Wizards at War, New Millennium Edition (45 page)

“She died,” Nita said, straightening up. “Yes. She died.”

“So you understand how it must be for us, for all the Yaldat. How it will be for me.” Memeki shivered again, and Nita noticed that those shivers were getting more frequent. “It’s the greatest honor that a Yaldah can achieve. I was called to the King. I became his vessel. Inside me, the eggs grew. Now they’re almost ready. The Great One’s children will come forth.”

“And kill you,” Nita whispered.

“Of course they will. This is the holy Sacrifice; this is Motherhood. What kind of mother would not die for her children?”

Once again the memory of darkness came down on Nita, the darkness inside her mother’s cancer-stricken body, and the worse one, much later, on the night Nita went up to her room after the funeral, shut the door, and sat in the dark, completely dead inside. But the shock a few moments ago had left Nita less susceptible to this second one… and she wasn’t going to let the pain distract her from the business at hand, especially when it was so plain that the whole Yaldiv species was being jerked around in a way that Nita found so personal. Suddenly everything seemed reflected in everything else—the mirror-eye looking back at her, and the koi’s words:
Within every dewdrop, a world of struggle.
And this was it, she realized. The struggles were the same; the answers were the same. This was the key.

“What kind of mother wouldn’t die for her kids?
Lots
of kinds!” Nita said. Her own anger surprised her, and at the sound of it, Memeki started back.
“Would,
sure. But
have
to? Most places it’s optional, not mandatory! Not for you, though. Someone’s picked out the kind of motherhood that’ll hurt the most, the kind you can never enjoy, and talked you into thinking it’s all you’ve got!”

Shock practically radiated from Memeki. “But this is—this is—”

“The way it’s always been done?” Nita said. “No, it’s not! There’s another story, isn’t there?” And as she said it, she knew it was true, the same way she’d known when to throw herself out of the line of fire back at the Crossings.
But nothing about this business is usual,
she thought, and felt the peridexic effect’s amusement in response.

Memeki’s shock became even more pronounced. She waved her claws in distress. “How do you know that?” she cried. “You were not—He didn’t—” She threw a glance toward Ponch.

She told him,
Nita thought.
And that’s how
I
know now. This was part of the information that was blocked in the manuals. But when she told Ponch herself, the peridexic effect got access to the information!
“It doesn’t matter right now,” Nita said. “Listen to me, Memeki! Once upon a time, mothers here didn’t have to do that kind of thing, did they?”

“No! They—” Memeki quieted a little. “No,” she said.

“Because there weren’t so many eggs?”

Memeki hesitated. “Maybe. I don’t know.”

“But these days there
are
so many,” Nita said. “Too many. And they have no other way to be born. They have to kill you.” She was getting angrier every moment. It was another of the Lone Power’s favorite gambits—perverting the way Life worked just to spite it. “There might be more to it than that. Never mind that right now. Once, things were different. But now you’re called to the King—” Nita thought about that for a moment. “‘Called.’ They
make
you go to him?”

Memeki put up her claws again in distress. “It is an honor—”

“Yeah, sure,” Nita said. “What if you don’t want the honor?”

“The warriors make meat of you,” Memeki whispered.

“So you have no choice,” Nita said.

Memeki was silent. Nita put a hand out to her and felt again the burning storm of angry life inside her, all the new little avatars of the Lone One waiting for their first act in life, which would be to murder someone. Away behind her, she could hear Ponch whimpering, and Kit was picking up on his distress.

Neets—

I know.

We’re just about ready.

Give us a minute.
“Memeki,” Nita said, “the only reason you’re here with us now is because somehow you felt different from all the other Yaldiv, all the other Yaldat.”

“That’s true,” Memeki said.

“And you said you heard a voice speaking to you?”

“The voice that said I could be more,” Memeki said, “that all my people could be more.”

“Memeki,” Nita said, “did you give the voice an answer?”

And inside Memeki, Nita could feel all those little sparks of dark fire suddenly blaze up in shock. From the other core of power working inside her, the small, dim-beating one, there was not the slightest sign of reaction: like someone holding absolutely still lest some shy, trembling thing bolt away.

Memeki was silent.

Neets, we really need to get out of here. Ponch thinks he smells something starting to happen.

Just a minute more!
“Memeki!” Nita said.

Memeki looked at Nita. “No,” she said. “I never knew what to say.”

Nita swallowed. “Memeki,” she said, “before, you never had a choice in anything. Now you have one, your very own choice.
Give the voice an answer.
”

Almost too softly to be heard, “But what answer?” Memeki said. “What do I
do?
”

Nita thought of Della in her dream: the claw pushing the hair back, the way Memeki groomed her palp, that nervous gesture.
Come on, give me a hint: What am I supposed to be doing to make everything turn out all right? You’re supposed to know what They want, you’re the one who’s supposed to have all the answers.

Her mouth had gone as dry as any desert, but Nita managed to open it, and said, very softly, “I can’t tell you.”

“But you have to! You know!”

I know the right answer. At least, I know
a
right answer. And it would be so easy to tell her. But if I did…
She couldn’t even swallow, she was so scared, for Nita was sure that giving Memeki
any
answer would completely screw everything up.
It’s not what Tom or Carl would do. And if I’m being a Senior, it’s not what I should do either.

“
Tell me!
” Memeki pleaded.

“Memeki, if I tell you what to say,” Nita said, “
it’s not your choice.
”

Behind her, Nita could hear Ponch starting to growl. She forced herself to ignore him.

“And you
have
to choose,” Nita said. “If you don’t, we’ll have come here all this way for nothing. Except to die.”

“That is a hard saying!” Memeki said. She sounded hurt and indignant, like someone under unfair pressure.

“Unfortunately, it’s also a true one,” Nita said. “Wizards tell the truth. Sometimes it’s all we’ve got: one way or another, the words wind up doing the job.”

“I need time! Time to think, to decide—”

“There is no time,” Nita said. “And this kind of choice won’t
need
time. It’s done in a flash, in a breath. All you have to do is be willing to finally make it, instead of putting it off!”

Memeki turned away from her.

Nita broke out in a cold sweat.
Oh, please don’t let me have messed up!
she thought.
If I’ve ruined this somehow, if the whole universe is going to go dark because I just said the wrong thing—

“Nita,” Ronan said. “
Now.
“

Her head came right around at the sound of sheer command in his voice—and the unexpected desperation.

“They’re coming,” he said, and this time it was just Ronan. “He can’t hide us anymore. His power’s going, and there’s another great lot of them coming. Five times as many as last time, maybe more. Something’s waking up in the City.”

Nita swallowed. His
power’s going?
H
ow
long is
ours
going to last?
“Look,” she said, “maybe we can help Him. Pass Him some power, or operate His shield routine independently. Can you feed Spot the cloaking spell He was using? At least we can buy ourselves some time.”

Ronan frowned, a concentrating look. “I have it,” said Spot from across the room. “Working…”

“Everybody into the
mochteroofs!
” Filif said.

There was a wholesale scramble for them. “Ponch,” Kit said, “if You-Know-Who can feel our transits now, you’re going to have to walk us out of here: It doesn’t seem to be able to feel
you.
‘Mela, here, get in—”

Nita stood for a moment more with her hand against Memeki’s carapace. Memeki swung herself around toward Nita, looked at her, and once again Nita was briefly dazzled by the reflections: mirror-shade eyes, dewdrops, and, suddenly, another eye looking out at her from one of the reflections—

Nita recoiled in terror as the myriad sparks of dark fire inside Memeki buzzed and jostled against one another with sudden rage. Nita jerked her hand away. “We’ll get you back to the grubbery,” she said, and turned and ran for her
mochteroof.

“Ponch, where’s the leash?” Kit said.

I have it here.

“Great. Fil—”

“I thought we might wind up needing this kind of transit: I left an open receptor for the leash in all the
mochteroof
spells. Tell me the words for your end of the spell. I can chain them together.”

He thinks of everything,
Nita thought as she got to her
mochteroof
and put her hands up against it.
He’s a better Senior than any of us. Where’d we be without him?
She melted straight through the virtual carapace, into the dim green insides of it. Light outside went monochrome, restating itself as heat and cool rather than light and darkness; the cavern around them blazed like day. Nita found the spell-handles inside that would let her wear the
mochteroof
in automatic mode, like a tight-fitting suit, and spoke the words in the Speech to activate each one. “Don’t worry about spoken conversation,” Filif said. “It’ll stay in-circuit; only wizards will be able to hear it.”

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.”