Interim Errantry 2: On Ordeal

by Diane Duane

  Ronan stared out at the storm. The core of it, he thought, was pushing closer and closer: the lightnings were flickering even closer together and more frequently in the clouds now, and out on the water he saw a lightning bolt stitch itself brilliantly against the livid sky and actually hit the water.

  Not good, Ronan thought. Time to get busy. Can’t figure out how to fight what you can’t see, though. What I need right now is the six o’clock weather report... And for a moment he wished he had the dark-haired thoughtful RTÉ weather lady there to tell him what to do.

  But suddenly he saw that he didn’t need her, because he had the wizardry—which obedient to his request was now showing him, in a multicolored heads-up display seemingly half a sky wide, a schematic of the adjacent coastlines, with the overlaid imagery of the cloud and rain and wind, and all the isobars clearly displaying. Ronan put out a hand, and responsive to his gesture the display tilted until he was seeing something more like a satellite view, but exquisitely local and detailed.

  Oh, this is great! Now all I need to do is figure out what to do— Because though RTÉ Lady talked about the weather all right, she wasn’t wasn’t in a position to do anything about it.

  Ronan pushed his hair out of his eyes again, nervous. The schematic the wizardry was showing him contained layers and features that no RTÉ weather schematic was likely to show any time soon… and most specifically it showed the places where the shoreward flow of wind and the storm’s heat exchange with the water were weakest, the places where a wizardry could most effectively make a change in the whole storm complex’s direction.

  But then he looked more closely at the numbers and Speech-characters embedded into the diagram… and as Ronan got a better grip on the amounts of energy that were going to have to be added to the system to stop the inward push, he was filled with dismay. The kinds of energy input required were what you might expect to get out of a hundred or so power plants in the course of a day. Can’t stop that, Ronan thought, no way… not even with all the power I’ve got! Useless—

  See, said one of those thoughts or voices inside his head. You were told! This is a mistake. You can still get out of it, though. You can still walk away. Do it now.

  …But still, Ronan thought. And in the quiet between thoughts he didn’t hear a voice, exactly, but a memory. Take whatever you need, and don’t be afraid.

  Ronan sucked in a breath.

  To the wizardry he said silently, Let’s give this a shot. Maybe if we talk to the wind in—that area right there, yeah? He pointed at one part of the schematic. And push. Pressure’s lower there. That curl there, the one that’s coming in closest, it might just fall apart.

  And from directly above Ronan, without so much as a second’s hesitation, lightning arced down and hit him.

  Or at least it tried to. The grounding shieldspell filtered out most of the light and a lot of the noise, so that Ronan wasn’t nearly as blinded or deafened as he might have been. But he staggered, and he had trouble seeing for a few moments.

  Gasping from the shock, Ronan kept blinking until his vision came back. Cute, he thought, hissing with annoyed amusement—one of the noises his dad made when something went wrong but wasn’t a total disaster. The bolt hadn’t precisely been a feint: clearly whatever was behind it would have been happy enough if it had actually killed him. But at least Ronan knew his shieldspell was working.

  And maybe, he thought, that was a line of inquiry it didn’t want me pursuing? Okay. Let’s see about that.

  He found the spot again. There— The diagram formed up a couple of lines of the Speech for him to read, and an input spot for Ronan to make contact with for energy transfer, like a glowing handle.

  He grabbed it, and read the words as quickly as he could. Right there, Ronan said in the Speech, let’s do it!

  Instantly he was reminded of the time when he was three or so and had managed to push part of one of his construction toys into a powerpoint that he’d pulled the “safety plug” out of. There was that sudden sense of being both frozen in place and violently shaken while you were stuck.

  Yet this time there was a lot more going on. Ronan was consciously aware of having consented to be a conduit for the extra amount of personal power allotted to him for this first time out as a wizard. But though he knew the spell was protecting him against the worst of the side effects, he still felt like a heavy cable rated for one voltage and having to deal with a throughput about ten times higher. Uncontrollable tremors shook him as the power passed from him into the spell. Still Ronan hung on and gritted his teeth as he watched the numbers in the schematic changing, watched the swirl of cloud tremble as he was trembling, roiling like steam rising from a boiled kettle—

  But it wasn’t enough. And as for the power flowing out of him, it grew to be too much for Ronan to manage, second by second, just too much: he couldn’t channel or direct it properly, not for long enough to make the change in the storm that needed made. Worse, even after all he’d done, the storm wasn’t slowing up that much. That spot he was concentrating on—as Ronan watched, it just sort of melted away in front of him, and other parts of the curl of cloud and wind took up the slack. Not enough…

  Finally he had to let go of the conduit-handle in the spell, and then stagger back and away from it, panting with exertion. On came the storm, and there was nothing Ronan could do, really nothing—

  You were too stupid to take the warning, said that voice in the back of his head… and it was laughing at him. You could’ve got away. But no! And now that storm’s going to hit you head on too, as well as everything else here. With you all alone here, all exposed… And you saw how long it took you to get up here. It’ll take you far too long to get away. What makes you think you’ll survive what’s coming?

  It was the smugness that got up Ronan’s nose, just as it had done with Seamus. The gust of wind that accompanied the self-satisfied, mocking prediction nearly knocked him over. But Ronan held himself pressed against that wind as if it was a wall, and concentrated on hanging onto his self-control.

  Now you see your helplessness, that voice said, amused. Put up all the brave front that you like; you’re not strong enough yet to deal with the power that’s been given you—and having discovered that, you’ve left yourself no time to run! How very choice. And now I’ll pin you right here where you’ve trapped yourself, and crush you like a bug.

  The flush of rage that went through Ronan at that condescending, amused tone surprised him by its vehemence. He actually bared his teeth in fury.

  “Oh will you fuck,” Ronan snarled. The anger was so intense that it pulled him back in memory to a schoolyard moment, so long ago, when he’d told those kids he did not want to run around that lunchtime, he wasn’t feeling well, but one of them grabbed him by the hand anyway and pulled him away from the wall and—

  And he saw it.

  Ronan grinned.

  ***

  That’s it, that’s absolutely it, he thought. And before anything else could happen to stop him, Ronan leapt forward to grab the spell’s power-conduit “handle” again, and said to the energy-channeling part of the spell, Do that again, what we did before—hurry up, just do it!

  The power went flaming out of him and into the spell, and once more Ronan felt himself chained to the wizardry and shaken to the bone. But this time he did one thing differently as he pushed the power in: he reached out and added a different ending to one particular Speech-word where it was embedded in the diagram. The lamesthae- root is all about motion relative to a given axis, and force imparted along that axis. Lamesthaetijh had been the form he’d been using: push, resist, used of movement on an opposing axis. But now Ronan changed it. “Lamesthaeturvh!” he shouted. Co-rotate—spiral—swing!

  The spell diagram shifted shape and appearance as he changed the word. What had before been like a pointed spear that he was thrusting at the storm now seemed more like a chain, curving, that Ronan was holding the end of as he started to turn in place. The spell channeled t
he power he was pouring into it into that movement, a spiraling movement, and Ronan gritted his teeth and hung on to that power input handle at his end of the chain of words, waiting to see if it would work. Oh please let this be right, he thought, desperate. Because it had to be. Please let it, please—

  The immediate response of the storm was almost a hesitation, as if it had been caught by surprise because Ronan wasn’t pushing it, fighting it, any more. Then, after some seconds, came the beginnings of resistance to the strategy. But it wasn’t going to be enough to change what he was doing, couldn’t be enough, because Ronan’s unseen opponent already had too much energy invested in keeping the storm going the way it was going. And now Ronan wasn’t trying to stop that. Stopping wouldn’t have worked. Now, instead, he and the spell were helping it. The inward path had been a curved one to start with, calculated so that the storm’s curving arms would strike the coast with maximum force. Ronan was just making it keep on as it had been doing—only faster than his opponent had originally wanted. And so it’s going to turn before it hits the coast full on. It can’t help it—

  The storm started speeding up, and yes, its angle was changing. Ronan hung on to the word-chain of the spell, spun in place like one of those Olympic hammer-throwers and hung on, feeding power down the chain no matter how much he felt like his skin and his nerves were frying in the fire of it. Slowly his teeth-gritting started to turn into a grin. It was exactly like playing snap-the-whip in the schoolground—that being the old furious image that had given him the idea. True enough that there was no way you could stop all those kids who were coming at you to grab you and drag you along. Yeah, you might have to hang on and go along with it at first. But as soon as you could find someone to help you and a place to dig your feet in and work to swing the others, unless they all stopped together, or dropped hands and broke the chain apart, they couldn’t stop you snapping them around and into something else—!

  Ronan leaned back against the motion as he spun, squeezed his eyes shut until he could see nothing but the chain of words he was holding and the knots and tangles of force they were attached to. The last six words at the far end of the chain, the ones fastened to the core of the storm itself, were the ones that mattered. He kept repeating them until he started to lose himself in the sound of them. Just keep saying them, just keep repeating them, the spiral’s in them, the swing is in them, keep it turning—

  And it was working. Oh God it’s working— In his head Ronan could see the storm ever so slowly starting to shift off its original course, curving, curving more, turning. The worst of it was going to miss the coast, it was going to miss—

  He wasn’t at all sure how long that part of the wizardry went on. All he was sure of was that he didn’t dare stop, because if he stopped too soon, it would all have been for nothing. The wind kept screaming at him for what seemed like forever, full of voices shrieking with frustration, rage, threats of revenge— But finally the blast and the noise of it began to drop off, slowly, slowly; down to a roar, down to a whine, down at last to a frustrated mutter, the noise you hear in your ears when you’re running. Fits and gusts, at last… nothing better. There was still rage there, but it was exhausted.

  Finally there was nothing more that Ronan could see to do. He let his contact with the spell fall away, and gradually it disassembled itself. As it did so he stood there swaying, the gray lightning-flecked world still turning around him because he’d been spinning so long, and finally he just sat down hard on the stones and held his head to try to get it used to the idea of being still again.

  Did I just save the future? he thought, groggy. Did I just make sure history was going to keep going the way it needed to for things to go the way they’re going already? It was too vast a prospect to take in, in all its good and evil: Ronan had to reduce it to something he could, for the moment, understand.

  And wow, here’s a thought. Did I maybe just make sure I’d be born? If I’d walked away from doing this, is it possible that I wouldn’t have existed afterwards?

  His mind reeled away from the concept, too shocked and wearied at the moment to deal with it in any detail. All he could do was laugh weakly at the concept. Wouldn’t the joke have been on me, then. Ha ha, very funny, McSnakeface. You should go into standup.

  ***

  Ronan put his head down on his knees for a few moments, relishing how the world no longer seemed to be spinning around, at least as long as he kept his eyes closed. But slowly he started to become aware that everything wasn’t quite settled yet. A furious slow hissing growl was still coming from the waves and from the balked wind out beyond the roiling water. He really doesn’t care for being made fun of, does he… Ronan thought. …Well. Brought it on himself this time.

  Ronan opened his eyes, found that made him dizzy, and closed them again. Give it a few moments yet. He sat there concentrating on his breathing, and finally said silently, So: was that it? Are we done here?

  Well… said one voice

  You may be, said the other. I am not.

  Ronan got a strong sense that the fury he’d sensed in the power behind the storm was now looking for something else to focus on. And without any real reason for it, the hair stood up on the back of his neck.

  I don’t like this, he thought, and got up. Once more Ronan staggered when he was on his feet, and had to close his eyes briefly until his sense of balance settled down. Absolutely no more spinning like that, he thought, opening his eyes again. He couldn’t remember having been so dizzy since that time he was six or so and his mam let him go round and round for as long as he wanted on that one playground thing, the wheel with the handles on it. God was I sick afterwards. Never again just yet…

  When he was sure of his footing, really sure, Ronan made his way carefully over to the edge of the flattest part of the Head and looked out to sea. Those huge waves were still rolling in to land and crashing, really crashing, down at the foot of the Head. Yes, the wind had died away, but it had already transferred huge amounts of energy to the water, and all that had to go somewhere. Have to be miles and miles of water stirred up like this, Ronan thought. Gonna be a long time before it gets rid of all this and quiets down…

  He stood for a few moments watching the water. There was something fascinating about the violence of it—the height of those waves, and the way that now that the wind was dropped almost to nothing, they were practically sloshing into one another, chaotically, like water in a plastic kiddie pool with people on all sides shaking it. And though the storm was now heading southward—much against the will of the one who’d started it going—the lightning that was jumping from cloud to cloud, or sometimes from cloud to sea, struck fiercely bright glints off the wavecrests. Ronan stood there staring at the vista for a moment, the bizarre movement of the water, the sheen of light down the waves when the lightning flashed—

  Which was when Ronan saw something strange. There was a dark spot on one of those waves. For a moment he squinted, sure he was seeing things, as the wave flattened, curved up again. But no, on the wave behind it: that spot. A strange shape, oval, almost vertical as it slid down the face of the wave.

  Another lightning flash went off, not too far away, and Ronan sucked in breath, horrified, as the shape ducked out of sight beyond another wave as it slid to the bottom of the present one. Sails! he thought.

  There was no mistaking them as the little dark shape came up again and precariously crested the next wave, poising there a moment before starting to slide down the fore of it. A pair of square sails thrust out of it, one smaller, one bigger, both of them a dull salt-stained dusty red. They were flapping around slackly, because there was no wind in them now. But the general landward push of the agitated water was still driving the boat that bore them—pushing it closer and closer to Bray Head.

  “Oh now what,” Ronan groaned in sheer annoyance at a world (or a being) that seemed intent on throwing one thing after another at him. Where had that come from? How long had it been out there? “What are you lads
doing here?”

  Saying their prayers, for all the good it’s likely to do them, the answer came back, amused.

  And because there’s no wind now, Ronan thought, they’ve got no control. Ah God, this is my fault!

  Yes it is, the answer came back. And then came the laughter.

  Another of those ferociously bright blazes of lightning lanced down out of the clouds and struck the water near that boat, illuminating everything about it in merciless detail. The little ship wasn’t all that close, but Ronan saw what he was sure were human figures clinging to at least one of the masts.

  “Oh come on now,” he shouted, “not lightning too, don’t they have enough problems, how the hell is that fair?”

  And how would what you just did be fair? the snarling voice replied. You and your little friend! Well, now you find out for yourself what your whole good-versus-evil nonsense is worth. Nothing’s fair. Best you learn it now.

  Assuming that the angry power answering him was referring both to him and the owner of the other voice, Ronan had no time to spare for figuring out which one of them was “little.” All he could concentrate on right now was the desperate and helpless little dark blot of a boat that was presently sliding down the face of yet another wave. Every time it managed the feat, Ronan was horrified at the possibility that it might not manage to do it again. And the number of times it would have to do it again was getting fewer and fewer, because the boat was getting closer all the time to the Head.

  Ronan found himself absolutely certain that this was the reality of the abstract he’d been considering before: an incoming slaver. Picking up or dropping off, who knows? he thought. And the thought flickered across his mind: If they’re dropping off, is it better to be dead than to be a slave? If they’re picking up, do they deserve to die for it?