Free A Wizard Alone New Millennium Edition by Diane Duane

“Where is he, you think?”
    Busy with something? Or maybe hiding?
    Kit thought about that, and about what his mother had said about autistic people who might find the rush of data around them just too intense to bear. “No way to tell till we talk to him.”
    He is here, though. Look! Ponch said. Kit looked where Ponch’s nose pointed. Footsteps led down from the dune-crest, dug in deep where someone had had to dig his heels in to stop sliding, and then had kept on sliding anyway. Down at the bottom of the dune, in the space sheltered from the wind, the footsteps were better preserved, better defined. They reminded Kit of certain footsteps left in the moondust of Tranquillity Base, except that those were now being eroded by micrometeorites. These footsteps were still sharp, and they had a familiar sneaker company’s logo scored across them, one that Armstrong’s and Aldrin’s boot soles had definitely been missing.
    “Weird,” Kit said softly. The footsteps led away across that blazing wilderness, up the next dune and into the unremitting day. “Where’s he going?” Kit said.
    Away from the Other One, Ponch said. Can’t you feel It? It’s here, too. It’s following him. Ponch scented the air. It’s been following him for a long time.
    “Three months?” Kit said.
    I think much longer.
    “How can that be?”
    I don’t know. But Its scent’s strong in Darryl’s neighborhood. No way to mistake it: I’ve smelled it often enough when It’s been chasing after you. Ponch shook himself all over … and this time it had nothing to do with feeling itchy; it was his version of a shudder. He flees—It pursues. Ponch’s nose worked; he looked bemused. And not just here.
    “Then where?”
    I’m not sure. Come on.
    The sand they slid down was more pink than golden. Kit looked at it and thought of the book that Darryl’s teacher had been reading him. “That book was open to a page about the Pyramids,” Kit said.
    Was it? Ponch looked around him as they slid down the dune. If it was, then it’s something he’s seen before. None of this is new.
    The heat from the sun was oppressive. Kit pulled off his parka, rolled it up, and stuck it into his otherspace pocket. Then he and Ponch reached the bottom of the dune and started the climb up the side of the next one. “We could airwalk it…,” Kit said.
    He didn’t, Ponch said. His trail’s down here. For now we need to go the way he went.
    Kit nodded, put his head down to try to keep the wind-whipped sand out of his eyes, and went up the next dune in Ponch’s wake. That way, Ponch said as he came up to the top of the dune.
    Kit looked across the sand, following Ponch’s gaze. Maybe eight or ten miles away, almost obscured by the height of the farther dunes and the haze of sand and dust in the air, a low line of jagged stone rose against the horizon. “Are those hills?” Kit said.
    I think so. He’s there somewhere. Come on.
    Ponch led, and Kit followed. Once or twice, Ponch was certain enough of the trail to let Kit use a transit spell to cover some distance, but more often he insisted on doing it on foot, so Kit simply had to slog after him, for the time being unwilling to use any spells to protect him from the wind and the sand, on the off chance that they would somehow interfere with Ponch’s tracking sense. The sand seemed to get into everything—down Kit’s shirt and up his pants, into the bends of his knees and elbows. It rubbed him raw around the neck and even under his socks. I can barely stand this, Kit thought as he toiled up yet another dune after Ponch. And if I can’t, what’s it doing to Darryl?
    Ponch reached the top of that dune and looked ahead of them. From here the low, jagged hills that had shown earlier near the horizon finally seemed within reach, no more than a few miles away. They looked taller than they had, harsher and more forbidding; they cast long, dark shadows at their feet, under that unforgiving sun, which hadn’t moved