Diane Duane - A Wizard Alone

The Lone One’s expression was indescribable. Nita felt like laughing out loud, but this would have been the wrong moment.

“You cannot,” It said after a moment. “Now that I am alerted to this game of yours, it will never work again, even if I did allow you to escape with either life or soul intact.” It raised Its hands, clenched Its fists—

And nothing happened.

Nita smiled gently, and from her pocket, she pulled out the kernel to Darryl’s internal universe.

The Lone One looked at it in sudden furious surprise.

“You really are running slow today,” Nita said. “ You taught me how to deal with these things when you were inside my old ‘friend’ Pralaya. How to find them…how to manage them. Of course, you were doing it for your own reasons. Maybe it didn’t occur to you that I was going to walk away after the dirty deal you offered me! Or that I was going to survive the consequences. Well, I did…and I remember everything you showed me, very well.” She smiled. “Now I— excuse me, we — just have to decide what else to do with this besides making you temporarily powerless.”

Nita stood there with the universe’s kernel, the heart of the world, in her hand, juggling it like someone juggling a grenade with the pin pulled. “Make your stay here permanent, maybe?” she said, glancing over at Darryl. “By just wiping the whole place out?”

“You wouldn’t dare,” the Lone One said.

“I’d dare a whole lot at the moment, so don’t push me!” Nita said. “Doesn’t it strike you as likely that I’d have just a whole lot of fun killing you off? Oh, sure, it wouldn’t be the whole you.

Here you’re just a fragment of your greater self; I know that. And I’d die, too. And so would Kit, and Darryl. But the power that the One has invested in Darryl won’t be lost.”

“That power is lost now! Boy”—the Lone Power turned Its baleful gaze on Darryl—“you are one of the—”

Then Its face suddenly went white, as if a whole universe had suddenly taken It by the throat and squeezed.

“You’re not going to be able to discuss certain subjects,” Nita said, “so don’t bother. Now, I think we were discussing what happens when we blow up this universe with you inside it. The damage done to you by the total destruction of even just this fragment of you… well.”

She smiled.

The Lone One trained that deadly look on Nita now. “If you did such a thing,” the Lone Power said, “your father and sister would—”

“Spare me,” Nita said. Her eyes narrowed. “Life hasn’t been so wonderful for me lately that I need to cling to it for my own sake. And if I went out taking you down, my dad and Dairine would grieve, yeah, but they’d applaud, too… because they’d find out soon enough that what I did lessened your clout in this part of the solar system.” Nita grinned. “You’ve underestimated me one time too many. Someone needs to teach you that this kind of behavior isn’t going to get you anywhere. I think today we’re the ones to do it.”

She turned as the Lone One lunged at her and tossed the kernel to Kit. He fielded it expertly.

“Nice little universe you’ve got here,” Kit said, tossing it up in front of him, and then Hacky Sacking it into the air a few more times, from his knee and elbow, and once from his head, while the Lone Power came toward him, a look of furious uncertainty on Its face. “It’d be a shame if something happened to it. Whoa!”

He flipped the kernel to Darryl. Darryl caught it, looked it over, and tossed it lightly in one hand.

The kernel, which had been glowing only softly while Nita and Kit had been holding it, now blazed like a star in the possession of its rightful master and creator.

“I’ve learned a lot from listening to the Silence for the past few months,” Darryl said. “About wizardry, and a lot of other things. But that hasn’t changed the fact that I haven’t lived long enough to be really attached to life. Maybe this is the other thing that makes wizards so powerful when they’re young. It’s not that we don’t know about death. It’s not that we don’t believe in it. It’s that we’re still able to let life go, if the price is right.”

He looked at the other two, looked in their eyes.

Nita nodded. She glanced at Kit.

Kit hesitated a moment… then set his jaw, and nodded, too.

The three of them looked at the Lone Power. It stood in the middle of them, trembling with rage… or with something else.

“You want to bargain,” It said.

“ Our terms,” Darryl said. “Not yours.”

“What’s the price for my freedom?” It said at last.

“Once they leave, they stay unharmed,” Darryl said. “No more than your usual attentions in the future. If you refuse, you stay in here with me until I die… and I chase you around and around forever.”

It stood there, silent, brooding. “But you stay here, even if I go?” It said.

“This is my world,” Darryl said. “Where else would I go? I’ll stay here.”

Nita and Kit looked at each other in shock.

“I can still make something of this place, with time,” Darryl said. “Everything has its price. I’ll stay.”

The Lone Power’s face was expressionless. “On the Oath, and in Life’s name, you say it?”

“Darryl!” Nita cried.

“Don’t!” Kit cried in the same moment.

“On my Oath,” Darryl said, very deliberately, “and in the One’s name, I say it.”

The Lone Power stood there, staring at the floor. Then, slowly, It began to smile.

“Fooled,” It said. “Fooled again.”

It started to chuckle. “You’ve bound yourself to my will after all,” It said. “What makes you think that just because you cast me out once, you can do it again? Manipulate your world’s kernel as you please. I have something better to manipulate. Entropy is my tool. I’ll wear away at the fringes of this place, at the edges of your life, until sooner or later you let your guard over the kernel’s parameters drop. I’ll be in here again within seconds. Then you’ll still be trapped here forever… and I’ll stay here with you, making every moment a torment, and reminding you every second of the rest of your life of the price of mocking the Eldest. Despair now, for you won’t have time later.”

“I’ll get around to the despair thing when I’m good and ready,” Darryl said. “Meantime, get your butt out of my world.”

It gave them an ironic bow. “Once again,” It said to Nita, “despite all the brave words, you’ve gotten someone else to save your little life at his expense. One of these days, someone will refuse you. I’ll be waiting for you then. And for you,” It said, glancing at Kit, “when she betrays you at last.”

“ Out ,” Darryl said.

It looked from one to another of them. But It looked hardest and most cruelly at Darryl. “Don’t get too comfortable here,” It said. “I’ll be along any day.”

And It was gone.

They stood there, in the sudden silence, staring at each other.

Then, as if by prearranged signal, they all began to laugh.

“Oh, Neets!” Kit said, and he grabbed her and swung her around. “What a bluff! You were terrific!”

Nita was laughing, too, but there was an edge of pain on the laughter. “I’m not sure I was bluffing,” she said. “I was just so angry right then that I believed it.”

“You must have,” Kit said. “There’s no lying in the Speech. But Darryl…”

He turned to Darryl in concern. “That’s the problem for you, guy. You promised to stay here.”

“I did,” Darryl said.

Nita let out a long, unhappy breath.