A Wizard Alone New Millennium Edition (30 page)

But it was the kernel’s power conduits that were the real surprise. They were huge, far bigger than a physical universe’s own conduits would have been, and they pulsed silently and blindingly with such force that Nita found it hard to look at them.
This is what an abdal uses. Or doesn’t even have to use; just
has.
There’s enough power in here, of enough kinds, to do incredible things.

Even to keep the Lone Power shut up inside for a while.

Nita shook her head. This much power could be used for a lot more important things than that, though. And she noted one other thing, now that she had the kernel in her hands. She reached into the tangle of coiled light and hooked a finger under one tightly braided chain of characters that glowed calmly right at the kernel’s heart: then pinched it between thumb and forefinger and teased it a little ways out of the kernel’s main structure. It was the core representation of the Wizard’s Oath, the heart of an Ordeal; and it was complete.

Nita grinned with sheer pleasure at having been right, remembering her earlier thought that Darryl didn’t have that tentative quality about his use of his wizardly abilities.
So,
she thought,
he’s already passed his Ordeal.

Then let’s get moving!

She turned the kernel over in her hands once more, finding the little strand of light that was the spell Darryl had, however unwittingly, enacted to create the wall. Nita pulled the strand of light representing that wizardry a little way out of the kernel, like someone pulling one strand loose from a ball of knitting wool. Then she twisted it in such a way as to cause that spot to become
this
one.

Instantly the internal laws of that universe changed accordingly, so that Nita looked up and found herself staring at the wall.

“Right,” Nita said under her breath, and walked right at the wall as if it wasn’t there.

And when she touched it, it wasn’t. It evaporated in front of her. The wall knew that the key to the physical structure of its universe was right in front of it, in the possession of a living being; and cooperatively it got out of her way.

“Thank you,” Nita said. She paused long enough to tuck the kernel safely away in her otherspace pocket, and then went on walking. In front of her the view opened up, distant and glittering—a view of what appeared to be a forest of glass trees, shining in that sourceless light she’d come to recognize.

Nita walked toward the forest, listening to the voices that she’d heard before in Darryl’s worlds, and that were here, too, louder than they’d been before, an endless rush of them. If she let them, they blended into a white-noise sound like wind or water, indecipherable. But if she concentrated, they did make sense.

“—get tired of waiting sometimes, you know?” said one of them, a man’s voice, Nita thought. “Sometimes I wonder whether any of it matters at all.”

“Of course it matters,” said another voice, a softer one, sadder, but more certain of itself. “We have to keep doing what we’re doing. Being there for him. Someday…”

The voices got steadily more distinct as Nita got closer to the forest. Soon she saw that it wasn’t a forest of trees, but of mirrors. “Someday! But no one can tell us when that day’s going to be. No one has the slightest idea! And we’re the ones who know him best. We’re the ones who ought to be able to tell. For a good while there things seemed to be going so well. But then come autumn—” A pained gulp for air. “It all went to pieces. No matter what they keep telling us about burnout, that it may get better, that he may find a way to cope again, I can’t help but think … can’t help but think that they have no idea. That maybe this is the way he’s going to be from now on. That this is as good as things are ever going to get.—”

The voice broke off, choked with pain.

“You know they told us this might happen,” said the other voice. “And that there’s a very good chance he’ll find a new coping level as he gets older. But that things could look very bad for a while...”

“But
this
long?”

“Yes, if necessary. There’s no way to tell how much time he needs. His situation’s unique, Like everyone else’s.” A long pause. “We just have to have faith, honey. If we don’t, if we lose it, no one else’s faith is going to help.”

The voices sounded two ways to Nita. On one hand, they were like any conversation she might have heard on the street. On the other, there was a terrible poignancy about them. Hearing their words was like being thrust through the heart with knives.
I’m hearing this not just as I would,
Nita thought,
but as Darryl would. And possibly seeing his inner world as he does, too.
Far from drawing her into Darryl’s trap for the Lone Power, this seemed to be giving her a kind of immunity.
Good. If that just lets me see a way out
…

As she came closer to the fringes of the “forest,” Nita saw that the trees weren’t exactly just mirrored, either. They were half-mirrored. She could see partway through them, out their other sides, to the shapes that walked among them. And there were only four of those.

Two of them she knew instantly: her heart seized at the sight of them. Ponch and Kit were wandering, sightless—or rather, it was Kit who looked and walked like someone blind, or like someone afraid to look at what he saw around him. Ponch walked ahead of Kit like a Seeing Eye dog, seeing for both of them. But something about the way the light fell on him made Nita wonder whether Ponch somehow saw
more,
in this chilly and sterile landscape, than any of them.
What
is
it with him?
she wondered. He hadn’t been able to tell her the other day. Nita remembered Carmela telling her what Kit had said, that there was some kind of “wizardry leakage” going on in his household. Suddenly she felt sure that what was happening with Ponch was more than just a symptom of this.

Nita paused, watching the other two figures wander around separately in the light shining on and reflecting from the half-mirrored trees. One of them was small and dark, in jeans and a polo shirt. He looked far less lost than Kit and Ponch. His progress was more an amble than a wander—unlike that of the final figure.

That last figure was tall and looked human. He was slender, well-built, and extremely handsome. Nonetheless, Nita couldn’t help but shudder at the sight of the Fairest and Fallen, once the greatest and most senior of the Powers that Be, the Lone Power Itself, as It passed by at a distance—looking, in the dark suit he was wearing, like a businessman lost in a strange city and doomed to wander endlessly from street to street because he was too proud to ask for directions.

The shudder passed, though. Nita’s anger was still running high enough to wash it out and leave her mind clear.
All right,
she thought.
Nothing had has happened yet. Let’s think about what to do.

And then something spoke her word in the air.
Let’s
…?

Nita’s head jerked up as he looked for the word’s source, and her hand went to her bracelet again. A second later she was holding the linac weapon, ready to discharge.

I am on errantry,
she thought, glancing around,
and I greet you. Wherever you are
…

I
am
errantry,
the Silence said.

Nita held very still. There was something familiar about that voice, though it wasn’t a voice as such.

Then she remembered her earlier thought. “The Silence told me about that,” the clown-Darryl had said to her.

You are the manual,
Nita thought.
Darryl’s version of it.

The Silence whispered agreement.

Right,
Nita said, lowering the weapon again.
Sorry, you startled me. How can I hear you now? I couldn’t before.

You are fully inside him now, because you have the heart.

Nita wondered about that phrasing, and then smiled. The heart of Darryl’s universe: the kernel.
Yes, I do,
she said.
Now all I have to do is figure out what to do with it.

He’ll know. He has full access now, as you’ve discovered.

Nita nodded and watched the four figures walking among the trees for a few minutes, while looking things over, assessing where the weak point in this scenario might be. That was how she saw something start to happen, something that initially scared her—an encounter that she normally would have done anything to prevent. The Lone Power in Its dark majesty came striding down between the mirrored pillars, to Nita’s eye looking very much like someone who’s trying to act like he knows where he’s going when he doesn’t. Toward It, ambling, unhurried, maybe even unseeing, came Kit and Ponch. Nita sucked in her breath and lifted the linac weapon into an aiming line, pointing it at the Lone One.

She watched with profound unease as Kit and the Lone Power got closer and closer to each other. They were no more than a few paces apart when the Lone One made a single sudden move.

It looked at Itself in a mirror as It passed, and smiled faintly. And Kit walked right on by It, unnoticing, unnoticed.

Nita had to just stand there for a few moments, calming herself down, nearly lost in admiration at the sheer power of the otherworld Darryl had created.
It’s like that fairy tale about the guy who does some magic creature a good turn,
she thought,
and as a reward it gives him a bag that nothing can get out of The guy lives a bad life, and when the devil comes for him, he tricks it into the bag, and it’s stuck there till he lets it out.
But in this case, Darryl was in the bag, too—and apparently thought this a reasonable price to pay to keep part of the Lone Power out of circulation for… How
long? Weeks, months at a time. And how much longer? Years? A whole life?

Carl had been completely right.
If that’s not a saint,
Nita thought,
I don’t know what is.

I need to get them out of here,
she said to the Silence.

You will have to break this paradigm,
the Silence said.
Break the mirrors. That will release them. But it will also release the Lone Power back into Its full potency.

For just a breath of time, Nita weighed the pros and cons of the problem.
Keeping It stuck in here, even just a fragment of It, couldn’t be a bad thing.

But keeping Kit here as well, and Ponch? And Darryl?

The price was too high.
Especially,
Nita thought, putting aside her personal concerns for the moment,
in Darryl’s case.

Nita sighed.
Besides,
she thought,
like in the fairy tale, the Powers That Be will make them let the devil out of the bag
eventually
. It’s still one of the Powers, part of the world. Keep the Lone Power in here forever and It’ll never be able to change
…

Nita stuck the linac weapon under her armpit and held it braced there against her side while she reached into her “pocket” again, found that tangle of light, and spent a few careful moments adjusting several of its properties. She altered the universe’s time flow first, so it matched their home universe’s; then made a few additional changes that might come in handy later. When that was done, she put the kernel away again and considered the maze of half-mirrored trees. It was vast, possibly even infinite, but Nita didn’t let herself worry about that. All these mirrors, the Silence whispered to her, were clones of another one. At the center of the maze was the key to the secret, the way out.

We’re short on time here,
Nita said silently.
Tell me.

In her mind’s eye, she saw it.

Nita grinned.
Darryl,
she thought,
you are
brilliant
. You were ready to do this yourself if you could figure out a way not to need this trap any more. And since now you won’t—

She unlimbered the linac weapon again and started to make her way toward the spot she’d been shown. If she’d tried to search for it by sight, she might have passed it many times. But she closed her eyes again, so as not to be bewildered by the reflections, and found it the way the Silence showed her—by walking slowly, bumping into things sometimes, feeling her way. Once she bumped into a tall shape that burned her to be near. “Excuse me,” she said to the Lone Power, and slipped on past It toward the heart of the maze.

It should be near here, shouldn’t it?
Nita thought.

You’re close. Keep going
…

She walked now through the darkness behind her eyes, slowly, taking her time. A few minutes later Nita came to the place she’d been looking for, and opened her eyes. They’d been closed so long now that she had to blink a little in the light as she looked at the one mirror—among however many uncounted millions in that place—that had no reflection in it at all, not even of any other mirror. This one was a plain bathroom mirror about three feet by two, hanging on a taller mirror-pillar and held in a steel frame—one that probably had a medicine cabinet behind it in the real world. Nita walked up to the rectangular mirror and waved at it, then jumped up and down in front of it. In the mirror, nothing showed at all.

That’s how it’s supposed to be with vampires,
Nita thought, intrigued. But, here, the mirrors themselves were vampiric, sucking up fragments of personality, snatches of conversation, the glances of eyes, leaving the originals devoid of words and glances afterward. Nita once more shook her head in admiration. Darryl had done a fantastic job constructing this trap. Even the Lone One, now confined in this constructed world, was vulnerable to it—slowly losing moment after moment of Its vast existence into the mirrored waste, being worn down by the forces that had been wearing away at Darryl since his Ordeal began.

Okay,
Nita thought.
Here we go.
The one thing she made certain of was that her other weapons were all ready to use as soon as she was finished with the linac.
I’ll only get one shot with this,
she thought.
If it’s a good one, all I have to worry about is what’s handy to use next, when all hell breaks loose
…

Nita glanced around her to make sure no one was about to come wandering through one of the many openings of the maze that led into this central area. Then she lifted the linac weapon again, narrowed her eyes, took careful aim at the bathroom mirror, and fired.