Диана Дуэйн - Wizard's Holiday

species oh-so-gracefully surrenders as a whole to what they will wrongly consider Fate. So much for their intended glory; the One is just going to have to do without them…And as for me, not only do I have all these poor frozen fools to amuse me the few idle aeons until Time’s end, but now I also have you two to laugh at for the rest of this universe’s eternity…your faces to entertain me as your souls writhe endlessly for the mistakes you made, the loved ones who’ll never see you again. Priceless,” Esemeli said, “priceless!”

Kit and Nita looked at each other helplessly as the Lone Power’s laughter once again drowned out the Whispering, echoing all through that place—

—and then Esemeli suddenly cried out, “Ow!!”—

—because something had dropped a stick of ironwood right onto the Lone Power’s head.

Everyone looked up in shock, most particularly Esemeli. Her face went in a second from an expression of pain to one of terrible fury. Standing there in the air above them all, looking down, was Ponch…and holding the other end of his wizardly leash, also looking down at that immeasurable assembly with an expression of relief and wonder, was Quelt.

They walked down the air together, and everyone looked at them, most specifically Esemeli. There was a curse in Its eyes, but It said nothing.

The two of them came down onto the mountaintop, and walked into the heart of that great gathering. She was wondering where you were, Ponch said to Nita and Kit. So was I. So we came looking.

And Kit started to smile. We’re not the only one who made some mistakes, he said privately to Nita. Aloud, he said to Esemeli, “You know, you’re to blame for this.”

It turned to glare at him. “If you hadn’t hurried us along and had waited for Ponch to catch up with me,” Kit said, “he’d be stuck in here with the rest of us. But, no, you had to get going and get us nice and trapped.” Kit glanced over at Nita. “That Binding Oath is really something,” he said, “if it makes the Lone Power help us even when It’s trying to screw us up.”

“Or else,” Nita said, looking over at the Lone One with an expression that was difficult to read, “someone’s found a really good way to do the right things without looking like they were.” And she smiled just the slightest smile. “Didn’t somebody say they were getting a lot more mileage out of ambivalence these days?”

The Lone One turned away. “This will only work this once,” It said. “Make the most of it. When she releases me, you may later come to regret all this. In fact, I guarantee that you will.”

Kit and Nita turned their attention back to Ponch and Quelt. Everyone else in that place was staring at them in astonishment, and the one looking hardest at them, though with the least look of being surprised, was Druvah. “Yes,” he said at last. “I foresaw this happening …but, I have to admit, not quite this way…”

Quelt, for her own part, hardly gave Druvah more than a glance at first. She went straight over to Kit and Nita and took first Kit, then Nita, by the shoulders in her species’ greeting. “I am so sorry,” she said. “I treated you so badly when you were only telling me the truth. I feel terrible about it. And I felt terrible before, as well! I got you started on all this!”

Nita stared at Quelt, confused. “I thought I got you started on it!”

“No,” Quelt said. “You just said things idly that made me think more about things I’d been thinking already. Remember how I said that there was something missing? I hadn’t been really serious about it before, but after you said you had the same thoughts, they started to matter much more. When the thoughts were inside, I was discounting them. They didn’t seem important or real. Yet you were so different, and the place you come from is so different…and you still had those feelings. That was the key.”

Ponch ran over to Kit with the leash in his mouth, dropped it, and then began jumping around him, whining and trying to lick his face. You went farther away than usual without me, Ponch said. I was worried about you. Don’t do that again!

Kit hugged Ponch’s head to him. Okay, he said. Just remember this the next time you go running off across the universe without telling me!

Ponch sat down and looked up at Kit with big soulful eyes. I’ll be good…

Quelt looked over at Druvah and smiled suddenly. “You’re taller than you looked in the Display,” she said.

He smiled. “Too great a distance in time does alter the perspective somewhat,” Druvah said.

Quelt turned to Esemeli. “And as for you,” she said. “Now you’ll tell me that all the things you said just now were a lie.”

“Why, of course they were.”

“Say it in the Speech,” Quelt said.

The Lone Power glared at her.

Quelt turned away from It and looked around at all that gathering of people, all the dead of Alaalu, ranged away around the mountain and up the slopes of the world, to the high horizon and beyond, it seemed.

“For now, though,” she said, “before we can go forward, something is missing.”

Nita and Kit looked at each other as the air around them shimmered and rumbled with power. Wizardry was being done here but not in a mode they recognized, and Quelt was at the heart of it. She simply seemed to be standing with her arms by her sides, murmuring in the Speech—

—and a moment later, the crowd surrounding them seemed, impossibly, much larger than it had.

“Everyone needs to be here for this,” Quelt said softly, but her voice traveled effortlessly right across that mighty assemblage. Nita looked at the people standing nearest her and Kit and realized that it wasn’t just the dead of Alaalu who were surrounding them now. The living had arrived as well, in spirit if not in body, and were looking around in astonishment at the heart of the world.

“Now that we are all here,” Quelt said, “now comes the time to make another Choice—whether to choose again—”

The Whispering, massive already, started to turn to a mutter, the mutter to a roar, at first distant, like surf crash on Earth, then closer and closer. All around, the Alaalids closest to Nita and Kit in that great crowd were turning to one another, murmuring, distressed.

“Oh no,” Kit said suddenly.

Nita turned to see what he was looking at. There was a stir of motion in the crowd, and through it came Kuwilin and Demair.

They went to Quelt, who looked at them with tears suddenly standing in her eyes.

“Daughter,” Kuwilin said, “what are you doing? Do you know what you’re saying?”

“Very well,” Quelt said.

Her mother reached out to Quelt, took her by the shoulders. “Quelt, sweeting, you can’t! Don’t you hear yourself? If you do what you’re planning, you’re going to kill everyone alive on the planet!”

“Their old lives will end,” Quelt said, “yes.” The tears began to fall.

“We’re happy!” Kuwilin said, desperate. “Our lives are good! How can you want to end them?”

It pained Nita to see that proud, good-natured face suddenly so frightened, to see Demair’s easy grace gone tense with terror. She saw that it pained Quelt, too. And all around, other voices began to cry out as well.

“Everything is fine just the way it is!”

“Why should you destroy the way a whole planet lives just because you have the power?”

“How dare you decide for us what’s right for us all to do!”

“Someone has to decide!” Quelt cried at them all. “Because you can’t do it anymore! Listen to you! You should hear yourselves! You’re like a bunch of little children who don’t want to take a nap in the afternoon because you’re afraid you’ll miss something! But you have missed something. Didn’t you hear the Lone One now, speaking truly for a change? It’s told you everything you need to know. But you never needed It to tell you that, not really. You weren’t listening to the world. None of us has been! We were too happy to listen!”