Wizards at War, New Millennium Edition by Diane Duane Read Free Book Online

that extra power isn’t going to help you for long. You’ll lose it, as we’ll lose it. You’ll lose the Speech, and wizardry, and even the belief that there was ever any such thing. And then the darkness will fall.”
    Kit felt himself going pale all over again.
    “So work fast,” Tom said. “We’ll do the same, for as long as we can. We’ll set you up with all the automatic manual assistance we can before we become nonfunctional.” His face hardened as he said it, as if he was trying hard not to let his real feelings out. “But after that, it’s up to you.”
    Kit, glancing briefly sideways, saw Nita swallow. He’d seen that sealed-over expression on her often enough lately; he hadn’t ever thought he’d see it on Tom. You get used to thinking the Seniors will always have a way out, Kit thought. That they’ll figure out what to do. But when you see that it’s not going to be that way…
    Tom glanced around at all of them. “So,” he said, “any questions?”
    He paused as a faint clicking noise came from off to his left, and then watched with interest as Dairine’s laptop walked into the room. A small, rectangular silvery case on many jointed legs, it now hunched itself down on the polished wood floor, put up two stalky eyes, rather like Sker’ret’s, and glanced from Tom to Carl and then to Dairine.
    “Wondered when you’d come out from under the bed,” Dairine said, sounding to Kit both annoyed and a little relieved. “Spot, are you okay?”
    From Spot issued a small whirring noise, like a cuckoo clock getting ready to strike. Dairine leaned over to peer down at him.
    “Three true things await discovery,” Spot said.
    “Darkness overspreading,
A commorancy underground:
And the Moon is no dream—”
    He sat there for a moment more, silent, and then got up on all his little legs again and spidered off into the kitchen.
    They all looked after him. “Uh, excuse me,” Dairine called after him, “but what was that? ”
    There was a pause, then the sound of little feet on the kitchen floor again, and Spot put several stalked eyes around the doorframe, gazing at Dairine. What was what? he said silently.
    “What you just said.”
    What did I say?
    Kit gave Nita a Huh? look. She gave him one right back, and shrugged.
    Dairine looked perplexed. “You’re the computer wizard here,” she said. “You’re supposed to be the one with all the memory! What do you mean, ‘What did I say’?”
    Kit said, “You said, ‘Three true things await discovery’—”
    “‘Darkness overspreading,’” Nita said.
    “And then something about a commorancy underground,” Dairine said. “Whatever a commorancy is—”
    “And the Moon is no dream,’” Roshaun said. “Well, I should say not. It’s real enough. Indeed, when we went there—”
    Dairine elbowed him. “Ow!” Roshaun said.
    Did I say that? I don’t recall. And Spot headed off into the kitchen again. A second later there came a little subdued pop! of displaced air as he teleported outside.
    “Oh, great,” Dairine muttered. “Since when does he have memory errors? This is just not the time.”
    Tom, however, looked thoughtful. “Has he done this before?” he said.
    Dairine shook her head. “Absolutely not!”
    Tom looked over at Carl. “That certainly sounded oracular to me. How about you?”
    “Sounds a lot like our koi,” Carl said. “Not haiku, though, more like some kind of poetic shopping list. Better start taking notes,” he said to Dairine. “Some of this might turn out to be useful at some point.”
    “Well, that’s just great, because he’s what I usually take the notes in!” Dairine said, aggrieved. “If all of a sudden he’s forgetting stuff—”
    Nita put her eyebrows up, reached across the table, and pushed a pad of yellow sticky notes over to Dairine.
    “Oh, sure! So we’re going to be running all over the place, saving the universe, and I’m going to have to write things down on stickies while I’m