Wizards at War, New Millennium Edition

  “Neither do I,” Kit said. “I had an idea about that, too—”

  The back door creaked open. “Another charming bijoux residence,” said a cool voice from just outside. “The overall understatement is most effective.”

  A few moments later Dairine came in, followed by Roshaun, who gazed around him with the vague, polite interest of someone visiting a theme park, or some kind of historical recreation. Behind them came Filif and Sker’ret, who also looked around at everything, but with more interest. As the screen door slammed shut behind them, Ponch ran over to the new arrivals and started jumping up and down among them in excitement, slurping Sker’ret and sticking his nose in among Filif’s fronds.

  “You did have your disguises on when you came over here, didn’t you?” Kit said.

  “Please,” Dairine said, putting Spot down. He went spidering away past them all and into the living room. “What’s tough now is getting the seemings off them.” She glanced over at Roshaun in his baggy T-shirt. “Some of us are becoming real fashion victims.”

  The back door creaked open again, and Carmela came in. “‘Mela,” Kit said, “have you seen Mama and Pop?”

  “They went out for a while,” Carmela said. “Pop said something about ‘bracing himself for the rest of the explanation.’”

  “Okay,” Kit said. Then he blinked, for an odd humming sound was coming from the living room. Kit headed in there, with Nita in tow. Spot was crouched down in front of the TV, staring at it with his own stalky eyes, and images and words in the Speech were flickering across the wide screen much too quickly for Kit to follow. “What’re you guys up to?” Kit said.

  “Dataaaaa…,” said the TV and the DVR and the DVD all together, and fell silent again.

  “Maybe we don’t really want to know,” Nita said. “It might be some kind of relationship thing. The secret life of machines.”

  The two of them wandered back into the dining room, where Carmela had just finished getting some glasses down from one of the cupboards. “Boy,” she said with satisfaction as she went back into the kitchen, “this is a whole lot more interesting than just spending the day grenfelzing.”

  Roshaun looked baffled. “Grenfelzing? What is that?”

  “It’s like emmfozing, except that—”

  “Okay, hold it right there. I’ve been meaning to ask you about that,” Kit said. “Since when do aliens know about chocolate?!”

  Carmela gave him a pitying look as she came in with a carton of fruit juice and a bottle of cola. “Poor little brother,” she said. “You mean you actually don’t know why Earth has so many UFO sightings?”

  “Thought it was something to do with human beings thinking they’re the center of the universe.” Kit snorted. “Like other species have so much time to waste kidnapping us. Not to mention making weird patterns in wheat fields.”

  “Oh, no, those are just people with boards and ropes,” Carmela said, ducking back into the kitchen. She came out a moment later with a bottle of spring water, which she put down in front of Filif. “And, very occasionally, sentient ball lightning. But most of the aliens are here for cocoa plants. The only reason people get abducted is when they have chocolate on them.”

  Nita looked at Kit. “Please tell me she’s making this up!” she said.

  Kit could only shrug. “She spends half her time watching the alien versions of the Discovery Channel. It could be true.”

  “It is true,” Carmela said. “For silicon-based life-forms, one of the chemicals in chocolate is an aphrodisiac.”

  “Oh, now, wait a minute!” Kit said, and covered his eyes with one hand.

  “But most warm-blooded carbon-based species just really like the taste,” Carmela said. “Every time a new species finds out about chocolate, they send someone here to get cocoa plants so they can take them home and genetically tailor them to their physiologies.” Carmela smiled a bright and infuriating smile. “See, I don’t ‘waste’ all my time in alien chat areas. I’ve been doing educational things. Like telling my chat buddies which brands of chocolate are best.”

  Kit was left with the image of some intergalactic SWAT team turning up on his doorstep and arresting his sister for being a cocoa pusher. “Why do I get the feeling that you are totally out of control?”

  “Your control,” said Carmela, and wandered off, smiling angelically. “You’re just now noticing?”

  Kit clutched his head as Nita stifled a laugh. “It’s not funny,” Kit muttered. “And here I was just hoping we might survive the next month or so! Now I have to worry about my sister getting our whole planet put on probation for corrupting underage species or something.”

  The doorbell rang.

  Aha, Kit thought, and braced himself.

  Nita’s amusement at the way Carmela was putting Kit through the wringer was diverted by a weird feeling she couldn’t quite analyze. It was like feeling the sun on sunburned skin; and it felt directional, so that she could get a sense, in her mind anyway, of where it was coming from. She turned to look toward the front door. Now what the—

  “Probably just another of the thundering herd,” Carmela said, frowning, and heading that way herself.

  “Don’t let any of your would-be boyfriends in here!” Kit said.

  “Are you kidding?” Carmela said. “There’s a lot cooler stuff happening in here than mere guys.”She vanished around the corner into the living room.

  “Someone’s being unusually cooperative today,” Kit said under his breath. “I bet I know why.”

  Nita looked at him. Oh no, she said silently. She doesn’t think that just because she knows about what’s going on, that she might get to go along with—

  If she gets that idea, Kit said, believe me, I’ll get her past it. Way past it. We have more than enough problems.

  Nita heard Carmela open the front door. The silence that followed was entirely uncharacteristic, so much so that Nita looked in that direction, still wondering at that uneasy “sunburn” sensation.

  A voice at the front door said, “Uh, is Kit here?”

  Nita’s eyes went wide.

  Oh… my… God, she thought.

  “Or Nita?” the voice said.

  “Uh, yeah,” Carmela said, after another of those unusually long pauses. “Yeah. Can I tell her who’s asking for her?”

  Nita stood there for several seconds more getting used to what was happening, and then got up and headed for the Rodriguezes’ front door.

  Carmela stood there looking up at a tall dark figure dressed in black jeans, black shirt, a black leather jacket over it all, and with that shaggy longish dark hair hanging down over one eye, in just the way Nita remembered.

  “Ronan,” Nita said.

  Ronan Nolan Junior glanced over Carmela’s head at Nita, and actually smiled, though as usual for him it was a rather grim and edgy smile. “Hey,” he said, “dai stihó.”

  “Dai, cousin.” Nita thought for a moment, and then said, “Or is it ‘cousins‘?”

  He rolled his eyes. “Some days,” he said, “your guess’d be as good as mine.” He looked from her to Carmela. “Can I come in?”

  “Sure,” Carmela said, sounding rather stunned.

  Ronan stepped in and glanced around the living room. “Listen,” he said, “normally I wouldn’t just show up without warning—”

  “Is anything normal at the moment?” Nita said.

  “Now you’d be asking.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Nita said. “Believe it or not, it’s kind of good to see you.”

  “Kind of?”

  She smiled slightly. Ronan smiled a little, too, then looked down at his feet. Nita followed his glance. To her surprise, Spot was standing in front of Ronan, staring up at him with multiple stalked eyes.

  “Three matters unknown but soon to be:

  The way of the Gods with the created,

  The way of the created with the Gods,

  The way between them across the bridge of Being.”

  Ronan blin
ked as Spot walked away again, toward the TV and the DVD and DVR, where he sat down on the rug and both legs and eyes vanished.

  “You remember Spot,” Nita said.

  Ronan raised his eyebrows. “Had an upgrade, from the looks of him,” he said.

  “Yeah. Well, he’s started doing poetry. Haiku, sort of.”

  Ronan shook his head. “Triads,” he said. “In Ireland we used to get a lot of prophecies that way: everything in threes.”

  Nita shrugged. “His basic logic’s trinary, Dairine says. But at least it beats him sitting in the corner going ‘uh-oh’ all day.”

  Ronan snorted. “Been hearing a fair amount of that myself,” he said. “That’s why I’m here. You’ve been in touch with your Advisories about the trouble that’s coming—”

  “Uh, yeah.”

  “Did they seem a little less helpful than usual?”

  “A little,” Nita said, hating to admit it.

  Ronan nodded. “It’s the same all over. Well, things are moving already, and we have to be part of it. But I need your help. We need it.”

  He looked uncomfortable as he said “we.” That, at least, was in character. “Come on,” Nita said, and led him toward the dining room. Then she paused and turned, responding again to that sun-on-sunburn feeling. “It’s here, isn’t it?” Nita said.

  “What’s here?”

  “The Spear. You’ve got it with you.”

  Ronan nodded. “Thought you might notice.”

  Now it was Nita’s turn to laugh a little. “How do you not notice that?” she said, for she’d been present at the forging of the Spear of Light, and had been more frightened by it than by almost anything else she’d seen or experienced during her practice of wizardry. It wasn’t that the Spear was a bad thing: absolutely the opposite. But it was hard to be in the neighborhood of a power of pure goodness for very long. That Ronan could handle the full force of the Spear—had apparently been destined to handle it—made Nita as nervous as the thought of the Power that lived inside his head with him and made dealing with the Spear possible.

  “Is it a problem?” Ronan said.

  Nita shook her head. “Right now we can use all the help we can get—and that means weapons, too. Where have you got it? In an otherspace pocket?”

  “No, in this one.” Ronan reached inside his jacket and came out with a plastic ballpoint pen.

  Nita blinked. “That?”

  “Mightier than the sword, theoretically,” Ronan said, clicking the point in and out a couple of times. Nita got just the briefest glimpse of a spark of blindingly white fire at the tip of the ballpoint, as if its ink were lightning. “Don’t think I carry it around in its normal shape all day, do you? It’s murder on people’s woodwork.” He slipped the pen back into the inside pocket and went into the dining room past her. “Dai stihó, everybody—”

  “Dai stihó,” said five audible voices and one silent one.

  Nita stood there watching them all get acquainted with the newcomer. Ronan looked taller somehow. Seems a little late for a growth spurt, Nita thought: Ronan had to be around seventeen now, maybe more. But there was always the possibility that what Nita was picking up was something to do with the Other that lived inside him—a being much older, and far more powerful, than any of them.

  She glanced over at Kit as Ronan made his way around to him, and banged a friendly fist against Kit’s. “You don’t look surprised,” Nita said.

  Kit and Ronan looked at her, and then at each other, and Ronan raised his eyebrows. “Why would he be?” Ronan said.

  “I asked him to come,” Kit said.

  Nita’s mouth dropped open. She shut it.

  “I was thinking of coming anyway,” Ronan said, “but this makes everything easier.” He glanced around at the other wizards. “And I’m glad to meet you folks, because it seems like you weren’t sent here by accident.”

  “No,” Dairine said. “We kind of got that feeling…”

  Without warning, Carmela came around the corner and pulled Nita away from behind Ronan, backward and out of sight of the dining room, where Kit had started to ask Ronan something.

  “Who. Is. Your. Friend??” Carmela whispered, as Nita regained her balance. “Where did he come from?”

  “Ireland. There’s this town on the east coast, it’s called Bray—”

  “No, no, no,” Carmela said. “I meant it in a much more existential way. I was referring to his basic, you know, hotness.” Carmela put her head down by Nita’s. “Is he attached?” she whispered.

  “In ways it would take me days to describe,” Nita said, “yes.”

  Carmela’s face fell.

  “But none of them are those kinds of ways,” Nita said.

  A smile appeared slowly on Carmela’s face. “Oh, good.” Carmela then strolled back into the dining room in the most casual manner imaginable.

  Nita shook her head. Did I think things were getting weird around her? We’re about to set a weirdness baseline the likes of which the planet’s never seen. She went after Carmela.

  Ronan had just sat down at the table. The others got comfortable on the sofa or on chairs or on the floor, each according to his kind.

  “As I just said to Nita, things are starting to happen already,” Ronan said. “The new ‘young Seniors’ are starting to meet on the Moon, right now. You’d have found out about the gathering shortly from your manuals, or whatever form of the Knowledge you use. But I needed to reach you before you left … because I’ve got access to information that’s too sensitive to be entrusted to the manuals.”

  Nita’s eyes went wide.

  “Whoa,” Kit said softly.

  “Here’s the short version,” Ronan said. “The Powers have learned that hidden somewhere in this universe, there’s an Instrumentality, a weapon, that will stop the stretching of space-time—if we can find it and ‘arm’ it soon enough. They say if we start looking now, there’s a good chance we’ll find the Instrumentality before things get really bad.”

  “What are the adult Seniors saying about this?” Sker’ret said.

  “Nothing,” Ronan said. “They haven’t been told.”

  Nita shot Kit an uncomfortable glance.

  “I know how it sounds,” Ronan said. “But we can’t tell them. They’re already losing their power; that’s why the intervention last week failed. And that power loss also means they won’t be able to guard the secret from the one Power who’d benefit most from learning it and sabotaging what we’ve got to do.”

  “Which is what?” Carmela said.

  Ronan glanced sharply at her. “I’m not sure you should be here,” he said.

  “I live here,” Carmela said in the Speech. “Get used to it.”

  Ronan looked at her for a moment more, then shrugged. “Well. The One’s Champion has passed me a hint of what the solution to the problem might be. But the Powers can’t tell anybody straight out, not even me.” Ronan looked royally annoyed. “If the Powers speak plainly about this to anyone, or put it in the manuals, the Lone One will shortly know whatever it is They know. So we have to go looking for the weapon with nothing but hints to guide us.”

  Nita was shaking her head. “I don’t get it. Why are you the one to get this news? Why didn’t the Powers say anything about this to Tom and Carl and the other Seniors who went out on the intervention last week?”

  “Because they’re the ones the Lone Power would expect to be given that news,” Ronan said. “I’m sure It was listening to their every thought. But me? I’m a failure.”

  He smiled one of those particularly grim smiles of his as he said it, and Nita winced a little. With Ronan it was often hard to tell whether he was being bitter because he meant it, or whether he was doing it for effect.

  “I’ve had the One’s Champion in my head for a good while now,” Ronan said. “And I haven’t done much of anything.” He shrugged. “The usual wizardry: local interventions, small-time stuff. But nothing to suggest that I’ve come to any kind of long-term agre
ement with the Champion, or that I’m anything to be concerned about.”

  And whose idea was that, I wonder? Nita thought. Ronan had at first fought the idea of the ancient warrior Power, which humans had occasionally called Thor, or Athena, or even Michael, winding up inside him. He’d hoped the presence of that Power would eventually just fade away and leave him in peace to be human.

  “And if the Lone One eavesdrops on me and isn’t able to hear what’s going on in my head terribly well,” Ronan said, “It’s likely to jump to the conclusion that it’s my fault. Ambivalence … the thing that makes a wizard least effective.” His smile wasn’t quite so bitter this time. “So I guess the Powers fancy me as an undercover agent. It was ‘suggested’ to me that someone I knew would be able to get the search for the Instrumentality started. Right after the suggestion came, you got in touch with me”—he glanced over at Kit—”which kind of clinched it.”

  “Great minds think alike,” Kit said.

  Ronan’s grin acquired a sly and amused edge to its darkness. “There’ll be other suggestions as we go along,” he said. “And the Champion will keep us from being eavesdropped on. But for the moment, to get started, the Champion says we need a Finder. We need the best one there is.”

  Ponch, lying on the floor, lifted his head. That would be me, he said, and yawned, and sat up. What are you looking for?

  “All I have to go on is imagery,” Ronan said. “I don’t know where it comes from, and neither does the Champion. But if you really have the tracking gift, my lad, it won’t matter. You’ll be able to find it.”

  Kit said, “Ponch is very good. He’s ‘made’ whole universes before, to find what he wanted.”

  Ponch’s tail started to wag. Squirrels! he said, and started to jump up and down.

  Kit groaned. “Ponch,” he said, “this is so not the moment! First you have to find what Ronan and his ‘friend’ need you to find.”

  Then the squirrels? Hurray! At least that was how the thought translated from a deafening spate of mental barking.

  Kit exchanged a wry glance with Ronan. “The Lone One has to know something about what Ponch can do.”