Wizards At War

“It’s good you all got here before I had to leave,” S’reee said. “There’s a lot to do back home, for I, too, have been ‘upgraded.’ I am now Wetside Supervisory Wizard for Earth.”

Nita’s mouth dropped open. “S’reee, you’re kidding. The whole planet!”

“The oceans, at least. When we first met, and I’d been promoted to Senior so young, I hated it. But now the experience seems like it’s going to come in handy.” She swung her tail in a thoughtful way. “It almost makes me think—”

“That Someone or other might have planned it this way in advance?” said a rather young voice from the far side of S’reee.

Kit glanced up. He started to grin. “Is that who I think it is?” he said.

A small human shape came ducking underneath S’reee’s floating broad, barnacled belly: a little dark-skinned kid, slender and slight in jeans and T-shirt, maybe about eleven years old, with a short afro and quick, bright eyes. “Hey,” he said, “dai stihó, everybody!” And then he saw Kit, and laughed that peculiarly joyous laugh of his, and went to throw his arms around Kit in a big hug.

Nita looked hurriedly at Ronan. Listen, she said, about Darryl—

He’s a lot more than he seems, Ronan said.

A whole lot. And we don’t mention it.

Of course not.

“Darryl, my man, look at you!” Kit said as they broke the hug, and Nita headed over. “Are you taller? Are you actually bulking up?”

“Just eating more,” Darryl said. “Yeah, I’m growing all of a sudden. Guess I’ve got the energy to spare now. Don’t get into it with my mom—she says that these days I cost too much to keep. Almost too much.” He grinned, turning away from them and S’reee toward the others as the visitors merged their bubbles with S’reee’s big one. “Hi, guys, who are you all?”

Introductions got under way. As they did, Nita saw Dairine giving Roshaun an unusually intense look. Roshaun put his eyebrows up, and then took them right down again. Any wizard in Darryl’s vicinity would notice an atypical intensity of power. But once you realized what it meant, it wasn’t something you discussed with Darryl, ever. He didn’t know about it, and wasn’t meant to. The situation was like knowing a superhero with a secret identity. But the difference here was that everybody else knew about the secret identity, and the superhero didn’t… which was a good thing, because if Darryl ever found out he was a direct channel of the One’s power into the world, the discovery would kill him.

Darryl turned back to Kit after a few moments. “I looked you up in the book, saw you were off joyriding halfway across the galaxy.” Darryl looked Kit over approvingly. “Got yourself some tan.”

“Nearly got myself a scorched hide,” Kit said. “Our old ‘friend’ again.”

Darryl nodded, his grin fading a little. “Well, we’re just going to have to screw up Its plans one more time.”

“Yeah, and then we can get back to business,” Kit said, and looked up at the sky. “Like the M—”

“The Martian thing!” Nita and Dairine and Darryl more or less shouted in chorus, leaving Sker’ret and Filif and Roshaun and Ronan all looking confused.

“You crack me up,” Darryl said, and whacked Kit in the shoulder in a friendly way. “Here we’ve got the whole universe going to pieces around our ears, and all you can think about is going hunting for ancient Martian princesses in skimpy clothes.” He guffawed.

“Will you cut it out? It’s not about princesses! That’s just in a book!” Kit said, but no one was listening. There was too much laughing going on. “Come on, Darryl, give it a rest!”

“Okay, never mind,” Darryl said, “you’re off the hook till we get present business sorted out. I can’t believe how full my manual’s gotten in the past few days. Just look at it—”

To Nita’s surprise, Darryl reached not into a nearby space pocket for his manual but into the front pocket of his jeans. Dairine stared at what Darryl brought out. To all appearances it was a sleek rectangular white-and-silver MP3 player, but as he turned it toward them, Nita could see that the apple on its little blue-glowing screen had no bite out of it.

“That is too slick!” Dairine said. Spot came up from behind and put some eyes up to goggle in a friendly way at the WizPod.

“Yeah,” Darryl said. He pulled it open—which shouldn’t have been possible—until it looked like a little book, and then opened it out again, and again, and yet again, until it was more like a flat-screen monitor than anything else, but one you could hold in your hands. Manual data started scrolling down its surface, imagery and spells together. “It’s got all the usual spell-storage and display options,” Darryl said. “And it carries my tunes. Like I’ve got time for music when this thing’s got twenty times the content, all of a sudden…” He grinned as he folded it up again.