Диана Дуэйн - A Wizard Of Mars

“Over the next week or so. It shouldn’t take more than that to do the necessary consulting and work out the actual process for dissolving the explosives. Nothing mechanical, though.”

“Something chemical makes more sense. We can build a spell to neutralize the byproducts.”

“And then the increased current takes those away, too? Makes sense.” S’reee blew briefly, a cetacean chuckle. “It sounds like something Pellegrino would have thought of.”

“I got the idea after I was reading about her,” Nita said. Angelina Pellegrino had been a great wizard of the previous century, a specialist in working with water who had single-handedly designed a way to cleanse the western Mediterranean of that period’s increasing pollution. That spell, the so-called Gibraltar Passthrough Intervention, was still reckoned by historians of wizardry as one of the greatest achievements of that period by any wizard working alone. “But this wouldn’t have to be anything like that big.”

“Which is good,” S’reee said as they made for the surface, “as hydromages are few and far between. And to move a lot of water, you need a lot of power…”

They broke surface a few hundred yards out from the jetty: Nita kept her bubble level with the surface until they were close enough that she wouldn’t be seen climbing out of the water. “You know, you should have a word with Arooon about her,” S’reee said.

“What, our guy who sang the Blue in the Song of the Twelve?”

“The same. He told me once that his father knew Pellegrino. I seem to remember him saying that when she got started, she was just a human farm girl who noticed that water acted strangely around her. You know the saying, that wizards who have the earliest Ordeals— and the latest ones— produce the biggest results? Angelina was one of those very late hatchers: almost out of latency when her Ordeal came along. She lived in the island down at the bottom of that long peninsula where the people lived who had that empire. You know the one, it was all around the edges of the Mediterranean—”

“The Romans. You mean Sicily?”

“That’s the place. She went swimming on the evening she took the Oath, and the Lone One met her in some kind of demon shape and tried to drown her.” S’reee snorted, a very wet blowhole-laugh that just missed drenching Nita again, though this time not on purpose. “Kind of an error of judgment on Its part! The fight between them threw her straight into sync with the whole element of water, right across the Med. For something like the whole year after, every wizard on Earth who met the Lone One physically on Ordeal reported that It turned up dripping.”

Nita snickered at the image. “She didn’t just do the water stuff, though, did she? She got to be a Planetary for a while.”

“So she did,” S’reee said. “But something else was going on with her, too, which meant she spent less time as Planetary than she might have.” S’reee rolled over, stretching those huge fins into the air. “In your reading, have you come across references to a manifestation of wizardry called infra-affinity?”

Nita considered. “Don’t know. I might have.”

“It’s one of the so-called ‘inner talents,’” S’reee said. “It’s not a spell you design, or something you do, but something you are. Lots of wizards have affinities to one or more of the classic elements or states of matter. But this state implies such a profound connection to one state of matter or another that a wizard can go into complete union with it, then come out of the unified state without showing any ill effects. Infra-affinity tends to turn up in very new wizards as an Ordeal exploit, like the water mastery your friend Ronan manifested on his Ordeal. But it takes an incredible toll if you keep it up.”

S’reee looked thoughtful. “Arooon thought that Pellegrino’s taking on the role of Planetary Wizard might have been why she died so young. A Planetary has to sync with the whole planet, and it’s possible that the required affinities to earth and air and the Earth’s interior fire started conflicting with Pellegrino’s infra-affinity to water.” S’reee let her tail fall over into the water in a sideways slap, a cetacean shrug. “No way to tell at this end of time…”

Nita sat thinking about that for a moment. “I wonder,” she said. “About Dairine …you think she might have an elemental affinity? She was always big on fire when she was little. I can’t think how many times Dad had to stop her from playing with the barbecue. She was always getting burned. And now here she is starting to play around with stars…”

“Plasma’s a whole different element,” S’reee said, “but you might be onto something there. It could explain the connection to your colleague Roshaun as well. Like does call to like sometimes.”

“I wonder if I’m developing something like that for water.”

S’reee waved a fin in agreement that this could be a possibility. “Could be. It might explain why you took to underwater wizardry so readily, and did so well in the Song. But it’s a tendency, not a restriction. It doesn’t have to dominate your practice.”

Nita nodded and leaned against the rocks. “Something else to research…”

S’reee bubbled with laughter again. “The story of all our lives,” she said. “Though I’d try to put the research aside for a little. We do have to make sure we have other things going on in our lives than just wizardry, or what good are we to the Powers?”

There was an amused quality to S’reee’s voice, something almost secretive. Curious, Nita stretched out on the rock to get a better look at S’reee’s eye on that side. “Oh, really? What’s this all about?”

“Well, there are other reasons to go out singing than just errantry,” S’reee said.

That was when Nita remembered that “out singing” had more than one meaning for a whale. “Whoa, wait a minute! ’Ree, are you seeing somebody? You are! You’re finning around with someone!” Nita reached down and pounded S’reee on the flank in a congratulatory way. “Who’s the lucky bull?”

“Someone I met out on errantry—”

“Hey, great! Another wizard?”

“Oh, no, not at all. We can’t all date wizards, hNii’t! I met Hwiii’sh a few weeks ago up by the Grand Banks when I was on a meal break in the middle of a team wizardry. You know how it is, there are always tourists around who’re all itchy to see wizards doing what they do…”

Nita smiled ironically, letting the “dating” reference go by. She was so used to hearing this kind of thing from kids at school that she’d stopped protesting, since it just made everybody sure they were right. With luck, they’ll stop eventually. “Well, tourists aren’t a problem I have all that much,” Nita said. “So tell me all about him! What does he sing?” That being what you generally asked whales instead of “What do you do?”

“He sings aouih’hweioooiuh’hhaii!t.”

Nita had to listen to the word in the Speech to make anything of it. “Am I getting that right? He’s a food critic?”

“And very stuck up about it, too,” S’reee said, blowing a big wet laugh. “You should hear him going on about Arctic krill, and South Cape squid, and all the rest of it! Fortunately he thinks it’s a big deal that I’m a wizard, so I don’t have trouble holding my own when his ego starts to run riot…”

Nita leaned against the jetty and relaxed while S’reee talked, enjoying the fact that for once she had time to kick back and laugh at the concept of a whale who did nothing but share news about the presence and quality of food with other whales. But then lately it seemed rare for Nita to have “quality time” like this— time without school or schoolwork hanging over her head, or some terrifyingly heavy piece of wizardry that needed her attention. More of this, please, and enough saving the world for this year! Nita said silently to the One. Actually having the summer off, like a normal person, would be very, very nice! Not that she could ever be precisely normal again: wizardry kind of precluded that.