Many versions of this story are related among the many worlds, assigning blame or praise to one party or another. However, 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 includes 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 includes a great deal 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 — 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 causing 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 only takes a second to get it working again.