The terrible blast of fire in that dim place blinded everybody and knocked them staggering. The force of the explosion shoved Nita into the warrior that was holding her; she found her footing again just before it let go of her and went down, crashing to the floor with a horrible, thin, shrilling scream. An awful singed-hair stink of burning bug came billowing out from the dais through waves of greasy black smoke, and it was some seconds before this cleared enough for Nita to see that the King’s entire front half had been blown away. Its rear half was now a smoking, bubbling, sagging bag of grossness, the sight of which made Nita simply bend over double and retch, mutely grateful that the soda she’d drunk was now too far along in her system to come back up. When she straightened up again, she saw through the smoke that Carmela was standing in front of the King’s smoking remains with the curling iron in her hand.
“Oops,” Carmela said… and, very slowly, smiled.
Nita stared around them in utter astonishment. Around them, all the other warriors and even the Arch-votary were making that same terrible shrill cry, wavering, desperate, as they fell to the ground and went silent. From the depths of the City to its heights, faintly at first and then more loudly, Nita started to hear that shrilling spreading all through the vast place. Ronan instantly whirled and snatched the Spear of Light out of the claws of the collapsed warrior who’d held it.
Kit ran over to Carmela. When he got to her, he threw his arms around her and buried his face against her. “You dummy,” he said, “you incredible idiot, you stupid—”
“Hey, I love you, too,” Carmela said, hugging him back as Nita hurried over.
“‘Mela,” she said, “it was controlling you! How did you—”
“It wasn’t,” Carmela said. “It made me jerk a little that first time, but after that I was just playing along. Maybe it’s no good with our kind of brain or something?”
Nita didn’t think that was likely, but she looked about halfway back at the King, making a face. It was very dead, and the smell seemed to be getting worse rather than better. “Okay,” she said. “But what about Memeki?”
They turned toward her. Memeki was hunched on the floor, and her limbs, which had before been flailing as if in distress, were now unnervingly still. Nita went over to her, knelt down by her. “Memeki?”
No answer.
“It’s starting to happen to her, isn’t it,” Kit said.
Nita felt sure it was. She reached sideways, feeling around for her otherspace pocket, and still couldn’t feel it.
Huh? she thought. What’s the matter? she said to the peridexis. The King’s dead, the Lone One should be—
“Uh,” Dairine said, very quietly. “Neets—”
Nita looked up, looked around, unable to see what Dairine’s problem was. Then she looked back at the dais.
The charred remnants of the King still lay there, smoking. But within them, slowly drawing upward instead of drifting outward, was a deeper darkness, gathering together and shaping itself into a new form: humanoid enough, but taller than any human, and with a far deeper darkness in the eyes gazing down at them as the shape grew more ominously distinct. Solidifying, clothing itself in a long ebon tunic and booted breeches somewhat like Roshaun’s, the young and darkly handsome figure of the Lone Power glanced down and around It, and casually kicked Its way out of the ruin of the King’s body like someone kicking his way out of a pair of shucked-off jeans.
The Lone One stepped down from the dais and surveyed the smoking remains of the King. Then It turned around and looked at them. “‘Oops’?” It said.
The voice was deep, urbane, and dry. It could almost have been pleasant had Nita not known perfectly well that the pleasantness was never more than a disguise or a trap. What worried her most at the moment was that all Its attention was bent on Carmela. It left the dais and stalked toward them. “‘Oops’?”
Carmela had sense enough to be unnerved. She took a hasty step backward, then another, as the Lone Power approached. “Sorry,” she said.
“I rather doubt it,” the Lone One said, “but that will change. Is it possible that you don’t know you’ve made things worse for yourself, not better? Then again, you’re new at this. Well, in the short time left to you, here’s one lesson for you to learn.”
It smiled, and Carmela shrank back. Then her eyes abruptly went wide. A little shriek burst out of her. She spun and, hastily, overhand, threw the curling iron away hard. A mere six feet or so away from her, in midair, it blew up.
Everyone jumped back. Nita gulped, and was briefly relieved that Carmela had spent so much of this school year on the pitcher’s mound for the school softball team.
“So much for science,” the Lone One said. “Though I must confess that why you weren’t more susceptible to control is an issue for curiosity.”
“Might be that someone here was able to keep you from noticing,” Ronan said. Leaning on the Spear of Light, he glowered at the Lone One from under those dark brows of his.
“That seems unlikely,” the Lone Power said. “He’s got precious little power left in him right now, and he can’t draw on the pitiful scrap of power that’s got left.” It glanced dismissively at the Spear, which now simply looked like a spear and nothing else; its flame was gone, and not even the twisting fires that normally lived in its blade were there anymore. “But even more unlikely is the possibility that she was able to keep the information to herself. So for the moment we’ll file the matter under ‘interesting but unimportant.’”
It turned around and looked briefly at the King’s remains. “What a shame,” the Lone One said. “I’d just gotten this one broken in. But I’ll soon grow another. Meantime, I have other business here.”
“What are you going to do with us?” Kit said.
“Probably nothing,” It said.
“Oh, sure!” Dairine said.
“No,” the Lone One said, “seriously. Why should I exert myself? Not a single one of you has enough power to turn lemons into lemonade. And that’s not going to change.” It strolled over toward the softly growling Ponch. “Not even he can get out of here; his abilities, not that I care to try to understand them, are derived from wizardry as well. You’re all completely stuck.”
It turned Its back on Ponch and wandered over to Memeki. “I admit,” It said, “normally just killing you would be my initial impulse. But I’m thinking it would be more fun just to let you all wander around on this planet for the rest of your natural lives, which probably wouldn’t be long: there’s not much to eat or drink here that your metabolisms are built to handle. But you’d live quite long enough to suffer from some of the things that are going to happen as a result of your failure.”
The Lone One came to a halt by Memeki’s side, gazing down at her. “And as for the attempted ‘Aeon of Light’ here,” It said, kicking Memeki idly with one booted toe, “the Unfallen One and all the rest of the fancy terminology—well, she’s a spent force. She waited a few seconds too long to make up her mind. When I sealed wizardry away, she lost access to the power that would have allowed her to enact her transformation. So, starting in a few minutes, when the grubs hatch and she begins to die, her embodiment will officially have failed … and after that, I won’t ever have to worry about the much-waited-for Hesper again, in this or any universe. You did know that if an emergent Power’s first embodiment fails, both the being inside time and the being outside in timelessness cease to exist?”