nishment and mild annoyance, like Alice falling down the rabbit hole. Up and up the three of them fell, and closer and closer to that peak of stone. Toward that! Esemeli cried; and Kit and Nita, having learned in passing a little about handling themselves when free-falling in atmosphere, spread out their arms and legs and did their best to maneuver themselves toward the top of the peak. They were falling up at enough speed for Nita to erect a personal-shield wizardry around herself; she was concerned about the possibility of slamming into the rocks. But she was pleased to find that the velocity of their fall seemed to be lessening as they got close to the top of that peak. By the time the haze of distance disappeared, they had slowed to a leisurely plummet; by the time they were within perhaps a mile of it, they had slowed to a glide. And as they came to the top, or the bottom of it Who knows what it is anymore Nita thought, as she concentrated on somehow putting her feet flat down on stone instead of air. Let it be up or down just as it pleases. I only want to stand still! And she was standing still, on the stone, and Kit and Esemeli were standing there on it with her. Nita breathed out and looked around. The plateau on which they stood was the pale plain peach-colored sandstone of the Inner Sea lands. Nita made herself hold still and breathe and try to get used to some kind of normality again…if you could call this normal. We re on a pillar of rock maybe a thousand miles high, inside a planet, Nita thought, at a level where there should be nothing but magma, or maybe even molten iron under millions of tons of pressure. There s a sky here where there can t be one, and air here where there can t be any. If I were a pseudoscience freak, this would be terrific, and I d be expecting flying saucers next. As it is, I think maybe normality needs an overhaul… Next to her, Wow, Kit said softly. What Nita said, looking around. Then she saw Kit turning slowly, looking all around him. And Nita saw that he had good reason. The perspectives of things had shifted again, or rather their topologies, so that what had been the truncated top of a cone was now the flat top of a shallow rise, and all around them, from perhaps thirty feet away to the horizon, and seemingly right up into the impossibly glowing sky, there were people. Nita s mouth went dry with sudden irrational fear at the sight of them. All around her she heard, more strongly than ever, the sound that had been trembling at the edge of her hearing since they came to Alaalu…an incessant, friendly whispering. Now she knew where it came from. It was from these people, a myriad of Alaalids, all standing around with their amiable, interested faces, looking at her, and Kit, and Esemeli, and the Alaalid man who stood nearby the place where they had come to rest. Nita found herself experiencing a case of the shivers. The people were the dead: everybody who had ever lived on Alaalu, in their many billions, filling all this vast space out to the edge of the sky. And as for the man He had a shock of red hair that was rather untidy and casually kept, by Alaalid standards, but a face that was composed and good-humored, even for an Alaalid, with those dark and liquid eyes suggesting a profound wisdom underneath the good humor. He was very casually dressed, in the long kilt that some Alaalids wore, and a long loose jacket thrown over it. He looked like someone who d just been out for a swim. But he carried in his hands something that not many beachgoers would have brought with them. It was a tangle of near-blinding brilliance, lines of fire in many colors and many thousands or tens of thousands of words in the Speech, all knotted together in one complex structure. It was Alaalu s world-kernel, the software in which was contained the laws natural, physical, and spiritual that governed Alaalu and its homespace. The man holding that kernel nodded, first of all, to Esemeli. I thought you d turn up here eventually, he said. It smiled and bowed to him. You and I, Esemeli said, have unfinished business to transact. So we do, the man said. Then he looked over at Nita and Kit. Druvah, Kit said. The Alaalid bowed a little to Kit, and then to Nita. Cousins, well met on the journey, he said. You re very welcome to the heart of things. Thank you, Kit said. Yes, Nita said, thank you. But I have a question… Ask, Druvah said. When we re finished talking to you…how do we get out of here No one does that, Druvah said, until we change the world. And Esemeli smiled Dairine, Roshaun, Sker ret, and Filif were standing in position in blazing light, perhaps two thousand miles above the Sun s photosphere, while the invisible corona lashed space with superheated plasma above their heads. The wizardry was protecting them from the heat and more than ninety-nine percent of the visible light that boiled out of the Sun s nuclear furnace to express itself in the photosphere s glare. That outermost layer of the Sun s actual body was no more than an eggshell s thickness compared to the vast bulk of the star beneath it, but it boiled and roiled with golden fire. It was beautiful, but instantly deadly to anyone not protected as they all were. Even so, none of them intended to linger a moment longer than necessary. But the beauty was compelling. Look at it, Filif said, gazing into that furious brilliance with all his berries, which caught it and glinted red as blood. So magnificent, so dangerous Dairine had to smile just slightly at the poet living inside the bush who liked baseball caps. Her own impression was more prosaic. It looks like oatmeal, she said. And so it did, if oatmeal boiled at seven thousand degrees Celsius and every grain of it was a capsule full of burning liquid helium eight hundred miles across. The motion was the same, though new grains bubbled up every second, persisting in the violent roiling pressure for maybe twenty minutes, and then were pushed away to be swallowed into the depths. They rumbled, and the sound was real; sonic booms from them rippled incessantly across the surface of the Sun. Where s the tachocline Roshaun said. Two-hundred-eighteen thousand five hundred kilometers through two-hundred-twenty-one thousand six hundred, Sker ret said. It s fluctuating, though. Which way Up. Roshaun looked uncertain. We could wait for it to stabilize, he said. Then he shook his head. No point in that. I m going to adjust the wizardry to take us in, and hold steady at two-twenty-two. Everyone, check my numbers. They all watched as Roshaun brought out his version of the manual, a little tangle of light like a miniature sun itself, and read from it a precise string of words and numbers in the Speech. Inside the wizardry, the depth constant changed to reflect the shift. Everyone looked at the numbers. Did you all check me Dairine read the numbers three times. You ve got it, she said. Check, Sker ret said. And I check you, too, said Filif, trembling. Then let s go They vanished again this time into the inferno. In the heart of hearts of Alaalu, Nita and Kit stood looking at the planet s oldest surviving wizard if his present state half myth, half spirit could be described as surviving as he said, We ve been waiting for you here for a while. Not too long, I hope, Kit said. Druvah s smile was reassuringly ironic. Long enough, he said. But I don t mind. He bowed to Esemeli, and It looked at him and eyed him with an expression of reserved disdain. You did a good job hiding your kernel, Nita said. It seemed necessary, Druvah said. Under the circumstances, it seemed wise to keep it in an ambivalent state: not quite in the real world, in Time; not all the way into the deeper world, out of Time; but oscillating between them, a million times every moment, so that its location was always more a possibility than a definite thing. Uncertainty, Nita said to Kit. The way you get it in atomic structure, with the electrons more or less certain to be in a given area, but never really just in one spot… That quality of matter I borrowed for this wizardry, yes, Druvah said. And for myself as well, so that I could keep an eye on what our destiny was bound to. He looked at Nita and Kit. But where is the last wizard They looked at each other. Well, Nita said. Unfortunately, Esemeli said, she will not be coming. Druvah looked at her in a shock so stately, it resembled composure. The strangers on whom you pinned all your hopes, Esemeli said, unfortunately have given your wizard the fright of her life, by telling her the truth. A choice irony. She s seen what the Telling showed her of their world and wants nothing to do with it, or them. Or, by extension, you, Druvah. She even made herself unavailable enough to them this morning that they couldn t be warned in time about what they were so eager to do. Esemeli turned Its attention to Nita and Kit and smiled at them sweetly…a little too sweetly. You, at least, the Lone Power said to Nita, will recognize the source of the Whispering you ve heard in the nights. This is the Whispering s core, the place into which the souls of the Alaalid die, when they die into the world. Here, by virtue of the Choice the Alaalids made, everything is preserved forever as it was when it arrived. Think of it as a sketchy little version of Time-heart. The furious, hating twist It put on the word gave Nita an abrupt shiver. Too sketchy, though. And also by virtue of that Choice, nothing that comes here ever leaves here, whether it comes of its own free will or not. Esemeli directed the full force of that infuriating smile on Nita. You should have asked fewer questions about how soon you could get where you were going, the Lone One said, and more about whether you could get out afterward. But most to the point, you forgot the line in the Binding Oath about not allowing you to err by inaction. Nita felt all the blood run straight down out of her face, leaving her staggered and shivering. She and Kit looked over at Druvah. The most powerful of the ancient Alaalid wizards nodded regretfully. What It says is true, Druvah said. I have no power to change it. And the one who has that power has not come with you, as I had hoped she would. His voice was filled with regret, and Nita looked over at Kit, her mouth suddenly going dry with fear. Indeed, that was my only hope. But the future has not turned out the way I thought it would. It seems my people must remain as they are. And here we must all stay, until the day after forever… The Lone One s laughter began to echo in that bright place, filling it, and drowning out all other sound, even the sound of the Whispering The wizardry brought Dairine, Roshaun, Filif, and Sker ret out in the midst of a hurricane of fire. Not exactly in the middle of it, Dairine thought, trying desperately to keep hold of her nerves, for the status readouts hanging in front of her own part of the wizardry told her exactly what was going on out there, and it terrified her. It was one thing, as she d once done, to sink a skinny little spatial slide into this nuclear fury and pull out a pencil-sized stream of molten mass. When she d done that, she d been dealing with a star s core, and the core was a placid pool on a windless night compared to the place where they now found themselves. By definition, the tachocline was turbulent. Its name meant the place where the speed changes, and it was where the more placid motion but more terrible temperatures of the radiative zone below met the boiling madness of the convective zone above. The tachocline slid between the two zones like ball bearings rubbed between two hands, in wide belts and roiling spots like the atmosphere of Jupiter, but at wind speeds that made Jupiter s seem tame. Wind, though, seemed a pitiful word for the insensate power that was raging around them in wildly varying directions. The solar medium was no denser than water here but even water becomes a deadly weapon when it s blasting past you at twenty times the speed of sound, and at two million degrees. Filif was pouring power into the wizardry at a prodigious rate, but even so, the wizardry itself was suffering under these atrocious conditions. It would not hold forever. And it was being buffeted around like a Ping-Pong ball in the terrible, constantly shifting pressure. Roshaun was trying to get a reading on the lowest levels of the tachocline, but Dairine saw that every second the readings changed more violently. The layer was like a blanket being wildly shaken up and down by people holding it at the edges. Until it calmed, there was no chance that they were going to be able to do what they needed to do. And it was not going to calm Come on, Roshaun said to the Sun in the Speech. He spoke silently to be heard over the roar. Come on, cousin! What are you waiting for Why all this trouble You know what you need to do. Otherwise, life on all your planets is going to be problematic. Give us some help, here. Let us help you sort yourself out! The Sun raged around him; the tachocline bucked and heaved like a live thing, stung by the approaching magnetic anomalies swinging around from the far side of the Sun, the skin of the border layer twitching and shuddering. Dairine started to hear something she never would have imagined it was possible to hear: the Sun itself speaking, like a sentient thing. It was using the Speech, but she couldn t understand the words. It wanted something; it was trying to tell her, but she couldn t understand That s impossible. I have to be able to understand; it s the Speech. What s the matter There s something wrong here, she heard Sker ret saying in her mind. Something s interfering with the magnetic flow at this level. The bubblestorm area Dairine asked. No. Something else. A darkness… Sunspots Dairine said. No! Something else. But dark Under them, the tachocline heaved ever more violently. It won t stay still! Dairine cried. How are you going to get the worldgate down in there long enough to bleed the mass off if it keeps heaving around like this There was a long silence from Roshaun. There are ways, he said conversationally. Something about the tone of that thought brought Dairine s head up, made her look him in the eye. But he wouldn t meet her eye. Roshaun You know what I am, he said to the Sun, ignoring her. A blast of reply. Yes, Roshaun said. A Guarantor. Another blast. He could understand it and she couldn t. It wasn t fair Sker ret, Roshaun said, detach the worldgate for me. What Dairine shouted. If Roshaun heard the thought behind the shout, he didn t betray it. At any rate, the way the roar of the Sun was coming through even the wizardry now, there was no point in using normal speech. Sker ret said three words, very quickly, and the black shadow that was the worldgate, reduced to a thin scrap of grayish fog in this terrible light, leaped straight into Roshaun s hands as if he d called it. What are you thinking of Dairine demanded. Let me help you You need to stay here and let me do this, Roshaun said. But if I can just You can t, Roshaun said, looking at her with that infuriating, amused expression. But then that s what Guarantor means. If the world can t pay the price.. if the people around you can t pay the price…you do. The price No! Dairine said. No! You don t even like my little planet you said so No, Roshaun said. Which is possibly the best of all possible reasons to do this. He stepped out of the wizardry. No, Dairine whispered. No! Roshaun! Roshaun vanished in the fire. * * * * Interim Destinations IN THE HEART OF ALAALU, Kit looked at Nita in complete horror. You mean that s it! She looked over at him, shivering, and nodded. I think It s right, she said. We re stuck here… You were so earnest, the Lone One said. And so careless. And so patronizing. You have deserved this so profoundly, I can barely express it. A failed fragment of the Lone Power, am I Oh, very failed. But not so failed that this species will have any further chance to go on into whatever lovely bodiless stage of evolution might potentially await them. Their only wizard will remember her betrayal until the day she dies, and will warn all her successors never to be tempted to consider Repeal. Generation after generation of them will live out their happy little lives and die into the world. They ll keep on doing that until their star goes cold and their species oh-so-gracefully surrenders as a whole to what they will wrongly consider Fate. So much for their intended glory; the One is just going to have to do without them…And as for me, not only do I have all these poor frozen fools to amuse me the few idle aeons until Time s end, but now I also have you two to laugh at for the rest of this universe s eternity…your faces to entertain me