A Wizard Alone

can barely stand this, Kit thought as he toiled up yet another dune after Ponch. And if I can’t, what’s it doing to Darryl?

Ponch reached 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 to What’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 if It doesn’t want just to concentrate on him? Kit thought. What am I supposed to do if It decides to try to do something about me? Just cut and run, just leave him there?

I wish Neets were here. I could really use some backup.

Ponch stood 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.

I think 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, and up, 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 and Ponch 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 to Ponch. “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 can be 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.”

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

I can 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 of light, 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 as Ponch 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 their fronts, everything sharp and clear, down to the last grain of sand or dust.

Who’d have thought somebody autistic could notice things this way, Kit thought. But then he shook his head at himself. He’d hardly ever thought about autistic people except to feel vaguely sorry for them, and he’d never given any thought to what they might or might not be able to do. That was changing now. Whatever else might be going on inside of Darryl, he could see things — possibly more clearly than Kit had ever seen them, except under the most unusual circumstances. If that was any kind of hint to what Darryl’s talents as a wizard might eventually become—

Ponch stopped, and growled.

Kit stopped, too, looking around, a little more nervously now. It had occurred to him that one of the other things Darryl had managed to include in this space, if he had, indeed, created it for himself, was a sense of it being haunted. And only now, alerted by Ponch’s growl, did Kit start to see the dark shapes moving beyond where his little light could reach, beyond the statues, in the gloom through the archways that opened here and there off the great main hall. And— Kit looked up, unsure whether he had heard wings flapping way up above them, under the soaring shadows of the unseen ceiling.

What are they

? he said silently to Ponch. ‘

Ponch sniffed, let out a long whoosh of breath, as if smelling something bad. Fears.

Kit frowned, seeing more of the dark shapes gathering in the path he and Ponch had been taking toward the heart of the hill. Even when he tried to look straight at them, they stayed vague, like the things you see or half suspect you see out of the corner of your eye, the things that creep up on you from behind in the dark. Point the light at them, and they’re gone, flitting to either side; but let the light slide away, and they gather there again, seen better by averted vision than straight on. The glint of eyes, of teeth, showed in the dark: the flailing, skittering motion of too many limbs—

Ponch growled again. It’s here. Ahead, to the right, then left again. In the center of it