ssive garden of red and golden plant life. Everything was manicured, managed, perfect, the strangely shaped trees not seeming to have so much as a leaf out of place, the amber-colored grass seemingly mown with micrometric precision. There wasn t a molehill or a hump or a hill anywhere in sight. It was as if a myriad of gardeners had worked the place over with rollers from right where Dairine stood to the distant horizon, where the sun was setting in a glowing blaze of cloud. Dairine let out a breath. This was beautiful, but she couldn t spend all day admiring the scenery. She turned around to go back the way she d come and froze yet again. There was the terrace, and the terrace roof, but above it reared up a huge, graceful, imposing mass of a building, all built in the same golden stone as the terrace, and spreading away far in both directions. It was at least a New York City block square And a long block, not a short one! she thought and reared up before her in stack upon stack of towers and spires and turrets and battlements, spearing defiantly upward as if to make up for the flat countryside all around. This is a palace, Dairine thought. His palace. She immediately looked around her guiltily, as if somebody might catch her being somewhere she shouldn t and dump her in a dungeon. Then Dairine straightened, held her head up. He shouldn t be here, either. Not like this! She marched back under the terrace roof, toward the long line of glass-paned doors she saw at the back of the roofed-in area. One of them stood open, near where the illicit pup-tent access still hung down. Dairine headed on past it and through that door. If she d thought the furnishings of the pup tent were opulent, she d been seriously mistaken. She now found herself in a high-ceilinged, elliptical space that was nearly the size of the auditorium at her school. This, too, was filled with massive and ornate furniture, rich carpeting scattered across the goldstone floor, figured hangings on the walls. The gold and gems were everywhere, inlaid or appliqued or just stuck onto things with wild abandon. Dairine shook her head, gazing around And someone laughed at her. Her head snapped around. There he was, in more of his trademark glittering robes, leaning back in a gaudy chair that was halfway to being a throne, and with his feet up on a footstool. I wondered how long it would take you to sneak in here, Roshaun said, stretching and lapsing back into a comfortable slouch again. I admit, you kept me waiting longer than I thought I d have to. I wish I d kept you waiting a lot longer, Dairine thought. What are you doing here she said. The pup tents are what you re supposed to be sleeping in, on an excursus, if you re not using the actual host family space for it. And you re not supposed to sleep away every night, either! The guidelines are just that, Roshaun said, guidelines. You ll have noticed that there s not a lot of heavy enforcement. The Aethyrs have better things to do. His word for the Powers That Be, I guess, Dairine thought. And that s another thing! You re not supposed to retroengineer the wizardries They gave us, either That restriction is only on the custom worldgates, Roshaun said, not the pup tents. He smiled slightly. Dairine stared at Roshaun, remembering how obvious and casual this rationale had sounded when she was considering it, and wondering why it now sounded so outrageous and annoying. And why are you so stuck on every little rule all of a sudden Roshaun said, obviously amused at Dairine s expense. You ve broken a fair number of them in your time. She looked at him in shock. Oh, yes, Roshaun said, I ve seen your precis. Something of an early star, weren t you But suffering something of a decline at the moment. Ah, that tough time when you have to redefine yourself as something less than you dreamed… Dairine opened her mouth, but managed to stop what she was about to say on its way out. The best she could find to replace it was, Why are you such a pain in the ass Probably for the same kinds of reasons you are, Roshaun said, and turned away. But I don t propose to discuss my developmental history with the likes of you. The likes of !! That s not good enough! she shouted. Why did you even bother applying for this excursus if you didn t want to be with other Suddenly doors burst open all around. Dairine looked around her in shock as a sudden inrush of people arrived from what seemed every possible direction. Most of them were dressed like Roshaun, in long overtunics over shorter tunics and breeches and boots, though all of these people wore the style in plainer, more sober-colored fabrics. Some of them were actually carrying spears, and Dairine s wizardly senses detected a number of energy signatures hidden about those servants persons that had nothing to do with spears. Pulse weapons, she thought, and a few other niceties… Dairine stood there with her head up, but inside her head, she said eighteen words of a nineteen-word spell that would bounce back at them anything they threw at her. And if Roshaun gets a little singed, well, tough Roshaun, though, just laughed and waved his servitors away. No, it s all right. You re not needed, Roshaun said. You may all go. Lord prince, said one of the spear carriers, looking at Dairine. This is an alien! You shouldn t be alone with Roshaun laughed. Nonsense! She s no possible danger to me, he said. Go on. All of the servants bowed and departed, though the armed ones gave Dairine a number of hard looks as they left. She had to smile grimly at that, though she was trying to contain her annoyance at the assessment that she was no danger. Never mind. People a lot more important in the big scheme of things have thought otherwise… The room emptied and the doors closed. Roshaun dusted his hands off as if he d actually done something, and sat back down on his throne, stretching his legs out lazily. So what s on your little agenda today Dairine collapsed the almost-built shield-spell, deciding she didn t need it anymore. And as for him, listen to him! Every word out of Roshaun is a needle, Dairine thought. Well, I m just going to stop jumping when he sticks the needle in, no matter what he says. We re going up Mount Everest and K2, she said. Those are two of the highest mountains on Earth. A lot of people climb them some just for the challenge, some almost as a tourist thing. But they leave a lot of garbage behind…so every now and then some wizards go up there and clean it up a little. It s kind of an art form, taking away enough of the oxygen bottles and so forth to keep the place from turning into a dump, without taking so many that people notice they re vanishing. That s all we need, to turn into a yeti myth or something. She stopped, because he had actually yawned at her. I don t think so, Roshaun said. I don t think so what! Housecleaning, Roshaun said, wouldn t normally be a part of my job description. Despite all her good intentions, Dairine instantly got steamed again. Neither would doing wizardry, most times, from the look of things around here, she said. Why lift a finger when all these people will jump out and do everything for you And once again she stopped herself. Well, never mind, she said. The whole point of the excursus is to see what other people s wizardly practice is like. This would have been good for that. And besides it being a kind of fun service-thing to do, I d have thought you d enjoy the view. You don t seem to have a lot of high ground around here. We have a fair amount of it elsewhere, Roshaun said, on the other side of the planet He was still trying to sound bored, but somehow it wasn t working. Dairine glanced over at him quickly, but if anything had shown in his face while she was looking away, it was too late to catch a hint of it now. He had sealed right over again. Look, Dairine said, I really don t know what your problem is. But let s just drop it, okay Why not come on back with me and we ll At the moment, I d rather not, Roshaun said. There was still something ever so slightly different about his tone of voice. Some of that snide quality had come off it, if only a few percent s worth. If it s just a personality thing… Dairine said, after some hesitation. It s nothing so simple, Roshaun said, turning away from her and reaching out to some kind of data pad by his chair. I don t much like your little world, and your Sun pains me. Dairine wasn t terribly sure what to make of the second remark, but the first was easy enough to understand. Well, you have a nice time here by yourself, she said. Lie around and take it easy…Have someone peel you a grape or three. And don t feel rushed into hurrying back. She headed back toward the access to the pup tent and made her way back through its overdecorated interior, growing gradually more annoyed. Halfway through, though, Dairine stopped, turned, and looked over her shoulder at the extra access Roshaun had added. Somebody could get him in trouble for that… Dairine stood there absently biting her lower lip for a few moments, considering possibilities. Then she grimaced at her own ill temper. This guy is really messing me up…and I hate it. Never mind. She slipped through the main pup-tent access into her basement and trotted up the stairs. Roshaun s not going to be with us this morning, she said to Filif. Something s going on at home that he had to take care of. Let s just get ourselves up Everest and do some tidying. Her dad was still standing by the counter, keying numbers into his cell phone. He held it to his ear, shook his head, and glanced at the phone. Honey, before you go, her dad said, what s going on with the cell phones today I was trying to call one of my suppliers. Is it the usual network-busy problem, or is the magic possibly interfering with it I really doubt that, Dairine said. Tom s too good at this kind of wizardry. But you know what, I heard something on the news this morning. Let me check She turned to Spot, who was sitting on the counter. Get me a weather report The SOHO satellite ll do. Spot flipped up his lid and showed Dairine the manual s version of the live feed from the SOHO solar-orbiter satellite, with a selection of pictures of the Sun taken in various wavelengths of light red, green, blue. There you are, Dairine said, pointing to the blue version, where one particular detail was clearest. We re having a little bad weather. Dairine s dad peered over her shoulder at the image of something like a big bump or bulge of light on the side of the Sun. That happened last night, Dairine said. It s a CME, a coronal mass ejection. In English, please her dad said. Dairine grinned. Think of it as a solar zit. Her dad made a face. Honey, do you think you could possibly have put that more indelicately Gives you the right impression of what s happening, though, Dairine said. Every now and then the Sun shoots out a big splat of plasma into space. No one really knows why. But if the splat s aimed toward Earth, when the front of the plasma wave gets here, there s all kinds of trouble with satellites because of the ionized radiation. Radio gets messed up for a day or so, phone connections get screwed up until the wave front passes. She shrugged. It s no big deal. These guys make sure everybody gets enough warning to turn their satellites sensors away from the wave front before it hits. She put Spot s lid down. Probably the phones ll come back up later today or tomorrow. Her father sighed, turning to the wall phone and picking it up. It s a nuisance, he said as he started to dial. Yeah, Dairine said. Sker ret came in from the living room. So where are you three off to Dairine s dad said. Mount Everest, Dairine said. Her father looked at her. She was wearing a T-shirt and shorts: It was more like summer than spring outside, at the moment. I don t suppose there s any point in telling you to dress warm We all have force fields, Dairine said. We ll be fine. Her dad watched her and hit a key on the phone s dialing pad. Voice mail, he muttered. I hate this. Mount Everest, though Why We re taking Sker ret out to lunch, Dairine said, grinning a wicked grin. Nepalese food…sort of. See you later. They vanished. It was much later that evening, after latemeal, when lamps were lit and Nita had gone down to the beach again for one last swim, when Kit finally had time to sit down in private on his bed-couch, with his manual, and page through it for some more detail. Much of what Quelt had shown them and told them was there, and more information about the way of death on Alaalu. Entropy might have its way with the bodies of the people who lived there, but not with their spirits. Those lingered on. Kit saw from the manual that this Choice had, in fact, not taken place as quickly as it had seemed at first glance. In particular, the wizards making this Choice had understood that without entropy, there was no passage of time, no way to live or be. They d seen that any bargain they might have struck with the Lone Power in an attempt to eliminate entropy completely would ve been a cheat. Naturally, the Power that had invented entropy had some control over it; the exemption It had been offering the Alaalids would have been real enough, a kind of eternal life. But Kit knew enough about the Lone Power s intentions to understand that whatever advantage over death they purchased by accepting the bargain It offered them, they would eventually have paid dearly in some other coin. Still, he thought, the way they ve got it here…they re lucky. There was a passing, but it was nothing to be afraid of. And afterward, the one who died became simply one more part of a world full of whispers, all friendly…the relatives and cousins of an elder time, passed along but not passed away, at peace after life as their people were at peace in life. She s been hearing them, he thought, remembering what Nita had said earlier. He looked down at the manual again. And as for the Lone One, now the Relegate, and defeated, the new way of the world meant she was part of the world, though made new. So they gave her a new name, the manual said, translating the local version of the Choice story, which was Esemeli, the Daughter of the Daughter of Light; and she did them no more harm, nor can do again. She went into the place prepared for her, the Relegate s Naos, and there she dwells still, in peace, as all things are at peace. And the world goes its way, and its wind speaks the One s name, and all things are well, forever… Kit closed the manual and looked out through the window on his side of the room, out to the twilit sea. The Lone One defeated, he thought. I m not sure I like the sound of that. It wasn t that such defeats were impossible: They weren t. But they were difficult to maintain, and to defend. Death might be thrown out of a scenario, but It had ways of sneaking back in if you weren t very, very careful He tucked his manual away under his pillow, pulled the light covers up over himself, and lay there looking out the window. She ll he back soon, he thought. It s almost crab time. Nita won t be swimming then. At the end of Kit s couch, Ponch lay with his chin on the covers, his eyes shifting occasionally out to the twilight, as Kit fell asleep, considering Nita was walking far down the beach, well above the waterline, watching the keks and trying to distract herself from the stinging of her neck and shoulders. This always happens when I get distracted, she thought, feeling her neck and then stopping; the stinging just got worse. First I forget the sunblock, then I forget the wizardry that s supposed to do what the sunblock would have done if I d remembered it. She sighed, watching the hurly-burly down on the sand as the keks bustled around and climbed over and under each other, building their strange little sand castles. Besides her sunburn, the main problem for Nita at the moment was Alaalu s thirty-two-hour day, which was making her experience something like jet lag without the jets. Kit, for some reason, seemed to have snapped very quickly into the local rhythm and had no trouble sleeping for sixteen hours and waking for sixteen, as the Peliaens did. But Nita s body stubbornly insisted on hanging on to its own ideas about when morning was, and when 7:30 A.M. rolled around back home, it woke Nita up with a snap and wouldn t let her go back to sleep. She could have done a wizardry on herself to force the issue, but she found herself resisting that option. This place is so super, why do I want to waste hours sleeping And no one here minds if I m up in the middle of the night, anyway. Nita looked over the whispering water as a small flock of moons started to come sailing up over the eastern horizon. Because of the size of the planet, the