DIANE DUANE - A Wizard Alone

Nita s intention and the force of her anger briefly turbocharged the spell, and it drowned her consciousness in dream. The effect wouldn t last, she knew, as she opened her eyes in a different darkness; the spell would relapse to its normal levels momentarily, but it wouldn t matter. She d stay asleep. The important thing was that she was dreamingnow .

She stood there again by herself in that great dark space inside Darryl. Far off to one side, somewhere, she knew that the infinitely obstructive white wall was waiting. But this time she wasn t going to waste her time: There was more important business.

For a long few moments Nita quieted herself, opening her mind to listen, as she d been taught. Then, eyes closed, self-blinded, she turned, waiting for the sensation she knew would come.

It took less time to find it than she d hoped it would. Nita had been banking on the idea that Darryl s grasp ofworldbuilding was instinctive, not studied, and that if he even realized the heart of his universe for what it was, he wouldn t have thought to hide it. And he hadn t. When she finally sensed what she was looking for, Nita took the time to actually walk to it, notwanting to attract any possible unwanted attention by using a transit spell. She was glad that the spot she was hunting was only a couple of miles away, not a couple of light-years.

She knew it by feel when she reached it, which was just as well; physically and visually it was indistinguishable from any other part of that tremendous darkness. Nita grinned, though, as she came close, feeling up close the faint, lively, burning, buzzing sensation she d been seeking. She rolled up her sleeve, thrust her arm elbow-deep into the darkness, felt around for a moment, and came out with a bright, tight, surprisingly large tangle of silvery light.

Will youlook at this, Nita said under her breath, turning the kernel over in her hands and looking closely at it to identify its major structural elements. The complexity of this kernel was by and large on a par with other personal kernels Nita had seen before. A couple of its sections were devoted to the mere physical business of running a human body. One of them seemed oddly augmented.Maybe this is how anabdal does his co-location , Nita thought.He s got an extra set of body software in here.Interesting.

But the power conduits were the real surprise. They were huge, far bigger than a physical universe s own conduits would have been, and they pulsed silently and blindingly with such force that Nita found it hard to look at them.This is what anabdal uses. Or doesn t even have to use; just has.There s enough power in here, of enough kinds, to do incredible things .

Even to keep the Lone Power shut up inside for a while

Nita shook her head. This much power could be used for a lot more important things than that, though. And she noted one more thing, now that she had the kernel in her hands. She teased some of the power strands out a little and looked closely at one tightly braided chain of characters that glowed calmly right at the heart of the kernel. It was the core representation of the Wizard s Oath, the heart of an Ordeal; and it was complete.

Nita grinned with sheer pleasure at having been right, remembering her earlier thought that Darryl didn t have that tentative quality about his use of his wizardly abilities.So , she thought,he s already passed his Ordeal. Let s get moving !

She turned the kernel over in her hands once more, finding the little strand of light that was the spell Darryl had, however unwittingly, enacted to create the wall. Nita pulled it a little way out of the kernel, like someone teasing loose one strand from a ball of knitting wool, and twisted it in such a way as to cause that spot to become this one.

Instantly the internal laws of that universe changed accordingly, so that Nita looked up and foundherself staring at the wall.

She walked right at it as if it wasn t there. And when she touched it, it wasn t. It evaporated in front of her. The wall knew that the key to the physical structure of its universe was right in front of it, in the possession of a living being. Cooperatively, it got out of her way.

Thank you, Nita said. She placed the kernel in herotherspace pocket and kept walking. In front of her the view opened up, distant and glittering, a view of what appeared to be a forest of glass trees, shining in thatsourceless light she d come to recognize.

Nita walked toward the forest, listening to the voices that she d heard before in Darryl s worlds, and that were here, too, louder than they d been before, an endless rush of them. If she let them, they blended into a white-noise sound like wind or water, indecipherable. But if she concentrated, they did make sense.

get tired of waiting sometimes, you know said one of them, a man s voice, Nita thought. Sometimes I wonder whether any of it matters at all.

Of course it matters, said another voice, a softer one, sadder, but more certain of itself. We have to keep doing what we re doing. Someday

The voices got steadily more distinct as Nita got closer to the forest. Soon she saw that it wasn t a forest of trees, but of mirrors. Someday! But no one can tell us when that day s going to be. No one has the slightest idea! And we re the ones who know him best. We re the ones who ought to be able to tell. For a while there it looked like it was working.A little. But since autumn, it s like we ve hit a brick wall or something. No change. I can t help but think can t help but think that maybe there s not going tobe any more change. That this is as good as it s ever going to get. That he s going to be this way forever

The voice broke off, choked with pain.

You know they told us this was likely to happen, said the other voice. That there d be plateaus times when nothing would seem to happen for a long time.

Butthis long

Every case is different, they said. You know that, too. A long pause. We have to have faith, honey. If we don t, if we lose it, no one else s faith is going to help.

The voices sounded two ways to Nita. On one hand, they were like any conversation she might have heard on the street. On the other, there was a terrible poignancy about them. Hearing their words was like being thrust through the heart with knives.I m hearing this not just as I would , Nita thought,but as Darryl would.And possibly seeing his inner world as he does, too. Far from drawing her into Darryl s trap for the Lone Power, this seemed to be giving her a kind of immunity.Good. If that just lets me see a way out

As she came closer to the fringes of the forest, Nita saw that the trees weren t exactly just mirrored, either. They were half-mirrored. She could see partway through them, out their other sides, to the shapes that walked among them. And there were only four of those.

Two of them she knew instantly: Her heart seized at the sight of them.Ponch and Kit were wandering, sightless or rather, it was Kit who looked and walked like someone blind, or like someone afraid to look at what he saw around him.Ponch walked ahead of Kit like a Seeing Eye dog, seeing for both of them. But something about the way the light fell on him made Nita wonder whetherPonch somehow sawmore , inthis chilly and sterile landscape, than any of them.What isit with him she wondered. He hadn t been able to tell her the other day. Nita rememberedCarmela telling her what Kit had said, that there was some kind of wizardry leakage going on in his household. Suddenly she felt sure that what was happening withPonch was more than just a symptom of this.

She paused, watching the other two figures wander around separately in the light shining on and reflecting from the half-mirrored trees. One of them was small and dark, in jeans and a polo shirt. He looked less lost than Kit andPonch or the final figure.

That last figure was tall and looked human. He was slender, well-built, and extremely handsome. Nonetheless, Nita couldn t help but shudder at the sight of the Fairest and Fallen, the Lone Power, looking, in the dark suit he was wearing, like a businessman lost in a strange city and doomed to wander around because he was too proud to ask for directions.

The shudder passed, though. Nita s anger was still running high enough to wash it out and leave her mind clear.All right , she thought.Nothing bad has happened yet. Let s think about what to do .

Let s

Nita s head jerked up, looking for the source of the word, and her hand went to her bracelet again. A second later she was holding thelinac weapon, ready to discharge.

I am on errantry, she thought, glancing around,and I greet you. Wherever you are

Iamerrantry , the Silence said.

Nita held very still. There was something familiar about that voice though it wasn t a voice as such.

Then she remembered her earlier thought. The Silence told me about that, the clown-Darryl had said to her.You are the manual , she thought.Darryl s version of it.

The Silence sang agreement.

Right, Nita said, lowering the weapon again.Sorry, you startled me. How can I hear you now I couldn t before .

You are fully inside him now...because you have the heart .

Nita wondered about that phrasing, and then smiled. The heart of Darryl s universe: the kernel.Yes, I do , she said.Now all I have to do is figure out what to do with it .

He will know. He has full access now, as you ve discovered.

Nita nodded and watched the four figures walking among the trees for a few minutes She was looking things over, assessing where the weak point in this scenario might be. That was how she saw something start to happen, something that initially scared her an encounter that she normally would have done anything to prevent. The Lone Power in Its dark majesty came striding down between the mirrored pillars, to Nita s eye looking very much like someone who s trying to act like he knows where he s going when he doesn t. TowardIt , ambling, unhurried, maybe even unseeing,came Kit andPonch . Nita sucked in her breath and lifted thelinac weapon into an aiming line, pointing it at the Lone One.

She watched with profound unease as Kit and the Lone Power got closer and closer to each other. They were no more than a few paces apart when the Lone One made a single sudden move.

It looked atItself in a mirror as It passed, and smiled faintly. And Kit walked right on byIt , unnoticing, unnoticed.

Nita had to just stand there for a few moments, calming herself down, nearly lost in admiration at the sheer power of the otherworld Darryl had created.It s like that fairy tale about the guy who does some magic creature a good turn , she thought,and as a reward it gives him a bag that nothing can get out of. The guy lives a bad life, and when the devil comes for him, he tricks it into the bag, and it s stuck there until he lets it out . But in this case, Darryl was in the bag, too and apparently thought this a reasonable price to pay to keep part of the Lone Power out of circulation for days or weeks or even years at a time.

Carl had been completely right.If that s not a saint , Nita thought, Idon t know what is .

I need to get them out of here, she said to the Silence.

You will have to break this paradigm, the Silence said.Break the mirrors. That will release them. But it will also release the Lone Power back intoIts full potency .

For just a breath of time, Nita weighed the pros and cons of the problem.KeepingIt stuck in here, even just a fragment of It, couldn t be a bad thing .

But keeping Kit here as well, andPonch And Darryl

The price was much too high.Especially , Nita thought, putting aside her personal concerns for the moment,in Darryl's case .

Nita sighed.Besides , she thought,like in the fairy tale, the Powers That Be will make them let the devil out of the bag eventually. It s still one of the Powers, and part of the world. Keep the Lone Power in here forever andIt ll never be able to change