A Wizard Alone

weariness in the air left him more and more uncomfortable and tired. Beside him, Ponch never stopped growling. I wish I could do something, Kit thought. But I’m not sure what to do. This isn’t my Ordeal… and right now, my job’s to watch.

And so he held still, and watched — though he got angrier all the time — while the Lone One whipped the little crouching shape with lightnings, and Its laughter, the earthquake, rumbled through all the stone around them. In the stands, the fear-shadows hissed and whispered and heaved with amusement, and Kit stood there and held his peace until he felt like he just couldn’t keep quiet anymore. He started to stand up and shout, He’s not alone!

But Ponch shouldered Kit to one side, behind the door again, and Kit sat down hard. Ponch put his nose up against Kit’s ear, cold, his own style of wake-up call, and said, He’s not here!

What

?? Kit said.

Dairy I. He’s not here.

But you said he wasn’t in school, either

— The scent’s changed! Watch.

Kit shook his head, got up, looked around the door again. There was the small, dark shape, crouching in the center of that huge lightning-scarred space, rocking, rocking, hiding its head in its arms, while the Lone Power scourged it with lightnings and laughed, the hissing of the watching fears a soft, evil accompaniment. It went on for a long time, a little eternity… but Kit held still. The lightnings descended with more and more violence every moment, until even that last faint glimpse of Darryl was washed out in their fury.

Watch

, Ponch said again, sounding perplexed but somehow also amused. The air stank of ozone, the stone of the floor began to run and go molten in places, and there was nothing at the center of things anymore but a ferocious knot of pale, blue-white fire, lightning that unnaturally endured for breath after breath, washing and burning through this one last stubborn spot that it had not been able to abolish—

— until it faded away, and all that huge amphitheater rustled with the satisfied hissing of a thousand fears.

But there was one sense of satisfaction that was missing. The greatest, deepest darkness — the tall one now moving down into the center, to where a young boy’s body should have lain — was not at all satisfied. All the shadow-fears that looked on slowly stilled their hissing, becoming afraid themselves, as that master darkness towered over the place where Darryl should have been… and wasn’t.

“Gone!” the Lone Power cried. “Gone again!

“Find him!!”

With a vast wind-rush rustling of terror, the shadows vanished. The Lone One, furious, swept Its darknesses about Itself. They writhed like an angry cloak, wrapped in close around their master. A second later, It was gone.

And Kit and Ponch stood there at the edge of it all, behind the door, in the dark, shaking.

It didn’t even notice you

, Ponch said, confused but relieved. That’s good.

No argument. But what about Darryl

? Kit was seriously confused. How could he be there and not he there at the same time?

I don’t know

, Ponch said. But I want to go home now. And when we get home, I want a biscuit.

Five biscuits

, Kit said. Maybe ten. Let’s get out of here.

They started making their way back through the carved corridors of the hill. “Where did he go?”

Kit said after a while, when he started to get his breath back, for he’d held it again and again.

The Lone One? He didn’t “go” anywhere. He’s still where he always is: here

One side of Ponch’s mouth curled again in a soft growl.

“No, I meant Darryl.”

Oh. It may take me a little while to find out

Ponch’s nose was working again. But I don’t think this is the first time he’s done this maneuver; he did it too quickly. I can scent the change. I can find where he goes next.

They came out of the dark, back into that pitiless day. “What I don’t get is, why’s he doing it?”

Kit said, looking out across the endless, scorched, barren waste. “Why doesn’t he get it over with?

Not that he didn’t look like he was having a bad time. But running away from the Lone One is no way to end an Ordeal. Sooner or later you have to tackle It head-on… before It catches you from behind, when you’re not looking, and finishes you off.”

I don’t know. I’m not a wizard. But I know what it’s like to be scared.

Kit heard the pity in his dog’s voice, and was slightly surprised. Normally Ponch saved his concern for members of the family, or friends. “You’re sure you can pick up the trail again?”

Any time. But not right now

Ponch trotted away from the bottom of the cliff, purposeful, not looking back. I’m tired.

But Ponch is sad, too

, Kit thought. And that makes it worse. “Come on, big guy,” he said. “Let’s go.”

Together, they vanished.

Conversations

Nita looked up out of darkness at the giant robot that was staring down at her.

At the time this seemed like the most natural thing in the world. There she stood, barefoot, in her long, pink-striped nightshirt, and there stood the robot, glittering in the single spotlight that shone down on the dark floor. The gleam of the downfalling light on the metal of the robot’s skin was nearly blinding. What kind of metal is that, I wonder? Nita thought, for the skin sheened a number of colors, from a hot blue through magenta to a greenish yellow, depending on how the robot moved.

Right now it was shifting idly from foot to foot, as if it was waiting for something to happen.

Titanium

, Nita thought, recalling some jewelry she’d seen one of her classmates wearing to school recently; it had had the same hot-colored sheen as the robot’s skin.

Or was it palladium? I forget

. “Hello?” Nita called up to the robot.

There was no reply. But the robot did hold still, then, and incline its head a little to look down in Nita’s general direction. There was no telling whether it was actually looking at her: Where eyes normally would have been, there was a horizontal slit, which probably had sensors behind it. The robot strongly resembled the kind of giant robot that kept turning up on Saturday morning television, and Nita found herself wondering whether this one might suddenly start breaking apart into jet fighters and tanks and other such paraphernalia. But for the moment, it just stood there.

Nita started to get a strange, repetitive, ticktock feeling in the back of her head — an emotion or thought recurring, again and again, as regular and inevitable as clockwork, but recurring at a distance, in a muffled kind of way. It wasn’t a pleasant feeling, either — it was a kind of thought or emotion that you would suffer from, rather than experience with any particular pleasure. Fortunately, it wasn’t so acute that Nita had to pay much attention to it, though she felt vaguely sorry for the robot, if this weary feeling did, indeed, belong to it.