A Wizard Alone

He looked at the other two, looked in their eyes.

Nita nodded. She glanced at Kit.

Kit hesitated a moment… then set his jaw, and nodded, too.

The three of them looked at the Lone Power. It stood in the middle of them, trembling with rage… or with something else.

“You want to bargain,” It said.

“Our terms,” Darryl said. “Not yours.”

“What’s the price for my freedom?” It said at last.

“Once they leave, they stay unharmed,” Darryl said. “No more than your usual attentions in the future. If you refuse, you stay in here with me until I die… and I chase you around and around forever.”

It stood there, silent, brooding. “But you stay here, even if I go?” It said.

“This is my world,” Darryl said. “Where else would I go? I’ll stay here.”

Nita and Kit looked at each other in shock.

“I can still make something of this place, with time,” Darryl said. “Everything has its price. I’ll stay.”

The Lone Power’s face was expressionless. “On the Oath, and in Life’s name, you say it?”

“Darryl!” Nita cried.

“Don’t!” Kit cried in the same moment.

“On my Oath,” Darryl said, very deliberately, “and in the One’s name, I say it.”

The Lone Power stood there, staring at the floor. Then, slowly, It began to smile.

“Fooled,” It said. “Fooled again.”

It started to chuckle. “You’ve bound yourself to my will after all,” It said. “What makes you think that just because you cast me out once, you can do it again? Manipulate your world’s kernel as you please. I have something better to manipulate. Entropy is my tool. I’ll wear away at the fringes of this place, at the edges of your life, until sooner or later you let your guard over the kernel’s parameters drop. I’ll be in here again within seconds. Then you’ll still be trapped here forever… and I’ll stay here with you, making every moment a torment, and reminding you every second of the rest of your life of the price of mocking the Eldest. Despair now, for you won’t have time later.”

“I’ll get around to the despair thing when I’m good and ready,” Darryl said. “Meantime, get your butt out of my world.”

It gave them an ironic bow. “Once again,” It said to Nita, “despite all the brave words, you’ve gotten someone else to save your little life at his expense. One of these days, someone will refuse you. I’ll be waiting for you then. And for you,” It said, glancing at Kit, “when she betrays you at last.”

“Out,” Darryl said.

It looked from one to another of them. But It looked hardest and most cruelly at Darryl. “Don’t get too comfortable here,” It said. “I’ll be along any day.”

And It was gone.

They stood there, in the sudden silence, staring at each other.

Then, as if by prearranged signal, they all began to laugh.

“Oh, Neets!” Kit said, and he grabbed her and swung her around. “What a bluff! You were terrific!”

Nita was laughing, too, but there was an edge of pain on the laughter. “I’m not sure I was bluffing,” she said. “I was just so angry right then that I believed it.”

“You must have,” Kit said. “There’s no lying in the Speech. But Darryl…”

He turned to Darryl in concern. “That’s the problem for you, guy. You promised to stay here.”

“I did,” Darryl said.

Nita let out a long, unhappy breath.

“But this isn’t the only place I can be at the same time,” Darryl said softly.

Nita’s head jerked up.

“I thought I was hallucinating at first,” Darryl said. “Now I know it’s no hallucination. When the two of you started coming into my worlds, I was with you both at once.” He shook his head. “I don’t know if this is something most wizards can do—”

“It’s not,” Kit and Nita said simultaneously.

“But it’s real useful,” Kit said after a moment, intrigued. “Just think. If you were—”

“Kit, maybe we should save it for later,” Nita said. This was a line of reasoning she didn’t want him to go too far down just now. “Why don’t we all get out of here first?”

Darryl looked at Nita in shock. “But I can’t leave,” Darryl said. “The Ordeal isn’t over.”

Nita looked at Kit, wondering if he’d realized the truth yet. From his blank look, it seemed he hadn’t. Then she looked at Darryl, and laughed out loud for sheer delight.

“Sure it is!” Nita said. “You passed your Ordeal weeks ago! You passed it the minute you managed to say the Oath.”

“Remember how you had to fight to get it out, word by word, phrase by phrase?” Kit said, slowly starting to grin. “How you kept losing it, forgetting it, having to start over again and again?”

“That was the Lone One interfering,” Darryl said softly. He was wearing a listening look, as the Silence spoke to him.

Slowly, his face changed, and the joy in it was so dazzling that Nita found it hard to bear, and had to look away.

“That was the real battle,” he said. “And I won it! I won…”

Nita had to smile, and for the first time in a long time, the smile didn’t feel like it would crack her face.

Kit looked at Nita in some surprise. “I thought the Lone One only starts noticing a wizard when he first says the Oath.”

“That’s how it is for most of us,” Nita said. “But it looks like not all Ordeals are alike.” She was still treading cautiously around anything that would get too close to the subject of abdals, until she could get Kit somewhere private and give him the lowdown. I’m pretty sure that since the Lone Power knew Darryl was an abdal, It wanted to keep him from taking the Oath any way It could, because who could tell how powerful he might become once he was a wizard? Maybe that’s even why Darryl became autistic in the first place; maybe the Lone One did that to him. But I’d better not get into that just now…

“And just the act of saying the Oath, accepting it, for someone autistic…” Nita looked at Darryl with renewed admiration. “You have to accept the concept of the Other, that there are others, to do it at all. It must have been like eating broken glass.”

Darryl stood there looking as if a whole new world was opening up before him, as if his past pain was retreating into the shadows. “It was hard,” he said. “The whole Oath is about doing things for other people…”

“But, Neets,” Kit said. “Your manual, Tom’s, mine, they all say that Darryl’s still stuck in his Ordeal.”

“Because he hadn’t realized it was over,” Nita said. “And because he just kept hitting the reset button in his brain, and losing his sense of self over and over again to keep the Lone One trapped in here, he never had time to let himself realize it. So his manual, the Silence, stayed stuck, too, and it couldn’t update to the manual network outside.”

Nita nodded. “The ones you couldn’t look at, the ones you were afraid of because you saw It in their eyes, you had to promise the One and the Powers That Be that you would come out and do stuff for them. What could possibly have been harder?”

“This,” Darryl said.

Nita and Kit glanced at each other.

“That,” Darryl said, changing his mind. “In here… it’s been safe. In here I never have to look, never have to be afraid I’ll see what might be there. Rejection. The one who sees me and doesn’t want to look back. Because he’s bored with me, or I’ve hurt him, or…”

“I will put aside fear for courage,” Kit said.

“And death for life,” Nita said, very softly. She swallowed. “When it’s right to do so.” She was silent for a moment, then said, “If it isn’t right now, then when will it be?”

“We need you out in the real world with us, guy,” Kit said. “We need all the wizards we can get…now more than ever. Entropy’s running…”