Диана Дуэйн: Games Wizards Play

What Dairine held stirred weakly against her. She felt a heart beating, she heard a wheeze of breath. And now the tears in her eyes weren’t entirely to do with the light, though that blazed still. “Oh God!” she moaned, trying again to sit upright, but he was too heavy, and she was too tired all of a sudden, it was all hitting her at once . . .

An instant later there was a shape bending over her, even taller, nearly as lean after months of pain suffered for the one who’d been lost. He helped her with the weight, shifted it so that Dairine could at least sit up. Nelaid was holding her in one arm and his son in another, gasping with shock as awful as Dairine’s. He looked up into the dark of the space above the Moon and cried, “Miril!”

And barely a gasp later Roshaun’s mother was there in a spill of silver-fair hair, taking everything in, pulling off her long outer robe and wrapping her son in it. Roshaun shone through it like a candle. Nelaid and Miril bowed themselves over him, holding him tightly, shaking with their own anguish and relief. “He’s breathing,” the Lady Miril was whispering, “O Aethyrs be thanked, he’s breathing . . .! ” And then she threw her arms around Dairine. “Daughter, he’s breathing, what did you do . . . ? ”

“What I taught him,” Nelaid said, his voice muffled as he once more held his son close.

“What he taught me,” Dairine muttered, and rubbed at her eyes, still tearing uncontrollably. But it wasn’t so much because of the light now. That was slowly fading, and even through the blurring of her eyes Dairine could make out the long nose, the clean-cut features. There was a slight frown stamped on them.

Someone came astronaut-bouncing along toward them, a little clumsily. “Sorry,” Dairine’s dad said, thumping to his knees beside them, “I keep thinking I’m getting the hang of this and then I fall over again. Dair, what the hell was that, what did you just do there?”

“Got in trouble,” Dairine said between heaves of breath.

“You have no idea,” her dad said, “ no idea how grounded you are!”

“Okay,” Dairine said, and fell over on him.

He caught her and held her in a way not too much different from the way Nelaid was holding Roshaun. Nelaid’s voice was choked. “Oh, my son, how are you even here, how does this come to be, what have you been doing? ”

A long, long silence. And then, though his eyes stayed squeezed shut, then came words at last, raw and difficult, in a voice unused for so long:

“Holding . . . someone’s . . . place.”

“Take him home,” Dairine gasped. “I’ll be right behind you.”

“You will not ,” her father said. “You will stay right here until Nel comes back for you.”

“Okay,” Dairine said, and slumped back onto her dad again.

“Nita? Kit!” she heard him shout.

“Roshaun,” Dairine said, and fainted with a smile on her face.

A crowd of medical wizards was already gathering around Roshaun and Dairine and Penn, Matt being one of the first to arrive. Nita knew she had nothing to add to their expertise: she stood back and let them get on with it. Besides, she was in a state of shock of her own, though she didn’t require medical assistance.

“I can’t believe it,” she said. “Oh, I can’t believe it—”

“I think you’d better,” Kit said behind her, hushed.

“But finally . . . ” Nita said. So many of the things she’d seen in her head, the terrors, the things she didn’t understand: in terms of this , they made sense. This was what had been coming. This was what she had been afraid of— Wow, was I dim!

“So all that worrying you were doing,” Kit said, “turns out to have been for nothing.”

“Not for nothing,” she said, so torn between annoyance and relief that she was having trouble pushing the words out. “For this. It was all part of the process. Everything counts. ” Just for that moment, the vision was staggering, and Nita saw it whole; event and causality with joined hands, dancing, dipping each other, taking turns leading, deadly serious but laughing, too. It was too big for her to take in, but Nita knew suddenly that it wouldn’t always be. I’ll get the hang of this. It may take forever but it’s going to be so much fun when it isn’t scaring me to death . . .

“Oh,” Kit said, “you mean all the times you nearly killed Penn?” Already the teasing was climbing into his voice.

“Yeah, those, apparently,” Nita said, somewhat annoyed with herself. Me and my temper . . .

“The time when you charred all those pancakes?”

“Look, you know that was the burner, it’s got a short in it somewhere, we need to—”

“Or the time after the Cull when you were freaking out on the dance floor?”

So close. And the gold in his eyes . . .

He was laughing now. “Or no, wait, I know, the time when—”

She turned around and grabbed him by the shoulders and kissed him.

Kit shut up. His eyes went wide. Then they closed.

Some seconds later Nita pulled back and regarded him with shivery satisfaction. “That worked,” she said.

“Uhh,” Kit said. It was the sound of someone who’d briefly forgotten how to talk. He opened his eyes, and then they widened again at the sight of something behind Nita.

“What?” she said.

From behind her there came a soft throat-clearing noise. Kit made a face that suggested that Nita needed to sort herself out and turn around.

She put a little air between herself and Kit, and turned. Irina was standing there looking at them, jiggling her baby in his sling. Her parakeet was sitting on her head, looking behind her and far above at where that shape of fire had been. “You know,” Irina said, “I don’t know if we should let you participate in any more group projects. Things keep happening .”

Nita blushed. “Look,” she said, “I’m sorry, everything sort of all came together and—”

“If you’re sorry,” Irina said, “I’m not sure I understand why. The Simurgh has been missing for a long, long time; it’s kind of nice to discover where it’s been.”

Nita and Kit stared at each other. “It’s not like stars can’t do without a soul fragment,” Irina said. “Lots of them do. There’s even a technical term for it, because some stars just have it in them to wander, and the attempt to repress that tendency is usually counterproductive. Sooner or later the star Exhales a soul-fragment and lets it go wandering around for a while, and eventually, after getting the urge out of its system, it makes its way back home. Sometimes these stars go a long way away first, and sometimes they get lost. But this is the first case I’ve ever heard of where an Exhalation got lost inside a human. ”

“Really?” Nita said.

“Yes,” Irina said. “And by the way, do you know the Chinese name for that star-bird in the old stories?”

They shook their heads.

“Peng,” Irina said. “Usually these days Anglicized to ‘Penn.’” She paused a moment to let that sink in. “Anyway, the Simurgh used to have a fairly regular schedule—it would journey for twelve thousand years or so, a ‘Simurgh year,’ and then come home to roost. But then it went missing. At least now we know where. And there are those who’ll use today’s events to suggest that one of the reasons the Sun has been behaving so unpredictably of late is that it was starting to suffer ill effects from its Exhalation being gone so long. Or from being in the very near neighborhood but never coming home.” In his sling, Sasha moved a little and made a plaintive noise; Irina jiggled him a bit harder.