Диана Дуэйн - Wizard's Holiday

Kit threw Nita a concerned glance. “What? Are you sure?

“We’ve heard It get wizards to swear this particular oath before, in shorter versions,” Nita said. “It’s at the very center of wizardry, embodied in all the Enactive modes of the Speech. Not even one of the Powers That Be would dare break it: They’re held by the stricture, whether They’re renegade or not. It’s at the root of creation. Even the Wizard’s Oath is derived from it.”

The Lone Power’s expression was becoming more than merely alarmed: It looked suspicious. “Where have you been getting information like that?” Esemeli said.

Nita’s smile was grim. “You made me do a lot of research when my mother got sick,” Nita said. “A whole lot of reading in the manual. Do you think that after she was gone, I just gave that up? And since I started really working on it, I’ve been getting access to all kinds of information I didn’t know was there before. You have no idea what trouble you’ve made for yourself.”

There was a brief silence.

“So swear,” Nita said. “Come on, it’s not so hard. And I can only do this once: It’s not like you’re ever going to have to repeat yourself on my account. ‘I swear by the One to perform what I promise—’”

The Lone Power looked at her, stony-faced, silent. “You know,” It said after a few moments, “what you’re likely to be bringing down on yourself, at some later date, by making me do something—”

Nita folded her arms and looked at the Lone One. “Threats are a bad start for what’s going to happen now…”

Esemeli glared at her.

“Won’t swear, huh?” Nita said. “No, I didn’t think so. You’ve just been yanking our chain this whole time.” She looked over at Kit. “I guess it’s true,” she said, with a sigh. “Evil can’t change. Or else,” she said, looking back at Esemeli, “you’re even more stuck than you say you are, you poor thing. Never mind. You just have a nice time sitting here in the shade for another aeon or three!”

She turned her back and started down the stairs again. Kit shrugged helplessly at the Lone Power, and turned to go after Nita.

“Wait!”

Nita didn’t stop.

“I’ll swear!”

Nita went down a couple more steps, a little more slowly, and then stopped and looked over her shoulder.

“Let’s hear it, then,” she said. “And don’t leave anything out.”

“I swear by the One,” Esemeli said, standing there in the sun and casting a longer and blacker shadow every moment, “to perform what I promise—”

“Fully and without any reservation,” Nita said, “nor with any mechanism or execution founded in the intention to deceive; to fully inform the wizards of all manner of things of which they inquire; to carry out this information at a speed and in a way best suited to these wizards’ desires and the achievement of their ends; and at the end of said achievement, to depart without doing any harm to them or any thing or person affiliated with them in whatever degree, and when the conditions of this swearing are discharged and acknowledged to have been discharged, to go

peaceably again into my own place. And all this, by the Power of that One in Which all oaths and all intentions rest, inviting It on my abroachment of this Oath to withdraw the gifts It allows me to enjoy, I swear—”

Phrase by phrase, scowling more and more blackly with every word, the Lone One recited the Binding Oath. It got as far as “any thing or person affiliated with them in whatever degree,” and then stopped, glaring at them, while its shadow boiled with half-seen nightmare shapes of fury. “Oh, come on, that could be construed as meaning your whole universe!! It said.

Nita ignored Its shadow, kept her eyes on Esemeli’s face. “So it could,” Nita said. “And if you cooperate with us, there won’t be any need to take you to arbitration over it.”

“Assuming you survive that long,” the Lone One said, grinding Its teeth.

“Anything can happen,” Nita said. “And if you start trying to sabotage us after you’ve sworn this Oath, I wouldn’t make any bets on your longevity, either. You know what that last clause means. The only reason you’re here is because the One hasn’t yet seen fit to abolish you by withdrawing the energy It gave you at the very beginning of things. If you break this Oath—” Then she grinned. “Nah. You’re infinitely destructive but you’re not actively dumb. Come on, just get it over with! Stalling isn’t going to help you.”

Esemeli grimaced, and then started reciting again. When the Oath was finished, Nita nodded and said, “All right. That wasn’t so bad, was it?”

The Lone One said nothing.

“Never mind,” Nita said. “Kit?”

“Right,” Kit said. “First question: Where is Druvah?”

“I don’t know.”

Kit gave Esemeli a skeptical look.

“I mean it,” Esemeli said. “He used the energy I gave him to change his way of being. After the Choice, he bound himself into the world physically. Finding him is going to require making some preparations.”

“Then make them,” Nita said. “I want to hear all about them, of course, when they’ve been made, before we actually go looking. But don’t take too long. We’re only here for another week or so, and after we get this sorted out, I want lots of time on the beach to relax with Quelt.”

The Lone One nodded in a surly way. “You’ll hear from me tomorrow dawn,” It said, then turned and slowly went back up the steps into the Naos, vanishing into the shadows.

Kit and Nita went down the stairs again, with Ponch following after, wagging his tail. At the bottom of the stairs, they paused briefly as Ponch hurled himself off into the flowery fields, jumping at the occasional fur-bat that flapped up, startled, out of the jijis flowers.

“Weren’t you a little mean to It?” Kit said under his breath as they went after Ponch.

“After a whole week on the Planet of Nice,” Nita said, equally softly, “and come to think of it, a week without Dairine, I kind of wanted an excuse to get cranky about something.” She smiled slightly.

“Do you trust It?”

“Now? After It swore the Binding Oath? Sure.” She glanced at Kit out of the corner of her eye. “About ninety percent. I wouldn’t put it past Esemeli to keep trying to find a way out of what I made It swear. But at least the odds are on our side. And we’ve got to find out the truth about what’s going on around here. Druvah is definitely still here…and he’ll be able to tell us.”

They walked on a little ways.

“So this turns out to be errantry after all,” Kit said.

Nita nodded. “Just not formally declared, nothing that the Powers officially sent us on.”

Kit shook his head. “But why not?” he said. “Why didn’t they just send us here and say, ‘There’s something wrong with this planet and we need you to fix it’?”

“Or,” Nita said, “why didn’t They just get in touch with Quelt and tell her what the problem was?” She picked up a small rock and threw it off into the flowers. One flower moved slightly in a sea of them as the rock came down, and then everything was still once more.

She and Kit sighed more or less in unison. No answers were going to be forthcoming. They were just going to have to get on with it.

“It’s like Rhiow said, a while ago,” Nita muttered. The little black cat who was head of the New York gating team had been describing a pleasure trip when she’d routed outward through the Crossings and had wound up spending days there, helping them repair a recalcitrant worldgate. “Wizard’s holiday…”

Kit grinned. The phrase meant a vacation or pleasure trip that rapidly turned into something else, usually involving errantry, but was still pleasant in a strange way, simply because of the change. “I don’t know why the Powers let us think we’re ever going to get a real vacation,” Kit said.