In that other world, in a place like New York City but also terribly differ ' ent, she had passed through the initial ordeal that every candidate for w ardry undergoes. Kit had been with her. Together they had pulled each other and themselves through the danger andthe terror, to the successful compl6 ' tion of a quest into which they had stumbled. They saved their own world without attracting much notice; they lost a couple of dear friendsthey'd me ' 173DEEP WIZARDRYlong tne way; and they came into their full power as wizards. It was a •yjlege that had its price. Nita still wasn't sure why she'd been chosen as one of those who fight for the Worlds against the Great Death of entropy. She was just glad she'd been picked. She flipped pages to the regional directory, where wizards were listed by name and address. Nita never got tired of seeing her own name listed there, for other wizards to call if they needed her. She overshot her own page in the Nassau County section, wanting to check the names of two friends, Senior Wizards for the area—Tom Swale and Carl Romeo. They had recently been promoted to Senior from the Advisory Wizard level, and as she'd suspected, their listing now read "On sabbatical: emergencies only." Nita grinned at the memory of the party they'd thrown to celebrate their promotion. The guests had been a select group. More of them had appeared out of nowhere than arrived through the front door. Several had spent the afternoon floating in midair; another had spent it in the fishpond, submerged. Human beings had been only slightly in the majority at the party, and Nita became very careful at the snack table after her first encounter with the dip made from Pennsyl-vania crude oil and fresh-ground iron filings. She paged back through the listing and looked at her own name.
