Diane Duane - A Wizard Alone

He’s a long way off Nita thought. But he’s here .

The trouble was that he seemed to be all by himself; there didn’t seem to be any indication of Darryl on the radar screen. He might still he by himself , Nita thought. Or if he has found Darryl, then Darryl's perception of his own isolation may have affected Kit so that he thinks he’s still alone .

It didn’t matter. At least now Nita had a direction to walk in.

She spoke the light of the rowan wand back up and spent what seemed like the better part of the next fifteen minutes walking toward Kit. But my time sense may be off, too , Nita thought, pausing briefly at about the fifteen-minute point to check her manual.

She was shocked to find that it was nearly.40. It’s been nearly three hours outside ! she thought.

This is the problem Kit ran up against the other night. Time flow in here is getting strange .

Nita walked faster. After what seemed like another five minutes or so, she started to see something right against the very edge of the dark horizon, like a very faintly seen thread or line of some different color. The closer she got to it, the more distinct it became; it was starting to pick up the light of the rowan wand.

Within a few minutes she found that the line was growing thicker and taller with every step, and brighter, too. Shortly she was close enough to start to make out what it was.

It was a wall. Perfect, white, featureless, stretching away from her — seemingly to infinity — in great curves on either side, the wall towered over Nita as she approached it. A few feet away from it, Nita stopped, bent her neck back to look at it.

It was not a physical thing, she knew, but a representation of some power or force that had been put here to stop any intruder. And there was no telling who had put it here — Darryl, or the Lone Power.

Nita stepped forward and cautiously touched the wall with a fingertip, like someone gingerly testing an electric fence. She could tell immediately that this construction didn’t have anything to do with the Lone Power: There was none of the inimical burn she would have expected. Nothing else happened — no force attacked her — but Nita could tell by the feel of the wall that it was meant to be infinitely obstructive. She could try to levitate over it, but it would simply stretch up and up and up to match the height at which she attacked it; she could try to dig down under it, but it would extend that way, too. The only way to deal with this wall was to go through — if she had time.

Okay

, Nita thought. Let’s see what works .

She said the twelve words of a small-scale antigravity wizardry, wrapped them around the rowan wand, and hung it on the air to give her some light to work by; then turned the charm bracelet on her wrist. One of the charms, looking like a little lasso, was the representation of the lifeline spell.

Touching it, Nita could feel the power feeding down it, and could faintly feel Dairine, in circuit with it back at home.

You okay

? her sister said.

So far. I need some power now.

Take what you need. The wizardry’s fully charged.

Nita held the charm between her fingers and said the two words that released the clamp on the power flow at her end. Her right hand started filling with a hot white glow, the representation of what Dairine’s wizardry was sending her. Nita let it flow, squeezing the power down to compact it a couple of times and make room for more. Finally, after about a minute, she cut off the flow and stepped toward the wall, using pressure of hands and mind and a few sentences in the Speech to shape that power into a small, concentrated explosive charge of wizardry. She pushed it up against the bottom of the wall, like so much plastic explosive, instructing it to vent all its force away from her, and then retreated to a safe distance.

Nita spoke the air in front of her dark, and then said the explosive’s actuator word in the Speech.

The result was a dazzling flash and impact like lightning striking six feet away. Dark though the air had been, Nita still had to shake her head and blink a few times, trying to get rid of the afterimages. When she managed it, she looked up…

… and saw that the wall was standing right where it had been, without so much as a dent in it.

Nita stared. What ?!

The amount of power she’d planted in that explosive had been huge. She felt somehow cheated and really angry at the same time. “Okay,” she said, “no more Miss Nice Girl. Let’s try something a little more emphatic.”

She reached down to the bracelet again and found the charm for the particle-beam accelerator.

As she touched it, the accelerator wizardry sprang into being in her hands, ready to fire — a long, narrow conical shape with a blunt stock. Nita snugged the stock of it up against her shoulder, and carefully took aim again at the base of the wall. She had invested a great deal of energy in this wizardry; now she would see what it was worth—

The world flickered, went abruptly bright. What ? Nita thought.

Don’t shoot

! someone shouted into her mind. It was Dairine.

Nita looked around her in complete confusion. She was lying in bed, aiming the linac weapon at her ceiling.

Oh my god

, Nita thought. She hurriedly lowered the accelerator and let the wizardry relapse. She lay there for a few moments while her pulse got back to normal, and then sat up and looked over at the small figure slumped in the chair by her desk.

“Dairine, what am I doing here? .” Nita whispered.

“Giving me grief, apparently,” Dairine said, looking ragged. “I told you to watch your time. You spent a real long time getting wherever you were going.” She let out a long breath. “And you didn’t find any trace of Kit at all?”

Nita sagged against the pillows again, and shook her head. “I know he was there, but I couldn’t get near him. We’re going to need more power in that thing this time, Dari. Charge it up. I’m going out again.”

Dairine shook her head. “Nita,” she said. “It’s nearly three in the morning. And I’m wrecked. It’s a strain holding that thing open.“ She looked miserable at having to admit such a thing. ”I have to get at least some sleep, because I have to go to school tomorrow morning. Of course , I’d rather blow school off, but I promised Dad. You know I did. You know what’U happen if I don’t go, or if I fall asleep in class.“

Nita was so angry that she had to put her hands over her face to keep from screaming, or otherwise letting Dairine see how she felt. After a few seconds she felt sufficiently in control to uncover her face again.

“Okay,” she said. “You’re right. I have an early morning, too. We’ll try it again tomorrow.” And she let out a long breath. “But thanks, Dair. You did good.”

“Well do better tomorrow,” Dairine said. “We’ll find him then, and get him home. G’night.”

She wandered off toward her room, closing Nita’s door behind her.

Nita lay there for a while more. Kit ? she said silently, out of desperate hope, nothing more.

Of course, no answer came.

She tried to sleep again, normally, but that was impossible for her now. All Nita could do was think about what Kit’s parents must be going through, and wait for six-thirty to come…

The mirrors went on forever.

Kit and Ponch stood in a brittle glory of reflected light. Overhead was a bright gray sky, featureless. All around them, mirrors stood, as many mirrors as trees in a forest, set at a thousand different angles: tall ones, small ones, mirrors that reflected clearly, mirrors that bent the reflection awry; shadowy mirrors, dazzling ones, mirrors reflecting mirrors reflecting mirrors, until the mind that looked at them began to flinch and sicken, hunting something that wasn’t just another reflection of itself.