Diane Duane ON HER MAJESTY'S WIZARDLY SERVICE also published as To Visit the Queen by Diane Duane Feline Wizards: Volume 2 Pussy-cat, pussy-cat, where have you been? I've been to London to look at the Queen. Pussy-cat, pussy-cat, what did you there? I frightened a little mouse under her chair. – Children's rhyme
In Life's name, and for Life's sake, I assert that I will employ the Art which is Its gift in Life's service alone. I will guard growth and ease pain. I will fight to preserve what grows and lives well in its own way: nor will I change any creature unless its growth and life, or that of the system of which it is part, are threatened. To these ends, in the practice of my Art, I will ever put aside fear for courage, and death for life, when it is fitting to do so – looking always toward the Heart of Time, where all our sundered times are one, and all our myriad worlds lie whole, in That from Which they proceeded …
– the Wizard's Oath, species-nonspecific recension
PROLOGUE Patel went slowly up the gray concrete stairs to the elevated Docklands Light Railway station at Island Gardens; he took them one at a time, rather than two or three at once as he usually did. Nothing was wrong with him: it was morning, he felt energetic enough – a good breakfast inside him, everything OK at home, the weather steady enough, cool and gray but not raining. However, the package he was carrying was heavy enough to pull a prizefighter's arms out of their sockets. He had made the mistake of putting the book in a plastic shopping bag from the superstore down the street. Now the thing's sharp corners were punching through the bag, and the bag's handles, such as they were, were stretching thinner and thinner under the book's weight, cutting into his hands like cheesewire and leaving red marks.