DIANE DUANE - A Wizard Alone

That way,Ponch said, turning.The contrast in temperatures stands out. But so do other things. There s company here .

 The same company as last time 

The same.A heart of cold.

 Great,  Kit said under his breath.  Well, let s head that way. I ll put the stealth spell up around us again, though in these conditions, it may not work a hundred percent.

If you could make the wind drop

It was worth a try. Kit paged quickly through his manual to the environmental management section and looked for the spells that involved short-term weather control. He found one that looked likely, started to recite it And then stopped, shocked. Something that had accompanied every spell he d ever done, that growing, listening silence as the universe started to pay attention to the Speech used in its creation was suddenly missing.

Blocked, Kit thought.But how  ! Not even the Lone Power Itself should have been able to keepa wizardry from executing. Once executed, of course, it might fail, but

Kit tried the spell again, and again got no result. Yet his force field was working fine. If it hadn t been, he andPonch would both have been frozen solid by now.

 Weird,  Kit said, closing the manual for the moment.  Looks like this environment s been instructed not to let itselfbe altered.

Could the Lone One have done that

Kit shook his head.  I don t know.

Never mind,Ponch said.I don t need to see, to lead us.And as for the Lone One Ponch s nose worked.It s distracted ,Ponch said.And Darryl s moving. Come on .

Ponchpulled on the leash, and Kit followed him across the squeaking blue snow, while every now andthen a new and ferocious gust of wind blue-whitedeverything out.  Snow tonight,  a voice said from somewhere immeasurably distant.

 You heard it that time, right   Kit said.

I heard something,Ponch said. And then he paused inmidstep . Ihear something besides that, too .

Kit waited.

Wings

Kit listened, but couldn t make anything out except that the wind was rising, the hiss scaling up to a soft roar. The last time he d heard a wind like this was when the hurricane had come through three years ago. The hurricane, though, had at least sounded impersonal in its rage. The sound of this wind had a more intimate quality, invasive, as if it was purposely pointed at Kit. And the voices were part of it.

  won t be able to 

  and in local news tonight

  wish I could understand why, but there s no point in even asking, I guess 

  come on, love, we need to get this on you. No, don t do that. Remember what we talked about 

The voices somehow both spoke at normal volume and screamed in Kit s ears, intrusive, grating,maddening . He couldn t shut them out. He opened his manual and hurriedly went through it to the section that would allow him to soundproof the force field, for the voices were scaling up into the deafening range now, an ever increasing roar. The noise wasn t just made up of voices, either. Music was part of it, too, but music gone horribly wrong, screeching at him, and also sounds that might have come from Kit s own house, a door closing, someone opening a drawer, sounds that were magnified past bearing, intolerable

Kit recited the wizardry, having to do it nearly at the top of his lungs to hear himself think. To his great relief, it took; he could tell that the sound all around him outside the force field was still rising, but now at least it was muted to a tolerable level.  Wow,  he said toPonch , who was shaking his own head, also troubled by the noise.

Ilost him ,Ponch said.He moved again. He moves very fast sometimes. He 

Ponch shead whipped around. Kit looked the way his dog was looking, through the blowing blue snow, just in time to catch sight of the thin young shape running past them, dressed in nothing but jeans and a T-shirt, running through the terrible cold and wind, running headlong, a little sloped forward from the waist as Kit had seen him running for the van at school.

 Darryl!  Kit shouted.  Hey, Darryl, wait up!

Darryl turned his head for just a flash, looking toward Kit. For a fraction of a second, their eyes met.

Darryl ran on. Kit reeled back as if someone had hit him across the face, and staggered with shock and pain. He had felt, for that second, what Darryl had felt: the unbearable pain of another person s regard.

Kit had sometimes found it hard to look into someone else s eyes, but that was nothing like this. This pain denied even the existence of the one who looked back. For Darryl, even meeting the gaze of his own eyes in the mirror was impossible, nonsensical,painful . Yet Kit also thought of the blind looks of the statues at the edge of the world of dunes, and suddenly realized that maybe it was only to him that their blindness seemed creepy. To Darryl, in his autism, maybe they were as close as he could comfortably get to the experience of being looked at by another being.It s something he wants, even though it hurts .

At least hewantsit, though. If he didn t 

Kit shook his head.  Where d he go 

That way.

 Come on!

Kit andPonch ran after him. But it seemed as if, in this world, Darryl could run a lot faster than they could.  The wind s filling in his tracks,  Kit gasped.

Idon t need them. Listen, though !

Kit could hear very little now that he d turned the sound down inside the force field.

 What 

The wings! They re here

The first of them roared overhead, trailing noise like a passing jetliner. Kit looked up and saw, dimly, through the blowing snow, whatPonch had been talking about. He was tempted to duck. The thing wasn t big, maybe only six feet long or so, but it looked deadly. It was as if someone had taken the three-finned symmetry of a standard paper plane and brought it to life, but with wings that were clawed on the forward edges. The creature was a furry blue white, just paler than the snow, and eyeless, though it had a long, nasty, many-fanged mouth that ran down the length of its body between two of the wings. And it brought the terrible noise with it as it shot overhead and past, dragging behind it still more of the torrent of voices and sounds that threatened todrown whatever lay in their wake. It tilted one wing, and started to circle Kit.

Basilisk! Kit thought, having seen the creatures  images in the manual more than once, and having thought every time that he d rather not see them in the flesh. They weren t the heraldic beasts that went by the name, but a worse thing that the Lone Power had constructed from spare parts in Its spare time a minion-creature that served as mindless messenger and doer of small dirty deeds.And it sees me. The stealth spell isn t working, either 

There were three kinds of basilisk: hot, cold, and starry. It was plain enough to Kit which kind he was dealing with here, and he knew the remedy for them if they got too close.Heat 

Kit flipped his manual open to its notes and storage area. Some time back during the summer, his pop had been having a lot of trouble keeping the barbecue lit, and Kit unnerved by the overconfident way his pop sprayed the lighting fluid around in his attempts to relight it had started working with some of the wizardries that temporarily  set  air solid and selectively reflective, so that it could be used to produce laser beams. When the barbecue season had come to an end, Kit had stored those wizardries in his manual for the next year. Now he hurriedly pulled one of them out, shook the long chain of characters out until it solidified into a rod, and twiddled its end to reset the air variable. Fortunately it didn t take long: All he had to do wasdeductthe oxygen and add some hydrocarbons.Right.Here we go 

Kit stuffed his manual into his parka pocket, shouldered the bright-glowing rod of the laser, and waited for the basilisk to swoop at him  and then was disappointed when it didn t bother, but just went screaming on past. Several others followed, all heading in the direction Darryl had gone. Kit stood there for a moment and let out a long breath that was as much frustration as relief. It was annoying to have something to shoot with, and something worth shooting at, and then not have an excuse to shoot at it.

He s stopped running,Ponch said suddenly.

 What   Kit said.  They ve caught him!

I m not sure,Ponch said.

 Come on!

They ran the way Darryl had gone. As they ran, something occurred to Kit.The stealth spell hasn t been working since we got here  otherwise, Darryl wouldn t have seen me, either. Kit wondered if these places where he kept finding Darryl weren t just rigorously constructed landscapes of the mind, obeying natural law, but genuine alternate universes, custom-made, the kind of places Nita had been working with to help her mother the kind of thingPonch had started creating on his own.Places where even the way wizardry works can be changed 

As Kit ran, he found his endurance wasn t what it normally would have been. He was tiring. He couldn t get rid of the sense that, whether real or inside Darryl s mind, this universe was much farther away than the last one. There was something inherently wearying about this space itself, as if its structure sapped the energy of anyone unfortunate enough to stray into it. Or maybe it was just the noise the wind, the roaring of the voices outside, getting louder again

Kit stopped for a moment to readjust the force-field wizardry,then went on again at a dogtrot behindPonch .  You doingokay   Kit said.

So far, no problems.

 You feel all right 

So far

Ahead of them, dimly, through the blue-smoke swirling of the methane snow, Kit thought he could see the basilisks diving and swooping at something, fluttering at it. Kit couldn t make out what it was.

Then, as he got a little closer, he could.

Darryl was standing there with his arms up over his eyes, twisting, turning from side to side  and then he stopped. Between one breath and another, he had become encased in what looked like a solid block of ice. The basilisks were scrabbling at it with the claws on their wings, screaming, and the thunder up in the sightless, coldly burning sky beat in the air like a heart, deafening.

Suddenly the basilisks flapped away, up into that blue-white haze, as a shadow approached them out of the blowing snow. Kit gulped and put the laser away in hisotherspace pocket as the form became distinct, gatheringItsdarknesses together out of the snowy air.

The Lone Power came striding up to that block of ice, looking as Kit had seenIt a long time ago like a young-looking human, red-haired, handsome, but with cruel, cold eyes and a smile you did not want to see. It was wearing the same dark suit Kit had seenIt wear on his own Ordeal, but this time with a long, black winter coat over it, and a scarf wrapped around Its throat. The Lone One s eyes were still angry and chill, but right now they also held an oddly weary and annoyed expression that intensified the closerIt got to Darryl. A few feet away from the block of ice,It stopped and stood, and put out Its hand, which was suddenly filled with the hilt of a long, black-bladed sword.

The Lone Power stood there in silence for a moment, gazing at Darryl s silent form with narrowed eyes.

 So it comes to this,  the Lone One said.  For a while, at least, you tried to fight. I ll give you credit for that. But now you ve given up. What were you thinking of  That I d be merciful now, that I d let you off easy because of your  problem   You should know better. When people give up around me, the poor fools pay the price.  It took a step forward, slow, menacing, savoring the moment.  Not thatnot giving up helps them, either, of course. Even for those who pass their Ordeals, there s no escape; I get them later. All they ever manage to do is delay the inevitable.

A chill, which had nothing to do with the local weather, went down Kit s back as the Lone Power took another step forward, and another, hefting the sword, lifting it in slow preparation to strike. In your case, though,  the Lone One said, amused,  there won t be any further delay. You should never have accepted the power if you weren t willing to use it. And you weren t  so now you lose it.

Ican t stand it , Kit said silently toPonch .

But I thought Tom said

I don t care. I m not going to just stand here!

Kit had already made sure the shield around him was secure. Now he was paging hurriedly through the manual to a section he looked at fairly often but had very rarely used, the offensive weaponry. It was the Lone One Itself he was going to be dealing with here, so Kit chose a quark-level dissociation tool the wizardry equivalent of a low-yield tactical nuke hooked his  canned  description of himself into it, told the wizardry to take as much of his power as it needed for one good shot, and then swallowed hard once, because this was scary stuff.You ready to get us out of here in a hurry if you have to  he said toPonch .

Say the word.

I may not have time

I llbe ready .

Kit took a deep breath then dumped the stealth spell. He took a step forward, and another, and then walked right up toIt , where It stood.

 Fairest andFallen ,  Kit said, trying hard to keep his voice even,  greeting and defiance.

It didn t even look up.

Kit stood there breathing hard.  I said, greeting and defiance 

No answer. The Lone One was intent on Darryl. It lifted that black blade high. Darkness ran down it,sweeping after in a trail asIt brought the sword swinging around. Kit swallowed one more time and spoke the first of three words that would activate thedissociator , as the sword struck the middle of that block of methane ice

 and shattered.

Kit stared.

The Lone Power straightened up from the stroke  and looked, suddenly dumbfounded, at the broken stump of a sword inIts hand. The block of ice wasn t marred, not even scratched.

IfIt was astonished, so was Kit.Could it be that the Lone Power can t see you when you re in someone else s Ordeal  he wondered.But Tom would ve said something .

Or is this space just the way it is because of Darryl being here  If Mama s right, if some autistic people have trouble with the concept that other people might be or think differently from them, then maybe nothing It does to Darryl here can hurt him  because the things It does aren t things he d do

Kit looked at the Lone Power, wondering in a scared way what was going throughIts mind. It regarded the broken sword for a moment,then flung it furiously away. Where the hilt-shard came down in the blue snow, there was a brief and noisy explosion. But the Lone One ignored that. It putIts hands up against the front of the block of ice and spoke softly to the small shape entombed there.

 Are you really stupid or crazy enough to think I m just going to walk away   the Lone Power said, and the menace inIts voice made Kit s hair stand up all over him.  I have centuries,aeons at my disposal. I can hound you from life to life if I chose, until for the sake of a moment s peace youbeg me to destroy your soul! Is this what your precious Powers gave you your wizardry for  To stand here inactive as a statue, refusing the inevitable  Well, it won t help you. Coward! You can t come out the other side of this until you confront me. And youwon t confront me! You ll just stay in here like the pitiful reject that you are, while outside in reality your darling mother and father grieve over you every day. You re not being very considerate of them, are you  After everything they ve gone through  Now you have a chance to stand up, to conquer me, to come out the other side of your power, and you won t take it.