Выбрать главу

—and the wave front flared out, vanishing.

Nita stared up, unbelieving. No!

The Pullulus was still there. That darkness swallowed the last of the rainbow, snuffed it out, absorbed all the power that had been poured into it…

…and plunged inward through the orbit of Mars, faster than light, faster than darkness, heading for the Earth.

Beside Nita, Kit looked up at the rapidly darkening sky in complete shock.

Ponch put his head under Kit’s arm. Was that it? he said. Can we go home now?

Nita was hiding her face in her hands. Out in the spell diagram, Tuyet and Nguyet collapsed. Along with numerous others, Kit scrambled to his feet and ran across the diagram, heading for Tuyet. Ponch galloped after them. Darryl was one of those who wound up closest to Kit and who got to Tuyet first. Kit slipped an arm under his head, and Darryl boosted him from behind. It was shocking how light Tuyet felt, almost as if the power he and his sister had been channeling had burned him out from inside.

“Tuyet!” Darryl said. “Come on, guy.”

“What about Ngu—,” Tuyet said weakly.

Kit glanced over his shoulder. Others were helping Nguyet. “I think she’s okay,” he said.

“No, she’s not,” Tuyet said. “I can feel it. Burned. Burned out.”

Kit shook his head. “It didn’t work,” he breathed. “With all that power, how could it not work?

“It did work,” Tuyet said, hardly above a whisper. “It just wasn’t enough.” He sounded desperately tired. “Look,” he said. “It’s coming back.”

Kit absolutely didn’t want to look. He could feel perfectly well what was happening. He looked at Darryl. “Now what?” he said.

“Now, this,” said a voice from the side of the circle. “And perhaps this will be enough.”

Everybody looked over that way. Roshaun had stood up from beside Dairine and Spot. There he stood in that long, floppy T-shirt, his expression grim but not desperate. Around his neck, in the collar he had worn ever since coming back from Wellakh with Dairine, that great orange-amber stone burned like fire. As they watched, he slipped the collar off and held it in his hands.

Dairine got up, looking at him warily. “What’re you thinking of?” she said, sounding slightly panic-stricken.

“It is what I did earlier,” Roshaun said, “to fill in the cavern floor back on Rashah. But here there is no need to be so restrained.”

“Are you nuts?” Dairine said. “Restraint is the only way to treat that spell! Moving little amounts of matter around is one thing, but you can’t just pull out the kind of energy you’d need to deal with that and—”

“I have done it before,” Roshaun said. “Not with a strange star, granted. But yours is no longer so strange. Also, this is your world’s best chance now. If time is all we need to buy—”

“You’re not doing it alone!” Dairine said.

His look got wry. “It had not occurred to me that I’d be able to stop you,” Roshaun said. “And perhaps Spot will also participate.”

“Naturally,” Spot said.

Kit threw a look back at Nita as he pulled off his jacket. What are they up to now? he said.

Nita shook her head.

Kit folded the jacket up and tucked it under Tuyet’s head. Roshaun had stepped a little distance away from the spell diagram, and now was simply standing and looking down at that huge gem in his hands. A moment later he straightened up, settled the collar about his neck again, and began to speak quietly in the Speech. Dairine stood up a few feet away from him with her arms folded, her eyes half closed, as if trying to remember something; crouching on the dusty ground between the two of them, Spot put up a number of eyes, enough to watch them both at once, and held very still.

The silence of a listening universe came down on all the wizards near them. Kit watched, but for a long while nothing seemed to happen; Roshaun and Dairine spoke in unison, more and more quietly, as if they didn’t need to hear each other speaking out loud. And, slowly, Roshaun began to stand out from his surroundings.

At least that was the way it looked at first. For the first minute or so, Roshaun simply looked more definite than the other wizards around him. But then it became plain that there was more light about him than what fell on him from the various wizard-lights hovering about. Then the glow became more obvious. The effect was strange, for it wasn’t as if Roshaun himself was glowing; rather, he was merely the vessel for something else inside him that was the true source of the increasing light.

The light strengthened, slowly gaining a dangerous quality. Roshaun was less a vessel, now, than a crucible, resisting the power inside him, glowing as a result of that resistance. Kit found himself remembering the way the Champion had looked back on Rashah, like a statue of molten metal. This, though, was different, scarier, for at all times the Champion had seemed to be in control of what was going on. Looking at Roshaun, Kit got a clear sense of Roshaun’s struggle with the terrible force inside him, something he was holding in check only with the greatest difficulty. That force was ready every moment to burst free, but Roshaun was spending all his energy to contain it until the moment was right. Behind him, Dairine was beginning to burn with some of that same fire, less violently, but also with a look of less concentration. Her attention was all on Roshaun now; Kit could tell it was, even though Dairine’s eyes were squeezed tightly shut.

Very slowly, like someone afraid to lose his balance, Roshaun lifted his arms. All that hair of his was beginning to stir around him now, as if in a growing wind. His eyes were closed, too, and a look of utter concentration had taken possession of his face. He brought his arms around in front of him, put the hands together, and within them materialized the little globe of burning light that was the way he communicated with the Aethyrs; but for once it was the least bright thing about him, dim by comparison with the fire that burned in him.

Roshaun and Dairine both looked up at the sky. At the same moment, Spot’s eyes all turned upward.

The little spark of Roshaun’s manual-globe went out, and light burst upward from him.

It was like being hit in the face. Kit had to turn his head. The whole lunar landscape was lit as if by the light of day. But it was the light of day, the Sun’s own light, borrowed, channeled, concentrated, and aimed like a spear at the inward-pressing tool of their enemy. That fire burned upward and outward and struck straight through the Pullulus.

It screamed. Where that beam struck, the Pullulus vanished utterly. Elsewhere, on either side of it, the darkness shrank away and left clean space and starlight showing. The beam moved slowly through the bulk of the Pullulus, shocking it backward and away, cutting through it like a knife.

But it’s not wide enough, Kit thought, desperate. This isn’t going to do it, either. It needs—

It was almost as if Roshaun had heard him thinking. Above them, the beam broadened out. Roshaun’s expression and stance didn’t alter in the slightest, but Kit could feel the strain on him increase. Dairine was perfectly still, but she was sharing more vividly now in that inward burning, and down on the ground, even Spot was beginning to glow from inside. The beam broadened. The silent screaming of the Pullulus got louder.

Roshaun’s eyes opened wide. It was a look of complete surprise and, a second later, of regret, for something that should have worked, really should have—