“But twychilding is more than just being twins, isn’t it?” Nita said. “I read about it in the manual a while back. You guys bounce spells back and forth between you, right? And they get stronger.” And then Kit was surprised to see Nita blush. “Sorry, I don’t know which of your names it’s okay to use.”
“The last one’s like the Western first name,” said the girl. “Nguyet’s fine for me. But as for the spells, yeah, that’s how it goes. The output multiplies, sometimes even squares.”
Kit grinned. “You sure you aren’t breaking the laws of thermodynamics or something?”
Tuyet snickered. “Probably,” he said. “Nguyet breaks most things.”
Nguyet glared at him. “I do not!”
“Oh yeah? What about that lamp last week?”
“That was an accident!”
The ground under all their feet suddenly began to vibrate. Kit and Nita looked at each other in alarm. “Guys!” Kit said.
The ground’s shuddering stopped. The twins looked at each other. “Uh, sorry…”
“It’s him doing it,” Nguyet said. “He’s younger.”
“Oh, yeah, right, two minutes younger!” Tuyet laughed. “That makes me more powerful.”
“Are you two going out, or staying in?” Kit said.
“Staying in,” Tuyet said. “That’s what we wanted to check with you. We’re putting together a notification list in the manuals so that wizards who’re staying home can cover for the ones who’re going on the road when the trouble starts. S’reee told us you guys were probably going off-world, so we added you to the list. You going through the Crossings?”
“Yeah.”
“We’ve got a custom gate wizardry set out in the middle of the crater,” Nguyet said. “Been a lot of traffic through there in the past few hours, in both directions. You can never tell … it might confuse Somebody.” She grinned. When she did, that fierce look in Nguyet’s face got fiercer. Kit liked it: it made her otherwise extremely delicate, “porcelain” prettiness look more like the kind of porcelain that’s made into high-tech knives.
“I hope so,” Kit said.
Tuyet’s grin was even more feral than his sister’s. “We’ll keep an eye on things here,” he said. “Get out there and make It crazy.”
“That’s the plan,” Nita said. “Good luck, you two.”
The twychild waved and headed on out of the force field, making their way down toward S’reee. “That was interesting,” Kit said.
“Yeah,” Nita said. “Imagine how it must have been for them. Joint Ordeals. Never having to find someone to help you with a spell…” She shook her head.
“Having another wizard in your head with you all day, instead of by invitation?” Kit said. “A little too weird for me.”
“But if you’ve been used to it all your life,” Nita said, “even before you knew you were wizards, then maybe we’re the ones that would seem weird to them.” She tucked her manual away. “Never mind. Here come the others.”
The center of Spring Lake Crater was empty except for one thing: a large hemispherical force-field bubble. Inside it, laid out on the pockmarked, dusty gray surface, was a huge circle of blue light; and that outer circle was subdivided into about twenty smaller ones of various sizes. The diagram was a duplicate in pure wizardry of the more concrete and “mechanical” gating circles and pads of the worldgating facility at the Crossings. Everyone knew the drill, at this point, and one after another, Filif and Sker’ret and Nita and Ronan went out into the diagram and stood in the middle of one of the subsidiary circles. With Ponch bouncing along behind him, Kit made his way out to an unoccupied circle and stood in it.
“Everybody ready?” Sker’ret said. “I’ll do the master transport routine—”
He began to recite a long phrase in the Speech, rattling it off with the assurance of someone who’d done it many times before. As Sker’ret spoke, and that familiar silence of a listening universe began to build around them all, Kit gazed back the way they’d come for a last look at the near-full Earth, the edge of its globe just touching the edge of Spring Lake Crater. A thought came unbidden: What if this is the last time you see that?
He shook his head. Silly idea. We’ve been in bad places before and made it home, even when we thought we wouldn’t.
But there’s something about this time that’s different, the back of his mind said to him. Everything’s changing. The things you thought you could always depend on aren’t dependable anymore. Maybe it’s smarter not to take anything for granted now.
Kit swallowed as the glow of the working worldgating wizardry rose all around them like a burning mist, beginning to obscure the view.
See you later, he said silently to the fading Earth… and hoped very much, as they all vanished, that he would.
5: Target of Opportunity
Dairine stepped through the brief darkness of Roshaun’s portable worldgate into the huge, high-ceilinged, overdone space he called home, and waited for Roshaun to come out behind her. Sunlight poured through those tall crystalline “patio” doors off to the left, but it was a fainter color than it had been when she was here before. This light was a weary, dulling, late-afternoon orange that burned, but burned cool. In it, every bright surface in the room gleamed coppery, and the silver gilt of Roshaun’s long flowing hair briefly matched the red of Dairine’s as he came out of the worldgate.
Dairine put Spot down. The laptop put out legs and quickly crab-walked out into the middle of everything, producing as many eyes as Dairine had ever seen him come up with at one time. He settled himself down flat, pointing every eye in a different direction. Apparently the architecture had him fascinated. This Dairine understood, since Roshaun’s living space in the palace on Wellakh closely resembled a three-way collision between an antique furniture warehouse, a jewelry store, and a Gothic cathedral carved and decorated by the artistically insane. Rich overlapping carpets covered the floor everywhere; sofas and wardrobes and tables and chairs ornate enough to be thrones were placed here and there under rich canopies. Delicately wrought lamps hung down from a ceiling almost lost to sight in an opulent gloom, through which the occasional gemstone gleamed down like a lazily observant eye.
Roshaun stood there looking around for a moment, then glanced over at Dairine. “I wish we did not have to make this stop,” he said.
“Family stuff,” Dairine said. “Always a mess. You’re just lucky to have parents who’re wizards.”
“Am I indeed,” Roshaun said. “You shall judge. For the moment, I have to change.”
“Really?” Dairine said in amusement. “You mean there’s somewhere in the galaxy that won’t immediately buy into Carmela’s fashion statement? She’ll be horrified.”
Roshaun gave her what was meant to be a cutting look, and with apparent regret pulled off the floppy T-shirt that had been covering him nearly to his knees. Has Carmela got a thing going for him? Dairine wondered. But no, now it’s Ronan. She had to smile a little. Wait till she figures out the ramifications of that one. Dairine spared a second for an entirely clinical appreciation of the lean look of Roshaun’s upper body above the soft golden-fabric “sweatpants” he was wearing. How old is he in “real” years, I wonder? If there’s even an approximation that makes any sense. Officially, as his people see age, he can’t be much older than Nita or Kit.
Roshaun carefully draped the T-shirt over an ornately carved chaise longue. “I shall return momentarily,” he said. “Do you require refreshment?”
Somehow Dairine didn’t think Roshaun was likely to have a supply of her favorite soft drink on hand. “I’m okay,” she said. “You go do what needs doing.”