Wizards At War

How interesting it was that the place of Roshaun’s desire had a hole in it….

Carefully Dairine ducked and stepped through the worldgate—and found herself in her own backyard, out among the trees right at the back of the property, where she and Roshaun had worked their second-to-last great spell together. There was no one here, either: nothing but silence and a faint smell of sassafras. Out past the trees, her yard was bright with moonlight. She stepped out into it, and saw lights on in the house, and all around her trees that seemingly reached up to the stars, and a full Moon above it all, turning everything silver—so strange a color, for someone whose own world had no moon.

Behind her, Logo, silvered by that same light, looked out across the strange place, the image of a Timeheart within a Timeheart. Now do you understand?

Yes, Dairine said softly. We still have unfinished business…!

She went back out through the worldgate, and back out through Roshaun’s place in that virtual Timeheart, and back out to the railing. Then Dairine stepped back out of it all, across the plane of wizardry and back through the portals of dream to Earth’s universe, to the real world, to begin the search for the one who was lost.

***

Watching this in silence from the shadows of the trees, Nita nodded slowly, then stepped back into her own dream.

She walked out of the shadows behind the dais in the great central cavern of the Commorancy. It was empty except for a pool of darkness that slowly began to draw itself up into human shape to look at her.

Nita laughed at it. “You lose again,” she said.

“Oh, go on, delude yourself,” said the Lone One, Its arms folded. “So your wonderful Hesper is here after all. Do you think that matters so far above your level of existence are going to have any effect on your pitiful lives? You won’t live to see any difference her appearance will make. The worlds will seem to be doing the same old thing for millennia to come. And as for your ‘victory,’ you and your universe will be cleaning up its consequences for centuries to come.” It sounded triumphant. Yet behind the triumph, Nita could clearly feel the rage: none of this should have happened!

“Maybe so,” Nita said. “But for the time being, we’ll keep our old promise to you … because that’s what wizards do. We’ll keep on fighting the little versions of you that you’ve left all over the place. And as for the long term, well, we’ve got a new ally now: the one who’s doing what you should have done. So make what you can of what little time you have left.”

“Little? Little! For millions of years yet I will rule this universe!”

“‘Rule’?” Nita said. “Running around kicking over everybody’s sand castles doesn’t mean you own the beach. And as for ‘millions’—in the bigger scheme of things, what’s that?” She snapped her fingers, grinning. “Do what you can with it, because until you finally give up, we’ll always be here to stop you.”

It smiled again, one last time. “Wizards may always be here,” the Lone Power said. “But will you?”

It vanished.

Nita shook her head. Well? she said to the peridexis. Will I?

Let’s go find out, it said.

***

The next morning, Kit got up and did all the routine things that he did when getting ready for school. He got showered, brushed his teeth, got dressed, went downstairs. He ate breakfast, and washed the cereal bowl, and put it and the spoon away.

Then he sighed, and went to Ponch’s bowls, and picked them up, and cleaned them. He rinsed out the water bowl and put it away. The dry-food bowl and wet-food bowls were empty. He washed them, too, and put them in a cupboard. And finally he went to the back door, to the coatrack where the leash was hanging, and took it down.

The front doorbell rang. His pop was at work already, and his mama was still in the bathroom, so that when the door opened, Kit had to smile, knowing what was going to happen next. He waited there by the back door for a few moments.

“Oh, wow!” Carmela yelled. “You shouldn’t have! Or no; I take it back. Yes, you should!”

Very quietly, Kit went out the back door and down the driveway, swinging the leash. At the end of the driveway, he stopped, watching as the UPS truck that had delivered Carmela’s new curling iron drove away.

There were no dogs in sight anywhere. Kit stood there and just felt the loss: the strange feeling of having Ponch’s leash in his hand, but not having Ponch dancing around him and insisting that he hurry up and put it on him. It was much like the strange empty feeling of the braided rug beside Kit’s bed, which had no dog lying on it with his feet sticking up in the air—the strangeness of a bed where there was enough room to stretch your feet out in the morning, because there was no dog taking up the whole lower end of it.