Диана Дуэйн - Wizard's Holiday

“I was looking for you back at the house,” Kit said. “Demair was there, but she said no one had seen you all day.”

“I skipped breakfast,” Nita said.

“Did you sleep okay last night?” Kit said to her.

Nita shook her head. “No.”

“Dreams again?”

“Partly. But I was thinking,” she said. Kit sat down beside her with his back against the dune, and Nita told him what she’d been thinking about.

At the end of it, she looked at Kit and said, “Does that make any sense to you?”

Kit nodded. “More than you’d think. I was doing a little exploring this morning…”

He told her where he’d been. Nita’s eyes widened as Kit told her about the conversation he’d overheard, with Ponch’s help, between Druvah and the Lone Power. When he finished, Nita looked down at the sand and started digging in it idly with one hand.

“What I don’t like,” Nita said, “is that what for us is the most interesting part of the Choice, and the weirdest part, almost didn’t seem to matter to Quelt at all. She just skipped past it…”

“And we took her at her word that it was just a boring part.”

“A cultural blind spot maybe?” Nita said.

Kit shook his head. “I don’t know. But I think that now we’re going to have to go see the Relegate’s Naos.”

Kit stood up. As he did, Ponch came running up the dune behind him.

Are we going somewhere?

Kit reached down and roughed up Ponch’s ears a little. “Yeah,” he said. “To see the Lone Power. Come on…”

They stood there on the edge of the valley and looked down into it. The valley itself was huge. Looking across it, Nita wondered if this spot had indeed been one of the impact craters she’d been expecting to see, for it was like a gigantic bowl, and it had its own mini-horizon inside the greater one, where the snowy mountains of the Tamins range could be seen off to the north and east. Away down in the middle of the great round valley, Nita could just see something small and pale: a little building. There was nothing else to be seen, for what looked like miles and miles, except flowery meadows, some scattered patches of woodland, and occasional flocks of ceiff, ambling from place to place or taking flight without warning.

“That’s it?” Kit said.

Nita nodded. “It’s probably a lot bigger than it looks from here,” she said. “The distances keep fooling me.”

“We can do a quick transit spell over to it,” Kit said.

Nita nodded, and Kit constructed the spell and spoke it. The hush of the universe listening to the words leaned in around them; they vanished, and the soft bang! of the air rushing away from them as they reappeared reached them before the more distant bang! of their disappearance.

The Naos was a simple structure done mostly in the peach-colored sandstone that the Alaalids favored. Nine tall columns upheld a round dome that glittered in the sunlight as if polished slick; inside the dome was another, smaller structure, constructed of screens of the same stone, intricately carved and pierced. Pointing toward each of the directions of the Alaalid compass were six broad sets of steps, running down to the surrounding greensward from the main pedestal-level on which the columns stood. The whole structure gave an impression of elegant and airy lightness, at least as far as architecture was concerned. To Nita, it suggested an extremely beautiful trap.

They walked slowly toward one of the flights of steps and paused there. Ponch looked at it, wandered over to the side of the steps, lifted a back leg, and made a liquid comment.

Are you ready for this? Kit said silently.

Nita nodded. She had ready a set of wizardries that had been effective enough against the Lone Power in other times, and she had some newer defenses, not yet tried, that might work even better if it turned out she needed them. Let’s go, she said.

They walked up the stairs slowly, in step, in the hot sunlight—she and Kit, with Ponch between them. Nita felt a little grim amusement: The only thing missing from the present scenario was the jingling of spurs, and someone whistling menacingly off in the distance. At the top of the stairs they stopped, looking through the columns toward the curved, pierced stonework shell inside. That was the naos proper, the center of the structure. It wasn’t precisely dark in there, but by comparison with the bright day outside, it seemed shadowy enough. Right in front of them, the stonework was interrupted by a wide doorway that led into the interior.

Kit and Nita glanced at each other, walked toward that opening. Inside, it wasn’t as dark as it had seemed on first glance. For one thing, the dome that topped

off the building wasn’t solid stone, or if it was, it wasn’t any thicker than half an inch or so—like the thickness of an eggshell compared to its size. Sunlight filtered through it in a soft, vague shimmer of pink, gold, cream, and white, all mingled together. That light fell on something inside, a structure all by itself in the center of the naos, which was circular like the pedestal and columns that contained it. It was another pedestal, of only three great, broad, shallow, concentric steps, with six long, curved, stone benches arranged around it. On the pedestal sat a huge blocky chair, exceedingly simple, made of blocks of squared-off and polished creamy stone—a back slab, two side slabs, and a horizontal slab between them. It’s kind of like the one in the Lincoln Memorial, Nita thought. Except—

—except that sitting with her legs curled up under her in that great chair, and leaning on one arm of it, with her chin in her hand, looking at them with an expression of ineffable boredom, was an Alaalid woman of staggering beauty. Mahogany-skinned, she wore a loose white sleeveless tunic over a long, loose white skirt. She had a long and perfect face, striking red-and-gold-streaked hair that tumbled down around her on all sides, and eyes that shone like orange amber with the sun behind it.

Kit and Nita came to a standstill and simply looked at her for a moment. Ponch, between them, regarded the woman sitting in the chair, and let out one long, low growl. Then, rather to Nita’s surprise, he fell silent and sat down.

Nita looked at Ponch hurriedly to see what was the matter…if the Lone One was doing anything to him. But Ponch was simply looking at It, with his head tilted slightly to one side and a thoughtful expression on his face.

“Fairest and Fallen…” Kit said.

“Yes, yes, greeting and defiance, thank you very much. I really wish you people would come up with something else to say,” the Lone Power said. Her voice was as beautiful as her face, but it had an edge to it.

Nita stood there, wondering what in the world to say next. “So nice of you to drop by,” the Lone One said. “You’re a nice change from the school groups and the mothers with bored toddlers. But don’t just stand there glaring at me,” Esemeli said, and she waved a languid hand at the bench nearest to where they were standing. “Go on, sit down. That’s what they’re there for. I’m a tourist attraction.”

Nita glanced at Kit and then sat down.

“Do a lot of people come and visit you here?” Kit said, sitting down beside Nita.

“Not that many,” the Lone Power said, leaning on one elbow. “Of those who do, most think I’m some kind of live entertainment meant to follow that little multimedia show they’ve got in the valley. A few of them…a very few…realize what I really am, and have the sense to be scared. But most of them never make it past vague interest. It’s been too long since they’ve had any real trouble in this world.”

“I can see how that would bother you,” Kit said.

The Lone Power’s smile was slow and grim. Nita had to shiver at it, for she had never seen a look of such malice on any Alaalid face. “Well, I do try to keep my sense of proportion about me,” It said. “Earth, for example; there’ve been some changes there.”