She was gasping for air now, having to concentrate harder on staying conscious, staying focused. The thought of Kit was helping. He has to be in there inside Khretef somewhere. He has to! No way he’d ever just let himself be absorbed, no matter how smart a wizard Khretef might be. And as for Aurilelde—
Nita breathed out, breathed in, getting her second wind, feeling less shattered. But I’m getting angry again. She looked up at the wave, no longer a wave anymore but a long, sinking slope, filling the impact basin around her rapidly but not in danger of killing her. She may have control of this planet’s kernel, Nita thought, but she can’t just keep throwing stuff like that at me. In fact she has to be suffering now, no matter how easy she tried to make that look. And control or no control, she’s not a wizard—
Nita pushed herself up until she was kneeling upright again. The wave had sunk now almost to the level of the filling impact basin, and the whole huge space, at least the stretch of it that Nita could see from horizon to horizon, was full of water splashing back and forth like a bathtub in which the person submerged has moved too quickly. It’ll take care of itself now, she thought. The next stage will be ready to go in a few seconds. So get up and do the next thing before the reaction sets in. Hers will be setting in, too, and if you can push her into overloading herself before she understands what’s happening—
Nita got her feet under her, staggered, steadied herself. “Bobo,” she said. “I want to see them. And I want them to see me. And the area around me for about a mile or so.”
Remote visioning? I can handle that.
“What’s the energy outlay like?”
Against what you just did? Negligible.
“Do it.”
Nita stood as straight as she could. She didn’t have to work at looking angry. A moment later, she was looking at the floor of the Scarlet Tower as if it were an island touching her own. All around it, the Shamaska stared at her in astonishment: and the four in the center were trying to maintain neutral expressions, and mostly failing. Aurilelde in particular was looking both horrified and enraged, and trying to cover it up.
“Well,” Nita said, trying to sound as snotty and unconcerned as Dairine could on occasion, “that was pretty lame.”
Aurilelde opened her mouth. Nita didn’t give her a chance. “Yeah, yeah, impossible,” she said. “Well, guess what, Miss Not-a-Wizard? Not impossible. And I am annoyed with you. Not Khretef, who is really Kit— Hi, Kit!— and not your poor dad; the One only knows which of you is running things, and I don’t care. Not even Mister Rorsik behind you there; I don’t know who he thinks he’s running, and I don’t have time to waste finding out. You dropped that wave on me and choked off transit and shield-spelling. So let’s get serious.”
She glanced over her shoulder. Behind her, their initial stage completed, the massive twin tubes of the Pellegrino passthrough were now slowly rearing up behind her over the city like the graceful bodies of two gigantic serpents—the wizardly containment field no more than a thin, shimmering skin that looked like it could let go at any moment.
“Earth’s premier hydromage,” Nita said, “spent nine years of her life designing this wizardry to move huge volumes of water around between two oceans, under precise control. And I mean precise—not like the big crude kindergarten-sandbox stunt you just tried. But then you’re not a wizard, and having one telling you how to dump a bucket of water over somebody’s head isn’t the same as actually understanding what you’re controlling. I, however, understand water because I work with it a lot. So you’d better believe me when I tell you that if you don’t answer my challenge right now, I’m going to instruct one of the two ends of this wizardry to terminate right there in that room with you, and the other to terminate over the City of the Shamaska, and then I’ll tell both of them to emit the same volume of water as you just dropped on me, with approximately a hundred times the force. The City will be destroyed. And as for you personally, your bodies may be tough, but I’m betting a lot of you will die. And even if you don’t, how pleasant will the very few Shamaska survivors find life in this world when I’ve destroyed all your lovely, comfy tech, and your pretty city, and forced you to roam the surface of Mars digging up raw materials and building things from scratch?”
The three men around the Throne looked nervously from Nita to Aurilelde. “You would never do such a thing!” Aurilelde cried. “You are a wizard! Wizards cannot—”
“Oh yes wizards can,” Nita said. “Watch me! I told you, I am annoyed. You are screwing with life on my planet generally and my life personally …and I’m willing to pay the price for dealing with you once and for all. You want to prevent me smashing you and your little toy city all over the mountainside? Then you, Aurilelde, meet me right here, and you and I will have it out. You have a kernel. I have everything else. Let’s find out who really rules Mars.” And she grinned a nasty grin that she did not have to borrow from Dairine. “Should be fun.” Then she allowed some scorn to show. “Unless you’re scared, of course.”
Khretef was trying to stop her, but Aurilelde leaped to her feet, a murderous expression on her face. The white-hot fury would have looked astonishing on someone so young, except that Nita had Dairine for a little sister and was used to such displays. “I have no fear of you! You cannot take my world, or my Khretef, or my City—”
“Actually, I can,” Nita said softly. “Come down here and stop me. If you dare.” And she turned her back on them.Bobo? Kill it.
The view into the City vanished. Nita glanced at the passthrough wizardry. “How long will it hold there?” she said.
Approximately twenty-eight minutes. Then your backlash will kick in .
Nita rubbed her face, feeling the shakes starting, and tensed herself: she didn’t dare let them take hold. “I need some height,” she said. “She was able to stop local spelling partly because I was too close to the ground, where a kernel’s power is most effective, close to the body of the planet. It’ll be weaker up high. She’ll be limited to exploiting magnetic fields and microgravity and wind and such, and she won’t have had enough time to get proficient with those. I just need to wear her down and get close, and then—”
Physical confrontation?
“Crude and ugly,” Nita said, “but though I hate to admit it, occasionally effective. So let’s go skywalking.”
***
Hi, Kit!
He had been dozing uneasily in the darkness, caught in a dream from which he couldn’t wake and through which he couldn’t sink into deeper sleep. But the words caught him out of the darkness, pushed him toward waking.
He caught just a glimpse of the world through Khretef’s eyes: the room at the top of the Scarlet Tower, the Shamaska people gathered there—and in the midst of it all a single non-Shamaska figure, slender, erect, and dangerous-looking. Over everything loomed vast twin serpents of water, poised and waiting on her word. He caught the gleam of her eyes, angry, but somehow still with a hint of amusement in the anger: everything under control, even though she was also deadly tired and scared.
Neets!
Hi, Kit!
The image shut down, and fear darkened everything around him. But at least he knew his name again. For a few moments there, he’d lost it. Kit looked around him in the darkness, hunting for a way out, for any ray of light. There was none. He might as well have been in a hole in the ground, the dirt shoveled in, tamped down…