Wizards at War, New Millennium Edition (49 page)

It stretched Its arms above Its head and grinned. Nita gulped.

Kit, though, gave It a blasé look. “Nice gloat,” he said.

The Lone One gave him a look. “You’re too kind,” It said. “But I’m just telling you the truth, which you pretend so to value. And, Kit…” It
tsk-tsk-tsked
at him. “Denial, even disguised as humor, suits you so badly. Don’t you understand?
You’re not getting out this time.
You don’t have a scrap of wizardry left to you. And did it occur to you that you might have been a little too secretive about getting here? There’s not a wizard anywhere in this universe who either knows where you’ve gone or is going to be able to do anything about it. Since this is now a no-wizardry zone, manual functions won’t be able to find you. And don’t think I’m forgetting your multilegged friend at the Crossings,” It said, looking over at Nita. “He’s got his claws full, too, every one of them.”

It sat down on the dais, crossing Its legs and swinging them a little. “So, for the extremely foreseeable future, here you stay. It takes quite a lot of power to exclude wizardry from any space, but with my energy investment withdrawn from ninety-nine percent of the Pullulus now, I have some to spare. I’m perfectly happy to use it making sure that the ‘Great Art’ is permanently disabled here. And in the meantime—”

On the floor before the dais, Memeki began heaving rhythmically.

The Lone Power laced Its fingers behind Its head and leaned back. “No,” It said, “there’s no rush at all. Nature is going to take its inevitable course, and we’ll all get to watch this particular zero hollow itself out.”

Nita stood there frozen with horror as she watched the heaving wrack Memeki more and more terribly. That awful wave of desperation she’d felt in the Crossings rose up to possess her again, and this time it stuck.
This is it, then,
she thought.
Despite all our work, regardless of everything we did, it’s all over.

Behind her, someone moved. Ronan pushed past Nita to stand in front of her and Memeki. “All right,” he said, pausing to lean on the Spear again, “I don’t know about everybody else here, but I for one think it’s time somebody put some manners on you.”

The Lone Power burst out laughing at him. “Oh please!” It said. “Just look at you! You and the Toothpick of Virtue. That can’t hurt me now: it’s absolutely no good for anything without someone who both knows how to use it, and has the strength! Which, as we’ve seen, you don’t.”

“You’re right,” Ronan said. “I don’t. But someone else does.”

“You know, you missed your calling,” the Lone Power said. “Why aren’t you in stand-up comedy? You’re just another cage for another spent force! My esteemed ‘little brother’ might be wearing fewer feathers this time, but you’re an even worse embodiment for him than his last one.” It turned Its back on Ronan and walked away, chuckling and shaking Its head. “You’ve only once let him have access to his full power, and never again since. Talk about a hopeless mismatch! But since he had to commit fully to embodying inside you, he’s stuck there whether he likes it or not. If he tried to leave you, it’d kill you. And, being a Power of Light”—the Lone One turned, and the sneer in Its voice was so full of scorn that the words almost burned in Nita’s ears—”he’d never take that chance.”

“No,” Ronan said softly. “He wouldn’t.”

“So you see that for all your big words—”

“
But I would!
”

Nita’s head snapped around.

Ronan leaned back and threw the Spear.

Forged in wizardry by one of the Powers That Be, with another Power as old as wizardry itself bound into the starsteel of the blade, the Spear of Light roared out of Ronan’s hand toward the Lone One. The Lone Power casually flung up a hand alive with black lightning to deflect it. But the Spear went nowhere near It. Instead, it swung far around the Lone One’s back, roared past him, and headed back.

The breath went out of Nita. “
Ronan!
”

He didn’t move, except to look just slightly sideways at Nita: that dark, wry, ironic expression of his, mocking himself now as much as the One whom he was attacking in the least expected way. In that last second, Ronan threw his arms wide—a grandstanding gesture, a casually defiant flash of black against the dim heat of the hive—and the Spear of Light struck him in the chest, and he went down.

“
No!
” screamed the Lone Power, and the whole City shook.

Nita stood there wide-eyed and gasping, as stricken as if she’d been the one hit by the Spear. She plunged toward where Ronan lay, bleeding blood and fire. But a breath later, a wave of force blasting away from the light that pooled around him struck Nita and knocked her and all the others flat … even the Lone Power. In that shock wave, the fallen bodies of the Arch-votary and its warriors were scattered across the floor of the central chamber like so many toys, and, with the rebound of the shock wave, a huge form of light gathered itself up around Ronan, swirling, streaming upward. Across the floor, the shape that had been human moments before and had been blasted into a puddle of darkness by that fury of light now began straining upward to reform itself, a blinding blackness throwing itself out in a hundred directions in writhing, raging tendrils and tentacles of shadow.

Nita scrambled to her knees, craning her neck to take in the tremendous form towering over them, armed in light, armored in fire. Once again she understood why, long ago, the first thing such an apparition had to say to the people who saw it was “Fear not.” No sane and mortal creature could look on the One’s Champion in full manifestation without being afraid that mere fragile reality might start to shred around so terrible a Power for good. The Champion towered up into the heights in what looked to Nita like human form. But in this manifestation, the Defender was not terribly concerned about details such as gender or ornament. Light flared behind It like wings, licking upward like fire, as It stood there burning like a statue cast in lightning, laughing uproariously.

Free!
the Champion cried.
Once again, Brother, you’ve underestimated the tenacity of the One’s other weapons. This one in particular! I’m surprised you ever let him in here, but then this splinter of you seriously believed that the first work I did with Ronan was what I
came
to him for!
It laughed again, delighted.
And though there’s only one thing I can do, now—thanks to him, it’s the only thing that needs to be done. You’ve done everything else for us; you yourself triggered the whole cycle of events you most desired to avoid!

The Champion lifted one arm and pointed what It held at the furiously writhing, growing shape of blackness building before It. A sword like a splinter of sun’s core lifted over the Lone One, ready to strike.
So as you interrupted my work once before, now I interrupt yours. And what was trying to happen, now has one last chance.

That unbearable shard of light reared high, struck down. Another blast of power hit Nita so hard that she staggered, but not because of the impact of any physical force. The words came rushing back right through her as the Speech once again
meant
something. Her charm bracelet blazed; the rowan wand in her belt burned moonfire chill. She glanced around, saw the others scrambling up from where the shock wave had thrown them, regaining their power and their weapons.

The light around them grew less bright. Nita looked up in shock and saw that the dark shape of the Lone One lay writhing on the floor like a tangle of shadowy snakes. But the burning form of the Champion was fading, slipping away out of the physical world.
I can’t stay any longer inside time,
It said in the depths of Nita’s mind, and the others’.
This embodiment ended too soon: I have no more power to spend. Now hurry! It’s up to you.

The light vanished: the Champion was gone.
At least It’s broken the Lone One’s blockage,
Nita thought. But the Lone One was still there. And were Its shadowy tentacles getting more solid again? She glanced at the still-heaving Memeki, who was trying to get to her feet. Filif and Roshaun and Dairine hurried over to her, getting down to support her, pushing her up. But Nita headed straight past them to Ronan, flinging herself down on her knees beside him.

The Spear stood upright in him, burning. Nita reached to pull it out of him, then hesitated as its blade went up in a great flame of furious white fire.
Why? Though maybe it’s trying to protect him, maybe if I pulled it out he’d—

Kit was suddenly there, kneeling across from Nita, staring down at Ronan, the light of the Spear glinting in his eyes. A moment later, Nita became aware of a darkness overshadowing her. She looked up. It was Memeki, with Roshaun and Dairine and Carmela and Filif all around her, helping keep her on her feet. Memeki’s claws trembled as she reached down to Ronan, toward the Spear.

“Memeki, no, don’t! He might—”

With a great effort, Ronan opened his eyes. “This,” he said. “This is your—” He took an incredibly deep breath. “—made for you. Now you can—”

His eyes closed again, his head fell to one side.

The ground began to shake.
This cannot happen!
said a terrible voice in all their bones, as the Lone Power started to rise again, the serpentine arms reaching out of that pool of darkness now getting more solid as It exerted every last ounce of force It had left to try to force Its way back into full physicality.
I will not permit—

But Memeki ignored It. She looked down at Ronan, where he lay silent and bleeding. Then she looked around her at Nita, and Kit, and Roshaun, and Dairine, and Filif, and, finally, at Ponch.

“Yes,” she said to him. “My answer is your answer. My answer is yes.”

And she reached out and seized the Spear in her claws.

Nita braced herself. But instead of what she expected—a cataclysmic shaking, some great scream of rage or triumph—there fell around them instead a profound stillness, into which all sound swirled down and was swallowed away. In silence, the universe bent close to hear what was going to happen next. In silence, Memeki reared up and yanked the Spear out of Ronan’s body. In silence, its fire whipped out of it in a vortex of terrific force and swirled around her, burning, hiding her away.

The City was already dark, but now it grew darker still. At first Nita was afraid that the Lone One was doing something. The darkness around them deepened, but that light at the center of everything swirled out, spiraling away from what had been its center. All that remained within the core of the light was a shell, glowing, transparent as the
mochteroofs,
and inside it a swarm of dark sparks of fire. They swirled and burned and then, all at once, burned fiercely bright, too bright to look at, like the myriad sparks of a fireworks display—

They went out. Around them, the glow of the shell that had been Memeki went out like a blown-out candle flame. Memeki was gone.

But the light itself was not. It fountained up into the heights of the central space of the City, and then down again, sheeting and splashing out, illuminating that whole place and flooding outward, striking the papery walls, pouring through them. At first Nita thought the walls were vanishing, but then she realized that they were simply becoming as transparent as glass under the influence of the power that now imbued them. All around, in every direction, hundreds and thousands of Yaldiv became visible in the deepest structures of the nest. Tens and hundreds more began to pour into the central chamber through its many doors. All the mirrory eyes looked up and inward at the blaze of light as it spun downward and outward from the heights, defining a new shape, a radiant and tremendous form shelled and sheened in light; and the beauty of it, even in the strange alien shape, was nearly unbearable. Nita wanted nothing more than to stand there staring at it, waiting to see what other, more momentous shape it would take when her human senses finally came to grips with it.

The chamber was full of Yaldiv now, thousands of them packed into this space. They and the thousands of others elsewhere in the now-crystalline structure of the City gazed inward or upward at the rainbow-streaming shape above them, all their myriad eyes swimming with a light that seemed to come in more colors than physical existence normally allowed—a spectrum as much of possibility as of mere radiance. The light no longer just lay on the surface of those eyes, but sank into them, dwelt in them. Some of the Yaldiv out there were handmaidens, some of them bearing eggs inside them as Memeki had done; and as Nita saw the brilliant sparks held within the huge shape of the Hesper flare up, so did the sparks within the handmaidens below, flaring into ferocious brilliance, burning clean, dying down again to swirls of rainbow glitter, dark no more—

Her heart went up in a blaze of triumph.
But this is what had to happen. And now all the Yaldiv born
and
unborn will be her avatars, all the Hesper’s children and not the Lone One’s!

Nita looked over at Kit. Off to one side, beside him, Ponch had been standing very still, watching this like a dark and shining statue of a dog. But suddenly his tail started to wag, and then he started barking, and jumping up and down. The barking got louder and louder, a sound of sheer triumph.

The rainbow light shivered and trembled to the sound of Ponch’s barking. Burning, glinting, like mirrors in the sun, the eyes of the great shelled shape above them looked down at Ponch, and at the wizards who stood or crouched to look up at Her; and at the one wizard who lay still, even the blood pooled beside him reflecting rainbows now.
I am here,
It said:
I am here at last.

The tremendous voice shivered in all their bones, as the Lone Power’s voice had. It was impossibly ancient, impossibly powerful… and it was Memeki’s.

For a few seconds, no one said anything. Then, “Elder sister,” Kit said, awestruck, “greeting and honor.”

To Nita’s astonishment, that great shape bowed to them.

My first work’s done, thanks to you,
the Hesper said.
I’ve driven the Lone Power away from here, possibly forever. And I have written a new history in the Yaldiv’s bodies: they will find ways to live that mean their lives need not begin in death as well as end in it. So this poor world that my other self maimed so badly will now be healed. And after it, in time, so will many other worlds, one by one.