He’s stopped running
, Ponch said suddenly.
“What?” Kit said. “They’ve caught him!”
I’m not sure
, Ponch said.
“Come on!”
They ran the way Darryl had gone. As they ran, something occurred to Kit. The stealth spell hasn’t been working since we got here — otherwise, Darryl wouldn’t have seen me, either. Kit wondered if these places where he kept finding Darryl weren’t just rigorously constructed landscapes of the mind, obeying natural law, but genuine alternate universes, custom-made, the kind of places Nita had been working with to help her mother — the kind of thing Ponch had started creating on his own. Places where even the way wizardry works can be changed—
As Kit ran, he found his endurance wasn’t what it normally would have been. He was tiring. He couldn’t get rid of the sense that, whether real or inside Darryl’s mind, this universe was much farther away than the last one. There was something inherently wearying about this space itself, as if its structure sapped the energy of anyone unfortunate enough to stray into it. Or maybe it was just the noise — the wind, the roaring of the voices outside, getting louder again—
Kit stopped for a moment to readjust the force-field wizardry, then went on again at a dogtrot behind Ponch. “You doing okay?” Kit said.
So far, no problems.
“You feel all right?”
So far…
Ahead of them, dimly, through the blue-smoke swirling of the methane snow, Kit thought he could see the basilisks diving and swooping at something, fluttering at it. Kit couldn’t make out what it was.
Then, as he got a little closer, he could.
Darryl was standing there with his arms up over his eyes, twisting, turning from side to side… and then he stopped. Between one breath and another, he had become encased in what looked like a solid block of ice. The basilisks were scrabbling at it with the claws on their wings, screaming, and the thunder up in the sightless, coldly burning sky beat in the air like a heart, deafening.
Suddenly the basilisks flapped away, up into that blue-white haze, as a shadow approached them out of the blowing snow. Kit gulped and put the laser away in his otherspace pocket as the form became distinct, gathering Its darknesses together out of the snowy air.
The Lone Power came striding up to that block of ice, looking as Kit had seen It a long time ago — like a young-looking human, red-haired, handsome, but with cruel, cold eyes and a smile you did not want to see. It was wearing the same dark suit Kit had seen It wear on his own Ordeal, but this time with a long, black winter coat over it, and a scarf wrapped around Its throat. The Lone One’s eyes were still angry and chill, but right now they also held an oddly weary and annoyed expression that intensified the closer It got to Darryl. A few feet away from the block of ice, It stopped and stood, and put out Its hand, which was suddenly filled with the hilt of a long, blackbladed sword.
The Lone Power stood there in silence for a moment, gazing at Darryl’s silent form with narrowed eyes.
“So it comes to this,” the Lone One said. “For a while, at least, you tried to fight. I’ll give you credit for that. But now you’ve given up. What were you thinking of? That I’d be merciful now, that I’d let you off easy because of your ‘problem’? You should know better. When people give up around me, the poor fools pay the price.” It took a step forward, slow, menacing, savoring the moment. “Not that not giving up helps them, either, of course. Even for those who pass their Ordeals, there’s no escape; I get them later. All they ever manage to do is delay the inevitable.”
A chill, which had nothing to do with the local weather, went down Kit’s back as the Lone Power took another step forward, and another, hefting the sword, lifting it in slow preparation to strike. “In your case, though,” the Lone One said, amused, “there won’t be any further delay. You should never have accepted the power if you weren’t willing to use it. And you weren’t… so now you lose it.”
I can’t stand it, Kit said silently to Ponch.
But I thought Tom said—
I don’t care. I’m not going to just stand here!
Kit had already made sure the shield around him was secure. Now he was paging hurriedly through the manual to a section he looked at fairly often but had very rarely used, the offensive weaponry. It was the Lone One Itself he was going to be dealing with here, so Kit chose a quarklevel dissociation tool — the wizardry equivalent of a low-yield tactical nuke — hooked his “canned” description of himself into it, told the wizardry to take as much of his power as it needed for one good shot, and then swallowed hard once, because this was scary stuff. You ready to get us out of here in a hurry if you have to
? he said to Ponch.
Say the word.
I may not have time—
I‘ll be ready.
Kit took a deep breath — then dumped the stealth spell. He took a step forward, and another, and then walked right up to It, where It stood.
“Fairest and Fallen,” Kit said, trying hard to keep his voice even, “greeting and defiance.”
It didn’t even look up.
Kit stood there breathing hard. “I said, greeting and defiance—”
No answer. The Lone One was intent on Darryl. It lifted that black blade high. Darkness ran down it, sweeping after in a trail as It brought the sword swinging around. Kit swallowed one more time and spoke the first of three words that would activate the dissociator, as the sword struck the middle of that block of methane ice—
— and shattered.
Kit stared.
The Lone Power straightened up from the stroke— and looked, suddenly dumbfounded, at the broken stump of a sword in Its hand. The block of ice wasn’t marred, not even scratched.
If It was astonished, so was Kit. Could it be that the Lone Power can’t see you when you’re in someone else’s Ordeal
? he wondered. But Tom would’ve said something.
Or is this space just the way it is because of Darryl being here? If Mama’s right, if some autistic people have trouble with the concept that other people might be or think differently from them, then maybe nothing It does to Darryl here can hurt him… because the things It does aren’t things he’d do—
Kit looked at the Lone Power, wondering in a scared way what was going through Its mind. It regarded the broken sword for a moment, then flung it furiously away. Where the hilt-shard came down in the blue snow, there was a brief and noisy explosion. But the Lone One ignored that. It put Its hands up against the front of the block of ice and spoke softly to the small shape entombed there.
“Are you really stupid or crazy enough to think I’m just going to walk away?” the Lone Power said, and the menace in Its voice made Kit’s hair stand up all over him. “I have centuries, aeons at my disposal. I can hound you from life to life if I chose, until for the sake of a moment’s peace you beg me to destroy your soul! Is this what your precious Powers gave you your wizardry for? To stand here inactive as a statue, refusing the inevitable? Well, it won’t help you. Coward! You can’t come out the other side of this until you confront me. And you won’t confront me! You’ll just stay in here like the pitiful reject that you are, while outside in reality your darling mother and father grieve over you every day. You’re not being very considerate of them, are you? After everything they’ve gone through? Now you have a chance to stand up, to conquer me, to come out the other side of your power, and you won’t take it.”