Wizards at War, New Millennium Edition (36 page)

Dairine’s eyes went wide.

The laughter began again, sounding even more self-assured and unconcerned. “Many other such minions are traveling among the worlds in these days,” said the King. “They seek to undo the great gift of the greatest and final Death. They cannot undo it. Now that Death is coming, inescapable, for them all.” The King chuckled as if at a particularly nasty joke. “They have no power to stop it—least of all here, where my strength is most strong.”

The Arch-votary, bowing, looked completely puzzled by all this. “To what labor shall they be put, Great One?” it said.

“They labor already,” said the King, his voice lazily, wickedly amused. “They labor to no purpose. And when their labor comes to an end, and the gift of Death comes to them all—very soon now—they will know that all their work, from the first to the last, has been in vain.”

It laughed again. Dairine gritted her teeth. “Let them go, Arch-votary. Whatever they do here, they will be doing my business. And it will amuse me to watch them doing it.”

The Arch-votary bowed down. Much against her will, Dairine bowed along with Kit and Roshaun and the others. “The Great One bids you go about Its business,” the Arch-votary said, and then turned away and ignored them.

Kit glanced at Ronan; then the two of them turned away from the dais and started to make their way across the vast hall. The others followed, and Dairine came last of all, heartily wishing she had an excuse to blow King Bug up.
It’d mess everything up, of course.
Our chances of doing what we came here to do would become about zero. But, boy, it’d be
so
much fun.

None of the others said a word as they made their way across the hall. As they approached the tunnel for which they’d originally been heading, the warriors who had been standing guard over it moved away.

Silently the wizards headed into the tunnel. Dairine was alert for whatever trap might be on the far side, but there was none. As Kit led them around a curve into the next tunnel, lined with many more tunnel exits and a number of chambers, all Dairine saw before them was the normal steady traffic of Yaldiv, going and coming about the Great One’s business.

We should find somewhere quiet,
Kit said at last,
get out of here, and figure out what to do next.

No argument,
Ronan said. To Dairine’s ear they both sounded as if they’d been in a fight that they felt they’d lost, and couldn’t figure out why.

Ahead, Dairine saw Kit turn a corner into another tunnel. Behind him, Ponch paused, looking back, then went after Kit.

And then something unexpected happened to Dairine, something as literally shocking as when she’d brushed up against an exposed wire in the Christmas tree lights the year before last. One of the chambers they passed had a long line of Yaldiv waiting outside, and another line going out.
More of these handmaidens,
Dairine thought, glancing in as they passed.
Getting food for King Bug.
She was beginning to recognize the slender look of the handmaidens, the smaller foreclaws. One handmaiden in the incoming line, as Dairine looked in, turned to glance out at the Yaldiv “warriors” passing in the corridor.

As she met that Yaldiv’s eyes, a jolt went straight through Dairine like that shock from the Christmas lights. She knew those eyes. On the mobiles’ world, she had looked out through them. And she saw herself looking out of them now.

Hastily Dairine glanced away. But it was too late; she had seen the Yaldiv’s reaction. It was one of recognition… and then alarm. Those eyes had not seen the
mochteroof,
the Yaldiv shape. They had seen what lay under it.
They’d seen Dairine.

In front of her, Roshaun felt Dairine’s shock.
What is it? What’s the matter?

Don’t stop. We’re in trouble. Just keep going!

They headed down the tunnel at the same steady pace. Dairine reached into her otherspace pocket and got out the wizardry she’d been prepared to use earlier to give them time to escape. She was hoping even now that she wouldn’t have to use it. Time-stops were expensive in terms of energy, even in the present circumstances.
But I’ll use it if I have to,
she thought. The spell burned cold and ready in her hand, a rigid lattice of frozen temporal variables, all set to let go. Every moment she expected the shout from behind: “The Other! The minions of the Other are here! After them! Kill them!”

But the shout never came. Everything around them went on exactly as it had. Dairine hugged Spot to her and kept walking, too, terrified, and moment by moment increasingly confused.
She saw me. Why isn’t anything happening?

Greatly daring, Dairine glanced behind her. The lines were still there, Yaldiv going in, Yaldiv going out. And in the doorway, a single Yaldiv, looking after them—

Dairine looked away before she could meet those eyes again. All the same, they were looking at her. The Yaldiv watched them go, silent, still. Then it vanished again.

Dairine hurried after the others, eager to get someplace where they could talk. Things were going terribly wrong…

…but possibly, just possibly, in the right kind of way.

***

Nita appeared among the trees at the far end of her backyard. For a long moment she just stood there, getting her breath. It wasn’t that the transit from the Crossings put you through much in the way of physical difficulties. It was just that, now that she was here, she was almost afraid to go into the house and see what she would find.

She took a deep breath and walked out from among the trees. Nita fished around in the pockets of her vest to find her house keys, but as she got close enough to the backyard gate to see the driveway, she saw her dad’s car there. The sight both reassured and scared her.
If he was home before, why wasn’t he answering the phone?

She ran up the steps to the back door, got her keys out, and bumped the screen door aside with one hip to keep it open while she unlocked the inside door. “Dad?” she said, walking into the kitchen. It was clean; no one had eaten any meals here recently. “Daddy?”

She went into the dining room. The table was clean; it was almost as if no one had been here for a while.

Nita turned her head, hearing the TV in the living room. “Daddy?” she said, going in. The living room was tidy; the newspapers, usually left in a casual heap, were stacked neatly by her dad’s easy chair.

“—Tension continues to build in the Caucasus as the government of Ossetia maintains its hard-line stance against the paramilitary group that claims to have stolen between ten and twelve kilograms of weapons-grade plutonium,” the TV said. Nita saw several different shots of men in military uniforms rushing around—
Some kind of SWAT team,
she thought. “—rumors of a nuclear briefcase weapon, and has threatened to sell the material to terrorist organizations in the area—”

Nita swallowed, and picked up the remote to change channels. But even on the nonnews channels, she kept running into screens that said NEWS BULLETIN or SPECIAL REPORT. Even the main cartoon channel had a news crawl running along the bottom of its screen.
Are the network people crazy?
Nita thought, annoyed.
Don’t they realize how scared little kids are going to get when they see that? Do they think that just because they watch cartoons, they can’t read?
She changed the channel again, finding herself looking at another BULLETIN screen.
What the heck’s going on around here?

But she knew. It was the local effect of the Pullulus, which Tom and Carl had predicted: people being pushed further and further away from one another. She threw the remote down on the hassock by her dad’s chair. “Daddy?”

And then Nita jumped nearly out of her skin, because he was right behind her; she’d been so preoccupied with the TV that she hadn’t even heard him. She grabbed her dad and hugged him, hard, and said, “What were you
doing
there?”

“I live here,” her dad said. “This is my house. And yours, when you have time to get home to it.” He hugged her back, looking over her shoulder. “I didn’t expect you to come home just to watch TV, though.”

“I didn’t,” Nita said. “Daddy, where
were
you? I was worried sick! I tried to call you, and I couldn’t reach you on the cell phone, and you weren’t in the shop, and you weren’t at home—” She was almost babbling, and she didn’t care. “I started thinking maybe you’d been in an accident—or, or—”

Her dad kissed Nita on the forehead and hugged her harder. “What is it they say,” he said, “about living long enough to worry your children? Guess I’ve done at least that.” He held her away from him. “I had to be out of the shop this afternoon,” he said. “I had to take Mike to the hospital.”

Nita stared at him. “What’s the matter with Mike?”

Her dad laughed a little, though the sound was rueful. “He had an allergic reaction to some lilies,” he said. “He swelled up in the most incredible hives. He couldn’t see to work, or even get himself to the hospital; I had to drive him.”

“Is he going to be okay?”

“Yeah, they pumped him full of antihistamines and cortisone,” her dad said. “He’ll be all right in a couple of days. Meantime, I have to handle the shop by myself and make the deliveries, so the place’ll be closed while I’m gone. It’s no big deal.”

“But your cell phone—”

“Oh, that,” her dad said. “Everybody’s been having trouble with their phones the past day or so. We had another of your solar flares. Didn’t Roshaun say we might get some more of those after he and Dairine and the others fixed the Sun?”

“Oh my gosh,” Nita said. “I forgot. So much has been happening, and I thought—” She sighed. “Never mind.”

“It’s a pity you weren’t here last night,” her dad said. “We had a really nice aurora. You’d have loved it.”

An aurora,
she thought.
When did I last have time to look at the sky for fun?
“Daddy,” she said, “this is going to sound really strange, but what day is today?”

“It’s April thirtieth,” her dad said.

“Oh, no!” Nita said. “We have to be back at school on Monday; that’s as much time as Mr. Millman could get us! What if we can’t, what if…”

Her dad sighed and sat down in his easy chair, though he didn’t lean back. He looked at Nita, concerned, and then glanced at the TV. It was still discussing wars and rumors of wars. “I know this sounds unlike me,” he said, “but don’t worry about that right now. How are you doing with what you left to do?”

“It’s too early to say,” Nita said. “But things are really messed up.”

“Yeah,” said her dad. He threw another glance at the TV. “The news is so bad right now.” He shook his head. “Let’s not get into it. Sweetie, you should get back there and concentrate on your job.”

“But what about you?” she said. Sker’ret’s ancestor was on her mind, and Dairine had left a précis in the manual about her meeting with Roshaun’s family. All Nita could think of at the moment was her father, alone in an empty house at a bad time.

“I’m doing okay,” he said, looking her in the eye. “Don’t distract yourself. I can cope.”

“But—”

“Honey, things here may be going to hell in a handbasket,” he said, “but after what you’ve told me, I know
why.
So when I feel awful, at least I’m privileged to know what’s causing it. For the meantime, you let me worry about this planet, and I’ll let you worry about all the others. If what you’re doing works, we’ll all have less to worry about here.” He smiled, though the smile was pained. “Dairine’s all right?”

“As far as I know.”

“Good,” her dad said.

“I have to call Kit’s mama and pop and tell them that he’s okay, too.”

“I can do that for you,” her dad said. “I need to talk to them anyway. In case the school decides to give us any trouble, we’re going to want to present a united front.”

“Okay,” she said. “I have to go check in real quick with Tom and Carl. As soon as I’ve done that, I’ll be going back.”

“Have you got enough stuff in your pup tent?” her dad said.

“Loads,” Nita said. “I’ll come back if I need anything.”

“Okay,” her father said. He looked at the TV, picked up the remote, and very pointedly turned off the TV. “At times like this,” he said, “you can pay too much attention to the news. Either they’ll blow up the world, or they won’t. Meantime, our job is to get on with life.”

“I think you’re right,” Nita said. “Daddy…”

She went to him and hugged him again. He hugged her back, hard. “You be careful,” he said. “But do what you have to. Don’t worry about me.”

She looked up at him. “I’m going to anyway,” Nita said. “But I
will
do what I have to.”

“Good,” her dad said, and pushed her gently away. “Don’t worry about the phones. Get in touch when you can, or just leave me voicemail. Okay?”

“Okay.”

“Then I’ll see you later.” He smooched her on the top of her head, and went into the kitchen, and outside.

“Bye-bye,” Nita said.

Standing there in the living room, she heard her dad start the car up and back out of the driveway. Everything was suddenly very quiet.

Hurriedly, Nita headed out the back door, locked it, and set out on the short walk to Tom and Carl’s.

***

She hadn’t had to ring the doorbell more than once before the door opened. Tom peered out at her. “Oh, hi, Nita. How’re you doing?”

He looked so perfectly normal that she could have wept. “Oh, wow, it’s great to see you!”

“It’s always good to see you, too,” Tom said. He stood in the doorway and looked at her quizzically.

This conversation somehow wasn’t going quite the way Nita had imagined it. “Where’s Carl?”

“At work. Where else would he be?”

That
calm reply ran a chill down Nita’s spine.
Wrong, this is all wrong.

“Uh,” she said. “Yeah. Listen, I thought I should touch base about where we’ve been.”

Tom raised his eyebrows. “School, I thought,” he said. “Spring break would have ended, I don’t know, last week sometime?”

Nita opened her mouth and closed it again.

“Listen,” Tom said, “I’d love to chat, but I’m on a deadline. I’ve got to get this article to the magazine by Friday.”