Wizards At War

A few moments later, Tom and Carl were getting out of Tom’s car: Tom looking as he usually did, tall and broad-shouldered, his hair graying, casually dressed in jeans and shirt with the sleeves rolled up; Carl, a little shorter, dark, dark-eyed, and—today at least—looking unusually intense, with the shirtsleeves down at full length. Nita’s attention fastened instantly on that intensity, and on Tom’s hair. He started going gray so fast, she thought. What’s been going on? What have I been missing?

Nita and Kit greeted the two Seniors as casually as would have been normal. “Hey, you three,” Tom said.

“Filif?” Carl said, turning to him. “Berries all in place?”

Filif laughed, a rustling sound. For the moment, anyway.

“Can we go in?” Carl said. “We’ve got a lot of ground to cover.”

“Yeah,” Nita said. “Come on.” She gestured toward the door.

Kit pulled the screen door open, holding it for everybody. Nita dawdled a little, watching with fascination as Filif went up the back steps after Tom and Carl. It was hard to see how Filif did it: his people had some personal-privacy thing about their roots, and when they moved, there was always a visually opaque field around the root area, like a little cloud that concealed the actual locomotion.

When they were all inside, Nita slipped past them and into the dining room to rearrange the chairs. As Tom and Carl came in, Sker’ret and Roshaun rose to greet them, the respectful gesture of a less senior wizard to a more senior one—though Nita noticed with some annoyance that Roshaun looked slightly skeptical.

“Sker’ret,” Tom said, while Nita sorted out the seating, “I was talking to your honorable ancestor this morning. He sends his best.”

“Does he?” Sker’ret said, politely enough, but Nita thought she caught some edge behind the words. Roshaun was standing there off to one side, with Dairine, looking slightly superior as usual. Carl turned to him. “Roshaun ke Nelaid am Seriv am Teliuyve am Meseph am Veliz am Teriaunst am det Nuiiliat,” Carl said, “eniwe’ sa pheir—”And then he continued, not in the Speech, but in a beautiful flow of language that sounded more like running water than like words. Nonetheless, the meaning was plain, for those who speak the Speech can listen in it as well, comprehending any language. “A sorrow for your new burden, Sunborn. Bear it as befits you, and lay it down in its proper time, mere cast-off shadow as it is of the greater radiance beyond.”

Roshaun looked utterly stunned. He bowed to Tom and Carl as if they were as royal as he thought he was, or more so. “May it be so,” he said, “here and henceforward.”

They nodded to him, and moved around the table to get settled.

“Now those are Seniors,” Roshaun said under his breath as he sat down beside Nita. “I was wondering if your people had any worthy of the name.”

“You have no idea,” Nita said softly. She wondered yet again exactly what was involved in becoming a Senior. It’s not like they’re so old. It’s not like they’re just grown up, either. Lots of grown-ups are wizards, and they never make Senior level, or even Advisory. What is it? What do you have to do? How do they know so much stuff, and make it look so easy?

At last everyone was seated. “Normally we’d spend a lot more time being social,” Tom said, “but today’s not the day for it, so please forgive us if we get right down to business.”

He let out a long breath, looking them all over. “Some of you,” he said, “will have noticed that the world has been getting… well, a lot more complicated of late. And, seemingly, a lot worse.”

“Yeah,” Nita said, thinking ruefully (among other things) of one significant change in the Manhattan skyline in the last decade, and what had come after.

“By ‘of late,’” Tom said, just a little sharply, “I mean, over the past couple thousand years.”

“Oh,” Nita said, and shut her mouth.

“It’s not local,” Tom said. “Matters have been worsening gradually all over the worlds; and wizards who study macrotrends have been concerned about it for some time. The Powers That Be haven’t had much to say except that this worsening is a sign of a huge change coming… something that’s not been seen before in the worlds. And now we know the change is upon us… because the expansion of the universe is speeding up.”

Kit looked a little confused. “But hasn’t it always been expanding? What’s the problem?”

“Bear with me,” Tom said. He looked at Nita. “What do you know about ‘dark matter’?”

“Mostly that it’s been missing,” Nita said. “Astronomers have been looking for it for a long time, maybe a hundred years or so. Now they’ve started to find it.”