A Wizard Alone

then, either, no escape. The worst of the eyes would be there, waiting for him, in the shape of what was going to kill him at last.

Kit tried to stop, but he couldn’t. Ponch blundered into him from behind. Kit’s own momentum combined with the push from Ponch sent him forward, through the last curtain of creeper and fungus, down onto the path, and he was helpless in front of the merciless thing that waited.

Hands came down, grabbed him by the arms. “No!” Kit cried—

— and then realized that nothing had happened to him, and that he was facedown in the mud, and that the screaming above him was just screaming again — and that the hands were Darryl’s.

Darryl was stronger than Kit would have expected. He hauled Kit nearly upright, but Kit didn’t have the strength to stay that way; he collapsed down onto his butt again in a most undignified manner, and stayed there for a few moments, just panting and trying to get his breath back.

“Have to get up now,” Darryl said. “It’s coming.”

Kit tried, and had trouble. Once again Darryl reached down to him and took Kit by the forearms.

This time he swung him right up to his feet. Kit staggered a little, but managed to stay there, marveling again at how strong the youngster was. “Thanks,” Kit said. “Darryl, I’ve been trying to catch up with you for a long time. I’m on errantry, and do I ever greet you! Now can we go somewhere quiet and have a talk, because—”

“No,” Darryl said.

“You don’t understand,” Kit said, getting his breath again, but only slowly. “You really ought to get out of here while you’ve got the chance. It’s not here yet, but I think It’s coming—”

“That’s just why I can’t leave,” Darryl said. “There are still things I have to do here, and in all the other heres. It doesn’t matter whether—” He stopped, as if searching for words. “It doesn’t matter what else might be here. It doesn’t matter if there’s a way out. I can’t take it. I have to find the thing that still needs to be done before I can go.”

Kit had been tired enough to start with, but now the exhaustion was coming down on him hard.

He means it doesn’t matter who else is here

, Kit thought, but he doesn’t really believe in anyone else. Not me, for sure. Maybe the Lone Power… but in some way that I don’t understand, which is a problem, because when the Lone One gets here —

“I said I’d stay until what I came to do was done,” Darryl said. “The Silence said, ‘So here’s what it’s all about. Here are the words. What’re you going to do about them?’ They were clear that first time, but after that it was hard to hear them all at once. Every time I tried to make sense of them, the noise would get in the way. Once or twice the shouting got so loud that I thought I’d die of it. Maybe only once or twice after that, it got quiet enough for me to think. But finally I knew those words were what needed saying, though I had trouble visualizing what they meant. It took a long time to picture them, longer to say them… days and days. I kept forgetting. But finally I got them all together and said them. ‘In Life’s name…’“

Kit sat there listening to the words. Part of him knew them better than he knew almost anything else. But another part of him thought, wearily, Why does that sound familiar? And the roaring and screeching in his head were once again making it hard to pay attention, hard to care about anything.

“…I will fight to preserve what grows and lives well in its own way…”

It was amazing the way the incessant howling of the world could weary you, until you would do anything to distract yourself from the noise of it — bang your head on a wall, hammer your fists on a table, scream to drown it out. That noise got into your head and wouldn’t let you alone, wouldn’t let you be. In the face of that torment, you quickly got to the point where the pain was itself reassuring, something you could rely on, something less stressful than trying to think anything or do anything through the cacophony of life. And when you come right down to it, it doesn’t really matter. Nothing matters that much. Nothing’s worth that much struggle___

“…To these ends, in the practice of my Art, I will put aside fear for courage, and death for life…”

Not that any of those matter

The world seemed dim and far away, this world, any world.

“But I don’t think anyone else should be here now,” Darryl said, and he came over to Kit. Kit turned his head away.

“There was— Someone was… here before,” Darryl said. “In other ‘heres.’ It was…” He paused, as if hunting for the right term. “It was appreciated. But this isn’t the right way to be here. It’s dangerous like this. It’s a way to get linked to me… by a link that can’t be broken, to keep getting sucked back into the trap I’ve set—” Darryl turned him around, pushed him. “Go,” Darryl said. “Go.

It needs to—”

And Kit saw Darryl catch sight of Ponch.

Darryl froze.

Kit turned to look toward him, dulled, not understanding what he was seeing. Darryl and Ponch looked at each other. Ponch stood there with his head up, his tail wagging. It was a speculative look on Ponch’s part. He was no more sure what Darryl was reacting to than Kit was.

“You,” Darryl said. “You have to go.”

Up in the trees, the screaming was scaling up again. “Go on,” Darryl said — not to Kit, now, but to Ponch. “Don’t wait. I recognize you — what you’re becoming. But you can’t stay. It’ll be here soon. This time you’re here the wrong way, you’ve been sucked in with him, and It’ll see the two of you for sure. Go on!”

We will

, Ponch said.

Above them, the gloom started abruptly to get darker. But we won’t leave you here, Ponch said.

We’ll be back.

Ponch turned around and grabbed Kit by the wrist, gently, with his teeth. He pulled Kit back into the dimness of the stand of trees that surrounded the path.

The darkness increased behind them, and the screaming. Finally the blackness became total, and Kit staggered through it, blinded, deafened, being led by the hand, aware of nothing except that he was being led, and hoping it was to somewhere better.

Eventually Kit found that he was looking at the wall by his bed. He’d been looking at it for a long time; there was no telling how long. Ponch was licking his ear, and there was no way to tell for sure how long that had been going on, either, except that the side of his head felt pretty wet.

I don’t think we should go there like that again

, Ponch said.

It took Kit a long time to collect his thoughts enough to answer. I think maybe you’re right about that

, he said. But at the same time, he found it hard to get excited about the concept. It just didn’t seem to matter that much.

Nothing seemed to matter that much.

Kit lay there for a long time, staring at the wall.

As Nita came through the dining room again, the phone rang.

She hurried over to answer it before it woke Dairine. “Hello?”

“Nita, it’s Carl.”

“Hi, Carl. What’s up?”

“Uh, have you seen Kit today?”

He sounded reluctant to be asking. “Haven’t seen him,” Nita said. “Heard from him, though. I think he had a late night last night.”

“Tom was expecting him for a debrief,” Carl said. “That hasn’t happened yet, though, and Tom was called away, so I need to handle it. You have any idea where Kit is at the moment?”

“I think he’s still asleep.” She paused a moment, checked to see if that was true. “Yeah,” she said. “He’s still out of it.”

“Okay,” Carl said, but he sounded uncomfortable to Nita. “It can wait a few hours, I suppose… but when he