Wizards At War

Her regard dwelled on them all for a moment. I can only stay a little more of your time in this form, the Hesper said. So new a connection between the physical realms and eternity won’t hold for long in this ephemeral place. I must depart. But because you and your worlds have endured such danger for my sake, I’ve done what I can to repay the debt. For a very little while, I have driven our Enemy out of time. While Its brief exile lasts, It can do no new evil. But what It has already set in train, I can’t now halt. I must withdraw into timelessness now and recoup my strength, or risk being unable to embody again for a long while.

Roshaun bowed to her. “Crowned one,” he said, “you owe us no debts. In the paths of errantry, we’ll meet again.”

The Hesper was already fading. Ponch started barking again. Don’t go away! Don’t go—

Those rainbow-mirror eyes rested briefly on Ponch, and Nita thought she saw affection there. Make haste to your world, the Hesper said, looking from Ponch to Kit and Nita and Dairine. Make haste! They will need you there.

The light faded, slipped away, as if sunset was happening indoors. Finally they all stood or knelt in twilight, surrounded by many curious Yaldiv who peered down at them and held up their claws in a new gesture.

“Welcome,” they said. “Friends of the Daughter of the true Great One, friends of the Queen of Light; dai stihó, and well met on the journey!”

Nita and Kit stared at each other. “Too much strange,” Nita said, “just too much!” She rubbed her eyes. “Hi, guys, good to see you, too. Please bear with us for a moment.” She turned her attention back to Ronan. “Fil, quick, give us some light!”

All Filif’s berries blazed with wizard-light as Nita reached sideways into her otherspace pocket, found it where it belonged, pulled out her manual, and dumped it on the floor. Its pages riffled wildly as she pulled the rowan wand out of her belt and shook it down once like someone shaking a thermometer: white moonfire ran down it. She looked down at Ronan, put a hand on his chest next to the place where the Spear had gone in—then froze.

She looked up at Kit. “Is he breathing?” she whispered.

Kit looked at her, and very quietly said, “No.”

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.