Nita felt the same way. She felt cold: she wanted to get out of this light. Earth would be going crazy, just about now, and wizards would be needed there to keep anything sudden from happening. .
'Neets, c'mon. Let's hustle. Dairine's okay.'
Nita shuddered all over. 'No.'
'Neets! People are gonna look up and think there's a nuclear war or something! If someone doesn't warn them what's really happening-'
'Kit,' Nita said. 'I'm not leaving. I want to, too. Or rather, I think something else wants to.' She turned her face up to the light. 'What are you feeling?'
He looked at her, stunned. 'Scared. .'
'Of what?'
She glanced over at Kit. He was rubbing his head: it was always headaches, with Kit. 'The light. But that's crazy.'
'You bet. Stand your ground. And look!'
They looked. The light got brighter: it was impossible to understand how it could. The broad glassy plain shone unbearably, the mobiles glittered. The only thing that did not shine in that light was the great length of darkness, like a shadow with nothing to cast it, that crouched over on itself in the midst of the plain, and writhed like a tortured thing.
The light still grew. There was no seeing anything by it anymore, but that brief blot of darkness that refused and refused the light, twisting, moaning. The light hammered at it. The urge to leave withdrew.
Nita, blinded, elbowed Kit lightly in the side, a get-a-load-of-this gesture. They had seen this light before, or something very like it; but it was not a light that waking eyes were supposed to be equipped to handle.
It was brother to the light in Timeheart, which had always been there, which did not change but grew every second, and made the ability to bear it grow too. Turn from it, and it blinded: stare into it till it blinded, and you could see.
They stared. 'Did we die?' Kit whispered.
'Not that I noticed.'
'You think we're gonna?' He sounded as bemused as Nita felt.
'You got me.' It didn't seem important.
The light whited out everything but that long, prone core of darkness, that grew less as they looked at it, as if the light dissolved it. It went flat. It lay against the burning ground and misted away. It was barely more than a gray shadow. Finally it was not even that.
And Dairine fell down.
/ told you we were going to talk.
Dairine felt It scrabbling in Nita's and Kit's souls for a foothold. She felt them refuse to flee and take It to safety; she felt It slip. She held the light, held It in the light. Through Its connection to the motherboard and Logo and through her own heart, she heard Its screams of recognition. It knew that light of old: the heart of all brightness, the radiance that kills and gives life again-the light It forswore forever at the beginning of everything, and fled into the dark, determined to do without rather than subject Itself to the other Powers that had asserted ownership of it.
And you still want it. Don't you?
It would die rather than admit that. But It could not die. There was the prize irony: the inventor of Death could not avail Itself of it, for no creation is ever completely available to the Universe without the concurrence of all the Powers. There were a thousand thousand situations and places in the worlds where death did not obtain, and for endless millennia now It had gone from place to place and species to species among them, like a peddler selling poison under a hundred fair guises. Most bought it. All the rest tried to get rid of it when they realized what they'd bought, but whether they succeeded or not, they were never free of the taint.
But for the first time, Dairine thought, a species didn't buy it, right from the start. You never expected that to happen. You always get a foothold in every species first, and make the sale. But this time they handed it back. . and now they have the foothold in you.
We have the foothold in you.
It lay there and writhed in pain unlike any It had known since that first time, when It created and set in motion, and found that Its creation was unwelcome. It had forgotten what that light was like; It had not suspected that Their torment, when They caught up with It at last, would be so bitter.
But it only hurts because you do want it back. Don't you?
The humiliation of being gloated over by this mere chit of a mortal, a thing with a life brief as a mayfly's.
Look, the voice said, full of pity and anger and a grieving love, how could anyone not want that, you dumb spud? Just admit it and get it over with!
There were tears in the voice.
The Powers are not physical, and the habits of physicality come hard to Them. But the Lone One, after long wandering about Its bitter business, had spent much time in bodies, and much in human ones. The feeling of another's tears for It-the tears of someone who now knew It more completely than any mortal, and yet shed the tears freely-after endless justified cursing by ten billion years' worth of tormented intelligence, the feeling ran down the pitiless light like the head of an irresistible spear, and pierced It to the heart.
It fell down, a great disastrous fall like a lightning-stricken tower's, and wept darkness with desire for the light.
Dairine bent over It, not sure what to do, and the mobiles gathered around her and wondered as well. It lay fading in the growing fire. She looked at Nita and Kit for help.
They came over to her, looked down at It, shook their heads. Dairine was mildly bemused by the sight of them; she was going to have to stop calling her sister plain, or dumb-looking, and as for Kit, the thought crossed Dairine's mind that it was a pity Nita had dibs on him.
It's the light, of course, she thought; it wouldn't last. But it was kind of a shame.
'It is too late,' the Lone One said. 'I cannot go back. That part of me I murdered, willingly. I cannot find the way into the heart of the light. And they would not have me if I could.'
Dairine wiped her face. 'What are we gonna do?' she said.
Nita shook her head. 'You got me. The coordinates for Timeheart aren't listed. . '
Kit sighed. 'I wish Peach were here, we could have asked her.'
There was a brief silence. 'Oh,' said a voice, 'I'm not that easy to get rid of.'
She was in the midst of them. Not Picchu. Or-was it not? She might look human, though very tall, and she might not be winged. . but there was still a sense of swiftness about her, rather like the sense you got about Picchu when you realized she was going to make a grab at your sandwich and either get a piece of it, or a piece of you. Swiftness, and power, and extreme beauty, so that Dairine and Nita were abashed, and both they and Kit stared at her with all their eyes. All this in a person burning even brighter than the light around them, and about nine feet tall; a person wearing a sweatshirt with the sleeves pushed up, and blue jeans and sneakers, a person with long dark hair, and a sword naked in her hand, and the sword burning; and the fire of the sword and the fire of the sky were the same.
'You're kidding,' Dairine said.
The woman laughed. 'Often. But not at the moment.'
'You were Picchu?' Kit said.
'I've been a lot of people. You'd be surprised at the names.' She looked down with concern at the Lone One, who lay like a shadow on the burning ground. 'But rarely have those namings turned out so well.'
This was a bit much for Nita. 'You're one of the Powers, aren't you? We dragged You halfway across the Universe and busted our guts when You could have- Why didn't You do something sooner?'
'We have been, for billions of years,' She said. 'But We couldn't do anything really permanent until Dairine got here.'
Dairine's jaw dropped.
'And now,' She said, 'if My brother here is amenable, We can start getting work done at last.'
Kit stared at her. 'Your brother?'
'I told you I've been called by a lot of names.' She knelt down by the shadowy form that lay collapsed on the
