Wizards At War

Nita saw Filif and Sker’ret and Ronan looking around them in confusion. Ponch ran barking off across the green lawn under the trees…

…and from high up in the branches, thousands upon thousands of gray shapes came boiling down the tree trunks.

Ronan stepped hurriedly past Nita with the Spear of Light. Thin tongues of white fire coiled and curled around the Spear’s head, and the starsteel of the head itself burned silver-white as if the spearhead had just come out of the forge again, while Ronan hefted it in one hand, ready to throw.

But the squirrels paid no attention whatsoever. Their attention was all on Ponch. The ones behind Ponch ran after him, and the ones in front of him ran away from him and up the trees again as he started to chase them.

Ronan lowered the Spear. “Uh,” he said. “I don’t think this is where we’re headed…”

“Absolutely not. Sorry about this,” Kit said, sounding exasperated. “And welcome to dog heaven. This is one of the first places Ponch made; he seems to need to use this as a first stop…”

Let him get it out of his system, the Defender said.

“Not that it looks like we have any choice,” Ronan said. He shouldered the Spear again, which began to calm down, the uneasy flame about the blade pulling itself in and going quieter.

Nita walked up across the perfect, manicured lawn to join Sker’ret and Filif. Sker’ret’s eyes were looking in all directions at once, as usual. Filif was standing there with all his eye-berries glowing blue, gazing up into the pale blue sky beyond the branches.

“Kit told me about this,” Sker’ret said, “but he understated the strangeness somewhat.”

“More than somewhat,” Nita said. “It’s like a movie set. All perfect. If you’re a dog…”

Ponch was running back toward them now, surrounded by waves of squirrels. He and the squirrels dodged off to the left, past several of the really large trees, and briefly went out of sight.

Kit and Ronan came over to join them. Ponch ran out from behind the trees and back to Kit, the squirrels hanging back a little. As he came, Filif leaned away from Ponch a little, pulling his branches in. “You’re not going to try to water me again, are you?”

It was a joke, Ponch said, sounding somewhat pained.

“Good,” Filif said, with some force.

“And I think we’ve had about enough of the joke stuff for the time being,” Kit said, sounding unusually severe. “I thought we agreed earlier that we’d come here afterward?”

There was something here I needed, Ponch said. I can’t find the way by myself.

Nita blinked at that. “But you said you knew where we were going.”

I do. This is how. Ponch looked up.

Everyone else looked up, too, rather confused. Nita craned her neck back to follow Ponch’s glance, and was surprised when, all by itself, down the largest of the trees a single squirrel came running. It was white.

The squirrel ran down the bole of the tree onto the ground, and there sat up in the middle of the perfect green grass and looked at all of them. Ronan suddenly started to laugh.

Now I understand, said the Defender through him. It’s an embodiment, a way to perceive the trail as an active entity rather than as something passive. Very sophisticated.

And fun. Hurry up and put the leash on! Ponch said, while the white squirrel sat there completely still, its little dark eyes moving across them, one by one. Nita met its eyes and was briefly transfixed, perceiving the white squirrel somewhat as Ponch might have. It was shorthand for a twisting trail made up of a complex of many virtual scents, all braiding and corkscrewing through a peculiar skewed landscape that might have meant time and space as a dog saw them… or as Ponch did, as he wasn’t just any dog anymore.

Kit got Ponch to sit down beside him, and fastened the “collar” end of the wizardly leash around his neck again. Nita and Sker’ret and Filif and Ronan all arranged themselves behind Kit, holding hands or claws or fronds as they’d done before.

The white squirrel’s eyes met Ponch’s. Ponch leaped forward. Just a few lengths ahead of him, the squirrel ran across the grass, then jumped into a sudden darkness that leaped forward to surround them all.

They ran. Ahead of them in the dark, like a white streak through the blackness, the squirrel ran. Ponch tore after it. Kit ran after him, or was dragged. All the rest of them were dragged along as well, and a breath later the darkness vanished—