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

chapter.
     
    Nita looked up from the page and stared unseeing at a Big Bird poster hanging between the bookshelves across from her. The universe was running down; all the energy in it was slowly being used up. She knew that from studying astronomy. The process was called entropy. But she’d never heard anyone talk about slowing it down before.
    She shook her head in amazement and went on to the “correlation” section at the end of that chapter, where all the factors involved in the makeup of a potential wizard were listed. Nita worked her way down the checklist. I’ve got a lot of these. More than half. If that means I could be a wizard…!
    In slowly rising excitement, she turned to the next chapter. “Theory and Implications of Wizardry,” the heading said. “ History, Philosophy, and the Wizards’ Oath. ”
     
    Fifty or sixty eons ago, when Life brought itself about, it also brought about to accompany it many Powers and Potentialities to manage the business of creation. One of the greatest of these Powers held aloof for a long time, watching its companions work, not wishing to enter into Creation until it could contribute something unlike anything the other Powers had made, something completely new and original. Finally the Lone Power found what it was looking for. Others had invented planets, light, gravity, space. The Lone Power invented death, and bound it irrevocably into the worlds. Shortly thereafter the other Powers joined forces and cast the Lone One out.
    Many versions of this story are related among the many worlds, assigning blame or praise to one party or another. But none of the stories change the fact that entropy and its symptom, death, are here now. To attempt to halt or remove them is as futile as attempting to ignore them.
    Therefore there are wizards—to handle them.
    A wizard’s business is to conserve energy—to keep it from being wasted. On the simplest level this involves such unmagical-looking actions as paying one’s bills on time, turning off the lights when you go out, and supporting the people around you in getting their lives to work. It also involves a lot more.
    Because wizardly people tend to be good with language, they can also become skillful with the Speech, the magical tongue in which objects and living creatures can be described with more accuracy than in any human language. And what can be so accurately described can also be preserved—or freed to become yet greater. A wizard can cause an inanimate object or animate creature to grow, or stop growing; to be what it is, or something else. A wizard, using the Speech, can cause death to slow down, or go somewhere else and come back later—just as the Lone Power caused it to come about in the first place. Creation, preservation, destruction, transformation—all are a matter of getting the fabric of being to do what you want it to. And the Speech is the key.
     
    Nita stopped to think this over for a moment. It sounds like, if you know what something is, truly know, you don’t have any trouble working with it. Like my telescope—if it acts up, I know every piece of it, and it doesn’t take long to get it working again. To have that kind of control over live things – over the world, even… She took a deep breath and looked back at the book, beginning to get an idea of what kind of power was implied there.
    The power conferred by use of the Speech has, of course, one insurmountable limitation: the existence of death itself. As one renowned Senior Wizard has remarked, “Entropy has us outnumbered.” No matter how much preserving we do, the Universe will eventually die. But it will last longer because of our efforts. And since no one knows for sure whether another Universe can or will be born from the ashes of this one, the effort seems worthwhile.
    No one should take the Wizards’ Oath who is not committed to making wizardry a lifelong pursuit. The energy invested in a beginning wizard is too precious to be thrown