Диана Дуэйн - Wizard's Holiday

“The strangers on whom you pinned all your hopes,” Esemeli said, “unfortunately have given your wizard the fright of her life, by telling her the truth. A choice irony. She’s seen what the Telling showed her of their world and wants nothing to do with it, or them. Or, by extension, you, Druvah. She even made herself unavailable enough to them this morning that they couldn’t be warned in time about what they were so eager to do.”

Esemeli turned Its attention to Nita and Kit and smiled at them sweetly…a little too sweetly. “You, at least,” the Lone Power said to Nita, “will recognize the source of the Whispering you’ve heard in the nights. This is the Whispering’s core, the place into which the souls of the Alaalid die, when they die into the world. Here, by virtue of the Choice the Alaalids made, everything is preserved forever as it was when it arrived. Think of it as a sketchy little version of Timeheart.” The furious, hating twist It put on the word gave Nita an abrupt shiver. “Too sketchy, though. And also by virtue of that Choice, nothing that comes here ever leaves here, whether it comes of its own free will or not.”

Esemeli directed the full force of that infuriating smile on Nita. “You should have asked fewer questions about how soon you could get where you were going,” the Lone One said, “and more about whether you could get out afterward. But most to the point, you forgot the line in the Binding Oath about not allowing you to err by inaction.”

Nita felt all the blood run straight down out of her face, leaving her staggered and shivering.

She and Kit looked over at Druvah.

The most powerful of the ancient Alaalid wizards nodded regretfully. “What It says is true,” Druvah said. “I have no power to change it. And the one who has that power has not come with you, as I had hoped she would.” His voice was filled with regret, and Nita looked over at Kit, her mouth suddenly going dry with fear. “Indeed, that was my only hope. But the future has not turned out the way I thought it would. It seems my people must remain as they are. And here we must all stay, until the day after forever…”

The Lone One’s laughter began to echo in that bright place, filling it, and drowning out all other sound, even the sound of the Whispering

The wizardry brought Dairine, Roshaun, Filif, and Sker’ret out in the midst of a hurricane of fire.

Not exactly in the middle of it, Dairine thought, trying desperately to keep hold of her nerves, for the status readouts hanging in front of her own part of the wizardry told her exactly what was going on out there, and it terrified her. It was one

thing, as she’d once done, to sink a skinny little spatial slide into this nuclear fury and pull out a pencil-sized stream of molten mass. When she’d done that, she’d been dealing with a star’s core, and the core was a placid pool on a windless night compared to the place where they now found themselves. By definition, the tachocline was turbulent. Its name meant “the place where the speed changes,” and it was where the more placid motion but more terrible temperatures of the radiative zone below met the boiling madness of the convective zone above. The tachocline slid between the two zones like ball bearings rubbed between two hands, in wide belts and roiling spots like the atmosphere of Jupiter, but at wind speeds that made Jupiter’s seem tame. “Wind,” though, seemed a pitiful word for the insensate power that was raging around them in wildly varying directions. The solar medium was no denser than water here—but even water becomes a deadly weapon when it’s blasting past you at twenty times the speed of sound, and at two million degrees.

Filif was pouring power into the wizardry at a prodigious rate, but even so, the wizardry itself was suffering under these atrocious conditions. It would not hold forever. And it was being buffeted around like a Ping-Pong ball in the terrible, constantly shifting pressure.

Roshaun was trying to get a reading on the lowest levels of the tachocline, but Dairine saw that every second the readings changed more violently. The layer was like a blanket being wildly shaken up and down by people holding it at the edges. Until it calmed, there was no chance that they were going to be able to do what they needed to do. And it was not going to calm—

Come on, Roshaun said to the Sun in the Speech. He spoke silently to be heard over the roar. Come on, cousin! What are you waiting for? Why all this trouble? You know what you need to do. Otherwise, life on all your planets is going to be problematic. Give us some help, here. Let us help you sort yourself out!

The Sun raged around him; the tachocline bucked and heaved like a live thing, stung by the approaching magnetic anomalies swinging around from the far side of the Sun, the skin of the border layer twitching and shuddering. Dairine started to hear something she never would have imagined it was possible to hear: the Sun itself speaking, like a sentient thing. It was using the Speech, but she couldn’t understand the words. It wanted something; it was trying to tell her, but she couldn’t understand—

That’s impossible. I have to be able to understand; it’s the Speech. What’s the matter?

There’s something wrong here, she heard Sker’ret saying in her mind. Something’s interfering with the magnetic flow at this level.

The bubblestorm area? Dairine asked.

No. Something else. A darkness…

Sunspots? Dairine said.

No! Something else. But dark—

Under them, the tachocline heaved ever more violently. It won’t stay still! Dairine cried. How are you going to get the worldgate down in there long enough to bleed the mass off if it keeps heaving around like this?

There was a long silence from Roshaun. There are ways, he said

conversationally.

Something about the tone of that thought brought Dairine’s head up, made her look him in the eye. But he wouldn’t meet her eye.

Roshaun?

You know what I am, he said to the Sun, ignoring her.

A blast of reply.

Yes, Roshaun said. A Guarantor.

Another blast.

He could understand it and she couldn’t. It wasn’t fair—

Sker’ret, Roshaun said, detach the worldgate for me.

“What?” Dairine shouted.

If Roshaun heard the thought behind the shout, he didn’t betray it. At any rate, the way the roar of the Sun was coming through even the wizardry now, there was no point in using normal speech. Sker’ret said three words, very quickly, and the black shadow that was the worldgate, reduced to a thin scrap of grayish fog in this terrible light, leaped straight into Roshaun’s hands as if he’d called it.

What are you thinking of? Dairine demanded. Let me help you—

You need to stay here and let me do this, Roshaun said.

But if I can just—

You can’t, Roshaun said, looking at her with that infuriating, amused expression. But then that’s what “Guarantor” means. If the world can’t pay the price.. if the people around you can’t pay the price…you do.

The price? No! Dairine said. No! You don’t even like my little planet—you said so—

No, Roshaun said. Which is possibly the best of all possible reasons to do this.

He stepped out of the wizardry.

“No,” Dairine whispered. “No! Roshaun!”

Roshaun vanished in the fire.

****

Interim Destinations In the heart of Alaalu, Kit looked at Nita in complete horror. “You mean that’s it!”

She looked over at him, shivering, and nodded. “I think It’s right,” she said. “We’re stuck here…”

“You were so earnest,” the Lone One said. “And so careless. And so patronizing. You have deserved this so profoundly, I can barely express it. A failed fragment of the Lone Power, am I? Oh, very failed. But not so failed that this species will have any further chance to go on into whatever lovely bodiless stage of evolution might potentially await them. Their only wizard will remember her betrayal until the day she dies, and will warn all her successors never to be tempted to consider Repeal. Generation after generation of them will live out their happy little lives and die into the world. They’ll keep on doing that until their star goes cold and their