The Wizard's Dilemma

by Diane Duane

  ... and then realized she had no reason to be. Nita knew this darkness... from a long time ago... from the inside. Some memories, she realized, are recovered only under very special circumstances. This dark, immense presence, completely surrounding her, owning the world, being the world...

  "Mom?" Nita whispered.

  "I do get something to say about this," said that voice, not just suspected now but actually heard. "Nothing that matters," said the Lone Power, though it sounded just slightly uncertain. "The only thing that matters," said her mother's voice.

  "It's too late," the Lone One said. "She's made the bargain."

  "She's made nothing," said Nita's mother's voice, "because this is my universe, and say what goes here, and she does not have my permission."

  And Nita's mother was standing there, in the dark, between Nita and the Lone Power, in her T-shirt and her denim skirt, with her arms folded, and her red hair a spot of brightness even in this gloom. "This is my body," said Nita's mother. "If this is going to be a battleground, make the rules."

  "For a mortal," said the Lone One, "you're unusually assured. With little reason. You believe everything some part-time psychologist tells you?"

  "For an immortal," said Nita's mother, "you're unusually dumb. The therapist, as it happens, was plainly more right than she knew. There they are, the nasty little things, just the way I imagined them." She glanced at the shadowy pools, roiling full of viral death. "In here somewhere, to match the darkness, there has to be light... and that's my weapon, for the darkness comprehendeth it not. On that point, I have sources of reassurance other than any therapist—much older ones. They say that you cannot command a soul that's firmly opposed to you."

  "But bodies are not souls."

  "At this level," Kit said, "just how sure are you?" There was a slightly unnerved silence at that.

  Nita's mother looked over her shoulder at Nita. "My daughter and I," she said, "are fighting the same battle. Maybe I do it in more ordinary ways. But we're on the same side. And you, if I recognize you correctly, are no friend of mine. Get off my turf!"

  She talks a good fight, Kit thought. But it's gonna take more than that.

  Nita was almost breathless with tension, yet she suddenly realized that this was the first time in a good while that she'd overheard Kit think. In any case, she had to agree with him. She's tougher than she looks, Nita thought. But then she was a dancer. Dancers are tough. Maybe what we need to be doing is feeding her power—

  "You have no power to order me around," said the Lone One. "I've been part of 'your turf since the beginning of things. I have my own rights here."

  "I've heard that line before," Nita's mother said. "I reject it. 7 choose who shares my body with me... as I chose my children... and my husband. / choose! You think you have any rights here that I don't grant you? Maybe you can live inside people who don't look at themselves closely. But those who fight with you every day and have an idea of what they're wrestling with? Let's just find out."

  She stood up tall. Nita gulped. She had seen her mother looking ethereal, in her tutu and swan feathers and dinky little crown, in the poster from a Denver Opera Ballet production—looking like something you could break in two. But looking over her shoulder one day and seeing Nita eyeing dubiously that old framed poster, her mother had said, "Honey, take my advice. Don't mess around with swans. One of those pretty white wings could break your leg in three places." And off she had gone with the laundry basket, sailing past, graceful and strong, with the danger showing only around the edges of the chuckle. But just bravery isn't going to be enough. Not here—

  "And just what do you plan to fight me with?" the Lone One said. "You have no weapons to equal my power. Not even the diluted form of it that's killing you now."

  "She may not have anything but guts and intention," Kit said, "but that's half of wizardry to start with. And we're carrying." He reached into his claudi-cation and came up with a long string of symbols in the Speech.

  Nita looked at it, uncomprehending. The Lone One laughed.

  "That won't work," It said. "Certainly not for her. And not even for Nita anymore, as you've seen. You think that by plugging an older version of Nita's name into this spell, she will no longer be mine? It won't work. It takes more power than either of you have to reverse the kind of changes she's been through. She knows me now. She's willing to pay my price to keep her mother alive... and, sorry, Mom, but permission or no permission, it's Nita's choice that finally counts."

  "Oh yeah?" Kit said. "Neets," he said to her then, holding out his hand, looking at her urgently. "Quick

  "Oh, of course, give him all your power, why don't you." The Lone One laughed. "So much for your doing anything useful by yourself."

  Nita swallowed. In Its voice she heard too many

  thoughts of her own, roiling in its darkness the way the viruses were boiling around in the pools.

  Can't cope.

  No independence.

  Scared to make a move without her fanner. Doesn't have the nerve to strike out on her own— Nita swallowed... and took off the charm bracelet. —going to let him do all the dangerous stuff. Going to prove him right again, and you wrong— She hesitated one last time...

  ... and then threw the bracelet to Kit.

  Kit caught it and quickly attached the old version of Nita's name he'd saved from the Jones Inlet wizardry. Then he reached into the air beside him and brought something else out.

  A small pale spark of light—

  The light it gave at first seemed little, but swiftly it lit up all that place, and even chased the shadows briefly from the Lone One's face... a sight that made Nita turn away—for the terror of It, to some extent, she could stand, but the beauty of It, seen together with that ancient deathliness, was difficult to bear. Around the Lone One, the darkness hissed with Its alarm, as if suddenly full of snakes. A glede—

  "The dragon's eye," Kit said as he hooked the glede into an empty link of the charm bracelet, and the whole chain came alive with sudden fire. "Something brand new, something you've never touched.

  Something born after the change happened to you, the chance to be otherwise. Something you can't affect —"

  "Not true!" It cried. "All creation, even the void from which things are created anew, has my power at the bottom of it."

  "Not here, it doesn't! Not in this! Whether you like it or not, even while you're killing people, the world is starting to heal... and so are you"

  Nita swallowed hard, watching Kit and suddenly remembering Tom and Carl's backyard and a fish looking up out of the water at her.

  All the drawing lacks

  is the final touch: to add eyes to the dragon—

  She desperately wanted to shout to Kit that yes, this had to be the answer—but she didn't dare. She'd been wrong about so many things lately. What if her certainty, her desperation, got Kit killed, too? And the Lone One's right, that's not who I am anymore—

  —but the other memory that came back to her, the amused piggy voice saying, "That is, assuming you're into sequential time... you can handle it however you like..."

  That blazing spark of light on the bracelet Kit held glittered at her like possibility made visible.

  Why in the world not? Nita thought. If you can't put together what yon were with what you are now— so you. can make up for your mistakes and not make the same ones again—then what's the point? This isn't about reversing anything. It's about going forward!

  "Kit! "she cried.

  He threw her the charm bracelet. Nita snatched it out of the air, and almost dropped it as the added power of the glede jolted up her arm like an electric shock.

  "I wouldn't do that if I were you!" the Lone One cried. "You'll destroy your mother, and yourself, here and now!"

  Nita hesitated for just a second... then put the charm bracelet back on, taking hold of the two versions of her name that hung from it, side by side. "Well, guess what?" she said. "You're not me!" And in the single quick gesture she
'd had entirely too much practice with lately, she knotted the names tight together with the wizard's knot.

  The blast of power that went through her was like being hit by lightning. Whether because of her remade name or the presence of the glede, suddenly Nita could comprehend all those little darknesses in the water much more fully than just by using the kernel. Those stinging, buzzing little horrors were right about being, in their own twisted way, part of her mother. But now she could see exactly what to do about them. The solution was the same as what she had been trying to do with Kit and S'reee at Jones Inlet...

  ... except that, where she'd been wrong about how to use her part of the wizardry before, here and now she was right. Her wizardly fix for Jones Inlet had been too complicated. "This whole contrareplication routine would be great," Kit had said, "if the chemicals in the pollution knew how to reproduce themselves." Of course, they hadn't. But viruses were just very smart chemicals in a protein shell that did know how to reproduce themselves...which made the solution perfect for her mother.

  It set me up, Nita thought in growing fury. The Lone One made sure I came tip against a problem where my solution would fail—and fail painfully—and where I fought with Kit. So that when I came to this moment, I'd be too hurt, too scared to try this solution again, too scared even to see it!

  She trembled with rage. But to waste time on being angry now would only play into Its hands. Nita's eyes narrowed in concentration as she channeled the power from the glede through both the kernel and her memory of her part of the Jones Inlet wizardry, and into the dark waters around her...

  Every pool around them roiled in agitation as all the viruses thrust their heads up out of the lapping darkness, like blind fish gasping in the air, desperately crying no!

  For many of them it was already too late. All around them, the sea of her mother's blood was churning as if in a storm with the power that washed through it— and from all around came countless little dark explosions as the viruses' shells unraveled. The wizardry was reminding the human blood of how it had once been part of an older, purer, uncontaminated Sea, one that was the outside of a world rather than the inside.

  Yet Nita could feel through the kernel that there were some places where, for all the glede's power, that cleansing Sea didn't, couldn't quite reach. Scattered through her mother's inner world, little knots of

  Friday Afternoon

  darkness still lay, waiting... and there were many, many of them. Too many...

  Nita fell to her knees, defeated.

  All for nothing...

  "I told you," the Lone One said. "You should have done it my way. Too late now—" And it began to laugh.

  Nita began to cry. It was all over... all over... A deathly silence fell.

  And an angry whisper broke it.

  "With me," it said, "you can do what you like. But not with my daughter!" And then another whisper.

  "Mrs. Callahan—"

  A moment later, someone took hold of Nita's bracelet. Nita looked up, gasping.

  "You need this, sweetie," her mother said, her voice controlled despite her anger as she turned the bracelet past the new-made version of Nita's name. "But Kit's right. This is what I've been looking for!"

  With a roar of fury, the Lone One moved toward the three of them, a terrible wave of shadow rearing up above It, ready to break. All around them, the waters of the pools rose up, to drown them, to destroy...

  ... and then suddenly fell back as if they had struck a wall. Everything kindled to blinding fire around them, the water glittering as it splashed away, the walls of the great hall shining, the Lone One standing there aghast in the blaze and terror of that light as Nita's mother pulled the glede free of Nita's bracelet, stood up, and squeezed the glede tight in her upheld fist, a gesture both frightened and fierce.

  She was lost in the resultant violent blast of fire, and Nita tottered sideways and clutched at Kit, watching her mother in amazement and terror: a goddess with a handful of lightning, imperial and terrible, rearing up into the darkness and towering over them all, even over the Lone One, and—to Nita's astonishment and concern—paying It no mind at all. All her mother's attention now was on what she gripped in her hand, a writhing struggling knot of lightnings growing and lashing outward all the time, until it crowned her with thunder and robed her in fire, and there were no shadows left to be seen anywhere.

  The fear and pain in her face were awful to see, as Nita's mother struggled with the glede, trying to keep from being consumed by its power as other mortal women had been consumed, in old stories, by fire from beyond the worlds. But her eyes were ferocious with concentration, and the look of terror and anguish slipped away as she started to get the better of the Power she held.

  Slowly she straightened, looking down at all of them—a woman in a T-shirt and a faded denim skirt, blazing with the fire from heaven, and with sudden certainty.

  "The Light shone in the darkness," she said softly, and the whole little universe that was Nita's mom shook with it. "And the darkness comprehended it not. This light! But you never learn, do you? Or only real slowly."

  The Lone Power stared at her with at least as much incredulity as Kit and Nita. After a second, It turned away.

  "Oh, no you don't," Nita's mother said. And the lightning blasted out from her, and struck It down into the nearest pool.

  Nita's mother looked at the Lone Power dispassionately as it struggled in the water. "If I am going to go anywhere," she said, "first you're going to find out up close and physical what the things you've done to me all this while have felt like." It struggled to get up out of the water. Nita's mom flung out her hand, and the lightning knocked It back in again.

  "Having fun with that?" her mother said. "Doesn't feel like so much fun from inside my body, does it? You should have thought of that before you came in here. Just feel all those broken bones and strains, those six weeks off for tendonitis, the bruises and infections and herniated muscles and all the rest of it. Oh, we knew about pain, all right! Dance is two hours' worth of childbirth every weekday evening at eight, and a Saturday matinee!"

  The Lone Power writhed and splashed in the water, stricken with the experience of her agony. "And then how about this?" her mother said. "Now that I've got your attention—"

  Nita flinched, for this was the phrase that most often preceded the tongue-lashing you got when you hadn't cleaned your room properly—and to a certain extent she could feel what her mother was imposing on the Lone One. Here the experience inflicted on It was all the more intense for being recent, fresh in the sufferer's mind—the blurred vision, the growing pain, the uncomfortable and unhappy sense that, hey, this isn't supposed to be happening, what's the matter with me?—the loss of control, of mastery over a body that was always precisely mastered in the old days; the slowly growing fury, inexpressible, bottled up, that things weren't working the way they should.

  In fact, that nothing was working the way it should.

  For in this place, under these circumstances, Nita's mother now knew that if matters had somehow gone otherwise, death itself wouldn't have happened. It was an additive, an afterthought, somebody's "good idea." And here was the somebody, right here, within reach... and available, just this once, for spanking.

  Not liking it, either, Nita thought.

  "Fun, huh?" Nita's mother said softly. "But even with your inventions, this Life that you hate so much is still too much for you. It was always too much for you. Whatever you do, it just keeps finding a way. Maybe even this time."

  The Lone One writhed and floundered in the water, and couldn't get away. Nita's mom looked down at It from what seemed a great distance. Under that majestic regard, as It finally managed to drag itself out of the pool, the Lone One seemed crumpled into a little sodden shape of shadow, impotent in this awful blaze of wrathful fire. Beaten, Nita thought, and her heart went up in a blaze of triumph to match the blinding light.

  "But no," said her mother then, in a much more mortal voice, and hearing i
t, Nita's heart fell from an impossible height, and kept on falling. "That's what you're expecting, isn't it? You want me to win this battle. And after that, when we're all off our guard, comes the betrayal."

  The light began to fade. No, Nita thought. M>, not like this! Mom!

  But her mother had her own ideas... as usual. There was no longer any great distance between her and the much diminished darkness that was now the Lone Power in what she had made of her interior world. "No," Nita's mother said, "not even at that price. You've really been stuck playing this same old game for a long time, haven't you? And you just don't believe a mortal could refuse the opportunity."

  From that sodden darkness there now came no answer. Nita's mother stood there looking down at the Lone Power as if at a daughter who'd turned up in particularly grimy clothes just after the laundry had all been done.

  "No," Nita's mother said. "I can guess where this is going. How many times have I heard my daughters wheedle me to let them stay up late, just this once? It starts there, but that's never where it stops. And if I was firm with them, I have to be the same way with myself when my turn comes, too." She was looking entirely less like a furious goddess, entirely more like a slightly tired woman. "Because I'm up against my own time limit, now, aren't I? Override the body now, and we'll all be sorry for it later. If not personally, then in the lives of the people around us."

  Nita was horrified. "Mom, no!"

  "Honey." Nita's mother chucked the lightning away, careless, and came over to her. The lightning hit the floor, lay there burning, and then came slowly humping back toward Nita's mom, like some animate and terrible toy. "Believe me, if there was ever a time for the phrase 'Don't tempt me,' this is it."

  "But, Mom, we're winningl"

  "We're supposed to think so," she said. "Look at It there; what a great 'beaten' act." She gave the Lone Power a look that was both clinical and thoroughly unimpressed. "The point being to encourage us to go home in 'triumph,' and to distract me, at any cost, from doing what I know is right. If It can't ruin my life, and yours, straightforwardly, by killing me, It'll try it another way."