Aurilelde grabbed his arm. “Khr— Kit!” she said. “No, don’t—”
But there was no need. One second Kit had believed himself to be looking at a monster, another example of the things that had just attacked him. Just? said the voice in his head. But now it seemed a month ago, a year. And the horrible thing running toward him was suddenly harmless, even funny, as the hind claws scrabbled for purchase on the floor, as it hurled itself toward him. “Takaf!” he said, and started laughing: he couldn’t help it. He got down on one knee.
The sathak flung itself at him, howling in inane greeting. Kit shoved the wand back into his belt and batted the claws away in the usual way. Then he grabbed the bizarre body, flipped it onto its back, and started rubbing the soft underbelly plating in all the right places, while Takaf squirmed and waved his claws around and made the usual idiot of himself.
Some other part of Kit stared at the strange thing on the floor, obsessed by a dream-memory of glinting green claws and deadly, empty metal eyes. But his waking mind now knew that the cold-hearted mechanical mav-sathakti were just imitations of the sathak, the few remaining companion-creatures from the First World to have survived here: and Takaf was probably the friendliest, most faithful, and dimmest of them all.
It took some minutes before Takaf had had enough reassurance that his master had returned for him to stop howling his relief and delight to the uttermost heights of the Tower. Then Kit stood up and looked over at Aurilelde, smiling slightly. “I couldn’t go up there without him,” he said. “Last time it was the three of us. This time it had to be the three of us again.”
Aurilelde looked at him, and a small, relieved smile started to creep across her face. “You are you again,” she whispered. “It’s truly you, come back as you promised. Even from so far, from so long! You had me frightened there for a while—”
Kit shook his head. “Let’s go up,” he said. “Let Rorsik bring on anything he likes. When we’re together, we can take on anything he’s got. Even the Darkness and the Doom—”
Aurilelde shivered. But she took Kit’s arm, and they headed across the Tower together to the transit cluster at the heart of the ground floor, with Takaf scuttling along behind.
The centermost pad in the cluster was empty. The three of them stepped on it together, and under them the circle of white stone lifted and began levitating into the Tower space, heading for the topmost floor and the tiny opening in it. “How many of them are up there, do you think?” Kit said.
Aurilelde shook her head. “Hundreds,” she said as they rose upward more and more quickly. “Rorsik has been whispering in a lot of ears that he’d take Father’s place if you don’t prove his trust in you to be wise. No one dares to be absent: everyone wants to prove they’re on the right side when the trouble starts...”
Kit swallowed, hearing that. But at the back of his mind, something odd was going on. The stranger-soul, the one who had been looking through his eyes and finding everything so weird and frightening, was now settling itself into a peculiar armed readiness, alert and waiting to see what would happen next. It was ready to intervene. Its heart was a wizard’s heart, and it seemed to be saying to him, I’ve come up against the Darkness every now and then, and It hasn’t done all that well. Let’s see what It’s got this time—
The pad of stone was drawing near the upper level now, and the aperture that would admit it was growing bigger and bigger above them. “’Lelde,” Kit said, while Takaf stood staring up at the many eyes gazing down at them through the nearing, glassy floor, “are you ready?”
“By myself?” She shivered. “But if you are— then I can be ready with you.”
He hugged Aurilelde’s arm to his side for a moment, then stood free of her as they ascended through the floor, concentrating on standing straight and tall beside her, trying to match a Daughter’s proud dignity with his own. As the pad locked into place, he heard the rustle and mutter of the crowd about them, felt the pressure of the hundreds of eyes on them: the fear, the unease, and in some cases the hate, bizarrely paired with hope. They hate it that they need an enemy to save them, Kit thought. They wish it could be any other way—
The two of them stepped out onto the ruby floor and headed for the Throne. Takaf came clacking along behind them, glancing nervously from side to side, for he could feel the threat as clearly as the two in front of him. Here, at the top of the Tower, the metal had been altered to let the clear uncolored light of day pour in; and under it, alone on that plain red sandstone bench, Iskard sat awaiting them, arrayed in the robes of the Master of the City, with a short lightgoad in his hand.
As they approached, he rose. Kit looked up at him—a man big and tall even for a Shamaska; the red-skinned face cold, set, and chiseled; the dark eyes cold, too. Only on his daughter did those eyes rest with any affection, and even then only for a moment. There were other influences in the room that mattered more.
Coming closer, Kit tried to keep his face set, too, trying not to betray any response that might upset what was happening. It had taken Iskard long enough to come to some kind of interior accommodation as regarded the relationship between the Daughter of the Shamaska and the son of the man who would have been the Eilith Master had their ancient rivalry followed the normal course. But no courses were normal anymore, nor could they be until both sides were freed to follow their separate fates in the New World—
They came to a halt before the Throne, and Takaf crouched behind them. “Welcome, young Khretef—”
Kit bowed. Aurilelde stood straight. “The Son of the Eilitt has returned,” she said, “bringing with him news of the prize the Master of the City requires.”
“News?” came a harsh voice from the crowd, and within a moment there was movement there, the expected shape forcing itself out into the open.
“My daughter always said you would return,” said Iskard, ignoring the interruption. “Many others had given you up for lost, Khretef. When you ventured out into lands filled with the creatures loosed on us by our ancient enemies, we feared you lost forever. Some there were—” and he looked toward the source of the interruption— “who even said you had betrayed us. But the Daughter spoke for you, and Aurilelde has always been wiser than fear: one who’s been able to see what others couldn’t, a seeress of the Old Light as well as one who sees into the Dark left behind us.”
The people gathered around the Throne rustled and muttered approval, some laying fists to chests and bowing in Aurilelde’s direction. She smiled at her father, and at the reaction of her people, but the expression had an absent-minded quality to it: it was Kit she was watching.
“She has seen nothing,” said the Shamaska man who was now approaching the Throne, “if this child of traitors and murderers has not brought back the Nascence with him! But he has nothing. Otherwise the City would not now still be trapped behind walls that cannot be broken, hemmed in by command of its enemies!”
Kit looked over at the owner of the angry voice now approaching them. He wore robes that were meant to recall the ones worn by the Master of the City, and he carried a lightgoad like the Master’s— through prudently unkindled: the city guards and warriors in the room would not have taken kindly to such a gesture, an overt challenge to the Master’s power. For his own part, Kit, now aware that his own clothes had somewhere along the line transformed themselves to a warrior’s proper harness, simply touched the firesword hanging at his belt and was reassured to hear the metal speak back to him in his mind as usual. That at least was normal, in this time when nothing else was.
“Rorsik,” said Aurilelde’s father in a dreadfully level and quiet voice, “be still. Your time to speak will come all too soon, I fear.” He turned to Kit. “So, Son of Eilitt: where is the Nascence, then?”
“Found, Master of the City,” Kit said, “in the green dunes halfway around the planet, where the enemies of Shamask once hid it.”
“And you should know, traitor, son of traitors,” cried Rorsik, “for it was your people who—??
?
“Rorsik,” said Iskard, and the lightgoad blazed up in his hand.
Rorsik fell silent.
“You have not brought it, however,” said Iskard.
“No, Master of the City,” Kit said.
The people gathered around muttered in distress. “Then your life is forfeit,” said Rorsik, and his face twisted up in a dreadful smile.
“I can’t produce it,” said Kit, “because it’s been sealed against us. Wizardries greater than ours have been used to render it dormant. It can’t be used to free us until the New World’s soul is found and mated to it. And this we cannot do without the help of the wizards of the Blue Star.”
A mutter of concern went among all those who were gathered to listen. But Rorsik only laughed. “This is mythology!” he shouted. “Just more tales of mysterious unknown magics from one who has everything to gain from spinning out his time among you until you actually start to believe his stories. What else would you expect from a child of the other side, one of those who watched the Darkness and the Doom come down on us, and laughed to see it come, and plotted to leave us to die as our world tore itself apart—”
“The wizards are here now!” Aurilelde said, and every eye in that great room turned to her. “They’ve found the Nascence in the dunes; they released its power; they triggered the tests, even the one that called for the manipulation of time. One has even invoked the Kinship upon himself! Soon we’ll be able to go among them and show them what we need. Then they’ll help us as I foretold, and there’ll be peace at last—”
Rorsik laughed again. “We all know why you want peace, Master’s Daughter! You and your traitor lover. You will sell us all to the Eilitt and destroy your own people. You are nothing but a tool of the ancient Power that sent the Darkness and the Doom upon us to begin with—”
A growl of anger started to go up from around the room. In the back of Kit’s mind, something said, quite clearly, Uh-oh— here we go! I was wondering when that name would come up.
He shivered at the sudden clarity of that voice, and Aurilelde, almost as if she’d heard something, too, glanced at him, worried. Undeterred by the anger of the crowd, Rorsik was shouting, “We can do nothing to make ourselves safe until the Dark Ones are destroyed— until their cities are dust, and the New World is cleansed of them! Only then can we spread safely through this world, make it our own, and resume our place in the light of the Sun as the First Ones, untroubled, in mastery over our world and our system again! And until the Nascence is ours, and the Dark Ones’ cities are revived and wiped out, none of us can be safe—”
Our worlds and our system? There was something about the phrasing that got the uneasy attention of the stranger-soul at the back of Kit’s mind. And something else was happening as well. The hair was standing up on the back of his neck. At his feet, Takaf was hissing, glancing about him with all his eyes, uncertain.
Above them, the sunlight was wavering, looking suddenly strangely faint. Almost everybody standing in that great assemblage under the Tower’s peak stared upward, even Iskard and Rorsik.
But Aurilelde did not. She turned to Kit. “It’s breaking,” she whispered. “It’s breaking too soon. There’s someone else here!”
Kit blinked— and suddenly he was Kit again, not Khretef with Kit watching from the background. It was strange, though, that now he could look at Aurilelde and see her as Khretef did. “It’s all right,” he said. “If it’s breaking, I can guess why. My friends have followed me. The other wizards. No, don’t be afraid! They’re really smart. They can help you! It’s what we came for, to help you—”
But Aurilelde was shaking her head, and her expression was frightened. “One of them is here already,” she said, gazing up into the sky, then looking nervously around her as if she was expecting something sudden to happen. “You can’t stay!”
“It’s okay,” Kit said, “they’re nice guys; you should meet them! One of them in particular is kind of special. Actually, they both are, but I should warn you about this one—”
“I know,” Aurilelde said, looking more alarmed by the moment. Her expression began to darken. “That one cannot come here. It would be dangerous— the City’s protection will break prematurely. You have to go!”
“Huh?”
“Khretef, listen to me. I don’t want you to go but you must!” She was staring around her now in real fright, and Kit started to get frightened himself, besides wanting to calm her down. “If the spell breaks before the right safeguards are in place and there’s enough power present to back them up, everything will be ruined. I won’t be able to stay.You won’t be able to stay! Please, Khr— Kit; I’m sorry, Kit; you have to go before anyone else comes. Please go!”
“All right,” Kit said. “But you have to try to let us help you, and if we can’t come here, how’re we supposed to—”
“I can’t tell you now. Later, later I’ll tell you, but this is a bad time, the wrong time!” Aurilelde was looking pale and scared. “It’s like it was before—when all the times were bad times, when it went cold and the Darkness was coming. We can’t let it come again—not after so long, not after all the time we waited!” She looked like she was about to burst into tears. “Please, Khretef; please go before the spell breaks!”
And now she was actually pushing Kit away, pushing him back toward the pad that had brought them up into the great throne room.
“Okay,” Kit said, backing away, “sure, no problem—” He glanced down and noticed that his clothes had shifted back to jeans and shirt and down vest: the sword that had been hanging at his side was a wand stuck in his belt again. And then as he looked at Aurilelde, he saw that her shape was wavering, too, and the long dark hair vanished and came back again, the beautiful face flickered and went smooth and gray, then came back; the eyes went pale, went dark—
Around him, the sunlight went weak; the Tower itself started to waver, to shimmer—
—was gone. Kit fell.
Just for a second he had a glimpse of the bare red ground, far far beneath. Skywalk! was his first thought, and he felt around in his head with desperate haste for the spell that would make the air go solid under him—
WHAM!
Kit came down on his face much too soon, as if he’d only fallen a few feet. All the same, the impact jarred the breath right out of him. He lay there gasping.
“Whoa,” he heard Darryl say. “Kit, you okay?”
Kit groaned and rolled over.
“If he can make that noise,” said a voice he wasn’t expecting, “he’s fine.”
He opened his eyes. There was a girl looking down at him: dark-haired, but the hair was strangely short. It was odd how much she reminded him of Aurilelde—
He blinked. Nita was looking down at him. Of course it was Nita.
“Where’ve you been?” she said, reaching down to help him up.
Kit staggered as he got to his feet. “Uh,” he said, “in the middle of a really strange experience.”
“Stranger than what we’ve been having?” Ronan said as Kit looked around him. They were near the edge of Hutton crater, and Kit looked southeastward from the crater’s edge to glimpse the edge of the next one over. Then Kit grinned a small crooked grin, for that crater’s name was Burroughs.
“You have no idea,” Kit said. “Come on and I’ll tell you—”
“You’ll tell us later,” Nita said. “You have to go home.”
“What? Why?”
“Helena’s back.”
For a second the name meant absolutely nothing to him... but only for a second. “Oh, no,” Kit said. “Better get it over with...”
“Like you have a choice,” Nita said. “Darryl, can you do the honors? We can all meet up tonight or something and go over the details of what just happened here.”
“Sounds like a plan,” Kit thought. But privately it occurred to him, as Darryl laid a hand on his shoulder, that the details might take considerably longer to sort out.
And as he and Ronan and D
arryl all vanished, it seemed to Kit that there was somebody else inside his head who was agreeing with him.
11: Olympus Mons
Nita stood there looking out across the crater called Hutton. It was late in the sol, and the light here would start failing in a while. But a glow of residual wizardry lay over the whole crater, sheening the surface with a thin skin of greenish light, as if with water.
In the midst of it all, Nita could still glimpse something that wasn’t really there anymore. A memory of gleaming towers and spires towered up into the Martian afternoon, the red tower at the heart of it all glancing back light at the setting Sun like a beacon.
She shook her head. Nita didn’t know the planet’s satellite schedule the way Kit did, but she knew that every inch of its surface got covered sooner or later. “Bobo,” she said under her breath, “we’d better stick a shield-spell over this until it fades out. It’s going to have to cover a whole lot of real estate...”
For how long? Bobo said.
Nita shook her head. There was no telling how long this effect might linger: the wizardry that had initially fueled it had surprising staying power. “Maybe a couple of hours?” she said, but it was a guess at best. “Can you get any sense of how much oomph is left in the original spell?”
A fair amount, the peridexis said. You could parasitize it, if you wanted to .
“You mean tell the illusion to hide itself?”
Yes. That will save you having to make the energy outlay for the shield yourself. And it’ll run the spell down faster.
“I’m all for that,” Nita said. “Let’s do it.”
A moment later the heat-shimmer of the simplest kind of visual shield came alive in the air above the city and spread itself downward toward her in an expanding dome. Seconds later, nothing was visible but a duplication of the rock-tumble and cratery landscape directly beyond the city’s limits. “Okay,” Nita said under her breath, “that should keep the neighbors from getting too crazy...” For there were already enough people on Earth who got all overexcited about rock formations that they insisted as seeing as faces and pyramids and whatnot—people who also insisted these “carvings” were proof that the doings of alien civilizations were being covered up by one government or another. Sometimes I wish wizards could just come out and tell them how hard it’s been to find out anything on the subject, even when you’re right down here walking around on the planet!