Wizards At War

They’re gone, Ponch said. Come on.

“How close are we?” Dairine said from the end of the line. “I think I hear some action behind us.”

Just a few minutes’ walk, Ponch said.

Up a level, and then a left turn.

They followed Ponch up the long ramp to the next level of the city, where a number of corridors came together in a small, central concourse or crossroads, under an arched-over papery dome. Down one of the other corridors, Nita could see shadowy figures moving: workers, she thought. Nonetheless, she was walking more softly now, and she noticed that the others were, too. They all know that, sooner or later, we’re going to wind up walking into a trap. And, indeed, the one subject none of them had so far discussed was one that in more normal times would have been one of the first to come up: how are we getting out of here?

They paused again. Ponch looked around him and chose their way, one of the left-hand passages. The relative dimness of a side corridor shut down around them as they went. But this is more serious than any of us getting out,

Nita thought. This is a whole universe’s worth of trouble, solved or messed up in one shot … and they all know it. It was a relief to know they realized it. And a strange feeling swelled up in Nita: pride in all of them.

They stopped outside an arched doorway. On the wall to either side of it was written, in the Yaldiv charactery, GRUBBERY 14.

Memeki slipped past Nita, went to the doorway. Inside, in the dimness, nothing moved. Nita could dimly see a central pit area that heaved gently with many, many small, caterpillarish forms … every one of them alive, inside, with one of those angry, evil little dark-fire sparks. On the far side of the room, past the main pit, were many smaller archways, each big enough to take a single entering Yaldiv. Many of those were walled up. Nita had already seen from Memeki’s mind what happened here, as each Favored Yaldah came to her time, entered, and was immured. The newly emerged grubs would be tenderly carried out by the ministering handmaidens, fed and tended… and the empty shell that was all that was left of their mother would be given to a worker to dump into the oily swamp.

Slowly, farther down the corridors, other Yaldiv began to appear: workers mostly, heading toward the door of the Commorancy to make their way out into the world for the day’s work. Inside her mochteroof, Nita turned to Memeki and waited.

Memeki stood quiet. All of them were looking at her now, but she seemed oblivious to this. Nita waited. Come on, she thought, come on! Just say yes! That’s all it needs. Just say—

“I will not,” Memeki said.

They all stared at her.

She stood there with her claws together, in a position that was neither the Yaldah’s fearful “averting” gesture or the warrior’s threat. There was something strangely serene about it, and she looked over at Ponch and bowed. “I will not go in,” she said. “I am no longer of the City. I am the Hes—”

And from the dim silence of the grubbery, the warriors came boiling out.

Once again everything started to happen at once. Nita saw Dairine and Filif and Roshaun drop, inside their mochteroofs, come up with strange shapes furred with the power-glow of working wizardries, and start firing at the surrounding warriors. To her own astonishment, Nita was horrified. “No! Look out, you’ll hurt Memeki, if you—”

Then the firing stopped. That, too, horrified Nita, because it wasn’t due to anything she’d said. From around all of them, the mochteroofs abruptly vanished.

There they stood, suddenly unshelled—five humans, one humanoid king, one talking tree, one dog, one computer-being, and a Yaldiv—and harsh claws seized them from every side, snatching away everything they had been holding, including the suddenly revealed Spear of Light from the shocked and swearing Ronan. The breath went right out of Nita, not so much from the horror of two giant bugs each grabbing one of her arms, but because of something much more innately awful. Ever since Nita had begun to practice the Art, the rule had been, “A spell always works.” But suddenly it didn’t.