Wizards At War

He paused as a faint clicking noise came from off to his left, and then watched with interest as Dairine’s laptop walked into the room. A small, rectangular silvery case on many jointed legs, it now hunched itself down on the polished wood floor, put up two stalky eyes, rather like Sker’ret’s, and glanced from Tom to Carl and then to Dairine.

“Wondered when you’d come out from under the bed,” Dairine said, sounding to Kit both annoyed and a little relieved. “Spot, are you okay?”

From Spot issued a small whirring noise, like a cuckoo clock getting ready to strike. Dairine leaned over to peer down at him.

“Three true things await discovery,” Spot said.

“Darkness overspreading,

A commorancy underground:

And the Moon is no dream—”

He sat there for a moment more, silent, and then got up on all his little legs again and spidered off into the kitchen.

They all looked after him. “Uh, excuse me,” Dairine called after him, “but what was that?”

There was a pause, then the sound of little feet on the kitchen floor again, and Spot put several stalked eyes around the doorframe, gazing at Dairine. What was what? he said silently.

“What you just said.”

What did I say?

Kit gave Nita a Huh? look. She gave him one right back, and shrugged.

Dairine looked perplexed. “You’re the computer wizard here,” she said. “You’re supposed to be the one with all the memory! What do you mean, ‘What did I say’?”

Kit said, “You said, ‘Three true things await discovery’—”

“‘Darkness overspreading,’” Nita said.

“And then something about a commorancy underground,” Dairine said. “Whatever a commorancy is—”

“And the Moon is no dream,’” Roshaun said. “Well, I should say not. It’s real enough. Indeed, when we went there—”

Dairine elbowed him. “Ow!” Roshaun said.

Did I say that? I don’t recall. And Spot headed off into the kitchen again. A second later there came a little subdued pop! of displaced air as he teleported outside.

“Oh, great,” Dairine muttered. “Since when does he have memory errors? This is just not the time.”

Tom, however, looked thoughtful. “Has he done this before?” he said.

Dairine shook her head. “Absolutely not!”

Tom looked over at Carl. “That certainly sounded oracular to me. How about you?”

“Sounds a lot like our koi,” Carl said. “Not haiku, though, more like some kind of poetic shopping list. Better start taking notes,” he said to Dairine. “Some of this might turn out to be useful at some point.”

“Well, that’s just great, because he’s what I usually take the notes in!” Dairine said, aggrieved. “If all of a sudden he’s forgetting stuff—”

Nita put her eyebrows up, reached across the table, and pushed a pad of yellow sticky notes over to Dairine.

“Oh, sure! So we’re going to be running all over the place, saving the universe, and I’m going to have to write things down on stickies while I’m doing it?” Nonetheless, Dairine pulled one of the notes off and started scribbling on it furiously. “How do you spell ‘commorancy’?”

“You’re asking me?” Nita said.

“You’re the spelling champ.”

“It’d help if I’d ever heard the word before!”

“Better look it up,” Tom said. “Meanwhile, we have to get moving. We’ve got a lot more people in the area to see today, and some who’re a lot farther away than the Island. Any questions before we go?”

For Kit, there were at least ten or twenty, many of them variants on the theme of How are we supposed to save the world when you don’t know how? One question, though, had pushed its way to the forefront and was going to drive Kit crazy until he got an answer.

“Why didn’t you tell us about this before?” he said.

Tom and Carl each let out a long breath. “Because there might not have been any need for you to worry about it, if we’d solved it?” Carl said after a moment. “Because you had enough to deal with in your own lives? Because we were fairly sure we could handle the problem—and so were the Powers That Be?”

Everyone was quiet again. “And then things didn’t turn out the way any of us thought they would,” Carl said, “so it became time to start worrying you. Believe me, we wish we didn’t have to. But right now, wishing’s a waste of time. We’ve got our work cut out for us. So…”

He and Tom got up. “Thanks for making the time for us,” Tom said. “We’ll be in touch.”

They headed for the back door. Nita got up and went out after them, and Kit got up and followed her, while Dairine finished scribbling on her sticky note, and Roshaun, Sker’ret, and Filif watched her.

Nita peered in Tom’s open car window as he settled himself in the driver’s seat and Carl got in on the far side. “If you’ve got all these people to see,” she said, “why don’t you just worldgate it?”

“We’re saving our strength,” Tom said as he started the car. “And, anyway, when all this is done, we still need some groceries.” His smile, though kind of tired looking, had the usual humor about it. “See you later…”