High Wizardry New Millennium Edition (25 page)

The light still grew. There was no seeing anything by it anymore, but that brief blot of darkness that refused and refused the light, twisting, moaning. The light hammered at it. Slowly, the urge to leave withdrew. Nita, blinded, elbowed Kit lightly in the side, a get-a-load-of-this gesture; for now another level of recognition was setting in. Both of them had seen this light before or something very like it, outside the realms of the merely physical. It was the light of Timeheart, which had always been there, which did not change but grew every second, and made the ability to bear it grow too. Turn from it, and it blinded: stare into it till it blinded, and you could see.

They stared around them, stared at each other. “Have we died?” Kit whispered.

“Not that I noticed.”

“Think we’re gonna?” He sounded as bemused as Nita felt.

“You got me.” It didn’t seem important.

The light whited out everything but that long, prone core of darkness, that grew less as they looked at it, as if the light dissolved it. It went flat. It lay against the burning ground and misted away. It was barely more than a gray shadow. Finally it was not even that.

And Dairine fell down.

*

I told you we were going to talk.

Dairine felt the Lone Power scrabbling in Nita’s and Kit’s souls for a foothold. She felt them refuse to flee and take It to safety; she felt It slip. She held the light, held It in the light. Through Its connection to the motherboard and Logo and through her own heart, she heard the Lone One’s screams of recognition. It knew that light of old —the light It forswore forever at the beginning of everything, and fled into the dark, determined to do without rather than subject Itself to the other Powers that had asserted ownership of it.

And you still want it. Don’t you?

It would die rather than admit that. But It could not die. There was the prize irony: the inventor of Death could not avail Itself of it, for no creation is ever completely available to the Universe without the concurrence of
all
the Powers. There were a thousand thousand situations and places in the worlds where death did not obtain, and for endless millennia now the Lone One had gone from place to place and species to species among them, like a peddler selling poison under a hundred fair guises. Most bought it. Many tried to get rid of it when they realized what they’d bought, but whether they succeeded or not, they were never free of the taint.

But for the first time,
Dairine thought,
right here, right now, a species didn’t buy it, right from the start. You never expected
that
to happen. You always get a foothold in every species first, and make the sale. But this time they handed it back… and now they have the foothold in
you.

We
have the foothold in you.

The Lone Power lay there in that merciless light writhed in pain unlike any It had known since that first time—when It created something, and set it in motion, and found that Its creation was unwelcome. It had forgotten what the light all about them was like. It had not suspected that the other Powers’ torment, when They caught up with It at last, would be so bitter.

But it only hurts because you
do
want it back.
Don’t you?

The humiliation of being gloated over by this mere chit of a mortal, a thing with a life brief as a mayfly’s—

Look,
the voice said, full of pity and anger and a strange grieving love,
how could anyone
not
want that, you idiot? Just admit it and
get it over with!

And there were tears in the voice.

The Powers are not physical, and the habits of physicality come hard to Them. But the Lone One, after long wandering about Its bitter business, had spent much time in bodies, and much in human ones. The feeling of another’s tears for It—the tears of someone who now knew It more completely than any mortal, and yet shed the tears freely—after endless justified cursing by ten billion years’ worth of tormented intelligence, that feeling ran down the pitiless light like the head of an irresistible spear, and pierced the Lone One to the heart.

It fell, a great disastrous fall like a lightning-stricken tower’s, and wept darkness with desire for the light.

Dairine bent over It, not sure what to do. The mobiles gathered around her and wondered as well. It lay fading in the growing fire, and Dairine looked over at Nita and Kit for help.

They came over to her, looked down at It, shook their heads. Dairine was mildly bemused by the sight of them; she was going to have to stop calling her sister plain, or dumb-looking, and as for Kit, the thought crossed Dairine’s mind that it was a pity Nita had dibs on him.
It’s the light, of course,
she thought; it won’t last. But it was kind of a shame.

“It is too late,” the Lone One said. “I cannot go back. That part of me I murdered, willingly. I cannot find the way into the heart of the light. And they would not have me if I could.”

Dairine wiped her face. “What should we do?” she said to her sister.

Nita shook her head. “You got me. The coordinates for Timeheart are unlisted….”

Kit sighed. “I wish Peach were here, we could have asked her.”

There was a brief silence. “Oh,” said a voice, “I’m not that easy to get rid of.”

And she was in the midst of them. Not Picchu. Or—
was
it not? The presence among them now might look human, though very tall, and she might not be winged… but there was still a sense of swiftness about her, rather like the sense you got about Picchu when you realized she was going to make a grab at your sandwich and either get a piece of it, or a piece of you. Swiftness, and power, and extreme beauty, so that Dairine and Nita were abashed, and both they and Kit stared at the new apparition with all their eyes. All this in a person burning even brighter than the light around them, and about nine feet tall; a person wearing a sweatshirt with the sleeves pushed up, and blue jeans and sneakers, a person with long dark hair, and a sword naked in her hand, and the sword burning; and the fire of the sword and the fire of the sky were the same.

“You’re
kidding,”
Dairine said.

The woman laughed. “Often. But not at the moment.”

“You were Picchu?” Kit said.

“I’ve been a lot of people. You’d be surprised at the names.” She looked down with concern at the Lone One, who lay like a shadow on the burning ground. “But rarely have those namings turned out so well.”

This was a bit much for Nita. “You’re one of the Powers, aren’t you? We dragged You halfway across the Universe and busted our guts when You could have— Why didn’t You do something sooner?”

“We have been, for billions of years,” She said. “But We couldn’t do anything really permanent until Dairine got here.”

Dairine’s jaw dropped.

“And now,” She said, “if My brother here is amenable, We can start getting work done at last.”

Kit stared at her. “Your
brother?
Not much of a resemblance.”

“I told you I’ve been called by a lot of names.” She knelt down by the shadowy form that lay collapsed on the brightness. “Nearly as many as he’s been. Athene was one of mine. And Thor. And Prometheus. And Michael.”

“But you’re a girl!”

Nita threw Kit a wry look. The Power grinned. “These things are relative,” she said. “But even in your world it’s a byword. Men will fight bravely and be heroes, but for last-ditch defense against any odds… get a Mother.” She smiled. “Ask Dairine.”

Dairine, wiping her eyes, grinned back.

“I was the Winged Defender,” She said. “He was my twin brother, the beautiful one. Then… the disagreement happened, and there was war in Heaven, and all the roles changed. I led the others in casting Him out.” She shook her head sadly. “But I always wanted Him back… as did all the other Powers as well. So my role changed again. I became Prometheus, and many another. I was sent to you again and again, to put the Power in your hands: wizardry, and other powers. I never had to steal it: it was given me—from what Source, you well know. I had to help undo the evils my brother was doing, and again and again I intervened, in many worlds. But We had a plan: that one day, someone else would intervene, and He would stop doing them himself. All it took was the entropy He himself had invented….”

She looked at Dairine. “Billions of years, it took. All the redemptions there have ever been went toward this; from the greatest to the least. And finally in the fullness of time you came along, and took my role, of your own will, and woke up a race powerful enough to change the whole Universe, and gave them the fire.” She glanced up at the mobiles and smiled. “How could he resist such a bait? He took the gamble: he always does. And losing, he won.”

“He killed you, though,” Kit said.

“I struck him down once. I had to come where he could do the same to me, without my doing anything to stop him. Now the balance is even.”

The Defender reached down and put a hand into the shadow. “And we are going where such matters are transcended… where all his old pains will shift. Not forgotten, but transformed. Life in this universe will never have such a friend. And as for His inventions… look closely at Death, and see what it can become.”

The long, prone darkness began to burn, from inside, the way a mountain seems to do with sunset. “Brother,” the Defender said. “Come on. They’re waiting.”

The light began to shift. Nita looked up and around in wonder. The planet seemed to be going transparent around them. Or not specifically transparent: it was as if, one by one, other vistas were being added to it; seacoasts, forests, landscapes she couldn’t understand, cities, empty spaces that were dark and yet burned; ten other worlds, twenty, a hundred, in an ever deepening overlay that enriched without confusing.
Alternate universes?
Nita thought, and then thought perhaps not: it was too simple an explanation….

She looked at the Defender and found the same change and enriching in Her, and in the steadily brighter-burning form She bent over. Nita felt inclined to squeeze her eyes shut, not from pain but from a feeling of sheer insufficiency, of being involved in matters too high for her. “Never think it,” said the Defender, beneficent lightnings flickering about Her as other forms and other attributes came and went in glory; “never think We were made to be less than equals in the One. Someday you’ll surpass Us, and still be Our equals, and both You and We will rejoice at it. But later for that. Brother, get up now and see the way home. Let them see what they have triumphed over.”

The Lone Power rose up, slowly, like one discovering walking after a life of lameness. And Kit and Nita and Dairine all gazed, and speech left them. Nita’s eyes filled with tears as she wondered how darkness could be so bright. Lightbringer He was, and star of the morning; and like the morning star, He needed the darkness, and shone brighter for it.

“Home,” He said, gazing upward; just the one word. All eyes followed His. Nita found herself looking into endless layered vistas that were not a mere radiant mirror, like Timeheart, not a repair, a consolation for the marred world, but something deeper, closer to the true heart of things. It was fiercer, more dangerous and more beautiful, something that had never gone wrong to begin with, that the Lone One had never had power to touch; a reality that burned like fire, but still was sweeter than water after thirst, and fed the thirst itself, and quenched it again. It was a state so much more solid and real than mere physical being and thought that Nita held on to herself for delight and terror, afraid she would fade away in the face of it like a mist in full sun. Yet she wanted to see and feel more of it. Who knew how many more realities like this, piled one on another in splendor, towered up into the burning depths of creation, each more concrete, more utterly real than the last? Even the Lone One and the Defender looked stilled and diminished in all Their strength and beauty as They gazed up into the light.

“Yes,” the Defender said, “it’s greater since you left. If these rough sketch-universes expand, how should that of which they’re studies not be doing so as well? But there’s room for you. There was always room. You’ll see.”

They turned to look at Nita and Dairine and Kit and the mobiles. “Best make your farewells,” the Defender said.

Dairine turned to the mobiles. Four or five whole seconds it took to say everything that she wanted to say to them: most of it not needing words.

“Don’t forget to kill that spell,” she said finally.

“Shall we come to see you?” Gigo said, bumping up against her knee.

“Better not for the moment, guys,” Dairine said. “I’ve got a lot of explaining to do at home. And I don’t know when I’ll be back… it may take a while. The power requirements to get all the way out here are pretty stiff.” She bent to pick up the laptop. “But you won’t miss me, huh? I’m here, I’m with you. I’m
in
you.”

“We will come, later,” said another voice from down by her knee. It was Logo, healed now as the One Who had been in it had been healed. “We’ll come to where you live, when we’re wiser in being human, and wake your quicklife up.”

Dairine grinned. “Just what we need…
real
computer wizards. Okay, you guys: fair deal. It’s gonna take a while for me to learn to be a computer….”

She paused, to make the usual effort: and the words came out easily, easily. “I love you, you know that?”

They didn’t have to answer.

*

The light was growing past even a wizard’s ability to handle it now, even the ability of one being sustained by two of the Powers That Be. “Time,” said the Defender. “Brother, will you do the honors, or shall I?”

“Let me.”

And darkness surrounded them.

Nita had been afraid of the dark when she was little. For a terrible moment, that fear swept down on her again—

—and then shifted completely. Something was looking at her: but not a thing like the things she imagined under the bed when she was little. SomeOne. Not a physical presence: it needed none; but a still, dark regard weighing on her soul—dark, and benign, and inexpressibly joyous. It bore down on her, considering her in endless calm, knowing her inside out; and the dark splendor of Its scrutiny so scorched and pierced Nita with some deeper kind of light that she would have gladly gone swimming in a sun for relief from it.