DIANE DUANE - A Wizard Alone

 You get six hours, Dairine said.  Then it s got to be dismantled and rebuilt, and I have to recharge it. It s   She glanced at Spot, who was sitting on the desk with his screen up, running manual functions, among them a Julian date clock.  It s just past three-oh-three-point-three. You get until point-fifty-five,then you snap back here, no matter what you re doing. So keep an eye on your manual.

Nita nodded. She wiggled against the pillows a little and closed her eyes.

After about five minutes, she opened them again, and sighed.  Dari 

 Is there something wrong with the spell 

Nita made a face.  This is really dumb, but I can t fall asleep with you sitting there watching me. You re going to have to stay in your room, for a while anyway.

Dairineshrugged.  No problem,  she said, and reached down to pick up one of the lines of light that was trailing away from the lifeline spell.Dairine walked out the door with the power-feed line in herhand. The line of light, the single character forconnection in the Speech, stretched and stretched after her as she went.

ThenDairine stuck her head back in the room.  Good luck,Neets ,  she said.

 Thanks,  Nita said. Imay need it 

At first Nita concentrated on doing the breathing exercises that often helped her get to sleep when she was having trouble doing so, but tonight all they seemed to do was make her uncomfortably aware of her breathing. Finally she gave up on that and just stared at the ceiling, fixing her attention on one spot, the little flawed place whereDairine had once bounced aSuperball too high and flaked off the ceiling paint. After a while, as Nita had expected, her eyes started tiring.

Eventually she found herself standing in the dark. That darkness was nearly complete: There were no spotlights now, no signs of anything being in this universe but her, and only the faintest, not-quite-black  background  radiance from the sky above.Did I miss them   Nita wondered.Have they gone somewhere else 

She looked around. It did no good standing still in one of these dreams, she d found. You had to walk around to get anywhere worth being. So Nita reached into herotherspace pocket and came out with a favorite tool, a moonlight-steeped rowan wand lent her byLiused , the tree in her backyard. This one was getting close to its  use by  date such wands routinely lasted for only three full moons and an intercalary day, unless burned out by overuse before then and wasn t much good for anything but light at this point. But light was just what Nita needed. As she touched it and pulled it out, the wand came afire with a blaze of secondhand moonlight, enough to show Nita that she was standing on the same plain black surface that she d seen here before, when meeting the clown, the robot, and the knight. But there was nothing else to be seen at all, in any direction.

 Okay,  she said softly.  Let s see.

One of the ready-made spells on her bracelet had a charm that looked like a miniature radar screen. Knowing before she left who she was going to be looking for, Nita had wound Kit s name in the Speech into it. Now she reached down to that charm and, touching it, saw in her mind the single word needed to activate the spell.

She said the word. Immediately Nita was standing in the middle of a pool of faint light, very much like the big radar that air traffic controllers use. It was a life-sign detector, one that would tag any specific personality it had been keyed to. Nita looked down at it. Even though the steady glow of it was soft, it was hard to make out any specific indication from it. Nita whispered the light of the rowan wand down to nothing and stared at the detector for many long moments, until her eyes watered.

Finally, though, she spotted what she was looking for: a faint, faint patch of light, off in the two o clock direction. The curlingtracery of Kit s initials in the Speech were beside it.

He s a long way offNita thought.But he s here .

The trouble was that he seemed to be all by himself; there didn t seem to be any indication of Darryl on the radar screen.He might still he by himself , Nita thought.Or if he hasfound Darryl, then Darryl's perception of his own isolation may have affected Kit so that he thinks he s still alone .

It didn t matter. At least now Nita had a direction to walk in.

She spoke the light of the rowan wand back up and spent what seemed like the better part of the next fifteen minutes walking toward Kit.But my time sense may be off, too , Nita thought, pausing briefly at about the fifteen-minute point to check her manual.

She was shocked to find that it was nearly .40.It s been nearly three hours outside !she thought.This is the problem Kit ran up against the other night. Time flow in here is getting strange .

Nita walked faster. After what seemed like another five minutes or so, she started to see something right against the very edge of the dark horizon, like a very faintly seen thread or line of some different color. The closer she got to it, the more distinct it became; it was starting to pick up the light of the rowan wand.

Within a few minutes she found that the line was growing thicker and taller with every step, and brighter, too. Shortly she was close enough to start to make out what it was.

It was a wall. Perfect, white, featureless, stretching away from her seemingly to infinity in great curves on either side, the wall towered over Nita as she approached it. A few feet away from it, Nita stopped, bent her neck back to look at it.

It was not a physical thing, she knew, but a representation of some power or force that had been put here to stop any intruder. And there was no telling who had put it here Darryl, or the Lone Power.

Nita stepped forward and cautiously touched the wall with a fingertip, like someone gingerly testing an electric fence. She could tell immediately that this construction didn t have anything to do with the Lone Power: There was none of the inimical burn she would have expected. Nothing else happened no force attacked her but Nita could tell by the feel of the wall that it was meant to be infinitely obstructive. She could try to levitate over it, but it would simply stretch up and up and up to match the height at which she attacked it; she could try to dig down under it, but it would extend that way, too. The only way to deal with this wall was to go through if she had time.

Okay, Nita thought.Let s see what works .

She said the twelve words of a small-scale antigravity wizardry, wrapped them around the rowan wand, and hung it on the air to give her some light to work by; then turned the charm bracelet on her wrist. One of the charms, looking like a little lasso, was the representation of the lifeline spell. Touching it, Nita could feel the power feeding down it, and could faintly feelDairine , in circuit with it back at home.

You okay her sister said.

So far.I need some power now.

Take what you need. The wizardry s fully charged.

Nita held the charm between her fingers and said the two words that released the clamp on the power flow at her end. Her right hand started filling with a hot white glow, the representation of whatDairine s wizardry was sending her. Nita letit flow, squeezing the power down to compact it a couple of times and make room for more. Finally, after about a minute, she cut off the flow and stepped toward the wall, using pressure of hands and mind and a few sentences in the Speech to shape that power into a small, concentrated explosive charge of wizardry. She pushed it up against the bottom of the wall, like so much plastic explosive, instructing it to vent all its force away from her, and then retreated to a safe distance.

Nita spoke the air in front of her dark, and then said the explosive s actuator word in the Speech.

The result was a dazzling flash and impact like lightning striking six feet away. Dark though the air had been, Nita still had to shake her head and blink a few times, trying to get rid of the afterimages. When she managed it, she looked up

  and saw that the wall was standing right where it had been, without so much as a dent in it.

Nita stared.What  !

The amount of power she d planted in that explosive had been huge. She felt somehow cheated and really angry at the same time.  Okay,  she said,  no more Miss Nice Girl. Let s try something a little more emphatic.

She reached down to the bracelet again and found the charm for the particle-beam accelerator. As she touched it, the accelerator wizardry sprang into being in her hands, ready to fire a long, narrow conical shape with a blunt stock. Nitasnugged the stock of it up against her shoulder, and carefully took aim again at the base of the wall. She had invested a great deal of energy in this wizardry; now she would see what it was worth

The world flickered, went abruptly bright.What   Nita thought.

Don t shoot!someone shouted into her mind. It wasDairine .

Nita looked around her in complete confusion. She was lying in bed, aiming thelinac weapon at her ceiling.

Oh my god, Nita thought. She hurriedly lowered the accelerator and let the wizardry relapse. She lay there for a few moments while her pulse got back to normal, and then sat up and looked over at the small figure slumped in the chair by her desk.

 Dairine,what am I doing here .   Nita whispered.

 Giving me grief, apparently, Dairine said, looking ragged.  Itold you to watch your time. You spent a real long time getting wherever you were going.  She let out a long breath.  And you didn t find any trace of Kit at all 

Nita sagged against the pillows again, and shook her head.  I know he was there, but I couldn t get near him. We re going to need more power in that thing this time, Dari. Charge it up. I m going out again.

Dairineshook her head.  Nita,  she said.  It snearly three in the morning. And I m wrecked. It s a strain holding that thing open. She looked miserable at having to admit such a thing.  I have to get at leastsome sleep, because I have to go to school tomorrow morning. Ofcourse , I d rather blow school off, but I promised Dad. You know I did. You knowwhat U happen if I don t go, or if I fall asleep in class.

Nita was so angry that she had to put her hands over her face to keep from screaming, or otherwise lettingDairine see how she felt. After a few seconds she felt sufficiently in control to uncover her face again.

 Okay,  she said.  You re right. I have an early morning, too. We ll try it again tomorrow.  And she let out a long breath.  But thanks,Dair . You didgood .

 Well do better tomorrow, Dairine said.  We ll find him then, and get him home.G night .

She wandered off toward her room, closing Nita s door behind her.

Nita lay there for a while more.Kit  she said silently, out of desperate hope, nothing more.

Of course, no answer came.

She tried to sleep again, normally, but that was impossible for her now. All Nita could do wasthink about what Kit s parents must be going through, and wait for six-thirty to come

Reconstructions

The mirrors went on forever.

Kit andPonch stood in a brittle glory of reflected light. Overhead was a bright gray sky, featureless. All around them, mirrors stood, as many mirrors as trees in a forest, set at a thousand different angles: tall ones, small ones, mirrors that reflected clearly, mirrors that bent the reflection awry; shadowy mirrors, dazzling ones, mirrors reflecting mirrors reflecting mirrors, until the mind that looked at them began to flinch and sicken, hunting something that wasn t just another reflection of itself.

Kit andPonch wandered among them, searching for something, but Kit had forgotten what it was they were looking for, along with everything else.Ponch wasn t sure what his master wanted wasn t even all that sure, anymore, why they were there. Together the two of them wandered through the glittering wasteland, seeing their shapes slide and hide in the mirrors,images chasing images but never meeting, never touching, fleeing one another as soon as any got close enough to make contact.   don t want to     when do you think he might     that hurts, why do you have to   Splinters of conversation and fragments of personality hid in the reflections and fled from mirror to mirror. Kit andPonch moved slowly among them, looking in some, avoiding others. Some had too many eyes to look into comfortably. Not all the eyes seemed human. It was as if alien logics looked out of some of them, either irrational or briefly revealing rationalities that were more painful than the human kind, and these were the glances that made Kit andPonch shy away most hurriedly, looking for somewhere to hide. But there was nowhere. Light and merciless reflection filled everything; and everywhere the two of them walked, a soft rush of sound ran under all other sensation, like water running under the mirrored floor, a river of words and noises trapped there under the unforgiving ice. All they could do was walk and walk, the thoughts in their minds being washed away as fast as they formed by the relentless flow of sound. They could hear the voices of other wanderers, elsewhere in the maze, but there was no way to find them, no way even to tell where they were.

  have to get out, if they don t they ll    find him, and when I do find him I ll   Theywalked for a long time, seeking those other voices but never finding them. Finally, exhausted, Kit sat down againstthe   trunk  of a mirror-tree, leaned back, and closed his eyes. His mind was full of the painful rush of voices and noise; it was a relief just to sit here, his eyes closed so that he didn t have to see the eyes in the mirrors, his body rocking a little and letting the motion distract him from the myriad other distractions around him that were fraying the fabric of his mind.Ponch sat down next to him, on guard and frightened, but not so frightened that he would leave his friend.

Finally someone came. Kit didn t open his eyes; every time he did, he saw other eyes staring at him, and he couldn t bear the invasiveness of their gaze. But he heard the footsteps even through the rush of noise.

Whoever it was stood there, not looking at them straight on that much Kit could feel on his skin, even without looking.

 I asked you not to come,  it said.

But he had to, saidPonch .And so I had to .

 I ve filled this whole place with one version of what happened to me,  said whoever was speaking.  TheOther followed me right in here, the way It always does  and now what happened to me has happened to It.  There was a kind of sorrowful amusement about the speaker s voice.  I did a really good job this time. I don t knowhow longIt ll be stuck in here. But no one can get out from inside: It s sealed.

We have to stay here forever, then,Ponch said.

 I don t know about you,  the voice said.  Your eyes aren t anything like his, or the Other s. You re something different. But me, and him, and the Other  yes, we ll have to stay forever.

If he has to stay forever,Ponch said,then I m not leaving .

And he lay down beside Kit, huddling close to him, and started to wait for forever.

Nita got her dad up at the usual time. She was already dressed for school at that point, having been unable to get to sleep.  Anything   he said.