Kit was looking at her with a shocked sort of expression: Nita assumed it had something to do with her voice, which even to her sounded like it belonged to somebody else. “What? A healing spell?”
Nita shook her head. “No time for that now,” she said, glancing down at her manual; its pages stopped riffling. “We have to get back to Earth as fast as we can.”
“But the Pullulus! If it’s getting closer to Earth, wizardry might not be working right—”
“See if the manual tells you anything about that,” Nita said. The page she’d wanted in her manual, containing the spell she’d prepared days earlier, lay there waiting in front of her. “But we have to take the chance. You heard the Hesper! We need to head back now.”
“But if you don’t heal him—” Kit looked past Nita at her manual, peering down at the details of the spell.
She shook her head again, shoving the rowan wand back into her belt for the moment. “Stasis,” she said. “After the little chat we had with Darryl, I thought I’d better have one ready.”
“Send me a copy!” Kit said, flipping his manual open.
“Did that already,” Nita said. She glanced around them. “Dair, Roshaun, Fil, when this is finished we need to transit back to the Crossings and home from there. A straight-in gating might derange this spell, especially if something is wrong with wizardry back home.”
“I will contact Sker’ret,” Roshaun said, “and make sure they’re ready for us.”
“I will set up the transit spell,” Filif said. “Will you need further assistance with that one?”
“Shouldn’t,” Nita said. “Kit?”
He nodded, and together they started to recite in the Speech. The old reassuring fade-out of sound started to set in around them as the words of the Speech seized on the fabric of the universe and started to bend it into a new shape, one that would absolutely freeze time for Ronan. It was a particularly “hard” stasis, its emphasis on completely stopping all activity in a living being, right down to the motions of electrons around their atoms’ nuclei.
Okay, Nita thought to the peridexis. If you’ve got extra power for me, let’s have it.
Nita’s whole mind went up a flare of sheer power that rushed out through her and into the spell with tremendous force, scorching her as it passed. Now Nita started to understand why wizards were so rarely allowed to channel power of this intensity: the “power limit” was a safety valve. Do this too often and it would scar the conduits of mind and spirit through which it flowed, leaving the wizard too sensitive to bear wizardry’s flow. Even lesser wizardries, afterward, would feel as if your own blood was burning you. Not my problem right now, Nita thought. Right now there’s exactly one thing to concentrate on—
The first long passage of the spell was done. Nita paused, taking a long breath as she got ready for the second passage. Even the simplest and most temporary stasis spell wouldn’t operate until you correctly described the physical object it was meant to freeze, and this one was neither simple nor particularly temporary. The lockdown was always the worst part of the work. But if I can’t handle this now, I’ll never be able to.
She caught Kit’s eye: he nodded. Ronan’s name in the Speech was already laid into the spell. Nita looked across the burning pattern the spell made in her mind, expecting to see the reality of what was going on with Ronan, probably a swirl of pain and shock.
But there wasn’t any pain, and the emotional context she sensed was very far indeed from shock. It was utterly serene. And off in the distance, getting more distant by the moment, Nita caught sight of a growing glow of light.
Oh, no, you don’t! she shouted inwardly. Not that way! You don’t get to do that right now! Kit!
I can’t get at him! He won’t listen, he’s not—
Typical, Nita said, furious. Ronan!
She poured more power into the spell. Don’t let me down now, she said silently to the peridexis. Now’s when I need it! Come on, let me have whatever you’ve got.
The new access of power burst through her with terrific force, leaping away from her across the spell diagram and past her and Kit to the dwindling figure that stood silhouetted against the faraway light. Nita hung on, though the scorching at the back of her mind got worse and worse. No—you—don’t!
The form walking away from them began to slow … and second by second, moved more slowly still. Nita closed her eyes and concentrated on being simply something for the power to pour through into the wizardry. Her brain felt like it was shaking itself apart, but Nita hung on, hung on. Not—another—step! Not—another—
In the distance, between one step and the next, Ronan froze.
Gasping, Nita opened her eyes again and looked at Kit across the spell diagram. He was still reading from his manual, finishing the last few phrases that would lock the stasis down. All around, the others were staring at her.
She looked around at them all. “What?”
Kit said the last couple of words of the spell, added the shorthand version of the words of the wizard’s knot, and then slapped his manual shut and dropped it in front of him, next to Ronan’s inert and unbreathing form. “You were kind of on fire there,” Kit said.
Nita rubbed her eyes. “Tell me about it,” she said. “I really need an aspirin.”
“No, I mean on fire on fire,” Kit said. “A lot of light…”
“I was?” She found it hard to care. At least the spell had worked.
“Yeah. And who else were you talking to?”
“Oh.” She laughed. “My invisible friend.”
Dairine looked horrified. “Oh, jeez, not Bobo!”
Nita laughed again. These days she couldn’t remember the invisible friend she’d blamed for everything that went wrong around her when she was five or six, but her mom and dad had told her endless stories about “Bobo’s” escapades. “Uh, no,” she said. “Just wizardry.”
Kit stared at her. “Wizardry talks?” he said. “Is this something new?”
Nita closed her manual and chucked it into her otherspace pocket. “Yeah,” she said. “It took me by surprise, too.” She looked down at Ronan. He wasn’t breathing, but now that was normal. If he suddenly started breathing again, that would be a real sign of trouble. “Come on,” she said, “we need to get back. This should hold for a few hours at least.”
“Question is,” Dairine said, “is that going to be enough?”
“Let’s go find out.”
Filif came gliding over to them with something held in his fronds. It was a drift of what looked like smoke, but it was shot through with glints of the dark green fire that characterized his wizardries. This is a version of the mobility routine I use to get around on hard surfaces, he said. It will make Ronan a little more manageable until he’s able to get around by himself.
“Great,” Nita said. Filif shook the cloud of smoke out like someone shaking a sheet out across a bed; the cloud thinned, drifted down over Ronan, and shrouded him like a see-through blanket. As soon as it had draped completely down over him, Ronan levitated gently up into the air to about Nita’s waist.
“Handy,” Kit said. He reached out and nudged Ronan’s shoulder a little with one hand: he moved weightlessly through the air. “Okay, let’s get him into the transit diagram.”