A Wizard Abroad, New Millennium Edition Read online

  Young Wizards

  New Millennium Edition

  Book 4:

  A Wizard Abroad

  Diane Duane

  Errantry Press

  A division of

  The Owl Springs Partnership

  County Wicklow

  Republic of Ireland

  Copyright page

  A Wizard Abroad

  Errantry Press New Millennium Ebook edition

  Original edition copyright © 1993, Diane Duane,

  New Millennium edition © 2013, 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

  121 West 27th Street, Suite 801

  New York, NY 10001

  USA

  Cover photography by Peter Morwood

  "Fragarach" forged for Peter Morwood

  by Fulvio del Tin of Del Tin Armiche,

  Maniago, Italy

  Publication history

  Transworld / Corgi (UK) paperback first edition, 1993

  SF Book Club (US) hardcover first edition, 1993

  Harcourt Trade Publisher small format hardcover, 1996

  Harcourt Trade Publishers mass-market paperback, 1997

  Harcourt Trade Publishers digest edition paperback, 2004

  Errantry Press international ebook edition, 2011

  Errantry Press New Millennium ebook edition, 2013

  This 2013 New Millennium Edition ebook is based on the 2011 Errantry Press International ebook edition of A Wizard Abroad, and has been extensively edited to bring it into line with the new series timeline established in the NME ofSo You Want to Be a Wizard.

  Acknowledgements

  Many thanks again to those who helped proofread

  A Wizard Abroad for its previous ebook edition:

  Alison Bailey Beard

  Sharon Corbet

  Christopher Gamio

  Jennifer McGaffey

  Fazia Rizvi

  VR Trakowski

  Mike Whitaker

  Dedication

  For A.M.

  Admonition to the Reader

  Geography in Ireland is an equivocal thing, and perhaps meant to be so. The more solid the borderline, the more dangerous the land's own response to it; the vaguer the boundary, the kindlier. This is best seen in the behavior of the borders between what we consider our own reality, and the other less familiar realities that shoulder up against it. Such boundaries are never very solid in Ireland, and never more dangerous than when one tries to define them, to cross over. Twilight is always safer there than full day, or full night.

  This being the case, I have taken considerable liberties with locations and “established” boundaries, including those between counties and towns. County Wicklow is real enough, but there are a lot of things in the Wicklow in this book that are not presently located in the “real” county—and my version of Bray is not meant to represent the real one. The description of the townlands around Ballyvolan Farm and the neighborhood of Kilquade is more or less real, though the two are actually some miles apart. And Sugarloaf Mountain looks like parts of its description...occasionally.

  More specifically, though, Castle Matrix exists: possibly more concretely than anything else in the book. But it has been moved from its actual present location. Or perhaps one can more rightly say that Matrix has stayed where it is, where it always is, but Ireland has shifted around it. Stranger things have happened. In any case, let the inquisitive reader beware...and leave the maps at home.

  Rubrics

  I am the Point of a Weapon (that poureth forth combat),

  I am the God who fashioneth Fire for a head.

  Who is the troop, who is the God who fashioneth edges?

  (Lebor Gabála Érenn, tr. Macalister)

  Three signs of the Return:

  the stranger in the door;

  the friendless wizard;

  the unmitigated Sun.

  Three signs of the Monomachy:

  a smith without a forge;

  a saint without a cell;

  a day without a night.

  (Book of Night with Moon, triads 113, 598)

  Time Fix

  Mid-July - early August, 2009

  1: Éire / Ireland

  The first hint Nita had of what was about to happen came when she got back home after a long afternoon’s wizardry with Kit. They’d been working for three days to attempt to resolve a territorial dispute between two groves of trees… which is a whole lot tougher than it sounds. It’s not easy to argue with a tree, let alone a crowd of them. No amount of hugging will get a tree to stop strangling another one with its roots, especially when it feels its innate right to expand its territory is being disrespected. But the two groups were now well along toward what appeared to be a negotiated settlement, and Nita was bushed.

  She wandered into the kitchen to find her mother cooking. Nita’s Mom cooked a lot as a hobby, but she also cooked as therapy, and Nita immediately started worrying when she noticed that while she was out her mother had embarked on some extremely complicated project that seemingly required three soufflé dishes and the use of every appliance in the kitchen at once, and had spilled out onto the dining room table as well. She decided to get out fast, before she was asked to wash something. “Hi, Mom,” she said, edging hurriedly toward the door into the rest of the house.

  “What’s the rush?” said her mother. “Don’t you want to see what I’m doing?”

  “Um,” said Nita, as she wanted no such thing but was unwilling to say so. “What are you doing?”

  “I’ve been thinking,” said her mother.

  Oh God, Nita thought, and started to get seriously worried. Her mother was at her most dangerous when she announced that she was thinking; over the course of the last year, such sudden fits of thought had rarely meant anything but trouble for Nita. “About what?”

  “Sit down, honey. Don’t look as if you’re going to go flying out the door any minute. I need to talk to you.”

  Oh no. Here comes something I know I’m not going to hear! But there was really no escape. With a sigh Nita went into the dining room, sat down and started playing with one of the wooden spoons which, among many other utensils, was littering the table.

  “Honey,” her mother said, “this wizardry—”

  “It’s going pretty well with the trees, Mom,” Nita said, desperate to guide her mother onto some more positive subject. Her present tone didn’t sound positive at all.

  “No, I don’t mean that, honey. Talking to trees—that’s all right, that doesn’t bother me.” Nita rolled her eyes while her mom was still around the corner in the kitchen. Boy, does she not know what constitutes tough wizardry yet…! “But the kind of things you’ve been doing lately, you and Kit…”

  Oh no, here we go: the shoe drops on last month’s work, finally. “Mom, we haven’t gotten in trouble, not really.” After all, Tom said no one was going to hold the Caribbean thing against us. Or the Arctic one. And the Vesta business, Carl said nobody could possibly have anticipated— “As new wizards go we’ve been doing pretty well. This early in our practice—”

  “That being code for ‘When you’re as young as you two are,’” her mother said. She did something noisy with the blender for a moment and then said, “Which is the part that really bothers me. Hon, don’t you think it would be a good idea if you jus
t let all this—have a rest? You’ve been at it like mad, the two of you. Even over last Christmas, you seemed to be running around all the time. And then the spring, and your finals, you didn’t do as well as you thought you were going to. And you came home from that thing with chilblains.” Nita covered her eyes for a moment. It was a hundred and fifty below on Vesta, what’s a chilblain or so among friends? “Don’t you think it’s time you took a break, just for a month or so?”

  Nita looked up at her mother without understanding at all. “How do you mean ‘a break?’”

  Her mother got busy with the food processor again, changing the plastic blade for the steel one. “Well, your dad and I have been talking. You and Kit have been seeing so much of each other in connection with the wizard business. At first we didn’t want to say anything. Plainly the two of you have fun together, you’re a lot happier than you used to be… But still.” She paused as if hunting for words. “We’re thinking that it might be a good idea if you two sort of… didn’t see each other for a little while.”

  Nita’s eyes went wide. “Mom!”

  “No, hear me out. I understand you’re good friends, I know there’s nothing… physical going on between you! So put that out of your mind. We’re very glad each of you has such a good friend. That’s not a concern. What is a concern is that you two are spending a whole lot of time on this magic stuff, at the expense of everything else….”

  ‘This magic stuff… !!’ Nita thought. Does she even hear herself? This was a theme that Nita hoped she’d heard the last of months ago: that wizardry was some kind of fad or hobby, something you’d eventually get over, like enjoying online gaming or reading comics.

  Nita opened her mouth, but her mom was still talking. “…that’s all you do! You go out in the morning, you come back wiped out, you barely have the energy to speak to us sometimes… What about your childhood?”

  “My childhood? What about it?” Nita said, now becoming actively annoyed. Up until last year, her experience of her childhood was that it swung unpredictably but too routinely between painful and boring. Only recently had it improved. And while wizardry might occasionally be painful, at least it wasn’t ever dull. “Mom—you don’t understand. This isn’t something you can just turn off. You take the Wizard’s Oath for life.”

  “I know,” Nita’s mother said. “That’s what worries me. You’re a little young to be making up your mind about what you want to do with the rest of your life.”

  At that Nita’s eyes went wide, and she burst out laughing. “Wait, sorry, are you amnesic? You’re the one who’s been sitting through all the sessions with the guidance counselor at school! I’m not even fifteen yet, and already the word ‘college’ falls out of everybody’s mouth about once every five minutes!”

  “Now, Nita, that’s not the same. You have to think seriously about that stage of education now. It’s not the same as—”

  “It is the same as! They want me to make career decisions, now, about what I’m going to do for, I don’t know, ten years or if I’m really lucky ‘in this job market’—” — it was so hard not to make fun of her guidance counselor’s favorite phrase, and in his Boston accent— “wow, maybe even twenty years, after I get out of college! I’m not even sure what I want to do yet. Except be a wizard! But the one thing I do want, and know I want, you don’t want me making decisions about? Not getting it, Mom!”

  “Oh, honey!” her mom said in some distress, and dropped a spoon on the kitchen counter, and came into the dining room, wiping the spoon off on a paper towel. , “Why do you have to make this harder than it— Never mind. Look.” Her mom took a breath. “Your Dad and I think it’d be a good idea if you went to visit your Aunt Annie in Ireland for a month or so. Until school starts again.”

  The breath went right out of Nita in shock. The Labor Day weekend was six weeks away: school started right after. Six weeks—wait, what about my summer vacation—what about—?! “Ireland!!”

  “Well, yes. She’s been inviting us over there for a while now. We can’t go with you, of course—we’ve had our vacation for this year, and Dad has to be at work of course, he can’t afford the overtime for staff to keep the shop open while he’s away. But you could certainly go. School doesn’t start until September ninth. That would give you a good month and a half.”

  There will be nothing good about it!! Nita thought. The best part of the summer, the best weather, the leisure time she’d been looking forward to putting to use either working or just hanging around with Kit… “Mom,” Nita said, changing tack, “how’re you going to afford this?”

  Her mother gave her a look that was a bit too acute: the expression of someone who knew an attempted end-run when one presented itself. “Honey, you leave that to your dad and me to handle. Right now we’re more concerned with doing the right thing for you. And for Kit.”

  “Oh, you’ve been talking to his folks about this too, have you?”

  “No, hon, actually we haven’t. I think they’re going to have to sort things out with Kit their own way. I wouldn’t presume to dictate to them. But we want you to go to Ireland for six weeks or so and take a breather. And see something different, something in the real world.”

  Oh jeez, Nita thought, they think this is the real world. Or all of it that really matters, anyway. This is going incredibly wrong… “Mom,” Nita said, trying hard to calm herself down, “there’s something here I’m not sure you’re getting. Wizards don’t stop doing wizardry just because they’re not at home. If the Powers that Be put me on call when I’m in Ireland, well, I go on call, and there’s nothing that can stop it. I’ve made my promises. If something like that happens, if I have to go on call, wouldn’t you rather have me here, where you and Dad can keep an eye on me and know what’s going on all the time?”

  Nita’s mother frowned at that, and then looked at Nita with an expression compounded of equal parts suspicion and amusement. “Oooh, sneaky,” she said, vanishing briefly back into the kitchen and returning with a glass bowl in the crook of her arm, the bowl full of something fluffy and amber-colored, with a white fluffier layer on top. “Nope. Sorry. Your Aunt Annie will keep good close tabs on you—we’ve had a couple of talks with her about that—”

  Nita’s eyebrows went up: first in annoyance that it was going to be difficult to get away and do anything useful if there was need; then in alarm. “Oh, Mom! You didn’t tell her that I’m—”

  “No, we didn’t tell her that you’re a wizard!” Her mother rolled her eyes. “What are we supposed to do, honey? Say to your aunt, ‘Listen, Anne, you have to understand that our daughter might vanish suddenly. No, I don’t mean run away, just disappear into thin air. And if she goes to the Moon, tell her to dress warm.’” Nita’s mother gave her a wry look and reached for the wooden spoon that Nita had been playing with. “No. We trust you to be discreet. You managed to hide it from us long enough, Heaven knows...you shouldn’t have any trouble keeping things under cover with your aunt.” She started folding the egg white on top of the mixture in the bowl down into the layer underneath it. “No, honey,” she said. “Your dad’s going to see about the plane tickets tomorrow. I think it’s Saturday that you’ll be leaving—”

  “Saturday!!” Nita was going hot and cold with shock. It was way too soon, impossible, the idea of being shipped off against her will like some kind of air mail package was bad enough, but there was no way she was going to get anything done now, none—

  “Yes, the fare’s cheaper then. We have to get you out of here before it goes up again: we’re in kind of a keyhole between the two summer rush periods for air fares to Europe. It’s a little complicated…”

  “I could just, you know, go there,” Nita said desperately. “It would save you the money, at least.”

  “What, you mean just vanish and reappear, the way you do? No, I think we’ll do this the old-fashioned way,” Nita’s mother said calmly. “Even you would have some logistical problems with arriving at the airport and getting off the plane wi
thout anyone noticing that you hadn’t been there before.”

  Nita frowned and started working on that one. “If we—”

  “No,” Nita’s mother said. “Forget it. We’ll send enough pocket money for you to get along with; you’ll have plenty of kids to socialize with—”