Wizards At War

“And over the next week or so,” Carl said, “we’d appreciate it if you went through the manual ‘overviews’ of recent events and annotated them. Your take on exactly what happened is going to be invaluable.”

Nita nodded, shouldering back into her backpack’s straps. There were already a number of things that were bothering her. The peridexis, for one thing, had gone silent, and she was wondering whether she was ever going to hear that voice again; the inside of her head was strangely lonely. She wished she had better understood the reassurance it gave her almost the first time it had spoken, when the shadow of the Pullulus first fell over her dreams: “There is only one to whom it will answer, and that one is not here.” It meant Ponch. But there’ve been so many other things it said that I still don’t understand. She still remembered the Transcendent Pig, on the Moon, looking at them all with an expression that suggested there was still something it was waiting for. Or did I just imagine that? Having to study your own life is a pain.

They all headed for the door. Tom looked at them as he opened the inside door. “You did good,” he said. “But you know that.”

“Yeah,” Kit said. “I just wish it didn’t hurt so much.”

Carl nodded. “I know,” he said. “Dai stihó… and hang in there. It’s all you can do.”

***

At around the same time, many light-years away, Dairine stood alone on the high platform outside the throne room on Wellakh.

Her clothes were much different than they had been when she came here last, and she didn’t care. The only one for whom she would have willingly changed her clothes was not here now, though she was still wearing one thing from that outfit that she wouldn’t willingly show anyone else.

Dairine stood there at the railing, looking out over the vast, blasted sunside plain. There was no sign of the huge crowd of people who’d been there before. They had had the Pullulus, Dairine’s manual told her, as Earth had, but when Earth’s infestation had been destroyed, so had theirs. Now they were probably cleaning up the local effects the same way that people were doing it on Earth. And like people on Earth, they’d be telling one another, for a long time, sad stories about the awful time the world changed, and how nothing now was the way it had used to be.

Eventually she heard the footsteps behind her on the stone. They stopped a long way from her. She turned, then, and saw the two tall figures standing there. Behind them, the great bronze doors stood open; in the great hall of the royalty of Wellakh, on the floor, halfway down that long, polished way to the throne, a single light burned. It was the same golden-yellow color of the planet’s sun; and very alone it looked, burning there by itself.

Dairine stood there a moment longer, and scrubbed at her eyes briefly. She was probably kind of dirty, but she couldn’t help it. If she’d stopped to take a shower—if she’d done anything except come straight here—she might have talked herself out of coming at all. And that would have been wrong. Slowly, she walked to them—Roshaun’s mother, Roshaun’s father, standing there together, waiting for her.

She could hardly bear their faces as she got closer to them. Wellakh’s sun was behind them; they stood in the shadow of the uprising peak from which the castle was carved. Their faces were in shadow, and their eyes. But that didn’t stop Dairine from seeing their expressions … and she wished she couldn’t.

She stopped a few feet from them, and looked up into their faces. They were so calm, and that by itself made the tears come to her eyes again. The hollow sorrow in Roshaun’s mother’s eyes was terrible to see. His father—Dairine looked up into that cool, set face, and realized that his mastery of his own expression was not as total as he might have hoped.

“I think we know,” Roshaun’s father said, “why you are here. And why you are here alone.”

Dairine looked up. “He did everything he could,” she said. “He did everything that was asked of him. More than was asked of him.” She gulped. “And it wasn’t enough. But that never stopped him…”

Roshaun’s mother stood very still, and only nodded, the tears running down her face. “Where did it happen?” Lady Miril said.

“In my solar system,” Dairine said. “We solved the root cause of the Pullulus, but after that we decided to go back to my world…”

“We decided?” Roshaun’s father said.

Dairine looked him in the eye. “He decided,” she said. “You of all people should know that nobody made his choices for him. Not you; not me.” Then she reached into her pocket. “But, afterward, this was left.” She brought out the collar with the Sunstone, looked down at it, and then held it out to Roshaun’s father. “Please,” she said, “take it.” Because having it hurts too much—