But this... this is just strange.
The listing did have some unusual descriptions of physical status. One, attributed to one of Roshaun’s great-great-grandmothers, was Indeterminate. A couple of others said Exhaled. Nita blinked. Whatever that means! But the complete lack of a physical status for Roshaun left Nita bemused. She reached out to the listing and touched a different name, feeling the small sizzle of power that spoke of active wizardry indwelling in a self. All the names had it, dead or alive. But when she touched Roshaun’s name—
No sizzle: a feeling as if the manual page was nothing but ordinary paper. It’s as if not even the Powers That Be are sure what’s happened to him. How can that be? I don’t get it.
And if even They don’t get it—
Nita let the manual’s pages fall forward on the finger that held her place. Whatever it means, it also means that Roshaun’s not dead! Or not dead yet. Or something. And whatever else I might think about what Dairine’s up to, at least she’s not nuts, or in denial. She’s looking for somebody she’s got at least a chance of finding. Maybe the smallest chance imaginable... but still a chance.
Nita spent the next few moments just getting hold of herself ...for she’d been shaking, afraid of what she was about to find. Which just goes to show that I should’ve done this a long time ago. Maybe I could have saved myself this grief with Dairine! The shock of relief was almost as hard to bear as the shock she’d braced herself for, that final awful certainty from which there would have been no retreat.
Finally she flipped the manual open again, riffling through to the section holding the directory for Earth. Nita had a quick-reference “bookmark” page installed at the front, showing names of wizards she knew well or had worked with either frequently or occasionally. The name she was looking for was almost at the top. Callahan, DAIRINE R. Present location: Sunplace, Old Continent, Wellakh. Nita raised her eyebrows. Okay, but doing what? she thought. Arrival time: JD 2454274.10012. Power rating, 5.45 +/- .55... Nita eyed her sister’s power level: it was lower than she’d ever seen it. Then again, what’s this supposed to be? She looked curiously at the listing beside it, one she couldn’t remember having seen before. It said, Under augmentation: augment level 3.2 +/- 2.2. She frowned. That’s a new one. What’s she up to?
She put her finger on the listing. “Coordinates, please?”
They displayed on the page. At the same time, a voice said in the back of her head, You know, if you’d just ask me, I’d do the gating and take you there.
“Bobo,” Nita said, “I appreciate the offer. I just want to make sure I don’t lose the hang of doing it the hard way.”
You’re just a glutton for punishment, the peridexis said.
“You and I are going to have to sit down—as much as you can sit, anyway—and have a long talk about—”
How we can be talking at all? Bobo said. At least he didn’t sound injured. I guess I wonder myself. But go on, do your spell the hard way.
Nita jiggled the charm bracelet on her wrist until the gating charm came up. Out of it she pulled a long, blue-glowing thread of spell, a single word-character in the Speech. This she drew down until it touched Dairine’s entry in the manual, hooking to its location parameters. Then Nita let go of the strand of light. When it snapped back into the charm, it pulled with it a whole new chain of characters, swallowed them up, and blazed, ready to go.
Nita stood up and shoved the manual into the waiting otherspace pocket. Then she pulled on the charm again, and that long line of glowing blue light slid out: she dropped it on the floor, where it went a fierce molten gold and stretched into a circle of Speech-words, ready to knot itself up in the Wizard’s Knot. Nita looked down at the glowing words and slowly began to speak them, turning as she spoke.
The room went silent. Darkness pressed in. As she completed the spell and pronounced the syllables of the Wizard’s Knot, everything went dark.
Moments later she found herself standing on a terrace of some smooth, glittering dark-golden stone. Behind her, in a sheer stone wall, was a series of tall, glassy doors, like the entry to a school or the front of a theater, leading into some dim, hard-to-see interior.
Maybe fifty yards in front of Nita, the terrace ended in a meter-high railing that followed the terrace’s curve hundreds of feet along to either side and out of sight. Out past the rail she got a glimpse of wide gardens far below, fading off into a barer landscape. Glancing from side to side, Nita saw that the terrace itself was cantilevered well out from the surface of the huge, relatively smooth needle of stone behind her, in the base of which the doors were set.
Nita tilted her head back, trying to see the top of the peak above. A few hundred feet, maybe— It was hard to tell. The blue-green sky was full of clouds: as she watched, one drifted straight into and around the top of that needle of stone, obscuring it. More terraces were visible above, staggered around the surface of the uprising spear of stone, up to the cloud and past it.
Nita glanced around, wondering where to go from here. Her transport wizardry had built into it a typical so-called “decent interval” offset; you’d be deposited somewhere within, say, a hundred meters of the person you were seeking, but the wizardry wouldn’t drop you right into that person’s lap. So let’s see ...Down the right side of the curve, nothing was visible but featureless, shining stone. To the left, though, maybe fifty yards down, Nita spotted a single small door, all by itself. But wait. Not a door. That’s a gate. It’s got bars—
Nita reached sideways and retrieved her manual from the otherspace pocket— for when a wizard was visiting a world where wizardry was practiced in the open, his manual was his passport— and walked toward that gate.
Above her, that cloud moved away. On the stony spire’s far side, the sun came out, throwing a long path of shadow down the wall, over the gate and Nita, and out to the terrace’s edge. But as she got close to the gate, she saw a light as intense pouring out of it, streaming in a narrow bar-striped ribbon out across the terrace.
Nita stared. Oooookay, she thought. Unusual. She walked slowly to the gate, tucking her manual under her armpit, and reached for her charm bracelet, pinching one small glassy lens-charm between finger and thumb and saying a few words in the Speech under her breath. A fragment of spell-shielding ran up and over her free hand and nearly to her elbow, like an oven mitt of thickened air. She wiggled her fingers to make sure that it felt right, and then stuck the shielded hand into that light.
Nothing happened. Just sunlight? Nita thought. Weird, unless there’s a window on the far side of the mountain. She shook the shield-spell back down her arm: it vanished. Then she peered around through the bars of the gate.
Her mouth dropped open. Sunlight, she thought. Inside the gate was a huge, domed, circular room nearly as wide across as the entire width of the spire of stone. Inside it, floating maybe three feet above the floor, was a sun.
Nita leaned against the gate, staring at the burning, dark-golden globe that hung there. It looked to be about fifty feet in diameter. Blobby black foot-long sunspots sailed slowly across its surface, the fiery red-gold plasma they pushed through getting all torn up by their magnetic fields. Plasma writhed and stretched away from the surface in bright filaments as the sunspots plowed stubbornly through it like inkblots with a mission. Elsewhere, sticking up off the surface like fuzz off a ball of yarn, spiky prominences licked into the upper reaches of the star’s atmosphere, frayed at their ends and fell back again. If you held still, you could just see the star’s rotation, as slow as watching sunrise. As Nita watched, movement off to the right caught her eye as someone walked around the side of the great globe and stood with her back to Nita, looking up at it.
What the heck is she wearing? Nita thought. There was no mistaking Dairine, especially in that small sun’s light: it made her red hair look even redder than usual. When Nita had seen her this morning, Dairine had been been wearing jeans leggings and a flowered T-shirt. She might still have them on, but it was hard to tell,
as she also now wore some kind of silky floor-length tunic in a dark honey color.
Dairine half turned, pushed up the sleeve of the tunic— yeah, the jeans and the top are still there; what a strange look!— and thrust her arm into the sun, almost up to the shoulder, where she stood feeling around under the “star’s” surface like someone trying to find something hidden at the back of a dark cupboard. And as Dairine felt around inside the sun, her glance fell on Nita.
Dairine’s eyes went wide: she froze. That’s my cue, Nita thought. Is this open? She pushed the gate experimentally. It swung open under her push. Nita walked in and started across that broad shining floor toward Dairine. Dairine took her arm out of the sun, shook it, folded her arms, and stood watching Nita come.
This was a sure sign that Dairine was in a snotty mood and ready to be tough to deal with. Now it’s just a question of how to handle it. Nita kept walking, letting her attention move to that huge, slowly turning ball of energy. The energy was real; as she got closer, the heat from the “sun” was increasing, though it was nothing like what a star would genuinely have emitted. It’s a simulator, Nita thought. Maybe even a real-time mirror of Wellakh’s own star.
Another shape came out from behind the starglobe: a man. He was taller than all but the tallest human beings would be— slender, narrow-shouldered, wiry, with very long hair as red as Dairine’s. He wore the same sort of long, light tunic Dairine was wearing, though his was several shades darker, with nothing under it but a sleeveless vest and long, loose trousers of a similar silky material, almost exactly the dark fiery amber color of that star.
As Nita got closer she spotted something else unusual that Dairine was wearing besides the tunic. Around her neck was an oversize torc of red-gold metal, with a smooth, egg-shaped, egg-sized stone set in it— paler than the metal, slightly paler than the color of the star. In its depths, as Nita got close, she saw a glow that shifted and moved, echoing the stretch and snap of the prominences on the “star’s” surface. Every now and then the glow dimmed as a miniature sunspot slipped by under the surface of the gem.
Dairine, hostile-eyed, watched Nita coming as the man walked around the side of the “star” toward them. Nita paused and waited for him to approach.
His walk was easy and graceful, but his expression suggested that the outer calm concealed a tremendous tension. Nita found herself being examined by very immediate green eyes, shadowed under heavy brows. The Wellakhit’s face was a sharp one, high-cheekboned, eyes slanted, so that it was easy to get the impression of some cool and thoughtful predator looking at you. As he got closer, Nita picked up on something else: a sense of sheer power that transmitted itself right across the empty air. She concentrated on hanging on to her composure as he came, for she’d never felt anything quite like this before from a being who worked with wizardry and was also mortal. Most immortals spend a lot of effort covering up their power, she thought, so we ephemerals won’t get too freaked. And mortal wizards don’t flaunt their power: it’s rude.
But this wizard possibly had reasons for handling his aura differently. On Wellakh, where there were relatively few wizards, Nelaid ke Seriv was very senior indeed: if not actually the Planetary—for some worlds had none—then the next thing to it on Wellakh, a person of crucial importance to the planet’s well-being and a power to be reckoned with. Which is probably why it annoys him so much that some of his people keep trying to assassinate him. And why he walks around with his aura hanging out, so anybody in range gets reminded what they’re in for if they cross him.
As he came, Nita’s eyes went back to that flaming hair of his. It wasn’t just almost the same shade as Dairine’s: it was exactly the same shade. That is beyond strange! And at the back of Nita’s mind, the thought stirred that, in a wizard’s world, there were no coincidences. When something looked like a connection, it was smart for you to pay attention—
Later. When she judged that Nelaid was close enough, Nita executed the half bow that she’d found worked well with most bipedal humanoid species. “Senior,” Nita said, having considered which of ten or twenty terms of address would be most correct, “in the Powers’ names, and on Their behalf, greetings from another jurisdiction.”
“Young cousin,” he said, a response correct if not precisely comradely, “in Their names, and on Their business as always, welcome.”
“What are you doing here?” Dairine said.
Nita didn’t even spare Dairine a glance. Protocol dictated otherwise: you always greeted and briefed the most senior wizard first. This also left Nita with a perfect way to outflank Dairine’s temper. “Sir, I’m sorry to interrupt whatever’s going on, but we have a family situation that in my judgment overrides what my manual indicates is an elective exercise on my sister’s part. With your permission—”
Nelaid nodded, a gracious gesture of agreement, and turned away as if to examine the star-simulation. Nita went over to Dairine. Under her breath she said, “You look like a Jedi knight who lost the bathrobe’s belt.”
Dairine rolled her eyes. “I live for your fashion bulletins.”
“Your continued life is just what we’re talking about. Your home life, at least. Dad wants you back there right now.”
“You came all the way here to tell me that? Well, you can just go right back, thanks.”
The dismissive, cutting tone made Nita flush hot. As she opened her mouth, “Your pardon,” Nelaid said, “but a matter has arisen that requires my intervention. If I may be excused—”
Surprised by the very status-neutral language, Nita caught the oddest look from Nelaid, a slight narrowing of the eyes. Then he vanished without so much as a breath of wind, the effortless displacement of a wizard who had long since perfected the art of teleporting in or out without anyone being the wiser. Especially whoever’s trying to murder him this afternoon...
Nita turned back to Dairine. “What exactly are you doing?”
“Practicing. Or I was until you butted in.” Dairine turned away.
“Practicing what?”
Shrugging out of her overrobe, Dairine glared at Nita. “Messing with the energy management of a live star,” she said. “What are you, obtuse?”
She’s trying to get me mad, Nita thought, and that’ll be her excuse to blow me off. “Cruel question for someone you know hates geometry,” Nita said.
Her sister’s mouth quirked as she folded up the robe. Nita kept her own face still. “Dair, you ditched school.”
“Like everybody else wasn’t ditching it today,” Dairine muttered, turning away. “Like it’s such a big deal. Some schools are more important than others.”
“Won’t argue,” Nita said. “But you and Dad had an agreement. If you’d let him know what you were going to do first, you might have been in less trouble than you are now. Now you’ve got a mess to clean up. The least you can do,” Nita said as Dairine opened her mouth to say something angry, “is let me help you get out of it so you can get on with business.”
Dairine paused. “What?”
Nita laughed, thinking, This is the way to go, keep her off balance! “You think I enjoy watching you get in trouble? There’s nothing in it for me. And it screws up my schedule. Let’s keep this brief so we can both get back to what we were doing, okay?”
Dairine stared, caught between bemusement and suspicion. “Are you all right?” she said. “Have you flunked something?”
“No! This isn’t about anything but me helping you cover your butt, because it looks like you could use some help with that right now.”
Dairine scowled, but now at least the scowl suggested that they might be on the same side of the argument. “All right, how?”
“We’re going to bug your manual,” Nita said.
Dairine’s eyes went wide. “Oh, no you are not!” she said. “Nobody but me messes with Spot!”
“Of course somebody does!” Nita said. “All the time. Wizardry messes with Spot every second of the day.”
Dairine gave her a strange look.<
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“All Dad wants is to know where you are, and that you’re okay,” Nita said. “There are two ways that can happen. He can make me run after you constantly and report in on everything you do. I mean everything. If he doesn’t like something you’re up to, I’ll have to haul you out of it... which is probably going to make us kill each other by the end of the summer. You’ll be sick and tired of me butting in on you every five minutes, yeah?”
“Yeah—”
“And I’ll want you dead because having to keep tabs on you will ruin my schedule and drive me berserk. Since killing each other would get the Powers That Be cranky with us, let’s try something else. Remember the translation spinoff we arranged with Tom last month, so Dad would have access to the manual info about Filif and Sker’ret and Roshaun when they came to visit?”
Dairine nodded, but couldn’t cover the wince of pain on hearing Roshaun’s name. Nita pretended she hadn’t noticed. “We’ll do the same deal,” Nita said, “but instead we’ll hook the output from your daily manual precís into it. Dad can read it on the computer, or even his cell phone.”
“He won’t understand half of it,” Dairine said, scowling.
“Not my problem,” Nita said. “You get to explain stuff to him when you get home every day. He’ll calm down even more when you’re telling him about what you’re doing.”
“It’s gonna be a nuisance,” Dairine said.
“Not as much a nuisance as being grounded.”
Dairine grinned. “Like he could.”
“He couldn’t. But Tom could.” The amusement fell out of Dairine’s expression. “You know he and Dad talk every few days! One word from Dad to Tom, and unless you’re officially on errantry, your butt’s going to be stuck on Earth till the two of them agree otherwise.” Dairine opened her mouth. “And the Powers That Be wouldn’t countermand Tom unless there was something big going on! Till we hit the local legal age, They’re mostly on Dad’s side.”