“Why should you care about that?” Ictanikë said. “You’re the oldest of the wizards on this world, the wisest and the strongest. And you’re the power source for this spell, the one without whom a wizardry of this scope and importance simply can’t happen. If they become offended, why, you just walk away from the spell—”
“And leave the future of my world unprotected from disasters and pain and sudden death, and alienated from the One?” Druvah said. “I don’t think so.”
“Whatever the One may do for you,” Ictanikë said, “without me included in your world, your species will never be able to change, or grow.”
“I suspect that to be true,” Druvah said, and for the first time, he looked troubled. “But I don’t trust you.”
“There I can help you,” Ictanikë said. “I will gladly give you enough power so that, for the rest of your life, if indeed you don’t trust me, you can step in to right whatever wrongs you think have been done.”
Druvah was silent for a while, gazing off into the distance. Then he looked up again. “You’re very cunning,” he said. “But what’s one lifetime against the lifetime of a world? I’m not so irresponsible as to cast away responsibility for what happens in Alaalu after I leave it. If you’re going to give me power in return for changes I
make in the wizardry we’re about to work, then it will be this way—that by your gift, I’ll be able to live here in the state of being I please, in the shape and way I please, until the last of the Alaalids passes from the world.”
Uh-oh, Kit thought. He recognized the veiled cruelty in the smile on the Lone One’s face, having seen it before. Whatever Druvah was asking for, it was something that the Lone Power thought suited Its own desires perfectly.
“After the Choice is done,” the Lone One said, “what you’ve asked for will be yours.”
“Before,” Druvah said. “I know perfectly well who you are. And I know that the gifts of the Powers can’t be recalled once bestowed.”
The Lone One looked somewhat taken aback.
“My way, or not at all,” Druvah said.
Ictanikë looked at him, narrow-eyed, furious. Finally, she said, “Very well.”
“And when you give me this power,” Druvah said, “what am I supposed to do for you?”
“Just a small thing,” the Lone One said. “Simply leave me a foothold in your world…a place where my essence can lie dormant until the day comes when you do need it for the Change that is to come. With you as the eternal guardian of your world, I won’t be able to do any harm.”
Kit knew that innocent look, and he went cold at the sight of it. The Lone One’s going to make sure something happens to Druvah, sooner or later, Kit thought. Probably sooner. It’ll find a loophole in the promise It’s made, and It’ll kill him somehow. And then the Alaalids will be stuck with It in their world forever. He had the urge to go over to Druvah and shake him and say, Don’t do it!
But Druvah was hundreds of thousands of years away from Kit. He said to the Lone One, “I agree. Pay me my price now, or I do nothing for you.”
The Lone Power looked at him for a long moment, then closed Its eyes.
The ferocity of the released power staggered Kit where he stood, even at this remove in time and space. Druvah, though, did not stagger. He went rigid as ironwood, and then, as the rigor passed, he looked at Ictanikë with the slightest smile.
“Now,” he said, “to work.”
Druvah went back to the other six wizards, who looked at him dubiously. “Well,” he said, “I’ve listened to Its words. Now you’ll listen to mine in turn. I am the power source for this Choice, this work we do to protect our world for all the generations that will come after. The spell we’ve built so far has many good things about it. Lives will be long in our world, and there will be peace and prosperity and joy for an endless-seeming time. The Lone One will have no more part in our world than entropy, Its child, makes absolutely necessary. Our world’s center, its kernel, It will never be able to reach, and this world will be a good one, a glad one, for a very long time. But not forever. I see the doings of the day after forever, when our people realize they must change and cannot, and there won’t be any release from the trap our present wizardry will have built for them.”
“You only say this because the Lone One has said it to you,” Seseil cried. “Power passed between you, just then. She has bought you!”
“Many will say that,” Druvah said. “Only the day after forever will reveal the
truth. So for now, if you want to enact the Choice we’ve made here, the wizardry that will protect our world, let’s do so. But I will only power the wizardry if we add to it this stricture: that, come the day after forever, when the children of the children of a thousand millennia from now finally realize they need to change their world and themselves, our descendants in power will be able to repeal this Choice, this protection, and make another that suits them better.”
“Never! We know what’s best for them—”
“So parents always say of their children,” Druvah said. “Sometimes they’re even right. Nonetheless, if we make a Choice-wizardry today, or ever, this is how it’s going to have to be. However, so that no such change of our whole world will be made lightly, let us add this to the stricture: The decision must be unanimous.”
Kit saw Seseil smile then. Under his breath, the Alaalid said to one of the other wizards near him, “That will never happen. So let us do as he asks.”
So the wizardry went forward. Kit watched it through to the end, watched the actual implementation of the massive working that was meant to keep this world safe from the Lone Power’s malice forever. It shook the earth when it was done, and thundered against the sky, and rooted itself into Alaalu’s star and into the fabric of all the space in Alaalu’s system, right out to the heliopause. When it was over, all the wizards went away to their homes, well satisfied that they had made their world safe from the evils of the universe until their star should come naturally to the end of its life span and go cold. Only Druvah was left. He stood and watched his colleagues go, and finally turned his own back and walked off the way Ictanikë had gone.
Kit watched him go with a strange feeling. The silence that fell after that mighty working was deafening. In it, only the wind blew. Everything seemed finished, and Kit almost expected to look up into that piercingly blue sky and see hanging there the words the end. But the way he felt, if there were going to be words written in the heavens, they could only be to be continued.
We need to get up out of this, Ponch said from beside Kit, panting. It’s over.
They stepped up out of the pool. Kit had to struggle, gasping, up the last six or ten feet of the climb; and when they came out onto the surface, he looked down and found everything beneath them empty—just water. No wizards, no past.
I think maybe I broke it, Ponch said, apologetic.
“Oh, great,” Kit muttered. “Well…never mind. We found out what we needed to. Let’s get back and tell Nita. And then we have to talk to Quelt. We’ve got to do something. They’ve made a terrible mistake, and we have to help them somehow.”
If they’ll let us, Ponch said.
In Dairine Callahan’s kitchen, hectic planning was in progress.
“This data source is useful,” Prince Roshaun said, looking over Dairine’s shoulder at Spot’s rendition of the SOHO satellite’s data feed. “But does it have history? If we’re going to avoid collapsing your star, I need data for at least the past fifty years.”
Dairine laughed weakly. “We’ve barely been in space that long,” she said. “The satellite’s only a few years old. For earlier data, you’re going to need the manual.”
“We’ll use both,” Roshaun said, running a finger down Spot’s screen and bringing up an array of solar views and a great many complicated-looking charts and graphs. “We don’t have a lot of time. Here, they have ultrasound data. And magnetographs. Good.” He went quiet for a moment, studying the images. “The star’s active side is pointing away from us right now. That buys us time…”