Wizards At War

Yet when It was silent, then the first Voice spoke, still and small. It said, “You’ve put your proper Choice aside, but this you did in loyalty’s name, and so in Life’s. For Life’s sake, therefore,some of Its power will still descend to you. In every generation will be whelped among you some of those able to sing the Speech that every creature hears. But 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.” Then that Voice was silent as well, and though we’ve sung to the silver of the Moon from then till now, we haven’t heard it again. We live and work and hunt with them as we did before, and we take care of them as we promised we would. They give us what we need, which was always their part of the bargain. So everything is fine.

Kit lay there, hardly breathing.

“But if everything is fine,” Memeki said, “then why do you still sing to the Light?”

There was a pause while Kit heard Ponch nosing one last time, regretfully, in the biscuit box. It was empty. I don’t know, he said. It’s a habit.

“It sounds as if there’s something you still need to do,” Memeki said.

A brief cardboard-scraping noise suggested that Ponch had gotten his nose stuck in the dog biscuit box and, as usual, was having trouble getting it out again. That sounds strange coming from you, he said. You don’t even know what you’re supposed to do next.

“But if I knew what this thing I needed to do was, I would be doing it. It’s far better than what awaits me if life goes on as it’s been going.” That shiver again—

Kit felt Ponch looking up at her. Are you all right?

“Not all right,” she said, “no. Tell me again what you told me when we met—what it’s like where you live. Tell me what you do.”

From the way the point of view changed, Kit could tell that Ponch had rolled over and was looking at Memeki upside down. I get up in the morning. I go out and harnf. Kit’s eyebrows went up at Ponch’s careful use of the politest Cyene word for dealing with bodily waste. Then Kit gets up and gives me food. Maybe we go walking before he goes off to school. Afterward I go out to my little house in the middle of my territory and have a nap. Then I get up and check my territory and make sure that everything’s all right. I have another nap. Then Kit comes home and we go for a walk, and I run, and he throws the ball for me, and maybe I see a squirrel and chase it. And then Kit gives me food. Ponch’s stomach growled; he rolled over again, looking longingly at the dog biscuit box. Then he does things he needs to do for school, and I lie and watch him while he does that. And then we go downstairs and he watches the pictures on the Noisy Flat Thing for a while, or he does wizardry, or uses the Quiet Box with the screen that sends him messages. And then we go to sleep, and I lie on his bed and make sure that he’s safe. Then we sleep—and in the morning, we get up and do it again.

Memeki was looking down at Ponch with what the dog could tell was the most profound kind of longing. “This is a life beyond lives that you’re living,” she said, wistful. “No carrying, no digging, no killing—”