A Wizard Alone

Pursuits

Quite early the next morning, Kit came downstairs to find his sister sitting in front of the TV with a plate of half-finished toast, and a most peculiar expression on her face. “Brother dear…”

Carmela said.

This tone of voice usually meant that something bad was going to happen. And I haven’t even had my cornflakes yet

, Kit thought. “What?”

“I need to talk to you about the TV.”

“Uh… what about it?” He went into the kitchen to make a start at least on the cornflakes, before she really got rolling.

“Why did Pop tell me not to watch it?”

“Uh,” Kit said, “maybe I should ask you first — if Pop told you not to watch it, then what’re you doing?”

If he hoped that taking the offensive with his sister would help him even a little, the hope was misplaced. “Why do what they say until you can figure out why?”

Carmela said from the living room. “And with Pop at work and Mama asleep, there’s no way I’m going to find out the whys from them for hours. So I ask you, instead… while having a look myself.”

Kit said nothing, just rummaged enthusiastically in the fridge for the milk.

“Most of the shows don’t make much sense,” Carmela said. “And a lot of others are in weird languages. This has to do with all the yelling in Japanese the other day, am I right?”

“To a certain extent,” Kit said, getting a bowl out of the cupboard and then opening a drawer for a spoon.

His sister sighed. “You know,” she said, “you’re bad at covering your tracks when you’ve busted something. Hey, that’s a local phone number!”

Kit’s eyes widened with shock. He hurried in to find his sister goggling at a screen full of billowing white smoke and a number with a 516 area code…both of which, to his vast relief, then dissolved into whangy guitar music and an offer for cut-rate Elvis CDs.

Carmela looked up at Kit, registering his reaction, and shook her head. “I can’t believe you’re into this retro stuff,” she said, changing channels to her more usual morning fare, the channel with all the cartoons. “It’s a good thing you’ve got Nita, because it’s gonna be a long time before anybody else wants to date you, the taste you’ve got.”

“I have not ‘got’ Nita,” Kit said through gritted teeth. “And as for taste, you shouldn’t be talking.

Tom and Jerry cartoons? Give me a break.”

“I’m waiting for the Road Runner,” Carmela said, managing to sound both pitying and incredibly stuck-up. “A symbol of innocence endlessly pursued by the banality of evil.”

Kit went back to his cornflakes. “I wish the evil I keep running into was a little more banal,” he muttered as he picked up his bowl and started eating. The Lone Power’s favorite tool, entropy, had already struck locally: His cornflakes had gone soggy.

Resigned, he sat down and ate them anyway. Shortly Carmela came wandering into the kitchen and stuck her head in the refrigerator. “You got today off, huh?”

“Yeah. ‘Business’ stuff.” He ate the last spoonful of cornflakes and went to rinse the bowl. “And I didn’t ’bust‘ the TV, either.”

“Well, it has a gigabillion new channels, looks like,” his sister said. “The one before this one looked pretty neat. They were selling some kind of eternal-youth potion.” She paused to primp herself unnecessarily in the dark glass of the microwave. “Might come in handy.”

“You have to grow up first before the fountain of youth’s going to do you any good,” Kit said, putting the bowl and spoon in the dishwasher, “and anyway, what you need is the fountain of brains.”

Kit spent the next few minutes running around the house while his sister, in pursuit, whacked him as often as possible with a rolled-up boy-band fan magazine. He could have teleported straight out of there, but it was more fun to let her chase him, and it would keep her in a good mood. Finally eight-thirty rolled around, the latest time when she could leave and still get to homeroom on time, and Carmela got her book bag and headed out. “Bye-bye,” she said as she went out the back door.

“Don’t get eaten by monsters or anything.”

“HI try to avoid it.”

The door closed. Kit went off to get his manual, reflecting that things could be a lot worse for him. A resident sister who found wizardry freaky or annoying could cause endless trouble, forcing him to live like a fugitive in his own house, hiding what he was. But so many human wizards have to do that, anyway

, he thought, going into his room to get the manual off his desk, and carefully walking around Ponch, who lay on the braided oval rag rug beside his bed, still asleep. They have families they can’t trust, or who can’t cope

… The thought of telling someone you loved that you were a wizard, and then discovering that he or she couldn’t handle it and would have to have the memory removed, made Kit shudder. I was lucky. Not that it wasn’t a little traumatic at first, with Mama and Pop. But they got past it. And so did Helena, sort of.

His older sister had been the cause of some worries for Kit when he’d told her he was a wizard.

Helena had at first been dismissive, in an amused way: She hadn’t believed him. But when Kit had started casually using wizardry around the house, Helena had actually gone through a short period when she’d thought he’d done some kind of deal with the devil. Finally she calmed down when she saw that Kit had no trouble participating at church along with the rest of the family, and when Kit got Helena to understand that the Lone Power, no matter which costume It was wearing, was never going to be any friend of his. But Helena’s moral concerns had died down into a kind of strange embarrassment about Kit, which was as hard to bear, in its way, as the accusations of being a dupe of ultimate evil. When she went away to college and didn’t have to see what Kit was doing from day to day, their relationship got back to normal, if a rather long-distance kind of normal. What would it have been like if she’d stayed around, though

? Kit had found himself thinking, more than once. How would I have coped? It was a question he was glad not to have had to answer. And if that makes me chicken, fine. I’m chicken.

He glanced down at Ponch. He was still asleep, his muzzle and feet twitching gently as he dreamed. Kit sat down to wait until the dog finished the dream. The wizard’s manual lay on his desk; he flipped it open to Darryl’s page again and considered that for a few moments.

He’s only eleven

, Kit thought, looking over the slightly more detailed personal information that had added itself to Darryl’s listing since Kit had become involved. Eleven wasn’t incredibly young for a wizard— Dairine had been offered the Wizard’s Oath at eleven— but it was still a little on the early side: a suggestion that the Powers That Be needed Darryl for something slightly more urgent than usual. All we need to do is try to figure out what it is… try to help him find his way around whatever’s blocking him. Without getting in the way of whatever his Ordeal’s supposed to do for him.

That’s likely to be a tall order…

Ponch had stopped dreaming and was breathing quietly again. Kit hated to wake him, but free days like this weren’t something he got often. He nudged his dog’s tummy gently with one sneaker.

“Ponch,” he said. “C’mon, big guy.”

Ponch opened one eye and looked at Kit.

Breakfast!

His dog might be getting a little strange, as wizards’ pets sometimes do, but in other regards Ponch was absolutely normal. Ponch got up, stretched fore and aft, shook himself all over, and then headed for the hallway. Kit grinned, picked up the manual, stuck it into the “pocket” of otherspace that he kept things in for his wizardly work, and went after him.

In the kitchen, Kit opened a can of dog food and emptied it into the bowl. Ponch went through it in about five minutes of single-minded chowing down, then looked up. More?

“You’re only supposed to get one in the morning. You know that.”

But today’s a workday. Today we go bunting.

“So?”

I have to keep up my strength.

Kit rolled his eyes. “I’m being had here,” he said.

Boss

! Ponch looked pained.

“Oh, all right,” Kit said after a moment. “But if all this food makes you want to lie down and have a big long sleep all of a sudden…”

It won’t.

Kit sighed and opened the cupboard to get out another can of dog food. Not that one. The chicken this time

, Ponch said.

Kit looked at his dog, then at the label on the can. “When did you learn to read?”

I don’t have to read. I can hear you doing it, Ponch said. Anyway, the color’s different on the food with chicken in it.

Kit grabbed a different can and popped the top, shaking his head, and emptied it into Ponch’s bowl. “The color” he said after a moment. “I thought dogs saw only in gray.”

Ponch paused in his eating. Maybe we do, he said. But important things look different.

Kit shook his head. Whatever color his dog saw his food in, it didn’t matter much, as it all swiftly went inside him, where theoretically everything was the same color, especially after it was digested.

When he was finished eating, Ponch circled around a couple of times and lay down to start washing his paws.

“You’re not going to go to sleep, are you?” Kit said.

Ponch looked at him with some mild annoyance. If you ‘re going to hunt, he said, your feet have to be clean

He went back to nibbling his paws again.

Kit sighed and sat down to wait. When Ponch was finished, he got up, shook himself again, and said, I have to go out.

“You’ll be ready then?”

Yes.

Kit opened the door and let the dog out. He put on his jacket, picked up his house keys from the hook inside the back door, and got one more thing from the place where the coats hung — the wizardly “leash” that he’d made for Ponch when they were working together in other worlds. For those who could see it, it looked like a slender, smooth cord of blue light, a tight braid of words in the Speech that had to do with finding things, remembering where you found them, and not losing what had helped you find them in the first place — namely Ponch. Kit coiled up the leash and stuffed it in his parka pocket, then locked up the house and went up the driveway to the gate in the chainlink fence. There Ponch was dancing with impatience. Kit opened the gate, and Ponch shot through and into the yard, straight to the back where the trees and bushes grew thickest.

Kit paused for a moment in the frosty morning air. It was one of those cold gray days, but the wrong kind of gray for snow — the kind of day that made you wish that spring would hurry up, but also a day when going to another universe, any other universe, would be a relief from the gloominess of your own. He reached into his pocket for the transit spell he’d used the other day to get to Darryl's school, and ran the long glowing chain of it through his fingers while Ponch did his business back in the bushes. A moment later Ponch bounced out of the underbrush again, and ran back to Kit, bounding up and down around him.

You ready?

“Yeah. Here’s your leash.”

Kit managed with some difficulty to get Ponch to hold still long enough to slip the leash-spell around his neck. Should Ponch’s search for Darryl take them into some space where there wasn’t air, or something else humans and dogs needed to survive, the leash would make sure Kit’s fail-safe spells temporarily covered Ponch, until Kit could improvise something else. It would also keep them from getting separated in any hostile environment.

Where to first?

“Darryl’s school,” Kit said. “Let me get us invisible first. I want a closer look at him when we get there.”

Kit reached out to one side and traced his finger down the air, “unzipping” his claudication pocket, then reached in for the wizard’s manual. When he bounced it in his hand, it fell open at the spot Kit had previously marked, the invisibility spell. The wizardry was as he’d left it, in a partly activated state, waiting for the last few syllables to be pronounced.

Kit said them, and felt the wizardry take, expanding to fold around him and Ponch and then snug in close. This was one of the simpler ways to be invisible; the wizardry “looked” at what was behind you and made anyone in front of you see that instead of you. This light-diversion type of invisibility wasn’t good for use in large groups, because it tended to break down under the strain of servicing too many viewpoints, but Kit thought this would be good enough for this morning; he didn’t think he and Ponch were likely to wind up in a crowd.

Ponch shook himself as the wizardry settled in around them, then sat down and scratched. It itches!

“I know,” Kit said. “It has to fit tight to work Try to bear with it — we won’t need it for long.”

Kit dropped the bright chain of the transit spell on the ground around them. It knotted itself closed, and the sound of the words and the power of the spell reared up around them in a roar of light. When the brilliance and the noise faded down again, they were standing where they’d been the previous day: in the parking lot, looking at the bland front of Centennial Avenue School.

Kit picked up the transit spell, tucked it away in his claudication pocket. We’d better keep it silent from here on

, he said. Have you got his scent?

Sure. He’s in a room over on the left side of the building. He’s close.

Show me where.

Together they padded quietly onto the sidewalk outside the school doors, and up onto the lawn on the left side, making their way down the length of the one-story building. About half a minute later, they were standing outside the schoolroom where Darryl and his classmates were working. Kit peered in.

It didn’t look much like the classrooms at Kit’s school, but he wasn’t expecting it to: These kids had special needs. The furniture was sofas and cushions and soft mats rather than the desk-chairs that Kit was used to, with a scattering of low tables suitable for working either from a chair or while sitting on the floor. Four teachers, men and women both, casually dressed, were working with the same group of kids Kit had seen getting into the van the day before. Some of the kids were sitting and working with books at one or another of the tables; one was lying on a mat doing exercises with the help of a special-ed teacher. Off to one side, Darryl sat, dressed in T-shirt and jeans and sneakers again, his dark head bent over a large soft-cover book. He was rocking slightly, while next to him a young male teacher sat and read to him from the book.

There he is.

But still not there

, Ponch said.

Then where, exactly?

It’s hard to tell from here. I need to get a better scent. We should go in.

Kit nodded. No point in going all the way back to the doors, he said, and flipped through the manual for yet another spell. This spell, too, Kit had prepared the night before, knitting both his and Ponch’s names and descriptions into it. The wizardry included a variant of the Mason’s Word, which involves a very detailed description, in wizardly terms, of the structure of stone. As both wizards and physicists know, even the densest stone — indeed, almost all kinds of matter perceived as solid — is mostly empty space. Now as Kit and Ponch walked toward the wall of the school, all the atoms in their bodies and the atoms of the wall engaged in a brief, complex, stately little dance, carefully avoiding one another in droves as wizard and dog passed through brick and mortar and reinforcing metal. A moment later, Kit and Ponch were standing inside the classroom.

The room was carpeted, which made it easy to walk softly. Kit and Ponch made their way carefully around the edge of the room, toward the side where Darryl sat on the floor, looking at the book. Or is he really? Kit thought, as his point of view changed and he could see more clearly that Darryl was looking in the general direction of the book, but not at it, more through it. His face was not quite expressionless: There was a shadow of a smile there, but it was hard to tell what he was smiling at.

They paused near him, behind him, while the teacher kept reading, something about the seven wonders of the ancient world. Ponch stood looking intently at Darryl, his nose working, while Kit looked over the boy’s shoulder, trying to make something of that remote expression. Definitely his body’s here

, Kit said. But as for the rest of him…

Far away

, Ponch said. I can show you where now, though. The scent’s strong.

Okay-In a moment

Ponch sat down and started scratching.

Unfortunately, in this small quiet space, a sound that Kit heard all the time, so often that he didn’t pay attention to it anymore, suddenly made itself apparent. It was Ponch’s dog-license tag and name tag, on his collar, jingling together. Just about everybody in the classroom, except for Darryl, looked up in surprise, trying to figure out where the sound was coming from.

Uh-oh

, Kit thought. That was dumb! To Ponch he said hurriedly, and silently, Now would be a good time!

Right—

Ponch stepped forward, pulling the leash tight, and vanished, just as Darryl’s teacher got up from the floor with a mystified look and headed toward them.

Kit stepped forward after Ponch and vanished, too, relieved—

The wind hit him then, so that Kit staggered, staring around him, half-blinded by the sudden blazing light after the soft fluorescents of the classroom.

“Where are we?”

Inside his mind. He’s here somewhere

, Ponch said.

Here was a landscape right out of the depths of the Sahara. Kit and Ponch were perched precariously on the crest of a dune so sharply wind-sculpted that its edge could have been used for a razor… except that every second, the wind stripped grains off it, eroding it, and whipping sand off the other dunes that stretched out all around them. A hard blue sky came down to the horizon on all sides, featureless; it held not a wisp of cloud, only the fierce sun… yet there was something mysteriously indistinct about that sun, as if, even in that sky, dust obscured it.

“Just look at all this,” Kit said, gazing around him. “Did Darryl’s autism make this? Or did he?”

I don’t know.

Kit shook his head. “I’ve seen an interior landscape or two in my time,” he said, “but this one…

Look how empty it is.” He scanned the horizon. “If this is the inside of Darryl’s mind, then where is he?”

Maybe he’s hiding?

Kit thought about that, and about what his mother had said about the autistic people who found life simply too intense to bear. “From himself, too?” Kit said.

I don’t know. But he is here. Look! Ponch said. Kit looked where Ponch’s nose pointed.

Footsteps led down from the dune-crest, dug in deep where someone had had to dig his heels in to stop sliding, and then had kept on sliding anyway. Down at the bottom of the dune, in the space sheltered from the wind, the footsteps were better preserved, better defined. They reminded Kit of certain footsteps left in the moondust of Tranquillity Base, except that those were now being eroded by micrometeorites. These footsteps were still sharp, and they had a familiar sneaker company’s logo scored across them, one that Armstrong’s and Aldrin’s boot soles had definitely been missing.

“Weird,” Kit said softly. The footsteps led away across that blazing wilderness, up the next dune and into the unremitting day. “Where’s he going?” Kit said.

Away from the Other One

, Ponch said. Can’t you feel It? It’s here, too. It’s following him. Ponch scented the air. It’s been following him for a long time.

“Three months?” Kit said.

I think longer.

“How can that be?”

I don’t know. But Its scent is strong in Darryl’s neighborhood. I’ve smelled it often enough when It’s been chasing after you

Ponch shook himself all over… and this time it had nothing to do with feeling itchy; it was his version of a shudder. He flees — It pursues. Ponch’s nose worked; he looked bemused. And not just here.

“Then where?”

I’m not sure. Come on.

The sand they slid down was more pink than golden. Kit looked at it and thought of the book that Darryl’s teacher had been reading him. It had been open to a page about the pyramids. Something of the world’s getting through to him

, he thought. The question is, what’s he making of it?

The heat from the sun was oppressive. Kit pulled off his parka, rolled it up, and stuck it into his otherspace pocket. Then he and Ponch reached the bottom of the dune and started the climb up the side of the next one. “We could airwalk it…” Kit said.

He didn’t

, Ponch said. His trail’s down here. We need to go the way he went, for now.

Kit nodded, put his head down to try to keep the wind-whipped sand out of his eyes, and went up the next dune in Ponch’s wake. That way, Ponch said as he came up to the top of the dune.

Kit looked across the sand, following Ponch’s gaze. Maybe eight or ten miles away, almost obscured by the height of the farther dunes and the haze of sand and dust in the air, a low line of jagged stone rose against the horizon. “Are those hills?” Kit said.

I think so. He’s there somewhere. Come on.

Ponch led, and Kit followed. Once or twice, Ponch was certain enough of the trail to let Kit use a transit spell to cover some distance, but more often he insisted on doing it on foot, so Kit simply had to slog after him, for the time being unwilling to use any spells to protect him from the wind and the sand, on the off chance that they would somehow interfere with Ponch’s tracking sense. The sand seemed to get into everything — down Kit’s shirt and up his pants, into the bends of his knees and elbows. It rubbed him raw around the neck and even under his socks. I can barely stand this, Kit thought as he toiled up yet another dune after Ponch. And if I can’t, what’s it doing to Darryl?

Ponch reached the top of that dune and looked ahead of them. From here the low, jagged hills that had shown earlier near the horizon finally seemed within reach, no more than a few miles away.

They looked taller than they had, harsher and more forbidding; they cast long, dark shadows at their feet, under that unforgiving sun, which hadn’t moved in the sky the whole time they had been there.

Kit glanced up toward it, then away. “It’s almost like this is a real place,” he said softly.

It’s real to him. And therefore it’s real to What’s chasing him…

Kit shook his head at that. Tom’s warning not to get caught up in Darryl’s Ordeal had been straightforward enough. Yet was it going to be possible to stand to one side and let another wizard handle the Lone Power by himself? And what if It doesn’t want just to concentrate on him? Kit thought. What am I supposed to do if It decides to try to do something about me? Just cut and run, just leave him there?

I wish Neets were here. I could really use some backup.

Ponch stood panting in the heat, gazing down. That looks sort of like a building, he said.

Kit squinted. Down among the rock-tumble at the foot of the steep, jagged hills, there did seem to be something that looked built, and in it was a vertical, oblong darkness that could have been a gigantic door. “Is that where he went?” Kit said.

I think so. Do you want to take us down there?

Kit looked at the dark patch in the long ominous shadows thrown by the hills. Want to? he thought. Wow, I can’t wait. Nonetheless, he pulled out the transit spell. “Let’s go,” he said.

A few moments later, they stood at the foot of the biggest cliff. Kit looked up at it, and up, and up, and hardly knew what to think. The whole side of the cliff was a dark red stone, carved, deeply, for at least three hundred feet up. The red stone must have been the source of the pink tint in all the sand they’d been toiling through. Someone had carved the cliff into pillars and arches, galleries and balconies, reaching back into solid stone that looked as if it had been laboriously hollowed out, chip by chip, by truly obsessive artisans. Niches and pedestals were carved into the stone; in them and on them stood statues, of people and animals and creatures not native to Earth, some of them not native to any planet Kit knew. Some of the poses, some of the expressions, were very creepy, indeed; all the statues, human or not, were staring down at the space in front of the oblong opening with stony blind eyes— staring at Kit as if, stone or not, they could still see. And it all looked brand-new, as if whatever or whoever had done this work might still be here, somewhere inside the gigantic gateway that loomed, dark and empty, in front of Kit and Ponch right now.

It wasn’t an idea that made Kit particularly happy. What a great place to have a cozy chat with Darryl about what’s bothering him

, Kit thought. “Can you smell anybody else here?” he said to Ponch. “Besides us, and Darryl, and you-know-who?”

No

Ponch stood there with his nose working. But I’m not sure that means that nobody else can be here

…

I’ve got to stop asking him questions when I know the answers are going to make me more nervous than I already am

, Kit thought. “In there?” he said, breaking his resolution immediately.

In there.

“Let’s go, then.”

Ponch stalked forward into the darkness. The way he was walking made Kit almost feel like laughing a little, even through his nervousness; it was the way Ponch stalked squirrels out in the backyard: stealthy, a little stiff-legged. That’s all we need in here, he thought as he followed Ponch into the dimness. To be attacked by millions of evil squirrels.

As the darkness around them got deeper, Kit pushed that thought away as one it was probably smarter not to encourage. “Can you see all right?” he said very softly to Ponch.

I can smell all right. Seeing doesn’t matter so much.

Kit swallowed as the darkness got deeper. To you, maybe, he thought. He reached into his

“pocket,” got out his manual, and riffled through it briefly for a spell that would produce a bit of light, no more than a pocket flashlight would produce. After a few whispered sentences in the Speech, he pointed one finger to test it out. No light source showed, but a soft white light nonetheless fell on what he pointed his finger at — in this case, another immense carving, set into the wall to their left. Kit took one look at it and immediately turned the light elsewhere, reminded much too clearly of the alien with the laser eggbeater. The carving could have been one of that alien’s relatives in a very bad mood, and it seemed to be looking right at him — not only with all its eyes, but also with all its teeth.

Kit shook his head and turned his attention elsewhere, using the wizardry flashlight to look around as Ponch led him further into the hill. There was no dismissing this space as just a cave: It was a long hall, a vast corridor of a dwelling of some kind, as intricately carved inside as it had been outside — as if thousands of creatures with a passion for strange statuary had been working here for centuries. Where the walls were lacking actual statues, they were wrought in weird but wonderful bas-reliefs, vividly colored, touched here and there with the glint of gold or the glassy sheen of gems. Kit moved past them in a mixture of nervousness and admiration, his light flicking past stern creatures with vast, spread wings; tall, rigid humanoid shapes with arms held in positions ungainly but still somehow expressive; strange beast shapes whose expressions were peculiarly more human than those of the man shapes that alternated with them. The place made Kit think of the set of some kind of adventure movie about exploring ancient tombs, but realized in a hundred times more detail — every chisel mark accounted for, the backs of the statues as perfectly executed as their fronts, everything sharp and clear, down to the last grain of sand or dust.

Who’d have thought somebody autistic could notice things this way, Kit thought. But then he shook his head at himself. He’d hardly ever thought about autistic people except to feel vaguely sorry for them, and he’d never given any thought to what they might or might not be able to do. That was changing now. Whatever else might be going on inside of Darryl, he could see things — possibly more clearly than Kit had ever seen them, except under the most unusual circumstances. If that was any kind of hint to what Darryl’s talents as a wizard might eventually become—

Ponch stopped, and growled.

Kit stopped, too, looking around, a little more nervously now. It had occurred to him that one of the other things Darryl had managed to include in this space, if he had, indeed, created it for himself, was a sense of it being haunted. And only now, alerted by Ponch’s growl, did Kit start to see the dark shapes moving beyond where his little light could reach, beyond the statues, in the gloom through the archways that opened here and there off the great main hall. And— Kit looked up, unsure whether he had heard wings flapping way up above them, under the soaring shadows of the unseen ceiling.

What are they

? he said silently to Ponch. ‘

Ponch sniffed, let out a long whoosh of breath, as if smelling something bad. Fears.

Kit frowned, seeing more of the dark shapes gathering in the path he and Ponch had been taking toward the heart of the hill. Even when he tried to look straight at them, they stayed vague, like the things you see or half suspect you see out of the corner of your eye, the things that creep up on you from behind in the dark. Point the light at them, and they’re gone, flitting to either side; but let the light slide away, and they gather there again, seen better by averted vision than straight on. The glint of eyes, of teeth, showed in the dark: the flailing, skittering motion of too many limbs—

Ponch growled again. It’s here. Ahead, to the right, then left again. In the center of it all.

From ahead, further into the hill, came a low rumble of thunder. The sound of it went right up to that unseen ceiling, echoing, and went right through the floor; Kit could feel it through his feet.

The shadowy fears crowded closer. Ponch bared his teeth and growled more loudly, and the closest of the fears skittered away. Kit looked all around them, reaching out with a wizard’s senses to try to tell if whatever avatar the Lone Power was using here was particularly close by. It seemed to him that It wasn’t, that Its attention was elsewhere, closely centered on someone else.

Darryl…

They came to the end of that immense hallway, a T-junction; the wall just ahead of them held another of the immense carvings, reaching up and out of sight into the gloom. It showed a tangle of human and alien bodies that seemed to struggle and push against one another, trying to go in one direction or another, but that seemed unable to get much of anywhere, like a stone rush hour in some otherworldly subway station. Kit shook his head at it as Ponch pulled him to the right. A faint mutter of sound was coming from that direction, and from far away, reflected on the endless carvings, a gleam of light.

The corridor through which they moved got narrower, the much-carved walls of it seeming to press slowly together, like another gimmick from a bad adventure movie. Kit tried to convince himself that the effect was just a trick of perspective, but no matter how he tried, he wasn’t sure that when he wasn’t looking, those walls didn’t actually creep inward, just a little bit. And off to either side of him and Ponch, slightly more visible now that there was a little light up ahead, the fearshadows paced them, flitting in and out among the carvings, skittering, chittering softly to themselves with, every now and then, the occasional little chattering laugh. In the way they moved, and in the way they avoided being seen, they began to remind Kit very unpleasantly of cockroaches… and he longed for the leisure to pause and stomp on some of them, just for the fun of it. But there wasn’t time for that now. Ponch was intent, his head down, in full tracking mode, growling softly again. The sound ahead of them started getting louder, and louder still — a repetitive, thundering noise. I don’t think this place is going to be conducive to a relaxed conversation with Darryl

, Kit thought.

Ponch turned a corner to the left; Kit followed him. The light up ahead was cold and flickering, like something glimpsed through the doors of a movie theater while the feature was showing. But no theater on Earth would have had a sound system capable of producing the thunder-rumble that accompanied the light. They turned down yet another carved corridor, this one a tall, narrow slit that Kit soon realized was two doors, easily several stories tall, that weren’t quite shut.

Kit stopped at another of those earthshaking, wall-shaking rumbles of noise, louder than ever, and the hair on the back of his neck stood up because he could sense the Lone Power nearby. If Darryl and the Lone One or Its minions were having it out up ahead, some kind of protection would probably be a good idea. You stick close to me from here on, he said to Ponch. All we have to do now is figure out what’s going on, and what to do about it.

Let me know when you do that

, Ponch said, because right after that, I want to go home. He sounded unusually definite.

You’re not alone there, believe me

Kit wondered if Ponch was feeling what he himself had started to feel — a wearying pressure that made him too tired to look at things, too tired to pay attention to what was going on around him. And just when I need to pay attention the most. If Darryl has to put up with this all the time, then, boy, do I sympathize with him

…

There was one other spell that Kit had been keeping ready in the back of his mind, twenty-six words of its twenty-seven already spoken. Now, under his breath, Kit said the last word of the spell.

Nothing visible happened around him and Ponch, but the silent sizzle of a wizardly force field flicked into being there, a half sphere of protection against sudden violent force. The field wasn’t anything that would hold off the Lone Power for very long if It decided to get really aggressive, but it would buy Kit and Ponch time enough to think of something else, or to get away.

Kit reached just above his head and felt the expected bump and slight shock of touching the field, like the shock you get from walking on carpet and then touching something metallic. It’s running

, he said. You ready?

No, but let’s get it over with

, Ponch said.

His dog’s nervousness surprised Kit a little…but then he wasn’t exactly calm himself. Kit slowly went forward toward the partway open doors, Ponch keeping close beside him. The increasingly bright light spilling out of the doors showed some of the carvings on them, another tangle of the strange half-man, half-beast creatures, all with their heads turned away from the viewer, or their faces hidden, as if afraid to be looked at directly. Kit began to wonder about that, but the crescendo of thunder coming from inside the doors distracted him. Light flared again and again from inside, blue-white, blinding.

Kit moved a little to one side, so that he and Ponch would be sheltered by the right-hand door, and wouldn’t immediately be seen by whoever was inside. They crowded up against the writhing shapes carved into the great brazen doors, the force field complaining softly in the back of Kit’s mind about having to press up against something solid. Kit ignored the complaint and had a good long look into the darkness, back the way he and Ponch had come, to make sure they weren’t being followed by anything that might be capable of breaching the force field. Then he turned and peered, very carefully, around the edge of the door.

His view was somewhat limited, but he could see enough of what was going on to have to catch his breath in astonishment. Beyond the door was a huge open space — enclosed, Kit thought from the way the sound echoed in there, but with a ceiling so high up that he couldn’t even see it. Well below that point, the awful blinding light contained in that space started to give way to gloom. For what looked like about half a mile in front of him, and off to either side, stretched a huge pit of the red stone, carved into endless rings of bleacherlike seats — an amphitheater, its upper walls crowded with more of the creepy blind-eyed statues, their gazes turned down toward the central stage, watching, though seeming not to. In the stands of the amphitheater were hundreds of the shadows that Kit had seen in the outer darkness, maybe even thousands of them, all as intent as the statues on what was happening down in the space in the middle.

The fury of light concentrated there should have washed all those shadows away to nothing. The center of the amphitheater was crowded with writhing whips of lightning, ropes and sheets of lightning, whole curtains of it, such as Kit hadn’t seen since he was last deep in the atmosphere of Jupiter. All of the deadly fire was striking at one spot, washing over it again and again as if trying to obliterate the single small shape that stood alone in the middle of it all, arms up around his head, twisting from side to side. With every crack of lightning, the air was torn with a great havoc of thunder, a shattering drumroll that never stopped. Ponch, peering around the door and squinting into the lightning, crowded close to Kit, growling softly, and Kit hung on to him as together they peered down into the heart of that riot of fire and destruction, trying to make out what was happening.

For just a few moments, the lightning died back a little, and Kit was able to make out what stood on the far side of it, beyond the small shape that the lightning was tormenting. It was a tall form, dark, somewhat human at the moment, and wearing a deeper darkness around it like a cloak or a shroud — looking like an abyss into which everything must invariably fall and be devoured, a chilly, light-hating vacuum that would have made a black hole seem outgoing and generous by comparison.

The Lone Power stood there, looking down on Its present handiwork, and finding it good.

The darkness around It rose up, and from it more lightning lashed down into the center of the arena at the little staggering boy shape that now turned and twisted and cried out, writhing and falling to its knees, clutching at its head, tearing at itself in a frenzy of trying to be somewhere else.

Yet escape seemed impossible. The boy kneeling there was bent double now, impotent, rocking back and forth, rocking. Kit thought in pity and horror of the slight rocking motion that Darryl had been making in the classroom as he looked at the book.

The unfairness of all this, the cruelty of it, was making Kit furious, even as the crowding pressure of weariness in the air left him more and more uncomfortable and tired. Beside him, Ponch never stopped growling. I wish I could do something, Kit thought. But I’m not sure what to do. This isn’t my Ordeal… and right now, my job’s to watch.

And so he held still, and watched — though he got angrier all the time — while the Lone One whipped the little crouching shape with lightnings, and Its laughter, the earthquake, rumbled through all the stone around them. In the stands, the fear-shadows hissed and whispered and heaved with amusement, and Kit stood there and held his peace until he felt like he just couldn’t keep quiet anymore. He started to stand up and shout, He’s not alone!

But Ponch shouldered Kit to one side, behind the door again, and Kit sat down hard. Ponch put his nose up against Kit’s ear, cold, his own style of wake-up call, and said, He’s not here!

What

?? Kit said.

Dairy I. He’s not here.

But you said he wasn’t in school, either

— The scent’s changed! Watch.

Kit shook his head, got up, looked around the door again. There was the small, dark shape, crouching in the center of that huge lightning-scarred space, rocking, rocking, hiding its head in its arms, while the Lone Power scourged it with lightnings and laughed, the hissing of the watching fears a soft, evil accompaniment. It went on for a long time, a little eternity… but Kit held still. The lightnings descended with more and more violence every moment, until even that last faint glimpse of Darryl was washed out in their fury.

Watch

, Ponch said again, sounding perplexed but somehow also amused. The air stank of ozone, the stone of the floor began to run and go molten in places, and there was nothing at the center of things anymore but a ferocious knot of pale, blue-white fire, lightning that unnaturally endured for breath after breath, washing and burning through this one last stubborn spot that it had not been able to abolish—

— until it faded away, and all that huge amphitheater rustled with the satisfied hissing of a thousand fears.

But there was one sense of satisfaction that was missing. The greatest, deepest darkness — the tall one now moving down into the center, to where a young boy’s body should have lain — was not at all satisfied. All the shadow-fears that looked on slowly stilled their hissing, becoming afraid themselves, as that master darkness towered over the place where Darryl should have been… and wasn’t.

“Gone!” the Lone Power cried. “Gone again!

“Find him!!”

With a vast wind-rush rustling of terror, the shadows vanished. The Lone One, furious, swept Its darknesses about Itself. They writhed like an angry cloak, wrapped in close around their master. A second later, It was gone.

And Kit and Ponch stood there at the edge of it all, behind the door, in the dark, shaking.

It didn’t even notice you

, Ponch said, confused but relieved. That’s good.

No argument. But what about Darryl

? Kit was seriously confused. How could he be there and not he there at the same time?

I don’t know

, Ponch said. But I want to go home now. And when we get home, I want a biscuit.

Five biscuits

, Kit said. Maybe ten. Let’s get out of here.

They started making their way back through the carved corridors of the hill. “Where did he go?”

Kit said after a while, when he started to get his breath back, for he’d held it again and again.

The Lone One? He didn’t “go” anywhere. He’s still where he always is: here

One side of Ponch’s mouth curled again in a soft growl.

“No, I meant Darryl.”

Oh. It may take me a little while to find out

Ponch’s nose was working again. But I don’t think this is the first time he’s done this maneuver; he did it too quickly. I can scent the change. I can find where he goes next.

They came out of the dark, back into that pitiless day. “What I don’t get is, why’s he doing it?”

Kit said, looking out across the endless, scorched, barren waste. “Why doesn’t he get it over with?

Not that he didn’t look like he was having a bad time. But running away from the Lone One is no way to end an Ordeal. Sooner or later you have to tackle It head-on… before It catches you from behind, when you’re not looking, and finishes you off.”

I don’t know. I’m not a wizard. But I know what it’s like to be scared.

Kit heard the pity in his dog’s voice, and was slightly surprised. Normally Ponch saved his concern for members of the family, or friends. “You’re sure you can pick up the trail again?”

Any time. But not right now

Ponch trotted away from the bottom of the cliff, purposeful, not looking back. I’m tired.

But Ponch is sad, too

, Kit thought. And that makes it worse. “Come on, big guy,” he said. “Let’s go.”

Together, they vanished.