by Diane Duane
This is absolutely amazing, Kit thought. And I’ve been amazingly dumb about this whole situation from the start. He’d rarely thought much 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 all.
From ahead, further into the hill, came a low rumble of thunder. The sound of it went right up to that unseen ceiling, echoing, and went right through the floor; Kit could feel it through his feet.
The shadowy fears crowded closer. Ponch bared his teeth and growled more loudly, and the closest of the fears skittered away. Kit looked all around them, reaching out with a wizard’s senses to try to tell if whatever avatar the Lone Power was using here was particularly close by. It seemed to him that It wasn’t, that Its attention was elsewhere, closely centered on someone else.
Darryl…
They came to the end of that immense hallway, a T-junction; the wall just ahead of them held another of the immense carvings, reaching up and out of sight into the gloom. It showed a tangle of human and alien bodies that seemed to struggle and push against one another, trying to go in one direction or another, but that seemed unable to get much of anywhere, like a stone rush hour in some otherworldly subway station. Kit shook his head at it as Ponch pulled him to the right. A faint mutter of sound was coming from that direction, and from far away, reflected on the endless carvings, a gleam of light.
The corridor through which they moved got narrower, the much-carved walls of it seeming to press slowly together, like another gimmick from a bad adventure movie. Kit tried to convince himself that the effect was just a trick of perspective, but no matter how he tried, he wasn’t sure that when he wasn’t looking, those walls didn’t actually creep inward, just a little bit. And off to either side of him and Ponch, slightly more visible now that there was a little light up ahead, the fear-shadows paced them, flitting in and out among the carvings, skittering, chittering softly to themselves with, every now and then, the occasional little chattering laugh. In the way they moved, and in the way they avoided being seen, they began to remind Kit very unpleasantly of cockroaches … and he longed for the leisure to pause and stomp on some of them, just for the fun of it. But there wasn’t time for that now. Ponch was intent, his head down, in full tracking mode, growling softly again. The sound ahead of them started getting louder, and louder still—a repetitive, thundering noise. Somehow I don’t think this place is going to be conducive to a relaxed conversation with Darryl, Kit thought.
Ponch turned a corner to the left; Kit followed him. The light up ahead was cold and flickering, like something glimpsed through the doors of a movie theater while the feature was showing. But no theater on Earth would have had a sound system capable of producing the thunder-rumble that accompanied the light. They turned down yet another carved corridor, this one a tall, narrow slit that Kit soon realized was two doors, easily several stories tall, that weren’t quite shut.
Kit stopped at another of those earthshaking, wall-shaking rumbles of noise, louder than ever, and the hair on the back of his neck stood up because he could sense the Lone Power nearby. If Darryl and the Lone One or Its minions were having it out up ahead, some kind of protection would probably be a good idea. You stick close to me from here on, he said to Ponch as he turned his smartphone’s light off and shoved it back in his pocket. All we have to do now is figure out what’s going on, and what to do about it.
Let me know when you do that, Ponch said, because right after that, I want to go home. He sounded unusually definite.
You’re not alone there, believe me. Kit wondered if Ponch was feeling what he himself had started to feel—a wearying pressure that made him too tired to look at things, too tired to pay attention to what was going on around him. And just when I need to pay attention the most.
There was a spell that Kit had been keeping ready in the back of his mind, twenty-six words of its twenty-seven already spoken. Now, under his breath, Kit said the last word of the spell. Nothing visible happened around him and Ponch, but the silent sizzle of a wizardly force field flicked into being there, a half-sphere of protection against sudden violent force. The field wasn’t anything that would hold off the Lone Power for very long if It decided to get really aggressive, but it would buy Kit and Ponch time enough to think of something else, or to get away.
Kit reached just above his head and felt the expected bump and slight shock of touching the field, like the shock you get from walking on carpet and then touching something metallic. It’s running, he said. You ready?
No, but let’s get it over with, Ponch said.
His dog’s nervousness surprised Kit a little… but then he wasn’t exactly calm himself. Kit slowly went forward toward the partway open doors, Ponch keeping close beside him. The increasingly bright light spilling out of the doors showed some of the carvings on them, another tangle of the strange half-man, half-beast creatures, but the crescendo of thunder coming from inside the doors distracted Kit from them. Light flared again and again from inside, blue-white, blinding.
Kit moved a little to one side, so that he and Ponch would be sheltered by the right-hand door, and wouldn’t immediately be seen by whoever was inside. They crowded up against the writhing shapes carved into the great brazen doors, the force field complaining softly in the back of Kit’s mind about having to press up against something solid. Kit ignored the complaint and had a good long look into the darkness, back the way he and Ponch had come, to make sure they weren’t being followed by anything that might be capable of breaching the force field. Then he turned and peered, very carefully, around the edge of the door.
His view was somewhat limited, but he could see enough of what was going on to have to catch his breath in astonishment. Beyond the door was a huge open space—enclosed, Kit thought from the way the sound echoed in there, but with a ceiling so high up that he couldn’t even see it. Well below that point, the awful blinding light contained in that space started to give way to gloom. For what looked like about half a mile in front of him, and off to either side, stretched a huge pit of the red stone, carved into endless rings of bleacherlike seats—an amphitheater, its upper walls crowded with more of the creepy statues, their gazes turned down toward the central stage, watching. In the stands of the amphitheater were hundreds of the shadows that Kit had seen in the outer dark
ness, maybe even thousands of them, all as intent as the statues on what was happening down in the space in the middle.
The fury of light concentrated there should have washed all those shadows away to nothing. The center of the amphitheater was crowded with writhing whips of lightning, ropes and sheets of lightning, whole curtains of it, such as Kit hadn’t seen since he was last deep in the atmosphere of Jupiter. All of the deadly fire was striking at one spot, washing over it again and again as if trying to obliterate the single small shape that stood alone in the middle of it all, arms up around his head, twisting from side to side. With every crack of lightning, the air was torn with a great havoc of thunder, a shattering drumroll that never stopped. Ponch, peering around the door and squinting into the lightning, crowded close to Kit, growling softly, and Kit hung on to him as together they peered down into the heart of that riot of fire and destruction, trying to make out what was happening.
For just a few moments, the lightning died back a little, and Kit was able to make out what stood on the far side of it, beyond the small shape that the lightning was tormenting. It was a tall form, dark, somewhat human at the moment, and wearing a deeper darkness around it like a cloak or a shroud—looking like an abyss into which everything must invariably fall and be devoured, a chilly, light-hating vacuum that would have made a black hole seem outgoing and generous by comparison. The Lone Power stood there, looking down on Its present handiwork and finding it good.
The darkness around It rose up, and from it more lightning lashed down into the center of the arena at the slim staggering boy-shape that now turned and twisted and cried out, writhing and falling to its knees, clutching at its head, tearing at itself in a frenzy of trying to be somewhere else. Yet escape seemed impossible. The boy kneeling there was bent double now, impotent, rocking back and forth, rocking. Kit thought in pity and horror of the slight rocking motion that Darryl had been making in the classroom as he looked at the book.
The unfairness of all this, the cruelty of it, was making Kit furious, even as the crowding pressure of 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 don’t know what to do. And anyway, this isn’t my Ordeal. My job’s to hold still and watch.
And so he held still, and watched—though he got angrier all the time—while the Lone One whipped the small 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.
Darryl. He’s not here.
What? What do you mean? You can see him, he’s right there —
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!” It whirled around in fury.
“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 be 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. Might 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.
Chapter 4: 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.
“Is there anything I can do for you?” Nita called, more loudly this time. There was no question of speaking to the robot more conversationally: Its head was at least fifty feet above the ground. This is like having a conversation with a flagpole, Nita thought.
The robot took a clunky step toward her, then another, then suddenly hunkered down in front of her with a great groan and screech of complaining, overstressed metal. Nita thought at first that it might fall over, it looked so unsteady, and it wobbled and leaned from left to right to left again. It was intent on her, though again Nita couldn’t be sure how she knew that: the metal face was blank, and it had no way to change its expression even if one had been there.