So You Want to Be a Wizard, New Millennium Edition Read online

  Young Wizards

  New Millennium Editions

  Book 1:

  So You Want to Be a Wizard

  Diane Duane

  Errantry Press

  A department of

  The Owl Springs Partnership

  County Wicklow

  Republic of Ireland

  Copyright page

  So You Want to Be a Wizard

  New Millennium Edition

  Errantry Press

  County Wicklow, Ireland

  Original edition copyright © 1983 by Diane Duane

  New Millennium edition copyright © 2012 by Diane Duane

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  Requests for permission to make copies of any part of the work should be mailed to the following address:

  Donald Maass Literary Agency

  Suite 801, 121 West 27th Street

  New York, NY 10001

  USA

  Publication history

  Delacorte Press hardcover, 1983

  Dell Laurel-Leaf mass-market paperback, 1986

  Science Fiction Book Club omnibus edition (Support Your Local Wizard), 1989

  Corgi Books (UK) mass market paperback, 1991

  Dell Yearling digest format paperback, 1992

  Harcourt/HMH Magic Carpet Book mass market paperback, 1996-present

  Science Fiction Book Club omnibus edition (The Young Wizards), 1996

  Harcourt 20th Anniversary hardcover, 2003

  Magic Carpet Books digest edition, 2005

  Houghton Mifflin Harcourt North American ebook edition, 2010

  This 2012 Errantry Press New Millennium Edition ebook edition is based on the text of the 1980s and 1990s paperbacks published by Dell and Harcourt. Significant revisions have been made to the text, and new material which does not appear in the original editions has been added.

  Dedication

  Once again,

  for Sam’s friend

  Rubrics

  By necessity every book must have at least one flaw; a misprint, a missing page, one imperfection…. The Rabbis … point out that even in the holiest of books, the scroll resting inside the Ark, the Name of Names is inscribed in code so that no one might say it out loud, and chance to pronounce properly the Word that once divided the waters from the waters and the day from the night…. As it is, some books, nearly perfect, are known to become transparent when opened under the influence of the proper constellation, when the full Moon rests in place. Then it is not uncommon for a man to become lost in a single letter, or to hear a voice rise up from the silent page; and then only one imperfect letter, one missing page, can bring him back to the land where a book, once opened, may still be closed, can permit him to pull up the covers around his head and smile once before he falls asleep.

  —Midrashim, by Howard Schwartz

  I have been a word in a book.

  —”The Song of Taliesin” in The Black Book of Caermarthen

  Time fix

  May, 2008

  Prologue

  Part of the problem, Nita thought as she tore desperately down Rose Avenue, is that I just can’t keep my mouth shut.

  She’d been running for five minutes now, jumping fences, squeezing sideways through hedges, but she was losing her wind. Behind her she could hear Joanne and Glenda and the rest of them riding furiously down the street after her, shouting abuse and threatening to replace her last, now-fading black eye with a new and shinier shiner. Well, Joanne would come up to her with that new bike, all chrome and silver and gearshift levers and digital speedometer-odometer and toe clips and water bottle, and ask what she thought of it. The problem was that it was almost exactly the bike that Nita had thought she was getting for her last birthday – and instead got nothing but clothes.

  So you thought you’d have a little fun rubbing that in, Nita thought, panting, as she took a short cut down the driveway of the house at the corner, around the house, through its back yard and over the low fence behind it into the back yard of the house on the opposite block. Naturally it had never occurred to Joanne that after what she did to Nita last week, and with all her gang hanging around to back her up, Nita would dare do anything but stand there and take it. And I really thought I could do that and not care if those idiots laughed. But the laughter stung worse than she’d thought it would… and suddenly Nita found herself telling Joanne in scathing detail what she thought, not of the bike, but of her. The result was predictable.

  “Don’t know what ‘supercilious’ means, Callahan,” Joanne yelled as she rode around the corner at the head of her gang, “but when we catch you I’m gonna look it up in your little dictionary and then shove it down your throat!”

  Nita paused for just a second in the next back yard, just time for one sharp laugh and no more: getting her breath was harder by the moment. Vocabulary’s never been her best subject, has it, she thought. But right now it was tough to find this as funny as usual. Avoiding getting beaten up again was more on Nita’s mind. They’re stuck with their bikes. Right now I can go where they can’t. But when I’m close to the house, I’ll have to use the street to get home. They’ll catch up with me fast. And then…

  Then the whole scene at home would play itself out again. Her dad wondering loudly enough for the whole house to hear, “Why didn’t you hit them back?”; her little sister making belligerent noises over Nita having picked up yet another set of non-battle scars; and her mother just shaking her head and cleaning up the hurts in silence, because she understood what was going on inside Nita’s head. That sad look would hurt Nita more than the bruises and scrapes and swollen face, because sometimes understanding just wasn’t enough…

  Nita ran on down the grassy length of the neighbor’s back yard, making for the chain link fence at the back of it – but it was hard to catch her breath now, and a pain was starting up in her side. Crap! Can’t keep this up much longer. Gotta hide somewhere and wait them out. But where? She was running out of neighborhood yards that were easy or safe to run through, and there was nowhere close by where it’d be safe to hide. In the cul-de-sac at the end of the next block was Old Crazy Swale’s house with its big landscaped yard, a place the neighborhood kids avoided. There were rumors that weird stuff happened in there, and Nita had herself noticed that the guy didn’t go to work like normal people. He might even be there now. …But that idea could keep Joanne & Co. out, too! If I ducked in there just for a few minutes till they left, if I stayed by that big hedge around his yard and didn’t go near the house, it might be okay—

  The clanking of bike chains and the whirr of wheels coming from the far side of the fence and yard in front of her warned Nita that Joanne and her crowd had turned the corner into the next side street. Too late. I’m cut off. Better double back—

  Nita ran back the way she’d come, pausing just briefly behind the neighbor’s house to make sure no one had lagged behind to watch for her. Nope. Clear. But they’ll figure it out real quick. Just have to figure out where to go next. Nita dashed down the house’s driveway and back up Rose Avenue … and the answer to her immediate problem suddenly presented itself to her in the shape of a little brown-brick building with windows warmly alight—refuge, safety, sanctuary: the little bungalow that housed the town library. It’s open! I forgot it was open late on Saturday!

  The sight of the place gave Nita a new burst of energy. She ran across the library’s tidy lawn, took the five stairs to the fr
ont porch in two jumps, bumped open the front door, and banged it shut behind her.

  The library had been a private home once, and it hadn’t lost the look of one despite the crowding of all its rooms with bookshelves. The walls were paneled in mahogany and oak, and the place smelled warm and brown and booky. At the bang of the door, Mrs. Lesser, the large kind-eyed brunette lady who worked in the library at weekends, glanced up from her desk across the room with the beginnings of a sharp expression. Then she saw who was standing there and how hard Nita was breathing.

  Mrs. Lesser wasn’t the kind to miss much, and the quick rueful grin on her face said she understood what was going on. “Nobody’s downstairs,” she said, nodding at the door that led to the children’s library in the single big basement room. “Get down there and keep quiet. I’ll get rid of them.”

  “Thanks!” Nita said, and went thumping down the painted cement stairs. As she reached the bottom, she heard the crash of bikes being dumped out on the front walk, and then the bump and squeak of the front door opening again.

  Nita paused to try to hear voices and found that she couldn’t. Doubt they can hear me either, she thought. But for safety’s sake she walked quietly anyway as she made her way into the children’s library, smiling slightly at the books and the bright posters.

  She hadn’t been down here in ages; no self-respecting thirteen-year-old would let herself be seen down in the little-kid zone. But she privately still loved the place as much as the upstairs library, or (for that matter) any library anywhere. There was something about all that knowledge, all those facts waiting patiently to be found, that never failed to give Nita a shiver. When friends couldn’t be found, the books were always waiting with something new to tell. Life that was getting too much the same could be shaken up in a few minutes by the picture in a book of some ancient temple newly discovered deep in a rain forest, an image of a blue sunrise above a crater on Mars, or a prismed picture taken through the faceted eye of a bee.

  And I just about lived down here till I got out of elementary, Nita thought as she moved softly through the dimness, among the low tables and chairs. She’d read everything in sight, fiction and nonfiction alike—fairy tales, science books, horse stories, dog stories, music books, art books, even the encyclopedias.

  Of course as soon as some of the other kids noticed this, the trouble began. Bookworm, she heard the old jeering voices go in her head, four-eyes, Little Miss Dictionary. Smartass. Walking encyclopedia. Think you’re so hot. “No,” she remembered herself answering once, “I just like to find things out!” And she sighed, for that time she’d found out about being punched in the stomach.

  But maybe not today. For the moment Nita just strolled between the shelves, looking at titles, smiling as her gaze fell on old friends—books she’d read three times, or five times, or a dozen. Just a title, or an author’s name, would be enough to summon up happy images. Strange creatures like phoenixes and psammeads, moving under the smoky London daylight of a hundred years before, in company with groups of bemused children; princesses in silver and golden dresses, princes and heroes carrying swords like sharpened lines of light, monsters rising out of weedy tarns, wild creatures that talked and tricked one another; starships and new worlds and the limitless vistas of interstellar night, outer space challenged but never conquered….

  I used to think the world would be like the stories when I got older. Exciting all the time, full of wonder. Instead of the way it is….

  Something stopped Nita’s hand as it ran along the bookshelf. She looked and found that one of the books, a little library-bound volume in shiny red buckram, had a loose thread at the top of its spine, and her finger had caught on it. She pulled the finger free, glanced at the book’s title. It was one of those “So You Want to Be a …” books, a series on careers. Also on the shelf were So You Want to Be a Pilot there had been, and So You Want to Be a Scientist … a Nurse … a Writer…

  But this one said, So You Want to Be a Wizard.

  A what?

  Nita pulled the book off the shelf, surprised both by the book’s title and the fact that she’d never noticed it before. I thought I knew every book down here. Yet this wasn’t a new book. The page edges were yellow with age, and the top of the book was dusty. SO YOU WANT TO BE A WIZARD. HEARNSSEN, the spine said: that was the author’s name. PHOENIX PRESS: the publisher. And then, written in white ink in Mrs. Lesser’s tidy handwriting, 793.4: the Dewey Decimal number.

  This has to be a joke, Nita said to herself. But the book looked exactly like all the others in the series. She opened it and turned the first few pages to the table of contents.

  Normally Nita was a fast reader and would quickly have finished a page with only a few lines on it; but what she found on that contents page slowed her down. “Preliminary Determinations: A Question of Aptitude.” “Wizardly Preoccupations and Predilections.” “Basic Equipment and Milieus.” “Introduction to Spells, Bindings, arid Geasa.” “Familiars and Helpmeets: Advice to the Initiate.” “Psychotropic Spelling.”

  Psychowhat? Nita turned to the page on which that chapter began, and stared at the boldface paragraph beneath its title.

  WARNING

  Spells of power sufficient to make temporary changes in the human mind are always subject to sudden and unpredictable backlash on the user. The practitioner is cautioned to make sure that his/her motives are benevolent before attempting spelling aimed at…

  I don’t believe this, Nita thought. She shut the book and stood there holding it in her hand, confused, amazed, suspicious—and delighted. If it was a joke, it was a great one. If it wasn’t…

  Oh, come on. Don’t be an idiot!

  But if it isn’t…?

  People were clumping around upstairs, but Nita hardly heard them. She sat down on one of the low tables and started reading the book in earnest.

  The first couple of pages were a foreword.

  Wizardry is one of the most ancient and misunderstood of arts. Its public image for centuries has been that of a mysterious pursuit practiced in occult surroundings, usually at the peril of one’s soul. The modern wizard, who works with tools more advanced than bat’s blood, and beings more complex than any pop-culture demon, knows how far from the truth that image is. And wizardry, though exciting and interesting, is no glamorous business—especially in most of today’s cultures, where most wizards must work quietly so as not to attract undue attention.

  However, for those willing to assume the Art’s responsibilities and do the work, wizardry has endless rewards. The sight of a formerly twisted growing thing now growing straight, the satisfaction of hearing what a plant is thinking or a dog is saying, of talking to a stone or a star, is thought by most to be well worth the labor.

  Not everyone is suited to be a wizard. Those without enough of the necessary personality traits will never see this manual for what it is. That you have found it at all says a great deal for your potential.

  The reader is invited to examine the next few chapters and evaluate his/her wizardly potential in detail: to become familiar with the scope of the Art: and finally, to decide whether to become a wizard.

  Good luck!

  It’s a joke, Nita thought. Really. And to her own amazement, she wouldn’t believe herself—she was too fascinated. She turned to the next chapter.

  PRELIMINARY DETERMINATIONS

  An aptitude for wizardry requires more than just the desire to practice the Art. There are certain inborn tendencies, and some acquired ones, that predispose a person to become a wizard. This chapter will list some of the better-documented wizardly characteristics. Please bear in mind that it isn’t necessary to possess all the qualities listed, or even most of them. Some of the greatest wizards have been lacking in qualities possessed by almost all others and have still achieved startling competence levels….

  Slowly at first, then more eagerly, Nita began working her way through the assessment chapter. Wow, there’s so much of this to keep track of! She got up to get a bal
lpoint pen and some scrap paper from the checkout desk, then softly pulled out one of the low chairs from the table she’d been sitting on, settled down onto it, and started making notes on her aptitude. A few minutes later Nita was brought up short by the footnote to one page:

  *Where ratings are not assigned, as in rural areas, the area of greatest population density will usually produce the most wizards, due to the thinning of worldwalls with increased populati on concentration….

  Nita stopped reading, amazed. “Thinning of worldwalls?” Are they saying that there really are other worlds, other dimensions, and that things, or even people, can get through into this world from them?

  She sat there and wondered. It wasn’t just a question of all the TV shows that featured the idea these days. The concept was old. All those fairy tales about people falling down wells into magical countries, slipping backward in time or forward into it— Could it be that somehow the news that wizards did such things be the source of the stories? And if you can actually go into other worlds, other places, and come back again….

  Nita stared at the page and shook her head. Oh, come on. If somebody said they’d come back from some other universe, even if they brought back what they said was proof—pictures or something—nobody’d ever believe them! You’d think right away that they’d faked it.