High Wizardry

Reconfiguration

Nita stood in terror, hanging on to Kit, and watched the flowering start. It took her a few minutes to recognize what she was seeing.

The sky began to grow bright. It did it vaguely at first, from no specific source, as if the planet were suddenly developing an atmosphere and sunlight were beginning to diffuse itself through it. But there was no atmosphere, and anyway the brief burst of nova light hadn't had time to reach this world yet. Then slowly, sources became apparent: faint patches of light, others less faint; points of light that grew to beacons, bright as evening stars, brighter, bright enough to cast shadows from the torn-up rubble and the wildly assorted shapes that stood about and looked up in astonishment.

Dairine was not moving: she was frozen in mid-gesture, arms upflung, her fists clenched as if she were holding on to something by main force. The sky grew brighter. Space that had been black began to turn milky and misty; stars that had been bright, and the damaged swirl of the galaxy, swam in the light and began to vanish. Beside Nita, Kit was trembling. "What is it?"

She laughed, a shaky sound. "Olbers's paradox in action."

Kit's eyes widened. "You're kidding."

"Nope." It had been one of the bits of reasoning that led people to understand that the Universe was expanding. The galaxies were scattered evenly all across the globe of the sky: if they were not moving away from Earth at great speeds and taking their light with them, Olbers had reasoned, the night sky would be not black but one great sphere of light. Since it was not all light, the Universe must be expanding. And so it had been. . until now.

"I think I want to leave," Kit said, sounding uneasy.

Nita felt the same way. She felt cold: she wanted to get out of this light. Earth would be going crazy, just about now, and wizards would be needed there to keep anything sudden from happening. .

"Neets, c'mon. Let's hustle. Dairine's okay."

Nita shuddered all over. "No."

"Neets! People are gonna look up and think there's a nuclear war or something! If someone doesn't warn them what's really happening-"

"Kit," Nita said. "I'm not leaving. I want to, too. Or rather, I think something else wants to." She turned her face up to the light. "What are you feeling?"

He looked at her, stunned. "Scared. ."

"Of what?"

She glanced over at Kit. He was rubbing his head: it was always headaches, with Kit. "The light. But that's crazy."

"You bet. Stand your ground. And look!"

They looked. The light got brighter: it was impossible to understand how it could. The broad glassy plain shone unbearably, the mobiles glittered. The only thing that did not shine in that light was the great length of darkness, like a shadow with nothing to cast it, that crouched over on itself in the midst of the plain, and writhed like a tortured thing.

The light still grew. There was no seeing anything by it anymore, but that brief blot of darkness that refused and refused the light, twisting, moaning. The light hammered at it. The urge to leave withdrew.

Nita, blinded, elbowed Kit lightly in the side, a get-a-load-of-this gesture. They had seen this light before, or something very like it; but it was not a light that waking eyes were supposed to be equipped to handle.

It was brother to the light in Timeheart, which had always been there, which did not change but grew every second, and made the ability to bear it grow too. Turn from it, and it blinded: stare into it till it blinded, and you could see.

They stared. "Did we die?" Kit whispered.

"Not that I noticed."

"You think we're gonna?" He sounded as bemused as Nita felt.

"You got me." It didn't seem important.

The light whited out everything but that long, prone core of darkness, that grew less as they looked at it, as if the light dissolved it. It went flat. It lay against the burning ground and misted away. It was barely more than a gray shadow. Finally it was not even that.

And Dairine fell down.

/ told you we were going to talk.

Dairine felt It scrabbling in Nita's and Kit's souls for a foothold. She felt them refuse to flee and take It to safety; she felt It slip. She held the light, held It in the light. Through Its connection to the motherboard and Logo and through her own heart, she heard Its screams of recognition. It knew that light of old: the heart of all brightness, the radiance that kills and gives life again-the light It forswore forever at the beginning of everything, and fled into the dark, determined to do without rather than subject Itself to the other Powers that had asserted ownership of it.

And you still want it. Don't you?

It would die rather than admit that. But It could not die. There was the prize irony: the inventor of Death could not avail Itself of it, for no creation is ever completely available to the Universe without the concurrence of all the Powers. There were a thousand thousand situations and places in the worlds where death did not obtain, and for endless millennia now It had gone from place to place and species to species among them, like a peddler selling poison under a hundred fair guises. Most bought it. All the rest tried to get rid of it when they realized what they'd bought, but whether they succeeded or not, they were never free of the taint.

But for the first time, Dairine thought, a species didn't buy it, right from the start. You never expected that to happen. You always get a foothold in every species first, and make the sale. But this time they handed it back. . and now they have the foothold in you.

We have the foothold in you.

It lay there and writhed in pain unlike any It had known since that first time, when It created and set in motion, and found that Its creation was unwelcome. It had forgotten what that light was like; It had not suspected that Their torment, when They caught up with It at last, would be so bitter.

But it only hurts because you do want it back. Don't you?

The humiliation of being gloated over by this mere chit of a mortal, a thing with a life brief as a mayfly's.

Look, the voice said, full of pity and anger and a grieving love, how could anyone not want that, you dumb spud? Just admit it and get it over with!

There were tears in the voice.

The Powers are not physical, and the habits of physicality come hard to Them. But the Lone One, after long wandering about Its bitter business, had spent much time in bodies, and much in human ones. The feeling of another's tears for It-the tears of someone who now knew It more completely than any mortal, and yet shed the tears freely-after endless justified cursing by ten billion years' worth of tormented intelligence, the feeling ran down the pitiless light like the head of an irresistible spear, and pierced It to the heart.

It fell down, a great disastrous fall like a lightning-stricken tower's, and wept darkness with desire for the light.

Dairine bent over It, not sure what to do, and the mobiles gathered around her and wondered as well. It lay fading in the growing fire. She looked at Nita and Kit for help.

They came over to her, looked down at It, shook their heads. Dairine was mildly bemused by the sight of them; she was going to have to stop calling her sister plain, or dumb-looking, and as for Kit, the thought crossed Dairine's mind that it was a pity Nita had dibs on him.

It's the light, of course, she thought; it wouldn't last. But it was kind of a shame.

"It is too late," the Lone One said. "I cannot go back. That part of me I murdered, willingly. I cannot find the way into the heart of the light. And they would not have me if I could."

Dairine wiped her face. "What are we gonna do?" she said.

Nita shook her head. "You got me. The coordinates for Timeheart aren't listed. . "

Kit sighed. "I wish Peach were here, we could have asked her."

There was a brief silence. "Oh," said a voice, "I'm not that easy to get rid of."

She was in the midst of them. Not Picchu. Or-was it not? She might look human, though very tall, and she might not be winged. . but there was still a sense of swiftness about her, rather like the sense you got about Picchu when you realized she was going to make a grab at your sandwich and either get a piece of it, or a piece of you. Swiftness, and power, and extreme beauty, so that Dairine and Nita were abashed, and both they and Kit stared at her with all their eyes. All this in a person burning even brighter than the light around them, and about nine feet tall; a person wearing a sweatshirt with the sleeves pushed up, and blue jeans and sneakers, a person with long dark hair, and a sword naked in her hand, and the sword burning; and the fire of the sword and the fire of the sky were the same.

"You're kidding," Dairine said.

The woman laughed. "Often. But not at the moment."

"You were Picchu?" Kit said.

"I've been a lot of people. You'd be surprised at the names." She looked down with concern at the Lone One, who lay like a shadow on the burning ground. "But rarely have those namings turned out so well."

This was a bit much for Nita. "You're one of the Powers, aren't you? We dragged You halfway across the Universe and busted our guts when You could have- Why didn't You do something sooner?"

"We have been, for billions of years," She said. "But We couldn't do anything really permanent until Dairine got here."

Dairine's jaw dropped.

"And now," She said, "if My brother here is amenable, We can start getting work done at last."

Kit stared at her. "Your brother?"

"I told you I've been called by a lot of names." She knelt down by the shadowy form that lay collapsed on the brightness. "Athene was one. And Thor. And Prometheus. And Michael."

"But you're a girl!"

Nita threw Kit a wry look. The Power grinned. "These things are relative," she said. "But even in your world it's a byword. Men will fight bravely and be heroes, but for last-ditch defense against any odds. . get a Mother." She smiled. "Ask Dairine."

Dairine grinned back.

"I was the winged defender," She said. "He was my twin brother, the beautiful one. Then. . the disagreement happened, and there was war in Heaven, and all the roles changed. I led the others in casting Him out." She shook her head sadly. "But I always wanted Him back… as did all the other Powers as well. So my role changed again. I became Prometheus, and many another. I was sent to you again and again, to put the Power in your hands. . wizardry, and other powers. I never had to steal it: it was given me. . from what Source, you well know. I had to help undo the evils my brother was doing, and again and again I intervened, in many worlds. But We nhad a plan: that one day, someone else would intervene, and He would stop doing them himself. All it took was the entropy He himself had invented…."

She looked at Dairine. "Billions of years, it took. All the redemptions there have ever been went toward this; from the greatest to the least. And finally in the fullness of time you came along, and took my role, of your own will, and woke up a race powerful enough to change the whole Universe, and gave them the fire." She glanced up at the mobiles and smiled. "How could he resist such a bait? He took the gamble: he always does. And losing, he won…"

"He killed you, though," Kit said.

"I struck him down once. I had to come where he could do the same to me, without my doing anything to stop him. Now the balance is even."

The Defender reached down and put a hand into the shadow. "And we are going where such matters are transcended. . where all his old pains will shift. Not forgotten, but transformed. Life in this universe will never have such a friend. And as for His inventions. . look closely at Death, and see what it can become."

The long, prone darkness began to burn, from inside, the way a mountain seems to do with sunset.

"Brother," the Defender said. "They're waiting."

The light began to shift. Nita looked up and around in wonder. The planet seemed to be going transparent around them. Or not specifically transparent: it was as if, one by one, other vistas were being added to it; seacoasts, forests, landscapes she couldn't understand, cities, empty spaces that were dark and yet burned; ten other worlds, twenty, a hundred, in an ever deepening overlay that enriched without confusing. Alternate universes? Nita thought, and then thought perhaps not: it was too simple an explanation. .

She looked at the Defender and found the same change and enriching in Her, and in the steadily brighter-burning form She bent over. Nita felt inclined to squeeze her eyes shut, not from pain but from a feeling of sheer insufficiency, of being involved in matters too high for her. "Never think it," said the Defender, beneficent lightnings flickering about Her as other forms and other names came and went in glory; "never think We were made to be less than equals in the One. Someday you will surpass Us, and still be Our equals, and both You and We will rejoice at it. Brother. . up, and see the way home. Let them see what they have triumphed over."

The Lone Power rose up, slowly, like one discovering walking after a life of lameness. And Kit and Nita and Dairine all gazed, and speech left them. Nita's eyes filled with tears as she wondered how darkness could be so bright. Lightbringer He was, and star of the morning; and like the morning star, He needed the darkness, and shone brighter in it, and made it blessed. .

"Home," He said, gazing upward; just the one word. All eyes followed His. Nita found herself looking into endless layered vistas that were not a mere radiant mirror, like Timeheart, not a repair, a consolation for the marred world, but something deeper, closer to the true heart of things, fiercer, more dangerous and more beautiful, something that had never gone wrong to begin with, that the Lone One had never had power to touch; a reality that burned like fire, but still was sweeter than water after thirst, and fed the thirst itself, and quenched it again in delight and more desire; a state so much more solid and real than mere physical being and thought that Nita held on to herself for delight and terror, afraid she would fade away in the face of it like a mist in full sun. Yet she wanted to see and feel more of it-for she knew that there was more. How many more realities like this, piled one on another in splendor, towered up into the burning depths of creation, each more concrete, more utterly real than the last? Even the Lone One and the Defender looked stilled and diminished in all Their strength and beauty as They gazed up into the light.

"Yes," the Defender said, "it's greater since you left. If these rough sketch-universes expand, how should that of which they're studies not be doing so as well? But there's room for you. There was always room.

You'll see."

They turned to look at Nita and Dairine and Kit and the mobiles. "Best make your farewells," the Defender said.

Dairine turned to the mobiles. Four or five whole seconds it took to say everything that she wanted to say to them: most of it not needing words.

"Don't forget to kill that spell," she said finally.

"Shall we come to see you?" Gigo said, bumping up against her knee.

"You better not, for the moment, guys," Dairine said. "I've got a lot of explaining to do at home. And I don't know when I'll be back… it may take a while." She bent to pick up the computer. "But you won't miss me, huh? I'm here, I'm with you.

I'm in you."

"We will come, later," said another voice from down by her knee. It was Logo, healed as the One Who had been in it was healed. "We'll come to where you live, when we're wiser in being human, and wake your quicklife up."

Dairine grinned. "Just what we need. . real computer wizards. Okay, you guys. It's a fair swap. It's gonna take a while for me to learn to be a computer…"

She paused, to make the usual effort: and the words came out easily, easily. "I love you, you know that?"

They didn't have to answer.

The light was growing past even a wizard's ability to handle it, even the ability of one being sustained by two of the Powers That Be. "Time," said the Defender. "Brother, will you do the honors, or shall I?"

"Let me."

And darkness surrounded them.

Nita had been afraid of the dark when she was little. For a terrible moment, that fear swept down on her again — and then shifted completely. Something was looking at her: but not a thing like the things she imagined under the bed when she was little. Some-One. Not a physical presence: it needed none; but a still, dark regard weighing on her soul-dark, and benign, and inexpressibly joyous. It was no less a weight for all that, and terrible, but not in any way that made her afraid. It bore down on her, considering her in endless calm, knowing her inside out; and the dark splendor of Its scrutiny so scorched and pierced her with some deeper kind of light that she would have gladly gone swimming in a sun for relief from it. Her skin and her bones and her brains cried out to be out of there. But her heart sang with irrational joy, to match the Other's, even while rationality cursed and twisted under the weight of being completely known. .

It spoke to her, not with words but as if she thought to herself. shadows are still abroad in the world. As I have done evil, for some time ye they still shall. Stop them. Stop me.

We will. Always.

Then the worlds are saved, as long as you save them all over again, eve day.

Deal, said another thought, as if her own mind spoke to itself; but thought was Kit's.

And light broke out again.

Backyard light. Nita's and Dairine's backyard, dark with evening; and hanging low in the west, the evening star. Voices floated out the windows from inside; Tom and Carl, still talking to the Callahans. In the elm tree, a mockingbird was doing blue jay imitations and demanding muffins.

The three looked at each other and sighed. Dairine headed around the house to the screen door, yanked it open, and hollered, "Hi, Mom, hi, Dad, we're home!"

Pandemonium broke out inside. Kit paused in the doorway. "What are we going to tell Tom?" he said.

"The truth?"

They went in in time to see Dairine go straight to her mom, willingly, and then to her dad, and hug them hard. This triggered a few minutes of loud noises, brief crying spells, and much fast talking. In the midst of it, Nita met her mother's astonished eyes over her dad's and Dairine's shoulders. She shrugged, and grinned. Some things not even being a wizard was going to help her explain.

It didn't last, of course. Dairine promptly disentangled herself. "If I don't go to the bathroom," she said, "I'm gonna blow up." And she headed up the stairs.

On the living room coffee table, calmly, as if it agreed with her, the Apple she had dropped there grew legs, climbed down, and went after Dairine.

Nita glanced at Kit, and together, as usual, they sat down to face the music.