Nita nodded. “It’s in novice mode; all you have to do is walk,” she heard Kit saying to Carmela, who was inside one of the mochteroofs now. “Walk the way you usually do … Uh, maybe not that way, but just—”
“Thank you so much,” Carmela said sweetly, “but it’s not like this is the entertainment system and I need a little kid to program it for me or anything.”
Nita could just hear Kit gritting his teeth. “Ponch,” he said. “You ready?”
Always.
“Let’s go!”
They all stepped forward, vanishing—
—and came out together in some anonymous City tunnel, strung out along it: Kit and Ponch first, with Nita, Carmela, Ronan, and Memeki close behind them, and Roshaun and Filif and Dairine, with Spot, bringing up the rear. Inside the City, everything was terribly quiet—a heavy, hot, unechoing silence like being in a closed room.
Nita stood still with the others for a moment, listening, and looking around at the strange papery walls with their endless messages: The Commorancy is all, the Outside is the Enemy, the different is the dangerous. But clearer than any of the writings was the message that she felt all around her, thousands of point-sources of darkness, inert for the moment but ready to awaken: the avatar-presence of the Lone Power in every single Yaldiv, owning every soul in the City, each one ready and eager to do Its will. They’re bad news, she could just hear Darryl saying. Deadly. And I think if you hang around where they are, somebody’s going to get killed.
Nita was trembling with nerves and sheer weariness. Stronger far now than the individual Yaldiv avatars in its pressure against her mind was the sense of one presence that was no longer running on automatic. Nita could sense it right through the walls, a core of burning darkness which was definitely the parent of the sparks of dark fire inside Memeki. It’s not going to wait for matters to take their course, Nita thought.
She glanced behind her. Through the shell of Filif’s mochteroof, she could see the dark green light of a locator spell. It’s as Ponch thought, Filif said, his eye-berries glowing faintly through the mochteroof‘s illusion-field as he looked at the others. Our cavern is full of warriors again; they’ve broken in through a new tunnel. Easily a hundred of them.
“At least we’re not there,” Kit said. “And they may waste a little more time thinking we are, and looking for us.” He glanced back at Memeki. “So, to the grubbery?”
Nita turned to Memeki. The Yaldah rubbed her foreclaws together, shivering.
“Yes,” she said. “If I’m not there when the others wake, they will raise the alarm.”
It’s raised already! Nita wanted to say, but she restrained herself. Give her the time to realize the truth. Until it’s plain there’s no more time left. “Ponch, you know the way?” Nita said.
Of course. He sounded faintly offended. We’re not very close; if they were waiting for us, I wanted a chance to know about it and go somewhere else. But we’re not very far, either.
“Let’s go,” Kit said.
Ponch led them down through that tunnel and paused at the end of it; the passage they were in grew broader, and two narrower ones led off left and right. He chose the right-hand one, and Kit followed him.
One after another, cautious, they went after. Nita was listening with all of her for the sound of other claws on the floor of the tunnel but heard nothing. Next to her, Carmela—who had been watching Ronan as she walked—staggered into the right-hand wall and rebounded. Ronan rolled his eyes and looked away.
“‘Mela,” Nita said under her breath, “you need to stop concentrating on someone else’s hottitude and get serious, okay? We are not in a safe place here.”
“Yeah, okay,” Carmela muttered. But she shot Nita a sly look. “See that? Hung up on my little brother as you unfortunately are, I got you to admit it. He is utterly hot.”
“I am not—” Nita exhaled in exasperation. “Forget it. As for Ronan—yeah, he has his moments.”
“Without a doubt,” Carmela said. “And how many of his moments have you had?”
Nita gave Carmela an evil look as they turned a corner. “It’s possible to be too nosy,” she said, “even around people as perfect as Kit and me.”
Carmela looked thoughtful. “‘Perfect,’” she said experimentally. “‘Kit.’” Then she shook her head. “Sorry, Neets, one of those words is in the wrong sentence…”
Nita grinned. “As for Ronan, better enjoy him while you can. After this is over there’s no guarantee he’ll be with us that much longer…”
Nita checked behind them. There was no sign of pursuit, not even any sign of workers. But all the same, Nita thought, and reached down to her charm bracelet, making sure her accelerator was recharged, loaded, and ready to go.
And just in case the more techie kinds of spell are the first to fail—Nita reached into her otherspace pocket and pulled out her old standby, yet another in a series of peeled rowan wands soaked in full moonlight. Nita shoved it into the belt of her jeans and sighed. Just the touch of it brought back the feel of her backyard on an early autumn evening as she sat against the trunk of her buddy Liused the rowan tree, discussing the finer points of how most artistically to begin dropping your leaves in the fall…
Nita moved a little faster to catch up with Kit and Ponch and Carmela. The three of them were up near an intersection, pausing while Ponch picked yet another turn, moving right and up a slight incline into a wide and still-empty corridor. Kit was saying, “—don’t get how this can possibly have happened. You’re too old! And you haven’t had anything that looks like an Ordeal.”
Carmela looked down at Kit as if from a great height. “Oh, yeah? Well, you haven’t had you for a little brother all these years. It’s felt pretty ordeal-ish to me!”
“I don’t mean that kind of ordeal! Wizardry doesn’t just get passed out on street corners to just anybody who comes along!”
“Oh yeah, like I need this experience to learn that,” Carmela said. “You should hear yourself go on and on about it. Suffer suffer, pain pain, responsibility responsibility.” She waved her hands in exaggerated distress, and the mochteroof‘s claws waved around every which way. “Not like you’re not having insane and crazy fun, secretly, every minute of the day!”
They came to the next intersection. Ponch paused there a moment, then crowded back against Kit. Somebody’s down there, Ponch said. Some workers, I think. Wait a moment, they’re going by—
Ponch peered around the corner. “I can’t believe this,” Kit muttered, just briefly turning his head to look back toward Carmela. “You’re one of us and you’re still clueless! It could only happen to me. Would you just please open the manual and read that first page again, the one with the little block of text on it, you know the one—” Carmela reached behind her. “Anything to shut you up.”
“The first page!” Kit said. “The one that says, ‘In Life’s name, and for Life’s sake, I assert that I will use the Art which is Its gift—’”
“—in compliance with FCC regulation part 15, section 209(c), which states that any unwanted RF emissions from an intentional radiator shall not exceed the level of the—”
Openmouthed, Kit stared at Carmela. “What?”
“Right here,” Carmela said, pushing what she held up against the side of her mochteroof. “The first page—”
What Carmela was bracing against the side of her mochteroof for Kit to see was a paper booklet, in which the lettering neither moved around nor changed, but held almost bizarrely still.
“I said I found the manual,” Carmela said.
Kit stared at the paper booklet.
“For the TV,” Carmela said, with the slow distinct delivery of someone speaking in a kindly way to the mentally disadvantaged.
Nita took her hands off the spell-controls for her mochteroof and put them over her mouth in a desperate attempt to keep herself from bursting out laughing.
Very slowly, Kit looked up at his sister.
“Have I ever told you h
ow wonderful you are?” he said.
“Not lately,” Carmela said, slapping the TV manual shut and stuffing it out of sight. “And boy, had you better start making up for lost time, because I am feeling real unappreciated right now. I show up and shoot the butts off eight million hostile aliens to find out where you are so I can give you a hand, and what do I get from you? Bupkis!” She glanced back at Nita. “That’s my new word for this week,” she said.
Nita took her hands away from her mouth and concentrated on looking completely unconcerned. “Where’d you hear it?” she said.
“One of the cable channels. It’s alien, I think.”
Kit, meanwhile, was grinning in a helpless way and looking up. “Oh, thank you,” he said—and not, Nita thought, to Carmela. “Thank you so much.”
“A little bit late,” Carmela said, “but better than never. Sincere-sounding, anyway.” Then abruptly she looked at Kit and said, “Wait a minute. ‘One of us’?” And she laughed. “You thought I was talking about a wizard’s manual? I don’t need a wizard’s manual. I’m just fine the way I am. You can check that with the Power thingies.”
“Thingies?” Kit said.
They’re gone, Ponch said. Come on.
“How close are we?” Dairine said from the end of the line. “I think I hear some action behind us.”
Just a few minutes’ walk, Ponch said. Up a level, and then a left turn.
They followed Ponch up the long ramp to the next level of the city, where a number of corridors came together in a small, central concourse or crossroads, under an arched-over papery dome. Down one of the other corridors, Nita could see shadowy figures moving: workers, she thought. Nonetheless, she was walking more softly now, and she noticed that the others were, too. They all know that, sooner or later, we’re going to wind up walking into a trap. And, indeed, the one subject none of them had so far discussed was one that in more normal times would have been one of the first to come up: how are we getting out of here?
They paused again. Ponch looked around him and chose their way, one of the left-hand passages. The relative dimness of a side corridor shut down around them as they went. But this is more serious than any of us getting out, Nita thought. This is a whole universe’s worth of trouble, solved or messed up in one shot … and they all know it. It was a relief to know they realized it. And a strange feeling swelled up in Nita: pride in all of them.
They stopped outside an arched doorway. On the wall to either side of it was written, in the Yaldiv charactery, GRUBBERY 14.
Memeki slipped past Nita, went to the doorway. Inside, in the dimness, nothing moved. Nita could dimly see a central pit area that heaved gently with many, many small, caterpillarish forms … every one of them alive, inside, with one of those angry, evil little dark-fire sparks. On the far side of the room, past the main pit, were many smaller archways, each big enough to take a single entering Yaldiv. Many of those were walled up. Nita had already seen from Memeki’s mind what happened here, as each Favored Yaldah came to her time, entered, and was immured. The newly emerged grubs would be tenderly carried out by the ministering handmaidens, fed and tended… and the empty shell that was all that was left of their mother would be given to a worker to dump into the oily swamp.
Slowly, farther down the corridors, other Yaldiv began to appear: workers mostly, heading toward the door of the Commorancy to make their way out into the world for the day’s work. Inside her mochteroof, Nita turned to Memeki and waited.
Memeki stood quiet. All of them were looking at her now, but she seemed oblivious to this. Nita waited. Come on, she thought, come on! Just say yes! That’s all it needs. Just say—
“I will not,” Memeki said.
They all stared at her.
She stood there with her claws together, in a position that was neither the Yaldah’s fearful “averting” gesture or the warrior’s threat. There was something strangely serene about it, and she looked over at Ponch and bowed. “I will not go in,” she said. “I am no longer of the City. I am the Hes—”
And from the dim silence of the grubbery, the warriors came boiling out.
Once again everything started to happen at once. Nita saw Dairine and Filif and Roshaun drop, inside their mochteroofs, come up with strange shapes furred with the power-glow of working wizardries, and start firing at the surrounding warriors. To her own astonishment, Nita was horrified. “No! Look out, you’ll hurt Memeki, if you—”
Then the firing stopped. That, too, horrified Nita, because it wasn’t due to anything she’d said. From around all of them, the mochteroofs abruptly vanished.
There they stood, suddenly unshelled—five humans, one humanoid king, one talking tree, one dog, one computer-being, and a Yaldiv—and harsh claws seized them from every side, snatching away everything they had been holding, including the suddenly revealed Spear of Light from the shocked and swearing Ronan. The breath went right out of Nita, not so much from the horror of two giant bugs each grabbing one of her arms, but because of something much more innately awful. Ever since Nita had begun to practice the Art, the rule had been, “A spell always works.” But suddenly it didn’t.
The warriors began to hustle them all away from the grubbery. There was a certain amount of noise. When Spot was pried out of her arms, Dairine had joined Ronan in struggling hard and yelling words that would have given their dad a heart attack if he’d heard them; and Roshaun was accompanying her in Wellakhit idiom that from the sound of it was nearly as bad. Carmela, to Nita’s surprise and relief, was angry, but not terrified; as they were dragged along, she flicked Nita a glance and waggled her eyebrows a couple of times, then glanced toward her curling iron’s holster, and shrugged. It was empty.
Damn, Nita thought. She glanced at Kit and Filif, who were being dragged along nearby. As Nita was pulled even with Kit, she met his eye, tried to pass a thought to him, but was astonished to find that even in this moment of crisis, she couldn’t hear him think. He just looked at her and shook his head.
As they passed various astonished-looking workers and handmaidens and were hauled downward into the heart of the City, in the back of Nita’s mind she could feel the peridexis struggling as desperately as a bird clutched in someone’s fist. What’s happened? she said to it, getting less scared and more angry. Why isn’t anything working?!
The Lone One’s now fully occupying Its avatar here, the peridexis said. And It’s locally damped down every secondary wizardly function. The peridexis’s tone was faint and terrified, like that of a creature watching itself begin to bleed to death.
Nita was astonished. But that would affect It, too—
No. The only powers fully functioning here right now are those that have possessed wizardry or the power behind it from their very beginnings.
“Oh no,” Nita breathed. Yet she still found it impossible to believe. In her mind she felt around for the memory of a self-defense spell she’d come across while reading the manual, had memorized, and had then sworn (as required) that she’d never use unless she thought she was in danger of her life. Nita opened her mouth, started to recite it…
…and couldn’t find the words. Or, rather, she knew what they were, but as she whispered the first one, it didn’t make sense. It was just a nonsense word. The universe didn’t get quiet to listen to it. She said the second word, and the third, and they were nonsense, no power to them, nothing magical at all…
Around her, Nita saw the others struggling as she had done, trying to get a grip on wizardly weapons or say words that would act as such, but the words all sounded made up and did nothing.
Nita started to despair—then found, to her surprise, that the feeling didn’t last. She’d been in a similar situation not so long ago, a place and time in which no solution seemed possible. While there, she’d learned that, sometimes, if you just kept doing whatever you could, something would change in your favor. And I’m not dead yet, she thought. Neither are the others. If I can’t think of something, one of them might.
&n
bsp; Down and down the warriors carried them, deeper into the depths of the City. Nita knew in a general way where they were headed, from the précis she’d been looking at earlier; they were close to the King-Yaldiv’s great cavernous hall. But more to the point, she could feel that dull glow of evil power and scornful rage at the Commorancy’s heart getting stronger every moment as they got closer. The Lone One’s just about ready for us, she thought. So we’ve got only a few minutes to think of something.
I have no help for you, the peridexic effect said miserably.
Nita blinked. Wait a minute. If all the second-level uses of wizardry aren’t working for us now, then how am I still hearing you?
I still exist, the peridexic effect said. I am simply of no use.
I wouldn’t bet on it! Nita said as their Yaldiv escort hauled them around another long curve and pushed them into a wide spherical chamber. Its far door was guarded by another warrior, possibly the biggest one Nita had seen yet. For the moment, you’re keeping me sane. She gulped, because the memory of that horrible moment of disbelief in Tom and Carl’s backyard now rose up in front of her as something she definitely never wanted to experience again. You’re proof that wizardry’s been real, even if it’s not working right now. So just hang in there, because right now I need you!
The warriors turned the group loose inside the chamber and went to block the door behind them. The ten of them all clustered together in the center of the room, the humanoids rubbing their various bruises. Muttering under her breath, Dairine picked up Spot, who’d been unceremoniously dumped on the floor, and stood looking around her with a ferocious scowl. Ronan threw a furious look at the warrior holding the Spear, and eyed Dairine with a sort of disgruntled admiration. “What is it with these Callahan women?” he said to Kit as he tried to flex one strained shoulder back into working order.
Kit shook his head. “You okay?” he said to Dairine.
“Yeah. But Spot’s not. He’s gone mute, and his eyes and legs are gone.”
“Pop his screen,” Kit said. “See if you get any manual functions. Roshaun?”