Wizards At War

15: Armistice

It was, of course, not so simple. There was first of all the matter of Ronan.

His problem was easier to solve than Nita had feared. In the company of three thousand wizards, there were always going to be many who were expert at healing, and some far more so than Nita was. Within a very short time, Darryl had introduced Nita to a spiky-haired fifteen-year-old boy in floppy surfer shorts and a jeans jacket. As he hunkered down by where Ronan hovered, Nita found herself looking at the boy curiously, for he was familiar somehow.

“Missed the heart by about a centimeter,” he said in an Aussie accent, running his manual up and down over Ronan’s chest and looking at the visualization of the wound that appeared on the manual’s pages. “Went right past the right atrium into the lung, but below the major bronchi, and cauterized the tissue on the way in, so the lung didn’t bleed or collapse. Missed the vena cava, too!” He sat back on his heels. “Couldn’t have done it better with a scalpel, but that’d be the Spear for you. Whatever he might have had in mind, it didn’t care to kill him. Or need to, I’m thinking—the trauma and shock did the job of letting the Defender out, not to mention his own intentions. I don’t think he lost all that much blood.”

“Now I remember you,” Nita said. “We met in the Crossings!”

The boy blinked at her, then he grinned. “No accidents, are there?” he said. “Call me Matt, cousin. Get ready to pull this stasis off him, and we’ll have him right as rain in no time.”

It was a little longer than no time, and Matt looked a little pale by the time it was over. But fifteen minutes or so later, Ronan lay breathing quietly, and Matt was sitting in the moondust getting his breath back, his own wounds closing up. Like most healing wizardries, this one had needed blood.

“But he’s not conscious!” Nita said.

“He won’t be for a little,” Matt said. “His body’s still got to deal with the leftovers from the shock. Take him home, stick him in bed, let him have a few hours’ rest. He’s been through the wringer.” Matt gave Nita a look, and glanced at Kit, who’d come to join them. “But so have you.”

“He can be in my room,” Dairine said from behind them. “I have some things to take care of.”

Nita looked at Dairine with some concern. Her sister was holding Spot, which was normal enough, but so calm and flat a tone of voice was alien to her. Behind her, Carmela glanced at Dairine, then at Nita, and raised her eyebrows.

Nita nodded, and got up. “Sounds good. Matt, thanks!”

“No problem. Have him get in touch with me in a couple of days. I’ll want to do a follow-up,” Matt said as he stood up. “I’m in the book.” He sketched them a small salute, and vanished.

They looked around them, watching the crater start to empty out. Nita looked up at that dark sky, full of stars again, and breathed out in relief. “Come on,” she said.

They all vanished too.

***

Her backyard looked so utterly ordinary that Nita could barely believe it, the late-afternoon shadows of spring lying over it absolutely as usual. She sighed. “We’ve got to go back and touch base with Sker’,” she said. “See if he’s found his ancestor yet.”

Dairine nodded and went ahead of them, very quietly, unlocking the back door and vanishing into the house. Carmela glanced at Kit, then started after her.

Nita put out a hand. “Let her go,” she said. “‘Mela, maybe this is a job for you. Want to go check on Sker’ret?”

Carmela nodded, and roughed up the top of Kit’s hair before he was able to do anything about it. “I’ll go tell Mama and Pop that we’re home,” she said. “And that you’re a hero.”

“Spare me!” Kit said, but Carmela was already trotting down the driveway.

Nita and Kit headed for the back door. Just briefly, as they opened the back gate, Nita paused to look up at the Moon. There it hung, just past first quarter and looking utterly innocent, as if nothing of any importance had been happening.

“It’s hard to believe,” she said to Kit.

“I still can’t believe it,” Kit said. He was standing by the gate as if waiting for someone to run past him.

“Come on,” she said softly. She checked to make sure that the wizardly screening field around their property was still in place, so that the neighbors wouldn’t freak when they saw a body being levitated in through the back door.

They had gotten no farther than into the kitchen when Nita heard the sound of someone dropping newspapers by the easy chair. A moment later, her dad came around through the dining room and into the kitchen. Nita ran to him and hugged him hard. “Are you okay?”

“I feel fine,” he said. “How about you?”

There were too many possible answers to that question, some of them contradictory. “It’s going to take a while to tell you everything that happened,” Nita said. “But are things okay here?”

Her dad sighed. “It looks that way,” he said. “The political situation looked pretty bad late last night and early this morning, but now the news channels say that all the people who were threatening each other with nukes have begun to see sense and back down.” His expression got wry. “One of the commentators said, ‘Often you wait for one party or the other in a crisis to blink. But this time they all blinked at once.’”

Nita managed a very slight smile. “That would have been about the time,” her dad said, “that every dog in town started to howl.”

She put her eyebrows up at that. “Oh, yes,” her dad said. “And it wasn’t just here, either. Dogs all over the state, possibly all over the country. There are as many theories as there are news channels that are bothering to carry the story. The main theory seems to be that the government was testing some new kind of sound weapon. Or early warning system.”

Nita shook her head. “Ponch,” she said.

Her dad had been looking at Kit, who was looking at Ronan. “I thought maybe it was something like that,” he said. “Because all the other governments on the planet seem to have been testing the same weapon. —Tell me later. What about Ronan there?”

“He needs somewhere to rest awhile before he goes home,” Nita said. “Dairine said we should put him in her room.”

Her dad nodded. “Fine. Neets … how is she?”

Nita shook her head. “I don’t know.”

Her dad sighed. “Okay,” he said. “By the way, school called.”

“Oh no.”

“You all have to be back tomorrow,” he said.

Nita was tempted to say No, please, I need one more day! But then she nodded, for it struck her that the utter terrible normalcy of school might actually be something of a rest, after all this. “Okay,” she said. She turned to Kit. “Let’s get him upstairs so he doesn’t have to be floating around down here.”

It took a few minutes to maneuver Ronan up the stairs and into Dairine’s bed. When Nita got up to her room, Dairine was standing and looking into the closet with a very strange expression. As they came in, she turned hastily.

“Give us a hand here, Dair?” Nita said, pretending not to have noticed. Within a few moments they had Ronan settled, and Nita pulled off Filif’s levitator field, wrapped it up into a small tight ball, and stuffed it in her pocket.

“Did Dad tell you about school?” Nita said quietly to Dairine.

“Yeah.” Dairine gave Nita a look. “And don’t even ask. Yeah, I’ll be there. The last thing we need right now is more trouble. But I’m going out in a little while, and I might not be back till late.”

Nita nodded.

“I’m lying on an effing Star Wars bedspread,” said a dry voice behind them. “Will I ever be able to look myself in the eye again?”

They all turned.

“By the fact that I’m not on Rashah,” Ronan said, looking around him, “but instead apparently in suburban hell and in contact with this dubious cultural artifact, I take it that we won.”

Nita went over to the bed and looked down at him. “Mostly,” she said, “because of you.”

“Now why do I doubt that?” Ronan said. He started to stretch, and then scowled. “Janey mack, feels like somebody’s been performing Riverdance on my chest.”

Nita spared a moment to wonder who or what “janey mack” was. “That would be because of the incredibly dumb stunt you pulled,” she said.

“Wasn’t so dumb, was it?” Ronan said. “We’re here.”

Nita found herself getting annoyed. “You scared us to death.”

Ronan looked at her. “Oh, stop your whinging,” he said. “I couldn’t go anywhere, the way you were yelling at me. Don’t think I didn’t hear you.” He turned his head wearily to look at Kit. “What is it with these women? Always yelling…”

“They do that,” Kit said, rolling his eyes.

Nita scowled at him, joined by Dairine.

“But it has to be a lot quieter in there now,” Kit said.

Ronan snorted. “And sure now don’t I miss Him,” he said, sounding annoyed. “Typical. If I’d known I’d be rid of Him so soon, maybe I’d have appreciated Him more.”

“But you didn’t know,” Nita said. “You thought He was going to be in there forever.”

“He knew, though. That much I gathered as He was leaving. And He was just after gathering that the Spear hadn’t been forged for me, or for Him, all that while ago. It was always forged for Her, for the Hesper, even when the Smith of Falias first made it, ten thousand years ago. And I thought I was just a spear-carrier? So was He.” And Ronan laughed, then. “He thought it was a stitch. You should have heard Him laughing.”

“I did. I mentioned about His sense of humor,” Nita said, and rubbed one ear in memory of having been bitten there by the Defender, long ago.

“You did. But the whole bloody thing was a setup. The Hesper’d never have broken loose all the way unless the Lone One was there trying to stop Her. If It’d just ignored Her, none of this would ever have happened.” He grinned that dark grin of his. “But wasn’t that how They had it planned?”

He sighed, then, and glanced at Kit. “Where’s the big fella?” he said.

Kit shook his head and turned away.

“It’s a long story,” Nita said. “You get some rest. We’ve got some things to do.”

“And what’s that big ugly thing on your face?”

Nita put up one hand, astonished. The zit stung her. She glared at Ronan.

“As soon as you’re rested,” she said, “go home, you ungrateful slob!”

Ronan grinned at her as they went out.

***

Nita paused just long enough to take the shower she had been desperately longing for and change her clothes. About half an hour later, pausing only to stop in at a shop in a little strip mall on the way, she and Kit were standing on Tom and Carl’s doorstep.

Nita pushed the doorbell. She looked at Kit uneasily while they waited, and waited.

The inside door opened. Tom and Carl were standing there looking at them.

“Uh, hi,” Nita said.

The silence lasted a few moments. Then Tom said, “We are on errantry… and, boy, do we ever greet you!”

He held the screen door open for them. Nita tackled Tom, and the hug went on for some time.

A few minutes later, they were sitting around the kitchen table. Nita shrugged out of her backpack, pulled out the little cup for which she’d stopped at the strip mall, and put it down on the table.

Carl picked it up, looking bemused. “Why thank you,” he said. “It’s been months since anyone brought me half a pint of mealworms.”

“Tell Akegane-sama that I owe him one,” Nita said.

“Her,” Carl said.

“Are you guys okay now?” Kit said.

“If ‘okay’ includes being tragically embarrassed,” Tom said, “yes. But we couldn’t help it, any more than any other adult wizard on the planet could.” He turned to Nita. “I remember saying exactly what I said… and I believed it.” He shook his head. “It was terrible.”

Carl was nodding; he ran his fingers through his hair. “Imagine not doing anything but work for the TV station.” He shuddered. “It was a nightmare. Thank the One there’s more to life. Meanwhile, let’s see your manuals.”

Nita and Kit pulled them out and dropped them on the table. They were both back to their normal size.

“So it’s over,” Kit said.

“Oh,” Tom said, “I very much doubt that.”

Kit looked briefly panic-stricken. “You mean the Pullulus could happen again? But It said—”

Nita shook her head. “It’s never going to do that again,” she said. “The whole reason for the Pullulus was to keep anyone from helping the Hesper wake up. It’s too late for that now, and the Lone One won’t waste so much energy again on an attack. This was a one-off.”

“Is that a precognition?” Carl said.

Nita opened her mouth, closed it again. “Uh,” she said. “I don’t know…”

“Well, you’d better start keeping an eye on what you say,” Tom said. “You started your Ordeal with a precognitive event, as I remember. At the time I wondered if that was going to be something that would develop in more detail later on. Looks like I was right; you may be changing specialties again. Better get back to your manual studies and make sure.”

Nita shook her head. “And just when I thought things might get quiet now, stay the same for a while…”

Carl shook his head, smiling slightly. “There’s only one part of this job that’s the same for life,” he said; “that everything’s subject to change without notice.”

Tom nodded. “Anyway, I’d agree with your assessment,” he said. “The Pullulus itself is retreating rapidly everywhere now. Within days, even hours, perhaps, it’ll be completely gone. And in the event on the Moon, it was burned clear out of space for something like eight light-years in all directions. As far away as Sirius.”

“The Dog Star,” Nita said softly, and smiled.

“There was also another interesting development associated with that burnout,” Carl said. “It seems to have duplicated itself on a smaller scale in the neighborhood of Rirhath B. They burned clean about the same time we did, the manual says.”

Kit managed a small smile. “Probably someone saying ‘thank you’ for all the blue food,” he said. “Carmela told us about that when she got back from checking on Sker’ret.”

“Did they track down the Master, finally?” Tom said.

Nita nodded. “It took some doing, but once wizardry got working again in the neighborhood, Sker’ret found him and the Crossings staff on some little ice planet orbiting a brown dwarf in the Lesser Magellanic. I think the Tawalf and their masters had some idea that they might use them as hostages, or hold them for ransom, if the attack didn’t go as planned. They were all suffering from exposure, but Rirhait are tough: they’ll recover in a few months. Sker’ret will be the Master for the time being.”

“Good,” Tom said. “That place works best when a wizard’s running it.” He stretched.

Carl sat back, his arms folded. “Well, the universe is fortunate to have come through this with so little damage,” he said. “Not that in other times and places the Lone Power won’t attack in ways that are as awful, locally. But that doesn’t change the fact that this was a victory of a kind we may never see again in our lifetimes.”

Kit had been looking out the window into the backyard, his expression unreadable. Nita looked at him with some concern. “Is it true, you think, what we heard from the Powers?” he said. “That we’re going to see more ‘births’ of the Hesper, and each one’ll get stronger?”

Carl, too, had been wearing a brooding look. Now he stretched and stood up. “It seems likely,” he said. “But the Powers, like the One, are cagey about their scheduling. They’re not going to give away anything that will make it easier for the Lone Power to derail what They’ve got planned.”

He went to the window, looked out to see what Kit was looking at: Annie and Monty, the two sheepdogs, playing out on the lawn, taking a bone away from each other and running around the yard with it. “But in the meantime, take a little while to feel good about what you’ve just done. Any victory that can be won in the physical universe is just a picture of the bigger, slower one that started happening outside of time ages ago, and will keep happening outside of time until it’s all over.”

“And we win?” Kit said. He sounded doubtful.

Carl put a hand on his shoulder. “As long as we don’t stop fighting,” he said, “we always win. Because what we do, They do.”

“Not the other way around?” Nita said.

Tom shook his head. “It’s a popular misconception.”

He stood up. “You both look wrecked,” he said. “You should go get some rest. I understand that tomorrow is a school day.”

“Don’t remind us,” Kit said.

“And over the next week or so,” Carl said, “we’d appreciate it if you went through the manual ‘overviews’ of recent events and annotated them. Your take on exactly what happened is going to be invaluable.”

Nita nodded, shouldering back into her backpack’s straps. There were already a number of things that were bothering her. The peridexis, for one thing, had gone silent, and she was wondering whether she was ever going to hear that voice again; the inside of her head was strangely lonely. She wished she had better understood the reassurance it gave her almost the first time it had spoken, when the shadow of the Pullulus first fell over her dreams: “There is only one to whom it will answer, and that one is not here.” It meant Ponch. But there’ve been so many other things it said that I still don’t understand. She still remembered the Transcendent Pig, on the Moon, looking at them all with an expression that suggested there was still something it was waiting for. Or did I just imagine that? Having to study your own life is a pain.

They all headed for the door. Tom looked at them as he opened the inside door. “You did good,” he said. “But you know that.”

“Yeah,” Kit said. “I just wish it didn’t hurt so much.”

Carl nodded. “I know,” he said. “Dai stihó… and hang in there. It’s all you can do.”

***

At around the same time, many light-years away, Dairine stood alone on the high platform outside the throne room on Wellakh.

Her clothes were much different than they had been when she came here last, and she didn’t care. The only one for whom she would have willingly changed her clothes was not here now, though she was still wearing one thing from that outfit that she wouldn’t willingly show anyone else.

Dairine stood there at the railing, looking out over the vast, blasted sunside plain. There was no sign of the huge crowd of people who’d been there before. They had had the Pullulus, Dairine’s manual told her, as Earth had, but when Earth’s infestation had been destroyed, so had theirs. Now they were probably cleaning up the local effects the same way that people were doing it on Earth. And like people on Earth, they’d be telling one another, for a long time, sad stories about the awful time the world changed, and how nothing now was the way it had used to be.

Eventually she heard the footsteps behind her on the stone. They stopped a long way from her. She turned, then, and saw the two tall figures standing there. Behind them, the great bronze doors stood open; in the great hall of the royalty of Wellakh, on the floor, halfway down that long, polished way to the throne, a single light burned. It was the same golden-yellow color of the planet’s sun; and very alone it looked, burning there by itself.

Dairine stood there a moment longer, and scrubbed at her eyes briefly. She was probably kind of dirty, but she couldn’t help it. If she’d stopped to take a shower—if she’d done anything except come straight here—she might have talked herself out of coming at all. And that would have been wrong. Slowly, she walked to them—Roshaun’s mother, Roshaun’s father, standing there together, waiting for her.

She could hardly bear their faces as she got closer to them. Wellakh’s sun was behind them; they stood in the shadow of the uprising peak from which the castle was carved. Their faces were in shadow, and their eyes. But that didn’t stop Dairine from seeing their expressions … and she wished she couldn’t.

She stopped a few feet from them, and looked up into their faces. They were so calm, and that by itself made the tears come to her eyes again. The hollow sorrow in Roshaun’s mother’s eyes was terrible to see. His father—Dairine looked up into that cool, set face, and realized that his mastery of his own expression was not as total as he might have hoped.

“I think we know,” Roshaun’s father said, “why you are here. And why you are here alone.”

Dairine looked up. “He did everything he could,” she said. “He did everything that was asked of him. More than was asked of him.” She gulped. “And it wasn’t enough. But that never stopped him…”

Roshaun’s mother stood very still, and only nodded, the tears running down her face. “Where did it happen?” Lady Miril said.

“In my solar system,” Dairine said. “We solved the root cause of the Pullulus, but after that we decided to go back to my world…”

“We decided?” Roshaun’s father said.

Dairine looked him in the eye. “He decided,” she said. “You of all people should know that nobody made his choices for him. Not you; not me.” Then she reached into her pocket. “But, afterward, this was left.” She brought out the collar with the Sunstone, looked down at it, and then held it out to Roshaun’s father. “Please,” she said, “take it.” Because having it hurts too much—

Roshaun’s father looked at the Sunstone, and shook his head. “I will not wear it again,” he said. “I think it’s yours now. For look—”

She looked at it. The stone had been clear; now it had gone a much lighter gold than it had been. “It did that before,” she said.

“It is a sign of the mastery passing to another,” Roshaun’s father said. “It seems to have become attuned to another star.”

“Mine,” Dairine said. “Ours is this color.”

There was a long pause. Roshaun’s father reached out to the stone, and then pulled his hand back. “It is still active,” he said. “There are some routines that you should learn. He would have wanted to know that its power was not wasted, that it was safe with one he had—” Roshaun’s father broke off. “That he thought worthy of his attention. Some of those usages you could be taught. With proper supervision…”

Dairine got a clear sense of what terrible control Roshaun’s father was exercising over himself. She was determined to show that hers could be as great as his; here, in particular, at this point in a life that had been so much about control—and in which she’d lost so much control lately. “I’d like that,” she said, “if you have the time.”

“There’ll be nothing but time now,” Roshaun’s father said. He gazed down at Dairine and reached out a hesitant hand to touch the necklace that just showed under the collar of her shirt. There, around her neck, where it would stay, was the fat, round, gleaming emerald threaded on a single sentence in the Speech. It was not until a little earlier, when Dairine had had a moment by herself, that she’d had time to read what that sentence was. She was determined not to think about it now. She’d just cry again. “And what we taught him—” Roshaun’s father said. “That we can teach you, so that you can guarantee the safety of another world as he guaranteed his. Another star.”

“Thank you,” Dairine said. She was controlling herself very tightly, for right now, more than anything, she wanted to say to them, even to shout at them, Stop talking about him in the past tense! As if he’s—But she couldn’t say it. Part of her was certain that she was deluding herself. The thought, You’re just in denial! was already coming up. To say out loud what she really believed would merely guarantee that other people would think she was in denial, too.

But I can’t believe it yet. I can’t say anything until I’m sure. Not until I’ve made that one last test.

Dairine looked from Roshaun’s father to his mother. “Our world is going to need some straightening up after all this trouble,” she said. “It’s going to take a long time to get things back to normal. But as soon as I can come, I will.”

She turned and looked across the vast plain of the sunside. “But he loved you,” Dairine said. “Whatever else he would have wanted you to know, he’d have wanted to make sure you knew that.”

She had to go, then; she felt her control starting to slip. Back by the railing, Spot waited for her, silent. As she headed back, the darkness of a worldgate opened for her. Dairine stepped through, not looking back, and vanished from Wellakh.

***

No matter what Tom had told her to do, it took Nita a long time to get settled enough to rest. She walked Kit home, and talked to his parents, and reassured them as much as she could that they were both in fairly good shape. But all Mr. and Mrs. Rodriguez had to do was look at Kit to tell that there was a lot more to be said on the subject. It was Carmela’s mental state—thoroughly confused but still basically cheerful—that reassured them most.

And then everything started to catch up with Nita: she actually began to fall asleep on the dining room sofa while Carmela told them about what had happened on the Moon. Nita opened her eyes very wide and got up. “I’m so sorry,” she said. “I’ve gotta go.” She said her good nights to Kit’s folks and headed out into the driveway.

He followed her out. They stood there together for a moment, looking at the Moon.

“I miss him already,” Kit said. “It really hurts.”

Nita nodded. “I know,” she said. “Even though he’s okay. More than okay.” She shook her head. “It’s not the same.”

She yawned. “Oh, God, I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s not that— You know I don’t—”

“I know,” Kit said. “Go on, go home, get some sleep. We’ve got an early morning.”

“Yeah,” Nita said. But Kit didn’t move to go inside.

“You’ve been hugging everybody else in the place,” he said after a moment.

Nita turned around and gave Kit a hug calculated to be twice as emphatic as any she’d given anybody else. Then she held him a little ways away.

“You’re not all right,” she said in the Speech. “I’m not all right, either. But we will be.”

“Is that a precognition?” Kit said.

Nita smiled very slightly. “Yes,” she said. “Now get in there and let them know it.”

Kit nodded, punched her lightly in the arm, and went inside.

Nita went home. Her dad was making dinner; she helped him, and was for a while blissfully happy with the simplicity of macaroni and cheese. Dairine arrived not long after dinner started, sat down, and was uncharacteristically silent. She ate, thoroughly but unenthusiastically, and then went up to bed.

Nita’s father looked at her as they were finishing up. “I guess this means,” he said, “that even after you save the universe, you can still feel let down.”

Nita nodded. “It doesn’t last,” she said. “It keeps needing to be saved.”

Her dad smiled at her a little. “Take your time,” he said, as he got up to take his plate into the kitchen, “but I really want to hear all about it. Because it’s worth knowing that it can be saved.”

Nita smiled at that, stretched and yawned, then brought her own plate into the kitchen, kissed her dad good night, and went up to bed.

***

Dairine had gone to sleep holding the Sunstone, suspecting what the result of that would be, especially at a time like this.

The place through which she moved was one of light, and gathered around her was a huge crowd of inhuman shapes. Mostly little and low-built, shelled in light, they moved through a gigantic construction of fire that towered above and around them. Under them, as a floor, lay a spell diagram of incredible complexity, seemingly miles wide, a plain over which the low, shelled creatures moved casually while the uppermost fires of a star roiled and burned beneath them.

Dairine walked out over that wide floor of wizardry, and many of the shelled shapes accompanied her. You’re not supposed to be here just yet, one of them said.

Dairine glanced over at Logo. “Neither are you,” she said. “You’re all still alive!”

Don’t mistake this for Timeheart, Logo said. This is just an anteroom—a portal area. But you brought us the data that made what’s going to happen here possible. Causality therefore becomes something less than an issue. And Logo gave Dairine a mischievous look.

You shouldn’t be raising false hopes, Dairine said. Everything dies eventually. Everything runs down. No exceptions—

You’d be surprised, Logo said. Everywhere it can, the universe breaks the rule, sometimes in the strangest ways. That’s what wizardry’s about, isn’t it? Finding the unexpected way to foil the force that invented Death. Doing what Life itself does every chance it can. You’ve put the tools in our hands, and now the possibilities are endless.

Dairine swallowed. Let’s see how endless, she said. Show me what I came to see.

They walked a long time across the plane of wizardry, through the unending light. Finally, though, Dairine came to the place she’d known would be there. It looked a lot like Wellakh.

Here, though, the mighty spire of stone that reared up into the sky was not scorched barren. Here the red things grew, cascading down it, the hanging gardens of another world. Here that spire pierced right up into the darkness of space, not hubris or a challenge to the heavens, but a dream achieved. And all around it stretched an endless plain that was barren no more. Wellakh was healed of its old wound.

Dairine stood again high on that terrace above the world, looking down the mountain. She leaned over the railing as she’d done once before, seeing the beautiful red foliage of the native Wellakhit plant life stretching away for miles under the golden sun—not a garden, an artificial thing, but a natural reality, never destroyed by the terrible flare of the Wellakhit sun.

Dairine turned away from the railing and went across the terrace to the crystal-paned doors, and then through them, into the place where Roshaun’s rooms had been. The decorations were much the same as they had been before—to her eye, rich and overdone—but the light that dwelt in every carpet or chair or piece of artwork told her that this was his idea of perfection, the place of his desire. And he wasn’t here.

Dairine started to look around, taking her time. She went into every room in those apartments, explored every inch, but he was still not there. And in the last room she came to, a little place full of huge clothes-presses and nobly carved and decorated cabinets, Dairine found the one thing that could have surprised her. There was a darkness in one wall: the only darkening in that whole bright place—an active worldgate.

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.

Kit started to walk, because there was nothing else he could do. The only good thing about this, he thought, the only good thing, is that there won’t be any more weird howling all hours of the day and night. No more Hitchcock movie scenarios staged on his front lawn with dogs instead of birds. No more, he thought. All gone.

His eyes started to fill up, as he realized, on a different level, what Nita had had to deal with earlier in the year. The place where the other had always been … or for nearly as long as you could remember … now gone forever.

He kept walking, because that was what he did, this time of day, with a leash in his hand. There was no barking in the street. Even Tinkerbell, the slightly psychotic dog three doors down, stood quietly at his gate and watched Kit go by without the usual threats of bodily harm.

“Dai stihó,” he said.

Tinkerbell just stood looking at him, then turned and trotted back behind his own house.

Kit sighed and kept on walking down the block toward the corner where he usually would stop and let Ponch do his thing. The only thing he was missing right now was the plastic bag he’d have picked up Ponch’s doings with. There was no need for that now.

Kit stopped at the corner, looked around him, and let out a miserable sigh. What am I doing here? he thought.

That was when the sheepdog came trotting down the sidewalk. Kit just stood there for a moment, watching it come. It had been sitting on the lawn, weeks ago, and it wasn’t a neighborhood dog: Kit’s father had asked him where it had come from, and Kit had had no idea. His first urge was to turn away; the sight of any dog was a touch on an open wound.

Then he stopped himself. I don’t care, Kit thought. I want to talk to a dog, any dog, and get an answer back.

The sheepdog crossed the street toward him, jumped up onto the sidewalk, and paused by him, looking up. Kit almost managed to laugh: the way its hair hung down in its face, it was amazing that it could see anything. He hunkered down next to it and ruffled it behind the ears, though the gesture made his throat go thick with tears. In the Speech, he said, “So listen, guy, just where did you come from?”

The sheepdog shook its fur out of its eyes and gazed up at him, its tongue hanging out. That’s sort of a funny question, it said. You should know. You were there, too!

And Kit’s breath went right out of him—because though the sheepdog’s eyes were golden and not dark, Ponch was looking out of them.

Now the tears he’d been fighting so hard did come, and Kit didn’t care. “But I thought—I thought that you—”

That me did, said the sheepdog. But there’s a lot more of me now. I’m more here than I ever was. I’m in every dog there is! Didn’t I tell you I wasn’t going to leave you? The sheepdog grinned at him. Some parts of the old Choice were worth keeping.

Kit threw his arms around the sheepdog. But I made another Choice, Ponch said. For all of us. And now we have a new story: how the Hound of Heaven defeated the Wolf that ate the Moon … but only with the help of the Wise One who knew that what you give away, you get back a hundred times more, and who brought the Hound to where he could learn how the sacrifice could be made. Now all debts are paid, and we can all be more than we were.

And suddenly the street was full of squirrels, sitting upright on their haunches and looking expectantly at the sheepdog.

At least most of the time!

The sheepdog started wriggling wildly in Kit’s arms and washing his face like crazy. Laughing, Kit opened his arms, and the sheepdog went lolloping off after the squirrels, barking his head off, tearing down the road and out of sight. One after another, all the dogs living up and down the street started to bark.

With the tears running down his face, and grinning, Kit turned back toward his house to get his things. As he did, he saw someone standing at the end of his driveway, watching him, as if she’d known exactly where he’d be.

Laughing, he ran to meet her.