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  Young Wizards

New Millennium Editions

Book ane:

Then You Want to Exist a Wizard

Diane Duane

Errantry Press

A department of

The Owl Springs Partnership

County Wicklow

Republic of Ireland

Copyright page

So Y'all Want to Be a Magician

New Millennium Edition

Errantry Press

Canton Wicklow, Republic of 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 exist reproduced or transmitted in whatever class or by whatsoever 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 brand copies of whatsoever part of the work should exist mailed to the following accost:

Donald Maass Literary Agency

Suite 801, 121 Westward 27th Street

New York, NY 10001

U.s.a.

Publication history

Delacorte Press hardcover, 1983

Dell Laurel-Foliage mass-marketplace paperback, 1986

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

Corgi Books (United kingdom) mass marketplace paperback, 1991

Dell Yearling digest format paperback, 1992

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

Science Fiction Volume Club jitney edition (The Young Wizards), 1996

Harcourt 20th Anniversary hardcover, 2003

Magic Carpet Books assimilate 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 fabricated to the text, and new material which does not announced in the original editions has been added.

Dedication

In one case once more,

for Sam's friend

Rubrics

By necessity every book must have at least 1 flaw; a misprint, a missing folio, one imperfection…. The Rabbis … bespeak out that even in the holiest of books, the scroll resting within the Ark, the Proper name of Names is inscribed in code so that no one might say it out loud, and chance to pronounce properly the Discussion that in one case divided the waters from the waters and the day from the nighttime…. As it is, some books, nearly perfect, are known to go transparent when opened under the influence of the proper constellation, when the total Moon rests in place. Then it is not uncommon for a man to become lost in a single letter of the alphabet, or to hear a voice rise up from the silent page; and and then only one imperfect letter of the alphabet, ane missing page, can bring him dorsum to the country where a book, once opened, may still be closed, tin can permit him to pull up the covers around his head and smile in one case before he falls asleep.

—Midrashim, past Howard Schwartz

I take been a discussion in a book.

—"The Vocal of Taliesin" in The Black Book of Caermarthen

Time fix

May, 2008

Prologue

Part of the trouble, Nita idea as she tore desperately downwardly Rose Avenue, is that I simply can't keep my mouth shut.

She'd been running for five minutes at present, 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 afterward her, shouting abuse and threatening to replace her last, at present-fading black eye with a new and shinier shiner. Well, Joanne would come upward to her with that new wheel, all chrome and silver and gearshift levers and digital speedometer-odometer and toe clips and water bottle, and enquire what she thought of it. The problem was that it was most exactly the bike that Nita had thought she was getting for her last altogether – and instead got null simply clothes.

So y'all idea y'all'd have a little fun rubbing that in, Nita thought, panting, equally she took a short cut down the driveway of the house at the corner, effectually the business firm, through its back yard and over the low fence behind it into the back k of the firm on the opposite block. Naturally it had never occurred to Joanne that later what she did to Nita last week, and with all her gang hanging effectually to back her up, Nita would dare do anything but stand up there and take it. And I really thought I could do that and not intendance if those idiots laughed. But the laughter stung worse than she'd thought it would… and suddenly Nita found herself telling Joanne in scathing item what she thought, non of the cycle, only 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'g gonna await it up in your little lexicon and then shove it downward your throat!"

Nita paused for just a 2d in the side by side dorsum chiliad, just time for one sharp laugh and no more: getting her breath was harder by the moment. Vocabulary'south never been her all-time discipline, has information technology, she thought. But right now it was tough to detect this equally funny as usual. Fugitive getting beaten upwardly once more was more on Nita'south mind. They're stuck with their bikes. Right at present I can go where they tin can't. But when I'grand close to the house, I'll take to use the street to go abode. They'll take hold of upwards with me fast. So…

Then the whole scene at home would play itself out once more. Her dad wondering loudly plenty for the whole house to hear, "Why didn't you hitting them back?"; her little sister making belligerent noises over Nita having picked upwards notwithstanding another set of non-battle scars; and her female parent merely shaking her head and cleaning upward the hurts in silence, considering she understood what was going on inside Nita'southward head. That deplorable look would hurt Nita more than the bruises and scrapes and swollen face, because sometimes agreement just wasn't enough…

Nita ran on downwards the grassy length of the neighbor's back 1000, making for the chain link fence at the back of information technology – only it was hard to catch her breath at present, and a pain was starting upwards in her side. Crap! Can't keep this up much longer. Gotta hibernate somewhere and wait them out. But where? She was running out of neighborhood yards that were easy or safety to run through, and there was nowhere close past where it'd be condom to hibernate. In the cul-de-sac at the end of the next cake was Old Crazy Swale's house with its big landscaped thousand, 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 piece of work like normal people. He might fifty-fifty be there now. …But that idea could keep Joanne & Co. out, besides! 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 business firm, it might exist okay—

The clanking of cycle bondage and the whirr of wheels coming from the far side of the fence and yard in forepart of her warned Nita that Joanne and her crowd had turned the corner into the side by side side street. Too belatedly. I'm cutting off. Improve double dorsum—

Nita ran back the way she'd come, pausing just briefly behind the neighbour's house to make sure no one had lagged behind to watch for her. Nope. Clear. Merely they'll effigy it out real quick. Merely take to figure out where to go next. Nita dashed downwards 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 fiddling chocolate-brown-brick building with windows warmly alight—refuge, prophylactic, sanctuary: the little bungalow that housed the town library. It'southward open! I forgot information technology was open tardily on Saturday!

The sight of the identify gave Nita a new burst of free energy. She ran across the library's tidy lawn, took the v stairs to the fron

t porch in two jumps, bumped open the front end door, and banged it shut backside her.

The library had been a private dwelling house one time, and it hadn't lost the look of 1 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 beyond the room with the ancestry of a sharp expression. So she saw who was standing at that place and how hard Nita was animate.

Mrs. Lesser wasn't the kind to miss much, and the quick rueful grin on her face up 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 in that location and keep tranquility. I'll get rid of them."

"Thank you!" 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 and so the bump and squeak of the forepart door opening again.

Nita paused to try to hear voices and found that she couldn't. Dubiousness they tin hear me either, she thought. But for safe'southward sake she walked quietly anyhow as she fabricated her way into the children's library, smiling slightly at the books and the vivid posters.

She hadn't been down here in ages; no self-respecting thirteen-twelvemonth-one-time would permit herself be seen downward in the little-kid zone. But she privately withal loved the place equally much equally the upstairs library, or (for that matter) any library anywhere. There was something well-nigh all that knowledge, all those facts waiting patiently to exist plant, that never failed to give Nita a shiver. When friends couldn't be plant, the books were always waiting with something new to tell. Life that was getting also much the same could be shaken up in a few minutes past the picture in a volume of some ancient temple newly discovered deep in a rain wood, an epitome of a blue sunrise above a crater on Mars, or a prismed moving-picture show taken through the faceted eye of a bee.

And I just about lived downwardly 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, canis familiaris stories, music books, fine art books, even the encyclopedias.

Of course every bit soon as some of the other kids noticed this, the trouble began. Bookworm, she heard the old jeering voices get in her head, iv-optics, Little Miss Dictionary. Smartass. Walking encyclopedia. Recollect you're so hot. "No," she remembered herself answering once, "I just similar to discover things out!" And she sighed, for that time she'd constitute out about being punched in the stomach.

Only maybe not today. For the moment Nita just strolled between the shelves, looking at titles, smiling as her gaze roughshod on quondam friends—books she'd read iii times, or five times, or a dozen. Just a title, or an author's name, would be plenty to summon upwardly 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 conveying swords similar sharpened lines of calorie-free, monsters rise 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 only never conquered….

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

Something stopped Nita'southward mitt as it ran along the bookshelf. She looked and found that one of the books, a piffling library-spring 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 Yous Want to Be a Pilot at that place had been, and So Y'all Want to Be a Scientist … a Nurse … a Writer…

But this one said, So Yous Want to Exist a Wizard.

A what?

Nita pulled the book off the shelf, surprised both by the volume'southward title and the fact that she'd never noticed it earlier. I thought I knew every book down here. Nonetheless this wasn't a new book. The page edges were xanthous with age, and the elevation of the book was dusty. So Y'all WANT TO BE A Magician. HEARNSSEN, the spine said: that was the author's name. PHOENIX PRESS: the publisher. And and so, written in white ink in Mrs. Lesser'due south tidy handwriting, 793.4: the Dewey Decimal number.

This has to exist a joke, Nita said to herself. Simply the book looked exactly like all the others in the serial. She opened it and turned the commencement few pages to the table of contents.

Ordinarily Nita was a fast reader and would quickly have finished a folio with merely a few lines on information technology; just what she constitute on that contents page slowed her downwards. "Preliminary Determinations: A Question of Bent." "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 folio on which that affiliate began, and stared at the boldface paragraph beneath its title.

WARNING

Spells of power sufficient to brand temporary changes in the human being mind are e'er bailiwick to sudden and unpredictable backfire on the user. The practitioner is cautioned to make sure that his/her motives are benevolent earlier attempting spelling aimed at…

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

Oh, come up on. Don't be an idiot!

But if it isn't…?

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

The get-go 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 skillful in occult surroundings, usually at the peril of one's soul. The modern wizard, who works with tools more avant-garde than bat's blood, and beings more complex than whatsoever pop-culture demon, knows how far from the truth that image is. And wizardry, though exciting and interesting, is no glamorous business organisation—peculiarly in most of today's cultures, where most wizards must work quietly then every bit not to concenter undue attention.

However, for those willing to presume the Fine art'southward responsibilities and exercise the piece of work, wizardry has countless rewards. The sight of a formerly twisted growing thing now growing straight, the satisfaction of hearing what a establish is thinking or a dog is saying, of talking to a stone or a star, is idea by most to be well worth the labor.

Not everyone is suited to be a sorcerer. Those without enough of the necessary personality traits will never come across this manual for what it is. That you lot accept found it at all says a corking deal for your potential.

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

Good luck!

It'southward a joke, Nita thought. Really. And to her own anaesthesia, she wouldn't believe herself—she was too fascinated. She turned to the next affiliate.

PRELIMINARY DETERMINATIONS

An aptitude for wizardry requires more than just the desire to practice the Art. In that location are sure inborn tendencies, and some acquired ones, that predispose a person to become a wizard. This chapter will listing some of the better-documented wizardly characteristics. Delight 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 defective in qualities possessed by almost all others and have still achieved startling competence levels….

Slowly at beginning, then more eagerly, Nita began working her way through the assessment chapter. Wow, there's and so much of this to keep rail of! She got upwards to go a ballp

oint pen and some scrap paper from the checkout desk, and then softly pulled out ane of the depression 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 curt by the footnote to one page:

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

Nita stopped reading, amazed. "Thinning of worldwalls?" Are they proverb that there really are other worlds, other dimensions, and that things, or fifty-fifty people, tin get through into this globe from them?

She sabbatum there and wondered. It wasn't just a question of all the TV shows that featured the idea these days. The concept was onetime. All those fairy tales nigh people falling down wells into magical countries, slipping backward in time or forwards 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 dorsum once 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 dorsum what they said was proof—pictures or something—nobody'd e'er believe them! You'd call back right away that they'd faked it.

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