Wizards At War

Sker’ret shivered in a shiny ripple that ran right down his body, and then he poured himself into the heart of the cubicle and up onto its racking, draping himself across the control structures. He turned his attention to one of the consoles. “The main pad on the far side,” Sker’ret said. He looked at Nita and Carmela just briefly with every eye. “Call if you need anything.”

“We will,” Nita said. “Hold the fort, Sker’.”

He wreathed his eyes at her. “And, cousin, dai stihó.”

“You go well, too,” Nita said. “‘Mela—”

Carmela reached up and tugged at one of Sker’ret’s eyes. “Make me proud,” she said.

“And as for you, try not to blow up anything that doesn’t need it,” Sker’ret said.

“Me?” Carmela said, in a tone of dignified but wounded innocence. “When would I ever do that?”

Nita took Carmela by the elbow and steered her over to the pad. “Stand in the middle,” she said. “If you ever lose your balance in one of these things, you want to make sure you do it inside.”

“I would never lose my balance,” Carmela said. “I am a paragon of grace and stability.”

“Oh, yeah. Who said that?”

“Roshaun.”

Nita grinned as they positioned themselves in the middle of the pad. “Just wait till Dairine hears,” she said.

The de facto Master of the Crossings raised a few forelegs to them. Nita raised a hand. Carmela got out her curling iron and touched a pattern of spots on its side, upon which it started to make a soft and very businesslike humming sound.

Nita threw her a look. Carmela simply smiled. “You never can tell,” she said.

They vanished.

***

Back in the cavern on Rashah, out of their mochteroofs again, a very confused and troubled group of wizards sat down under the floating spell-lights to eat something and try to make sense of what had happened.

“It doesn’t know why we’re here,” Ronan said, shaking his head. “It actually doesn’t know!”

Will we be able to keep it that way? Filif said.

“If we’re careful, maybe,” said Kit.

“It was really strange,” Dairine said. She had broken out another trail-mix bar, one that didn’t have cranberries in it—Roshaun was eating the last of those, while wearing one of his more brooding expressions—and she paused to take a drink of one of Nita’s favorite lemon sodas, which she’d stolen. “It really did sound as if it was running on automatic. The King may be an avatar of the Lone One, like all Its other people, but You-Know-Who wasn’t completely there.”

“I felt that, too,” Kit said. “But did you feel It sort of… sucking at you? Trying to make you willing to do whatever It said? I did.”

And I, said Filif, all his branches and fronds rustling in a shudder.

“As did I,” Roshaun said. “Disgusting.” He, too, shuddered all over and looked at Kit with a sort of troubled admiration. “Doubtless that is the source of some of Its power over the hive. I wondered that you could find such self-mastery, to stare It in the eye and not flinch.”

“Oh, I was flinching, all right,” Kit said. “But sometimes you just have to cope. Besides, you were all there. It’s different when you have so much backup.”

I didn’t feel anything, Ponch said. Wagging his tail idly, he came ambling along past Kit, having just finished his own dinner, and put his head over Kit’s shoulder. Kit, not missing a beat, moved the bag of pretzels he was eating out from under Ponch’s nose and into his other hand. And there’s only one person who can make me do what he says.

Kit rolled his eyes. “Oh, really? Who would that be?”

Ponch barked and started to bounce around Kit, wagging his tail harder. Kit sighed and gave him a pretzel.

Dairine shook her head. “I can’t get past the fact that the King knew what we were … and then let us walk away. How come?”

“Perhaps because the situation is exactly as Kit extrapolated it,” Roshaun said. “And because this is not a complete avatar of the Isolate. Possibly the species’ rigid structure militates against that. Or the Lone One’s attention, as Kit also suggested, is elsewhere. Besides which”—Roshaun glanced at Ronan—”we have protection.”

It isn’t easy to divert such a creature’s attention from the truth of what’s going on right in front of it, the Champion said, but it can be done. Still, even with just a partial avatar to deal with, and in my present circumstances, I’m finding it … challenging.

When she heard that, Dairine’s mouth felt suddenly dry. “Which brings us to our next problem,” she said. “The Hesper…”

“That was indeed the one we seek?” Roshaun said to Ronan.

Ronan nodded. “It was,” he said. “Ponch”—and he reached out to ruffle the dog’s ears—”has done effing brilliant work.”

Thank you. Got a dog biscuit? Ponch said.