Diane Duane - The Wizard's Dilemma

"And just what do you plan to fight me with?" the Lone One said. "You have no weapons to equal my power. Not even the diluted form of it that's killing you now."

"She may not have anything but guts and intention," Kit said, "but that's half of wizardry to start with. And we're carrying." He reached into his claudi-cation and came up with a long string of symbols in the Speech.

Nita looked at it, uncomprehending. The Lone One laughed.

"That won't work," It said. "Certainly not for her. And not even for Nita anymore, as you've seen. You think that by plugging an older version of Nita's name into this spell, she will no longer be mine? It won't work. It takes more power than either of you have to reverse the kind of changes she's been through. She knows me now. She's willing to pay my price to keep her mother alive... and, sorry, Mom, but permission or no permission, it's Nita's choice that finally counts."

"Oh yeah?" Kit said. "Neets," he said to her then, holding out his hand, looking at her urgently. "Quick

"Oh, of course, give him all your power, why don't you." The Lone One laughed. "So much for your doing anything useful by yourself."

Nita swallowed. In Its voice she heard too many

thoughts of her own, roiling in its darkness the way the viruses were boiling around in the pools.

Can't cope.

No independence.

Scared to make a move without her fanner. Doesn't have the nerve to strike out on her own— Nita swallowed... and took off the charm bracelet. —going to let him do all the dangerous stuff. Going to prove him right again, and you wrong— She hesitated one last time...

... and then threw the bracelet to Kit.

Kit caught it and quickly attached the old version of Nita's name he'd saved from the Jones Inlet wizardry. Then he reached into the air beside him and brought something else out.

A small pale spark of light—

The light it gave at first seemed little, but swiftly it lit up all that place, and even chased the shadows briefly from the Lone One's face... a sight that made Nita turn away—for the terror of It, to some extent, she could stand, but the beauty of It, seen together with that ancient deathliness, was difficult to bear. Around the Lone One, the darkness hissed with Its alarm, as if suddenly full of snakes. A glede—

"The dragon's eye," Kit said as he hooked the glede into an empty link of the charm bracelet, and the whole chain came alive with sudden fire. "Something brand new, something you've never touched.

Something born after the change happened to you, the chance to be otherwise. Something you can't affect —"

"Not true!" It cried. "All creation, even the void from which things are created anew, has my power at the bottom of it."

"Not here, it doesn't! Not in this! Whether you like it or not, even while you're killing people, the world is starting to heal... and so are you\"

Nita swallowed hard, watching Kit and suddenly remembering Tom and Carl's backyard and a fish looking up out of the water at her.

All the drawing lacks

is the final touch: to add eyes to the dragon—

She desperately wanted to shout to Kit that yes, this had to be the answer—but she didn't dare. She'd been wrong about so many things lately. What if her certainty, her desperation, got Kit killed, too? And the Lone One's right, that's not who I am anymore—

—but the other memory that came back to her, the amused piggy voice saying, "That is, assuming you're into sequential time... you can handle it however you like..."

That blazing spark of light on the bracelet Kit held glittered at her like possibility made visible.

Why in the world not? Nita thought. If you can't put together what yon were with what you are now— so you. can make up for your mistakes and not make the same ones again—then what's the point? This isn't about reversing anything. It's about going forward!

"Kit! "she cried.

He threw her the charm bracelet. Nita snatched it out of the air, and almost dropped it as the added power of the glede jolted up her arm like an electric shock.

"I wouldn't do that if I were you!" the Lone One cried. "You'll destroy your mother, and yourself, here and now!"

Nita hesitated for just a second... then put the charm bracelet back on, taking hold of the two versions of her name that hung from it, side by side. "Well, guess what?" she said. "You're not me!" And in the single quick gesture she'd had entirely too much practice with lately, she knotted the names tight together with the wizard's knot.

The blast of power that went through her was like being hit by lightning. Whether because of her remade name or the presence of the glede, suddenly Nita could comprehend all those little darknesses in the water much more fully than just by using the kernel. Those stinging, buzzing little horrors were right about being, in their own twisted way, part of her mother. But now she could see exactly what to do about them. The solution was the same as what she had been trying to do with Kit and S'reee at Jones Inlet...

... except that, where she'd been wrong about how to use her part of the wizardry before, here and now she was right. Her wizardly fix for Jones Inlet had been too complicated. "This whole contrareplication routine would be great," Kit had said, "if the chemicals in the pollution knew how to reproduce themselves." Of course, they hadn't. But viruses were just very smart chemicals in a protein shell that did know how to reproduce themselves...which made the solution perfect for her mother.

It set me up, Nita thought in growing fury. The Lone One made sure I came tip against a problem where my solution would fail—and fail painfully—and where I fought with Kit. So that when I came to this moment, I'd be too hurt, too scared to try this solution again, too scared even to see it!

She trembled with rage. But to waste time on being angry now would only play into Its hands. Nita's eyes narrowed in concentration as she channeled the power from the glede through both the kernel and her memory of her part of the Jones Inlet wizardry, and into the dark waters around her...

Every pool around them roiled in agitation as all the viruses thrust their heads up out of the lapping darkness, like blind fish gasping in the air, desperately crying no!

For many of them it was already too late. All around them, the sea of her mother's blood was churning as if in a storm with the power that washed through it— and from all around came countless little dark explosions as the viruses' shells unraveled. The wizardry was reminding the human blood of how it had once been part of an older, purer, uncontaminated Sea, one that was the outside of a world rather than the inside.

Yet Nita could feel through the kernel that there were some places where, for all the glede's power, that cleansing Sea didn't, couldn't quite reach. Scattered through her mother's inner world, little knots of

Friday Afternoon

darkness still lay, waiting... and there were many, many of them. Too many...

Nita fell to her knees, defeated.

All for nothing...

"I told you," the Lone One said. "You should have done it my way. Too late now—" And it began to laugh.

Nita began to cry. It was all over... all over... A deathly silence fell.

And an angry whisper broke it.

"With me," it said, "you can do what you like. But not with my daughter!" And then another whisper.

"Mrs. Callahan—"

A moment later, someone took hold of Nita's bracelet. Nita looked up, gasping.

"You need this, sweetie," her mother said, her voice controlled despite her anger as she turned the bracelet past the new-made version of Nita's name. "But Kit's right. This is what I've been looking for!"

With a roar of fury, the Lone One moved toward the three of them, a terrible wave of shadow rearing up above It, ready to break. All around them, the waters of the pools rose up, to drown them, to destroy...