Wizards At War

“Oh.” She laughed. “My invisible friend.”

Dairine looked horrified. “Oh, jeez, not Bobo!”

Nita laughed again. These days she couldn’t remember the invisible friend she’d blamed for everything that went wrong around her when she was five or six, but her mom and dad had told her endless stories about “Bobo’s” escapades. “Uh, no,” she said. “Just wizardry.”

Kit stared at her. “Wizardry talks?” he said. “Is this something new?”

Nita closed her manual and chucked it into her otherspace pocket. “Yeah,” she said. “It took me by surprise, too.” She looked down at Ronan. He wasn’t breathing, but now that was normal. If he suddenly started breathing again, that would be a real sign of trouble. “Come on,” she said, “we need to get back. This should hold for a few hours at least.”

“Question is,” Dairine said, “is that going to be enough?”

“Let’s go find out.”

Filif came gliding over to them with something held in his fronds. It was a drift of what looked like smoke, but it was shot through with glints of the dark green fire that characterized his wizardries. This is a version of the mobility routine I use to get around on hard surfaces, he said. It will make Ronan a little more manageable until he’s able to get around by himself.

“Great,” Nita said. Filif shook the cloud of smoke out like someone shaking a sheet out across a bed; the cloud thinned, drifted down over Ronan, and shrouded him like a see-through blanket. As soon as it had draped completely down over him, Ronan levitated gently up into the air to about Nita’s waist.

“Handy,” Kit said. He reached out and nudged Ronan’s shoulder a little with one hand: he moved weightlessly through the air. “Okay, let’s get him into the transit diagram.”

The Yaldiv crowding around them made a little space for the wizards to pass over to where Roshaun had laid out their transit circle. As they made their way over to the diagram, one Yaldiv came up to them through the gathered crowd. To Nita’s slight surprise, it was the Arch-votary. She could just barely see the old patterns on its outer shell, which had burned themselves pale in the overflow from the Hesper’s transformation. “Friends of the Queen of Light,” it said, “will you return?”

“If we can,” Nita said. “There’s a lot going on at home right now.” It occurred to her then that there was something she wanted to do right away. She rooted around in her pockets until she found her cell phone. “But if we don’t come back ourselves, we’ll make sure somebody visits you when things quiet down.”

Kit floated Ronan into the diagram. “Can he go vertical?” he said to Filif. “He takes up a lot of room in here.”

“Certainly. I’ll help.”

While they were standing Ronan upright, Nita punched the “last dialed number” button on the phone, put it to her ear, and waited.

Nothing happened. She took the phone away from her ear and looked at it. Its dialing screen cleared and showed her a little message: DIALED PLANET UNAVAILABLE.

Nita’s blood instantly ran cold. “Planet unavailable?!” Nita said. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

She looked over at Kit, then at Dairine. Kit looked pale. Dairine’s eyes were worried. “If it means that wizardry’s failed completely back there—”

“I really, really hope that’s all it means,” Nita said.

“Unavailable?” Carmela mused, looking over Nita’s shoulder at the phone. “I think you need to change your service provider.”

“I want the old one back first so I can yell at it,” Nita muttered. She shoved the phone in her pocket, feeling herself starting to shake again. “You guys ready?”

“Ready now,” Filif said.

To the Yaldiv surrounding them, Kit said, “Take care of yourselves, people, and go well. Meanwhile, stand clear—”

The Yaldiv crowded away. Nita took a last look around in that great dimness, which just a short time ago had been so bright. Things looked really bad here, too, she thought. Just keep telling yourself that!

They vanished.

***

The group came out into a Crossings that wasn’t quite as frenetic as Nita had seen it last; and there seemed to be fewer Rirhait around … but she wasn’t sure whether that was a good sign or not. The group got off the transit pad on which they’d arrived and looked around.

“Which way?” Kit said. “We should check with the Master before we head out.”

“That won’t take long,” Nita said, and smiled just slightly. Away down the long shining corridor she saw a vividly purple shape pouring itself along toward them, followed by about thirty other Rirhait.