as your souls writhe endlessly for the mistakes you made, the loved ones who ll never see you again. Priceless, Esemeli said, priceless! Kit and Nita looked at each other helplessly as the Lone Power s laughter once again drowned out the Whispering, echoing all through that place and then Esemeli suddenly cried out, Ow!! because something had dropped a stick of iron-wood right onto the Lone Power s head. Everyone looked up in shock, most particularly Esemeli. Her face went in a second from an expression of pain to one of terrible fury. Standing there in the air above them all, looking down, was Ponch…and holding the other end of his wizardly leash, also looking down at that immeasurable assembly with an expression of relief and wonder, was Quelt. They walked down the air together, and everyone looked at them, most specifically Esemeli. There was a curse in Its eyes, but It said nothing. The two of them came down onto the mountaintop, and walked into the heart of that great gathering. She was wondering where you were, Ponch said to Nita and Kit. So was I. So we came looking. And Kit started to smile. We re not the only one who made some mistakes, he said privately to Nita. Aloud, he said to Esemeli, You know, you re to blame for this. It turned to glare at him. If you hadn t hurried us along and had waited for Ponch to catch up with me, Kit said, he d be stuck in here with the rest of us. But, no, you had to get going and get us nice and trapped. Kit glanced over at Nita. That Binding Oath is really something, he said, if it makes the Lone Power help us even when It s trying to screw us up. Or else, Nita said, looking over at the Lone One with an expression that was difficult to read, someone s found a really good way to do the right things without looking like they were. And she smiled just the slightest smile. Didn t somebody say they were getting a lot more mileage out of ambivalence these days The Lone One turned away. This will only work this once, It said. Make the most of it. When she releases me, you may later come to regret all this. In fact, I guarantee that you will. Kit and Nita turned their attention back to Ponch and Quelt. Everyone else in that place was staring at them in astonishment, and the one looking hardest at them, though with the least look of being surprised, was Druvah. Yes, he said at last. I foresaw this happening …but, I have to admit, not quite this way… Quelt, for her own part, hardly gave Druvah more than a glance at first. She went straight over to Kit and Nita and took first Kit, then Nita, by the shoulders in her species greeting. I am so sorry, she said. I treated you so badly when you were only telling me the truth. I feel terrible about it. And I felt terrible before, as well! I got you started on all this! Nita stared at Quelt, confused. I thought I got you started on it! No, Quelt said. You just said things idly that made me think more about things I d been thinking already. Remember how I said that there was something missing I hadn t been really serious about it before, but after you said you had the same thoughts, they started to matter much more. When the thoughts were inside, I was discounting them. They didn t seem important or real. Yet you were so different, and the place you come from is so different…and you still had those feelings. That was the key. Ponch ran over to Kit with the leash in his mouth, dropped it, and then began jumping around him, whining and trying to lick his face. You went farther away than usual without me, Ponch said. I was worried about you. Don t do that again! Kit hugged Ponch s head to him. Okay, he said. Just remember this the next time you go running off across the universe without telling me! Ponch sat down and looked up at Kit with big soulful eyes. I ll be good… Quelt looked over at Druvah and smiled suddenly. You re taller than you looked in the Display, she said. He smiled. Too great a distance in time does alter the perspective somewhat, Druvah said. Quelt turned to Esemeli. And as for you, she said. Now you ll tell me that all the things you said just now were a lie. Why, of course they were. Say it in the Speech, Quelt said. The Lone Power glared at her. Quelt turned away from It and looked around at all that gathering of people, all the dead of Alaalu, ranged away around the mountain and up the slopes of the world, to the high horizon and beyond, it seemed. For now, though, she said, before we can go forward, something is missing. Nita and Kit looked at each other as the air around them shimmered and rumbled with power. Wizardry was being done here but not in a mode they recognized, and Quelt was at the heart of it. She simply seemed to be standing with her arms by her sides, murmuring in the Speech and a moment later, the crowd surrounding them seemed, impossibly, much larger than it had. Everyone needs to be here for this, Quelt said softly, but her voice traveled effortlessly right across that mighty assemblage. Nita looked at the people standing nearest her and Kit and realized that it wasn t just the dead of Alaalu who were surrounding them now. The living had arrived as well, in spirit if not in body, and were looking around in astonishment at the heart of the world. Now that we are all here, Quelt said, now comes the time to make another Choice whether to choose again The Whispering, massive already, started to turn to a mutter, the mutter to a roar, at first distant, like surf crash on Earth, then closer and closer. All around, the Alaalids closest to Nita and Kit in that great crowd were turning to one another, murmuring, distressed. Oh no, Kit said suddenly. Nita turned to see what he was looking at. There was a stir of motion in the crowd, and through it came Kuwilin and Demair. They went to Quelt, who looked at them with tears suddenly standing in her eyes. Daughter, Kuwilin said, what are you doing Do you know what you re saying Very well, Quelt said. Her mother reached out to Quelt, took her by the shoulders. Quelt, sweeting, you can t! Don t you hear yourself If you do what you re planning, you re going to kill everyone alive on the planet! Their old lives will end, Quelt said, yes. The tears began to fall. We re happy! Kuwilin said, desperate. Our lives are good! How can you want to end them It pained Nita to see that proud, good-natured face suddenly so frightened, to see Demair s easy grace gone tense with terror. She saw that it pained Quelt, too. And all around, other voices began to cry out as well. Everything is fine just the way it is! Why should you destroy the way a whole planet lives just because you have the power How dare you decide for us what s right for us all to do! Someone has to decide! Quelt cried at them all. Because you can t do it anymore! Listen to you! You should hear yourselves! You re like a bunch of little children who don t want to take a nap in the afternoon because you re afraid you ll miss something! But you have missed something. Didn t you hear the Lone One now, speaking truly for a change It s told you everything you need to know. But you never needed It to tell you that, not really. You weren t listening to the world. None of us has been! We were too happy to listen! The Whispering started to die away a little. Can t you hear what we ve been trembling on the brink of Quelt said. Can t you hear the darkness, the potential that s been chasing around our world forever like the night, just waiting for someone to look up and see it Our own Whispering s drowned out that deeper silence. We talk to ourselves all the time so we won t hear what the silence holds the risk, the chance The danger! Yes, the danger! Quelt said, turning toward whoever it was who d spoken. How long has it been since there was danger in our world any real danger Oh, occasionally there s an accident, or some passing pain or personal sorrow but why doesn t it last We ve outgrown passion! These bodies are too used to this world, where all the edges and sharp corners have been rubbed off and everything made safe for us. We live and we die and everything is perfect and fine. What do we have to do with the rest of the universe anymore What, then someone s voice cried, desperate. Do you want our world to go back to the way it was in the very first times, before we awoke as a sentient species, where death is dreadful, and whole nations die in horror and pain, and the Lone Power has Its way with Life And here Kit covered his face, for he remembered the look on Quelt s face when he d told her about his world. Do you want to I don t want to go back to anything, Quelt said. I want to go forward. To the thing that waits. The stir and hush that went through that vast emptiness was awful. I m afraid, said one voice, trembling. I m afraid! said another, and I m afraid, too! said another voice yet, and another yet, and whole crowds of voices together, and choruses of them, cities of them, nations of them. Afraid, afraid, we re afraid! The roar rose to a shout, the shout to a rumble like an earthquake all around them. Finally, in a great voice, Quelt cried, SO AM I! Slowly silence fell again. But I m going to do it anyway, Quelt said. So that we can all make the leap together. Think about it! One way or another, we ve all got to die eventually. That part of the Choice was never in doubt if we were going to live in Time. Now we can go forward and find another way to do it. If we fail, what s the worst that can happen We all go down into the darkness at once. But we ll still be together. And even in the darkness, there s still the One! At that, the Lone One turned Its face away, and Nita thought she heard teeth grinding. And if this succeeds, Quelt said, we ll all be together, and go on into She shook her head. There aren t words. I don t think there can be. But every one of you has looked up, or out, sometime, and thought, There s something else that s supposed to happen. What is it This is it! This is the something else! Let s go! The roar died back, slowly, to a murmur again. There was no great cry of acclamation, no uproar of acceptance. Her people were, indeed, too afraid. But Nita could feel the change in the air, and glancing over at Kit, she knew that he could, too. It s happening, Nita thought in silent wonder. And, holidays aside, this is why the Powers That Be sent us here. Because even if they d told Quelt Themselves, face-to-face, what needed to happen, she wouldn t have believed Them. The proof had to come through someone she knew personally, someone she liked. Strangers just passing through, people with no agenda. Somebody she sat on the beach with and talked to about nothing important, at dawn. Us… Quelt waited until the silence fell. More and more strongly through it, strongly enough for even Ponch to feel it, so that he sat there wagging his tail, the silent acquiescence grew. It was another of those out-of-time moments that might have lasted an hour, or a day, or a month: In this otherworldly worldheart, there was no telling. But there came a time when the acceptance was complete, and when that happened, Quelt moved slowly to the center of it all, where Druvah stood, and held out her hands. He gave her Alaalu s kernel. She turned it over in her hands a few times, regarding it, and then looked up and around. We made a Choice once, as wizards, for our people, Quelt said. Druvah said, We did. And the Choice can be unmade, Quelt said, by all the living wizards of Alaalu, unanimously. Druvah said, So the original structure of the Choice was built. Then it s time to unbuild it, Quelt said. I am all the living wizards of Alaalu. I say now to the Choice that was made, be unmade in this regard: that our people may go, not merely our own way, but the whole way, the way that lay in the One s mind before we could perceive it clearly! The silence became complete. Kit and Nita stood there waiting for whatever would happen. The Lone Power turned Its back on the proceedings, though It moved no farther. It started to get brighter, in the world inside the world. The radiance from that dazzling and impossible sky began to build, thickening in the air around them the way a low cloud thickens into mist near the ground, but here that mist was radiance that washed out colors in light, starting to dissolve away the outlines and details of things as it grew. Nita glanced down at her hands, wondering if she should be nervous about the way they were beginning to refine themselves away into something that was more light than shape Ponch nosed Kit, and put the leash in his hand. We d better get out of here! Seems like a real good idea to me! Kit said. He grabbed Nita s arm. Just before they took a step forward together, she glanced over and caught just a flash of eyes in her direction, as Quelt s arms went around her mother and father, and she buried her face against her mother s shoulder. But she was smiling. And that smile spread to Kuwilin s face, slowly, and then to Demair s, as the two of them looked up and the light indwelling in the world-kernel of Alaalu spread and spread outward from them, flowering into something long awaited, something long denied, blinding Nita stepped quickly forward with Kit and Ponch. Ponch brought them out far above the planet, looking down from space. The shield-spell that Kit had inlaid into Ponch s leash for times like this instantly took hold, protecting the three of them from the cold and the vacuum. There was air, too, which was important, but for the moment, Nita had forgotten to breathe. Below them, the whole surface of the planet was coming alive with lightning strikes. From cloud to cloud, from cloud to earth, they crackled across the day side, the massive discharges clearly visible, and on the night side, the clouds flickered with them like electrified milk. Auroras whipped and crackled at the poles, even lashing up and out along the lines of the planet s magnetic field, and all over the planet, Alaalu s horizon burst out in spiky spurts of blue-jet and red-sprite lightning, and curving prominences of ion-fire. A little leftover Alaalid anger Kit said under his breath. Nita nodded. But I think not for long… Slowly, the atmospheric fury died away. The night sky went quiet first; on the day side, a few genuine lightning bolts, startled out of several great storm systems by the less natural discharges, let themselves loose for several minutes. Things went still. Then, slowly, light began to grow here and there on the world s surface. It was most obvious in the Cities, from which it seemed at first that white fireworks were rocketing upward. But the lights came from scattered islands, even from far out in Alaalu s immense seas…and they were not fireworks. They leaped and curved through the lower atmosphere, yes, but then the lights found their way up and out, and once into space, shot free, like meteors in reverse growing brighter and brighter as they pierced up and out of the atmosphere, shooting up and out of the planet s gravity well, burning brighter still as they fired themselves up and outward into the eternal night. Nita swallowed as the upward-streaking fires increased in number. It was the starfall she had awakened to, late their first night, but in reverse, the stars falling back up into the sky now; and like that other starfall, they fell upward more and more thickly every second, a shower of fire bursting off the planet in every possible direction, out into the unending starlight of space, getting lost in the blinding radiance of Alaalu s sun, or persisting for an amazing time as they streaked out toward the system s heliopause. For what might have been a very long time, or a very short one, Alaalu rained a new kind of life into the night. A billion and a half of them, Nita thought. She knew that for the moment they all had to be at least a little ways outside of Time; otherwise, seeing a billion and a half of anything go by would have taken forever. But this is the day after forever… Slowly, the rain of fire began to taper off. Kit and Nita and Ponch stood there, watching the world go quiet again. Well, Nita said at last, I guess that s it. Wait, Kit said. They waited. That stillness persisted for a little while longer And the planet erupted all over in one last blast of brilliance, with uncounted and uncountable streaks of soulfire piercing upward and out of the heart of the heart of the world, as those who had gone before and had been in the Whispering now erupted into a freedom that only one of them had ever anticipated. Nita and Kit both threw up a hand to shield their eyes as all the rest of the souls who had ever lived on Alaalu departed, in a storm of outward-streaking fire, for a far wider ambit. But at last all the new light died away, leaving t