he go? Ponch barked. What happened to him?

Kit shook his head; his eyes were stinging. “I don’t know,” he said softly. The one thing he was sure of was that he couldn’t bear to look at Dairine right now, the moment after she had picked up the fallen collar.

He turned and exchanged a glance with Nita. Then he dropped to his knees beside Ponch.

“You know you’re the best, right?”

Yes, Ponch said, but he sounded dreadfully uncertain and frightened.

“Good,” Kit said. He roughed the dog’s ears up. “So now you have to go do what you promised.”

I’m not going anywhere without you!

“Yes, you are. You have to take Carmela, and—”

No!

“You promised,” Kit said fiercely. “Ponch, I’m a wizard. I promised I’d take care of the world, and that’s what I have to do now. You promised me that you’d take care of Mama and Pop and Carmela, and Nita’s dad—”

But I can’t! Ronan couldn’t, and then Tuyet couldn’t, and now Roshaun couldn’t, and if I go, you could— You’ll—

“Ponch!” Kit said. He felt close to tears, but he didn’t dare show it. “This is what we have to do! Now go on.”

He threw his arms around the dog. One last hug, he thought. They have to let dogs into Timeheart, they have to.

But what about you? What about Nita?! And what about Tom and Carl and—

“Ponch!” Kit cried. “Just go!”

Ponch stood and looked at Kit. He hung his head, and his tail drooped. Utterly dejected, he turned away. He started to vanish.

And then he stopped. Half there, half not, and wholly torn, Ponch sat down in the dust of the Moon and threw his head up and howled for sheer grief and pain.

The tears ran down Kit’s face. This is what it’s like when your heart breaks, he thought. Good thing I won’t have to feel it for long. He looked up and saw the Pullulus closing in tighter on the clean space that Roshaun had carved out. But then he heard something that distracted him.

It was still more howling.

At first it seemed a very long way away, but then the sound came to Kit more immediately. He realized that he was hearing it as Ponch did. Other dogs were howling. Kit stared all around, but there was no one there but all his fellow wizards, and the spell diagram—now burning low from lack of power—and Ponch, his howling briefly diminishing into a terrible whimpering moan of pain as he got up again, anguished, to do as Kit had told him. Desperately, Kit looked up into the sky and saw nothing but darkness, and a single pathway of seemingly lighter sky cutting through it—the dark of space with the stars still burning in it, while everywhere else, the Pullulus pressed in all around. Ponch looked up at that path and howled one last time, and it seemed to Kit as if somewhere beyond him, the voices of hundreds of dogs, thousands of dogs, hundreds of thousands, could be heard howling with him. Or through him? Kit thought. It was impossible to tell. The cacophony was unbearable: it drove all thought out of the mind that listened to it. All around them, kids were holding their ears, bending over double, trying to maintain some kind of control. The air, Kit thought. The life-support—the spell won’t hold for much longer; wizardry’s starting to fail—

Yet in this moment of utter terror, somehow the spell started to seem less important. For above them, the inward-pressing darkness of the Pullulus seemed to be taking form. Shivering, Kit blinked and rubbed his own eyes, certain they were fooling him. How could there be any blackness darker than what the Pullulus had already become? But there was such a blackness, and it took the form of eyes, burning in that darkness, embodying it. Kit started to think he heard something growling softly to itself in pleasure.

Did you hear that? he said silently to Nita.

There was no answer at first. Kit looked around for Nita and saw that she’d gone to Dairine, and was now kneeling down beside her, her arms around her little sister, while Dairine just knelt there looking dazed.

A little noisy, Nita said after a moment, wiping her eyes. But is it just me, or is all this looking sort of strange to you?

Kit glanced around him. There was more light here than there should have been, with the Sun completely blocked away from them, and the terrible potency of Roshaun’s sunbeam gone along with him. The Moon had begun to look a lot less moonlike, almost more like a stage; it was as if something invisible was illuminating it from above. The howling was beginning to die away. Even Ponch had stopped now, and was staring up into the darkness, up into those eyes.

Very quietly, he began to growl.

“Kit?”

It was Carmela’s voice, sounding thoroughly confused. He turned to see her looking at something off to one side. “What?” Kit said.

“Do you know any pigs?”

He stared at her. “What?”

“Over there,” Carmela said.

Kit looked where she was pointing. Only a few feet away from them both, apparently unnoticed by many of the upward-gazing wizards, stood a large white pig that looked back at Kit with an interested expression, flicking one large pink ear.

Kit made his way over to that silvery-bristled shape and looked down at it in something like outrage. “What are you doing here?” he said.

“You forgot to ask about the meaning of life,” said the Transcendent Pig. “That’s got to be a first.”

“Yeah, well, it can wait, because there’s other business,” Kit said. He looked away from the Pig, back toward Ponch.

But Ponch was not there.

In his place was a huge dog-shaped shadow that towered above them. It was looking up into that blank black darkness, its eyes trained on the darker eyes that stared down at them in fury from above. And it was growling, too.

Ponch? Kit thought.

The shadow-shape above him made no response. Stiff-legged, it took a step forward, its hackles bristling. That one step took it right past the edge of the Dimple. Its second step took it right over the edge of Daedalus, over that three-kilometer-high rim. The third step took it out into the roiling dark, and straight off the edge of the Moon.

The Transcendent Pig stood there beside Kit, regarding the two dark shapes that now stood in the depths of translunar space, eyeing each other through the endless night. “And why the surprise?” the Pig said. “You didn’t think I kept turning up before just to see you and Nita, did you? I mean, not that it wasn’t a pleasure. It’s always nice to meet new people. But, as you say, there’s other business.”

And it gazed up at Ponch.

Above them all, the darkness grew and took shape as the Pullulus pressed inward. All around them, it beat against the orbit of the Moon as if against a seawall, and though for the moment it flowed no farther, Kit could feel that, at any moment, it might. Still, though, that pierced-through lane of normal space and starlight above them persisted … and suddenly Kit realized what he was seeing. The memory of voices back in the cavern on Rashah descended on him, so that he might almost have been lying in the pup tent again; and a voice said, No power more will come to you, and no new life, until you once more see before you the path you refused, and set out to walk it alone.

This is my place, Ponch said to the darkness. Go away!

Make me, the Darkness said.

I will, Ponch said. We said we would take care of them.

You can’t, said the being that was now wearing the Pullulus, in the shape of something huge and wolfish, with fangs as dark and deadly as its eyes. And they can’t save themselves, or you. You all get to die today.

I have driven our Enemy out of time for just a little while, Memeki had said.

Kit swallowed. I guess our time just ran out.

You’re just one more dog, the Darkness said. You have no power against me, and your threats mean nothing.

Ponch’s gigantic shape merely stood there, growling softly in his throat.

I will always be here, no matter what you do, the Darkness said. I will come for every one of your kind, sooner or later. That’s the way this universe is.

I think, Ponch said, that I have had enough of you telling me how things will be.

If you had, you’d be doing something about it. But you can’t. I own this place, whatever you may think. And as I will come for all your people in time … I will come for all of his kind as well. And for him!

The growling stopped.

You came for Ronan, Ponch said very softly. You came for Memeki. You came for Roshaun. But if you think you’re coming for him today, think again. Today I choose a new way to go—and it goes through you!

And Ponch threw himself at the throat of the Darkness beyond the Moon.

It was a “dogfight” in the same way that the meteor that killed the dinosaurs was an “impact.” The stars seemed to shake and the Moon rumbled and quaked with the tumult and the furor of it, and there was no telling how long it went on. The terrible growls and snarls of the Darkness were matched in their awfulness, and in a strange kind of splendor, by the righteous rage of the giant doglike shape with the starlight caught in its coat. Stunned, staggered, many of the watching wizards fell to their knees as the great battle slowly began to turn; others just stood gazing outward into that turbulent night, trying to assimilate what they were seeing. Kit, though, knew; for he’d heard the story beforehand. He watched as what had been foretold came to pass—the Hound taking His old enemy by the throat and throwing him down, yelping, against the floor of heaven.

The Wolf that ate the Moon slowly stood up from that downfall, still growling. There, in the darkness with which it had surrounded itself, It slunk a few steps away, head down, tail between Its legs, growling more softly … and then tried to dodge around and do Its Enemy one final harm. All at once, the Pullulus flowed past the Moon, heading for the Earth and past it, toward the Sun, trying to envelop them both—

The Hound opened His jaws and leaped at His enemy one last time.

The flare of power that had burst up from the group wizardry before was as nothing to this. All space went white as lightning in the flash of the terrible teeth. Kit closed his eyes and still could see nothing but that intolerable whiteness. In it, everything vanished. There was nothing to be felt or experienced but pure power and the eternity in which it was happening. In the face of that irresistible brilliance, the Pullulus burned away like so much ash.

In the white timelessness, Kit stood for some while, as blind as any other wizard on the Moon. But presently he was able to see something dark; and a wagging shape came wandering along to him, and put its head under his hand.

“I have to go,” Ponch said. “But I wanted to thank you first!”

Kit got down beside his dog. “Thank me? For what?”

“You showed me what to do,” Ponch said. “Now dogs have a new story, and a new way to be… thanks to you.”

Kit shook his head, burying his face briefly against the glossy black of Ponch’s coat. “I’m going to miss you,” he said. “You’re not coming back, are you?”

“Not like this,” Ponch said. “I have another job now, and I have to get started. My people have been waiting for me for a long, long time. But I won’t ever really go away.” He looked up at Kit, and his eyes were full of starlight now. “And dogs won’t really seem to change that much. Some old ways of being are good, while we work out what the new ones are.”

Kit put his arms around Ponch and held him for a long time. He had no idea how long they remained like that, or when the light began to fade. But gradually it paled, like dawn in reverse, and Kit found himself kneeling in moondust. He looked up and saw nothing above him but starry night, untroubled by any darkness except the one that properly lives between the stars.

Nita was crouching down by him, looking closely at Kit. “You all right?” she said.

Kit let out a long breath and looked around him. What he had been holding was gone. “Yeah,” he said. “I think so.”

Nita sighed, too, as she stood, looking over to where Carmela was standing with one arm around Dairine. “And as for you!” she said to the Pig, which was standing on the other side of Kit.

“Tell me you’re not going to ask me that question!” said the Pig.

“I was going to ask you,” Nita said, “whether all that was what I thought it was.”

“If you thought that dogs now finally have their own version of the One,” said the Transcendent Pig, “then the answer is yes.”

Kit was shaking his head. “I can’t believe it,” he whispered. “Are you trying to tell me that my dog—my dog was—”

“Was? No. Is? Yes, it’s the ‘spell-it-backward’ joke again,” the Pig said, with some resignation. “The One just loves those old jokes. The older, the better.” It raised its bristly eyebrows. “Making a big BANG! sound and running off to hide behind the nearest chunk of physical existence, like some kid ringing the doorbell at Halloween. And the puns. Don’t get It started on the puns… you’ll be there forever.” It smiled. “Literally. But what did you expect? Your dog started making universes out of nothing. This wasn’t a slight tip-off?”

“And not just making them,” Nita said. “Saving them.”

“Or saving one person,” Kit said.

“It’s the same thing, I’m told,” said the Pig; and it vanished.

Kit looked around at the thousands of astonished and exhausted wizards. Then he looked along the arc of the now-dimming spell diagram, and saw Dairine standing there, holding in her hands a collar with a stone that had gone as clear as water, and now was shading gently toward gold; and beyond her, off in the background, Ronan’s still form. “This is going to take a while to sort out,” he said, and wiped his eyes. “Let’s go home.”