The door to the hallway pushed open a little. “Room check,” said an adult voice.
Nita flushed hot with annoyance. It was one of the teachers who checked the toilets after the change-of-class bell to make sure no one was hiding in there and smoking or popping pills. Who needs this? Nita thought, getting furious all over again. Her hand went to her charm bracelet just as the teacher pushed open the stall door.
The teacher—it turned out to be one of the gym teachers, Ms. Delemond, a tall, blond, willowy lady—stared in at Nita, but saw nothing, because Nita had just climbed up on the toilet seat, to avoid the door, and had availed herself of the simplest way to be invisible: nothing fancy, just bending light. A second or so later, Ms. Delemond turned away, went to check the next stall, and the next. Finally she went outside again, and Nita could hear her footsteps going down the hall.
Nita got down off the toilet and let out one small breath of annoyed laughter. Then she reached into her claudication pocket, came out with the long chain of the ready-made transit spell she kept there, and dropped it on the floor around her. The chain of words knotted itself closed and blazed with light…
Nita came out in a sheltered part of her backyard, ankle-deep in snow, and the air-pressure change caused by the air she had brought with her from school made snow fall off the trees above her and onto her head. She spluttered as the snow got down her collar, not finding it funny and getting angrier by the second. Good. Use it. It’s a tool—
Nita’s house keys were inside her locker at school, along with her coat and her boots. Forget it, she thought as she went around into the driveway and up to her back door. She pulled the screen door open and put her hand against the wood of the inside door. “I need to walk through you, if you don’t mind,” she said in the Speech, while she reached down to the charm bracelet for another wizardry she’d been keeping there, this one with a charm like a little cloud. “Is that okay? Thanks, just bear with me.”
She said the three words that turned the low-level dissociator loose. Nita waited a moment for the itching to set in—the sign that every atom in her body was willing to move aside for atoms of other substances. In this case, Nita wanted to walk through the atoms of the door. She went through it like so much smoke, itching fiercely all the way, and when she was standing inside the back door, she let the wizardry go, then just stood there panting with the exertion of the spell, and scratched for a few seconds until she felt like all her molecules had settled themselves back into place.
She headed upstairs to her room, got her manual, and lay down on the bed. This had better work, Nita thought, because Dad’s probably going to go intercontinentally ballistic when he finds out I cut school. But I can’t help it. What’s the use of being a good little girl and losing my best friend?
She lay there and realized it was just too bright for her even to think about going to sleep. Nita opened her manual, went to the energy-management section, and turned pages until she found the wizardry she wanted.
She recited it, feeling the universe leaning in around her, paying attention, slowly muting down the light in her room as if someone was turning down a dimmer switch. Anyway, this is all my fault, she thought as the room got darker and darker. If I hadn’t been so wrapped up in my own troubles, I’d have been with Kit on this job from the start. Yeah, okay, I have a right to grieve. But do I have a right to dump my friends until I’m finished with it, until it’s convenient to listen to them, to care about them again? If I’d listened to Kit—
“He wouldn’t listen to me,” Nita had said. And “Now you know how he felt before,” Dairine had said to her, as blunt as always, and accurate. Kit had come right out and said that he wished he had backup on this job. She’d ignored him, and he’d gone ahead with what he was doing and got himself in too deep. I should have been paying attention to what was going on around me, no matter how awful I felt. I’ve been indulging myself. I’ve almost been having fun hurting. That’s so stupid.
Nita stopped herself. There was no point in rerunning the “guilt movies.” They always ended the same way. And a new guilt movie was no better than the old ones.
But she was still left with her anger at herself. Nita lay there just breathing, just feeling it, letting it build. Well, she’d been in too deep herself, not long ago, unable to see the trouble she was getting into … and Kit had pulled her out. Now she was going to be able to return the favor. But it wasn’t about scorekeeping at all; there were much more important issues. I’ve already lost one of the most important people in my life. I’m not going to lose another!
Nita was briefly distracted by the burning at her wrist and throat.
She glanced down in surprise. All the charms on her bracelet, the symbols for all the prefabricated spells she was carrying, were glowing considerably brighter than usual. And the necklace of the lucid-dreaming wizardry was running hot, too.
Think about what result this kind of emotion has produced in the past, Millman had said. Or might produce again in the future.
Nita smiled a small angry smile.
I could get to like this, she thought. Maybe it’s better if I don’t. But today … today, I’m going to like it a lot.
She closed her eyes and pushed all her available power into the lucid-dreaming spell.
***
Nita’s intention and the force of her anger briefly turbocharged the spell, and it almost instantly drowned her consciousness in dream. The effect wouldn’t last, she knew, as she opened her eyes in a different darkness; the spell would relapse to its normal levels momentarily, but it wouldn’t matter. She’d stay asleep. The important thing was that she was dreaming now.
She stood there again by herself in that great dark space inside Darryl. Far off to one side, somewhere, she knew that the infinitely obstructive white wall was waiting. But this time she wasn’t going to waste her time: There was more important business.
For a long few moments Nita quieted herself, opening her mind to listen, as she’d been taught. Then, eyes closed, self-blinded, she turned, waiting for the sensation she knew would come.
It took less time to find it than she’d hoped it would. Nita had been banking on the idea that Darryl’s grasp of worldbuilding was instinctive, not studied, and that if he even recognized the heart of his universe for what it was, he wouldn’t have thought to hide it. And he hadn’t. When she finally sensed what she was looking for, Nita took the time to actually walk to it, not wanting to attract any possible unwanted attention by using a transit spell. She was glad that the spot she was hunting was only a couple of miles away in Darryl’s internal topology, and not a couple of light-years.
She knew the spot by feel when she reached it, which was just as well, for physically and visually it was indistinguishable from any other part of that tremendous darkness. Nita grinned, though, as she came close, feeling up close the faint, lively, burning, buzzing sensation she’d been seeking. She rolled up her sleeve, thrust her arm elbow-deep into the seemingly empty darkness before her, and felt around for a moment.
The burning against her fingers alerted her. She grinned a small angry grin and took a step backwards, and out of the darkness puled free a bright, tight, surprisingly large tangle of silvery light.
“Will you look at this,” Nita said under her breath, turning the kernel over in her hands and looking closely at it to identify its major structural elements. The complexity of this kernel was by and large on a par with other personal kernels Nita had seen before. A couple of its sections were devoted to the mere physical business of running a human body. One of them seemed oddly augmented: bent back on itself and half-twisted in a way she recognized. A Mobius strip, though more than just that, Nita thought; there’s another dimension or so layered in. Maybe this is how an abdal does his co-location? Looks like he’s got an extra set of “body software” in here; and the soul conduit’s doubled over, and way heavier-gauge than usual. Interesting.
But it was the kernel’s power conduits that were the real su
rprise. They were huge, far bigger than a physical universe’s own conduits would have been, and they pulsed silently and blindingly with such force that Nita found it hard to look at them. This is what an abdal uses. Or doesn’t even have to use; just has. There’s enough power in here, of enough kinds, to do incredible things.
Even to keep the Lone Power shut up inside for a while.
Nita shook her head. This much power could be used for a lot more important things than that, though. And she noted one other thing, now that she had the kernel in her hands. She reached into the tangle of coiled light and hooked a finger under one tightly braided chain of characters that glowed calmly right at the kernel’s heart: then pinched it between thumb and forefinger and teased it a little ways out of the kernel’s main structure. It was the core representation of the Wizard’s Oath, the heart of an Ordeal; and it was complete.
Nita grinned with sheer pleasure at having been right, remembering her earlier thought that Darryl didn’t have that tentative quality about his use of his wizardly abilities. So, she thought, he’s already passed his Ordeal.
Then let’s get moving!
She turned the kernel over in her hands once more, finding the little strand of light that was the spell Darryl had, however unwittingly, enacted to create the wall. Nita pulled the strand of light representing that wizardry a little way out of the kernel, like someone pulling one strand loose from a ball of knitting wool. Then she twisted it in such a way as to cause that spot to become this one.
Instantly the internal laws of that universe changed accordingly, so that Nita looked up and found herself staring at the wall.
“Right,” Nita said under her breath, and walked right at the wall as if it wasn’t there.
And when she touched it, it wasn’t. It evaporated in front of her. The wall knew that the key to the physical structure of its universe was right in front of it, in the possession of a living being; and cooperatively it got out of her way.
“Thank you,” Nita said. She paused long enough to tuck the kernel safely away in her otherspace pocket, and then went on walking. In front of her the view opened up, distant and glittering—a view of what appeared to be a forest of glass trees, shining in that sourceless light she’d come to recognize.
Nita walked toward the forest, listening to the voices that she’d heard before in Darryl’s worlds, and that were here, too, louder than they’d been before, an endless rush of them. If she let them, they blended into a white-noise sound like wind or water, indecipherable. But if she concentrated, they did make sense.
“—get tired of waiting sometimes, you know?” said one of them, a man’s voice, Nita thought. “Sometimes I wonder whether any of it matters at all.”
“Of course it matters,” said another voice, a softer one, sadder, but more certain of itself. “We have to keep doing what we’re doing. Being there for him. Someday…”
The voices got steadily more distinct as Nita got closer to the forest. Soon she saw that it wasn’t a forest of trees, but of mirrors. “Someday! But no one can tell us when that day’s going to be. No one has the slightest idea! And we’re the ones who know him best. We’re the ones who ought to be able to tell. For a good while there things seemed to be going so well. But then come autumn—” A pained gulp for air. “It all went to pieces. No matter what they keep telling us about burnout, that it may get better, that he may find a way to cope again, I can’t help but think … can’t help but think that they have no idea. That maybe this is the way he’s going to be from now on. That this is as good as things are ever going to get.—”
The voice broke off, choked with pain.
“You know they told us this might happen,” said the other voice. “And that there’s a very good chance he’ll find a new coping level as he gets older. But that things could look very bad for a while...”
“But this long?”
“Yes, if necessary. There’s no way to tell how much time he needs. His situation’s unique, Like everyone else’s.” A long pause. “We just have to have faith, honey. If we don’t, if we lose it, no one else’s faith is going to help.”
The voices sounded two ways to Nita. On one hand, they were like any conversation she might have heard on the street. On the other, there was a terrible poignancy about them. Hearing their words was like being thrust through the heart with knives. I’m hearing this not just as I would, Nita thought, but as Darryl would. And possibly seeing his inner world as he does, too. Far from drawing her into Darryl’s trap for the Lone Power, this seemed to be giving her a kind of immunity. Good. If that just lets me see a way out…
As she came closer to the fringes of the “forest,” Nita saw that the trees weren’t exactly just mirrored, either. They were half-mirrored. She could see partway through them, out their other sides, to the shapes that walked among them. And there were only four of those.
Two of them she knew instantly: her heart seized at the sight of them. Ponch and Kit were wandering, sightless—or rather, it was Kit who looked and walked like someone blind, or like someone afraid to look at what he saw around him. Ponch walked ahead of Kit like a Seeing Eye dog, seeing for both of them. But something about the way the light fell on him made Nita wonder whether Ponch somehow saw more, in this chilly and sterile landscape, than any of them. What is it with him? she wondered. He hadn’t been able to tell her the other day. Nita remembered Carmela telling her what Kit had said, that there was some kind of “wizardry leakage” going on in his household. Suddenly she felt sure that what was happening with Ponch was more than just a symptom of this.
Nita paused, watching the other two figures wander around separately in the light shining on and reflecting from the half-mirrored trees. One of them was small and dark, in jeans and a polo shirt. He looked far less lost than Kit and Ponch. His progress was more an amble than a wander—unlike that of the final figure.
That last figure was tall and looked human. He was slender, well-built, and extremely handsome. Nonetheless, Nita couldn’t help but shudder at the sight of the Fairest and Fallen, once the greatest and most senior of the Powers that Be, the Lone Power Itself, as It passed by at a distance—looking, in the dark suit he was wearing, like a businessman lost in a strange city and doomed to wander endlessly from street to street because he was too proud to ask for directions.
The shudder passed, though. Nita’s anger was still running high enough to wash it out and leave her mind clear. All right, she thought. Nothing had has happened yet. Let’s think about what to do.
And then something spoke her word in the air.Let’s…?
Nita’s head jerked up as he looked for the word’s source, and her hand went to her bracelet again. A second later she was holding the linac weapon, ready to discharge.
I am on errantry, she thought, glancing around, and I greet you. Wherever you are…
I am errantry, the Silence said.
Nita held very still. There was something familiar about that voice, though it wasn’t a voice as such.
Then she remembered her earlier thought. “The Silence told me about that,” the clown-Darryl had said to her.
You are the manual, Nita thought. Darryl’s version of it.
The Silence whispered agreement.
Right, Nita said, lowering the weapon again. Sorry, you startled me. How can I hear you now? I couldn’t before.
You are fully inside him now, because you have the heart.
Nita wondered about that phrasing, and then smiled. The heart of Darryl’s universe: the kernel. Yes, I do, she said. Now all I have to do is figure out what to do with it.
He’ll know. He has full access now, as you’ve discovered.
Nita nodded and watched the four figures walking among the trees for a few minutes, while looking things over, assessing where the weak point in this scenario might be. That was how she saw something start to happen, something that initially scared her—an encounter that she normally would have done anything to prevent. The Lone Power in Its dark maj
esty came striding down between the mirrored pillars, to Nita’s eye looking very much like someone who’s trying to act like he knows where he’s going when he doesn’t. Toward It, ambling, unhurried, maybe even unseeing, came Kit and Ponch. Nita sucked in her breath and lifted the linac weapon into an aiming line, pointing it at the Lone One.
She watched with profound unease as Kit and the Lone Power got closer and closer to each other. They were no more than a few paces apart when the Lone One made a single sudden move.
It looked at Itself in a mirror as It passed, and smiled faintly. And Kit walked right on by It, unnoticing, unnoticed.
Nita had to just stand there for a few moments, calming herself down, nearly lost in admiration at the sheer power of the otherworld Darryl had created. It’s like that fairy tale about the guy who does some magic creature a good turn, she thought, and as a reward it gives him a bag that nothing can get out of The guy lives a bad life, and when the devil comes for him, he tricks it into the bag, and it’s stuck there till he lets it out. But in this case, Darryl was in the bag, too—and apparently thought this a reasonable price to pay to keep part of the Lone Power out of circulation for… How long? Weeks, months at a time. And how much longer? Years? A whole life?
Carl had been completely right. If that’s not a saint, Nita thought, I don’t know what is.
I need to get them out of here, she said to the Silence.
You will have to break this paradigm, the Silence said. Break the mirrors. That will release them. But it will also release the Lone Power back into Its full potency.
For just a breath of time, Nita weighed the pros and cons of the problem. Keeping It stuck in here, even just a fragment of It, couldn’t be a bad thing.