DIANE DUANE - A Wizard Alone

Kit said them, and felt the wizardry take, expanding to fold around him andPonch 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 andPonch were likely to wind up in a crowd.

Ponchshook 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 ofCentennialAvenueSchool .

Kit picked up the transit spell, tucked it away in hisclaudication 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 andPonch 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 andPonch 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 andPonch were standing inside the classroom.

The room was carpeted, which made it easy to walk softly. Kit andPonch 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 notat it, morethrough 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. Ican 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 wasPonch 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. Thatwas dumb ! ToPonch he said hurriedly, and silently,Nowwould be a good time !

Right

Ponchstepped 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 afterPonch 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.

Herewas a landscape right out of the depths of theSahara . Kit andPonch 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.

 Justlook at all this,  Kit said, gazing around him.  Did Darryl s autism make this  Or did he 

Idon 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 heishere. Look !Ponch said. Kit looked wherePonch 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 themoondust ofTranquillity 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 andAldrin 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 feelIt   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.

Ithink longer .

 How can that be 

Idon t know. ButIts 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  Itpursues.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 hisotherspace pocket. Then he andPonch reached the bottom of the dune and started the climb up the side of the next one.  We couldairwalk 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 inPonch s wake.That way ,Ponch said as he came up to the top of the dune.

Kit looked across the sand, followingPonch 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.

Ithink so. He s there somewhere. Come on .

Ponchled, 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 withPonch s tracking sense. The sand seemed to get into everything downKit 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. Ican barely stand this , Kit thought as he toiled up yet another dune afterPonch .And if I can t, what s it doing to Darryl 

Ponchreached 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 toWhat 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 ifIt doesn t want just to concentrate on him   Kit thought.What am Isupposed to do ifIt decides to try to do something about me  Just cut and run, just leave him there 

I wishNeets were here. I could really use some backup.

Ponchstood 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.

Ithink 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, andup, 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 andPonch 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 toPonch . 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 canbe 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.

Ponchstalked forward into the darkness. The way he was walking made Kit almost feel like laughing a little, even through his nervousness; it was the wayPonch stalked squirrels out in the backyard: stealthy, a little stiff-legged.That s all we need in here , he thought as he followedPonch 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 toPonch .

Ican 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 oflight, 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 asPonch 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 theirfronts, everything sharp and clear, down to the last grain of sand or dust.