by Диана Дуэйн
The cold, proud, erect figure on the black mount raised what it held in its right hand, a steel rod burning dark and skewing the air about it as the dark Book had. "You have stolen something of mine," said a voice as cold as space, using the Speech with icy perfection and hating it. "No one steals from me. "
The bolt that burst from the rod was a red darker than the Eldest's fiery breath. Nita did not even try to use the rowan wand in defense — as well try to use a sheet of paper to stop a laser beam. But as she and Kit leaped aside, the air around them went afire with sudden clarity, as if for a moment the darkness inherent in it was burned away. The destroying bolt went awry, struck up sideways and blasted soot-stained blocks out of the facing of Grand Central. And in that moment the Lotus screamed wild defiance and leaped down Forty-second at the rider and his steed.
"NO!" Kit screamed. Nita grabbed him, pulled him toward the doors. He wouldn't come, wouldn't turn away as the baying perytons scattered, as the Lotus hurtled into the forefront of the pack,
flinging bodies about. It leaped up at the throat of the iron beast, which reared on four hooves and raised the other four and with them smashed the Lotus flat into the street.
The bloom of fire that followed blotted out that end of the street. Kit responded to Nita's pulling then, and together they ran through the doors, UP the ramp that led into Grand Central, out across the floor—
Nita was busy getting the rowan wand out, had gotten ahead of Kit, who couldn't move as fast because he was crying — but it was his hand that shot put and caught her by the collar at the bottom of the ramp, almost choking
Jr. and kept her from falling into the pit. There was no floor. From one side the main concourse to the other was a great smoking crevasse, the floor lower levels and tunnels beneath all split as if with an axe. Ozone smell a cinder smell and the smell of tortured steel breathed up hot in their c^s, while from behind, outside, the thunder of huge hooves on concrete the howls of perytons began again, clow them severed tunnels and stairways gaped dark. There was no seeing the bottom — it was veiled in fumes and soot, underlit by the blue arcs of shorted-out third rails and an ominous deep red, as if the earth itself had broken open and was bleeding lava. The hooves clanged closer.
Nita turned to Kit, desperate. Though his face still streamed with tears, there was an odd, painful calm about it. "I know what to do," he said, his voice saying that he found that strange. He drew the antenna out of his back pocket, and it was just as Nita noticed how strangely clear the air was burning about him that Kit threw the piece of steel out over the smoking abyss. She would have cried out and grabbed him, except that he was watching it so intently. The hoofbeats stopped and were followed by a sound as of iron boots coming down on the sidewalk, immensely heavy, shattering the stone. De-spite her own panic, Nita found she couldn't look away from the falling antenna either. She was gripped motionless in the depths of a spell again, while the power that burned the air clear now poured itself through Kit and into his wizardry. There was something wrong with the way the antenna was falling. It seemed to be getting bigger with distance instead of smaller. It stretched, it grew, glittering as it turned and changed. It wasn't even an antenna any more. Sharp blue light and diffuse red gleamed from flat, polished faces, edges sharp as razors. It was a sword blade, not even falling now, but laid across the chasm like a bridge. The wizardry broke and turned Nita loose. Kit moved away from her and stepped out onto the flat of the blade, fear and pain showing in his face again. "Kit!"
"It's solid," he said, still crying, taking another step out onto the span, holding his arms out for balance as it bent slightly under his weight. "Come on, Nita, it's noon-forged steel, he can't cross it. He'll have to change shape or seal this hole up."
(Nita, come on,) Fred said, and bobbled out across the crevasse, following Kit. Though almost blind with terror, her ears full of the sound of iron-shod feet coming after them, she followed Fred, who was holding a straight course out over the sword blade — followed him, arms out as she might have on a balance beam, most carefully not looking down. This was worse than the bridge of air had been, for that hadn't flexed so terribly under each step she or Kit took. His steps threw her off balance until she halted long enough to take a deep breath and step in time with him. Smoke and the smell or burning floated up around her; the shadows of the dome above the concourse stirred with wicked eyes, the open doors to the train platforms ahead of muttered, their mouths full of hate. She watched the end of the looked straight ahead. Five steps: Kit was off. Three. One— She reached out to him, needing desperately to feel the touch of a hand. He grabbed her arm and pulled her off the bridge just as another bias of black-red fire blew in the doors on the other side of the abyss. Kit said one sharp word in the Speech, and the air went murky around his body again as the Book ceased to work through him. Nita let go, glanced over her shoulder in time to see the sword blade snap back to being an antenna, like a rubber band going back to its right size. It fell into the fuming darkness, a lone glitter, quickly gone.
They ran. Nita could still see in her mind the place where the worldgate was hidden; the Book 's power had burned it into her like a brand. She took the lead, racing down a flight of stairs, around a corner and down another flight, into echoing beige-tiled corridors where Fred and the rowan wand were their only light. Above them they could hear the thunderous rumor of iron footsteps, slow, leisurely, inexorable, following them down. The howls of perytons floated down to them like the voices of lost souls, hungry for the blood and pain they needed to feel alive again.
"Here!" Nita shouted, not caring what might hear, and dodged around a corner, and did what she had never done in all her life before—jumped a subway turnstile. Its metal fingers made a grab for her, but she was too fast for them, and Kit eluded them too, coming right behind. At full speed Nita pounded down the platform, looking for the steps at the end of it that would let them down onto the tracks. She took them three at a time, two leaps, and then was running on cinders again, leaping over ties. Behind her she could hear Kit hobbling as fast as he could on his sore leg, gasping, but keeping up. Fred shot along beside her, pacing her, lighting her way. Eyes flickered in his light—hidebehinds, dun mice, ducking under cover as the three of them went past. Nita slowed and stopped in the middle of the tracks. "Here!" Kit had his manual out already. He found the page by Fred's light, thumped to a stop beside Nita. "Here? In the middle of the—"
"Read! Read!" she yelled. There was more thunder rolling in the tunnel than just the sound of their pursuer's footsteps. Far away, she could hear what had been missing from the other tunnel beneath City Hall; trains. Away "i the darkness, wheels slammed into the tracks they rode—even now the "ils around them were clacking faintly in sympathy, and a slight cool wind breathed against Nita's face. A train was coming. On this track. Kit began the worldgating spell, reading fast. Again the air around them seemed clearer, fresher, as the power of the Book of Night with Moon sei/ed the spell and its sPeaker, used them both. That was when the Starsnuffer's power came down on them. It seemed mPossible that the dank close darkness in which they stood could become ny darker, but it did, as an oppressive blanket of clutching, choking hatred
1 Ov'er them, blanketing everything. The rowan rod's silver fire was smoth-
e
(I — will—not,)Fred said, struggling, angry. (I will—not — go out!) His de-termination was good for a brief flare, like a match being struck. Kit found his voice, managed to get out a couple more words of the spell in Fred's wavering radiance, grew stronger, managed a few more. Nita found that she could breathe again. She clutched the rowan wand, thinking with all her might of the night Liused had given it to her, the clear moonlig
ht shining down between the branches. The wand came alive again. Shadows that had edged forward from the walls of the tunnel fled again. Kit read, hurrying. Two thirds done, Nita thought. If he can just finish—
Far away down the tunnel, there were eyes. They blazed. The headlights of a train, coming down at them in full career. The clack of the rails rose to a rattle, the breeze became a wind, the roar of the train itself echoed not just in the other tunnels, but in this one. Nita got to her feet, facing those eyes down. She would not look away. Fred floated by her shoulder; she gathered him close, perching him by her ear, feeling his terror of the overwhelming darkness as if it were her own but having nothing to comfort him with. Kit, she thought, not daring to say it aloud for fear she should interrupt his concentration. The sound of his words was getting lost in the thunder from above, iron- shod feet, the thunder from below, iron wheels on iron rails.
Suddenly Kit's voice was missing from the melange of thunders. Without warning the worldgate was there, glistening in the light of the rowan wand and Fred and the train howling down toward them — a great jagged soap bubble, trembling with the pressure of sound and air. Kit wasted no time, but leaped through. Fred zipped into the shimmering surface and was gone. Nita made sure of her grip on the rowan wand, took a deep breath, and jumped through the worldgate. A hundred feet away, fifty feet away, the blazing eyes of the train glared at her as she jumped; its horn screamed in delight, anticipating the feel of blood beneath its wheels; sudden thunder rocked the plat' form behind her, black-red fire more sensed than seen. But the rainbow shimmer of the gate broke across her face first. The train roared through the place where she had been, and she heard the beginnings of a cry of frustrated rage as she cheated death, and anger, and fell and fell and fell. — and came down slam on nothing. Or it seemed that way, until opening her eyes a little wider she saw the soot and smog trapped in the hardened air she lay on, the only remnant of her walkway. Kit was already getting up froin his knees beside her, looking out from their little island of air across to the Pan Am Building. Everything was dark, and Nita started to groan, certa" j that something had gone wrong and that the worldgate had simply duropetl them back in the Starsnuffer's world—but no, her walkway was there. Greatly daring, she looked down and saw far below the bright yellow glow of sodium-vapor street lights and red of taillights, City noise, roaring, cacopho-nous and alive, floated up to them. We're back. It worked!
Kit was reading from his wizards' manual, as fast as he had read down in the train tunnel. He stopped and then looked at Nita in panic as she got up. "I can't close the gate!" She gulped. "Then he can follow us ., through… ." In an agony of haste she fumbled her own book out of her pack, checked the words for the air-hardening spell one more time, and began reading herself. Maybe panic helped, for this time the walkway spread itself out from their feet to the roof of the building very fast indeed. "Come on," she said, heading out across it as quickly as she dared. But where will we run to? she thought. He'll come behind, hunting. We can't go home, he might follow. And what'll he do to the city? She reached up to the heliport railing and swung herself over it. Kit fol-lowed, with Fred pacing him. "What're we gonna do?" he said as they headed across the gravel together. "There's no time to call the Senior wizards, wherever they are—or even Tom and Carl. He'll be here shortly."
"Then we'll have to get away from here and find a place to hole up for a little. Maybe the bright Book can help." She paused as Kit spoke to the lock on the roof door, and they ran down the stairs. "Or the manuals might have something, now that we need it." "Yeah, right," Kit said as he opened the second door at the bottom of the stairs, and they ran down the corridor where the elevators were. But he didn't sound convinced. "The park?" "Sounds good."
Nita punched the call button for the elevator, and she and Kit stood there panting; There was a feeling in the air that all hell was about to break loose, and the sweat was breaking out all over Nita because they were going to have to stop it somehow. "Fred," she said, "did you ever hear anything, out where you were, any stories of someone getting the better of you-know-who?" Fred's light flickered uncomfortably as he watched Kit frantically consult-In8 his manual. (Oh, yes,) he said. (I'd imagine that's why he wanted a universe apart to himself—to keep others from getting in and thwarting him. '* used to happen fairly frequently when he went up against life.) rred's voice was too subdued for Nita's liking. "What's the catch?" 'Well … it's possible to win against him. But usually someone dies of >*) Nita gulped again. Somehow she had been expecting something like that. Kit?" 'he elevator chimed. Once inside, Kit went back to looking through his manual. "I don't see anything," he said, sounding very worried. "There's a general-information chapter on him here, but there's not much we don't know already. The only thing he's never been able to dominate was the Book of Night with Moon. He tried — that's what the dark Book was for; he thought by linking them together he could influence the bright Book with it diminish its power. But that didn't work. Finally he was reduced to simply stealing the bright Book and hiding it where no one could get at it. That way no one could become a channel for its power, no one could possibly defeat him… "
Nita squeezed her eyes shut, not sure whether the sinking feeling in her stomach was due to her own terror or the elevator going down. Read from it? No, no. I hope I never have to, Tom's voice said in her mind… Reading it, being the vessel for all that power — I wovldn't want to. Even good can be terribly dangerous.
And that was an Advisory, Nita thought, miserable. There was no doubt about it. One of them might have to do what a mature wizard feared doing: read from the Book itself. "Let me do it," she said, not looking at Kit.
He glanced up from the manual, stared at her. "Bull," he said, and then looked down at the manual again. "If you're gonna do it, I'm gonna do it."
Outside the doors another bell chimed as the elevator slowed to a stop. Kit led the way out across the black stone floor, around the corner to the en-trance. The glass door let them out onto a street just like the one they had walked onto in the Snuffer's otherworld — but here windows had lights in them, and the reek of gas and fumes was mixed with a cool smell of evening and a rising wind, and the cabs that passed looked blunt and friendly. Nita could have cried for relief, except that there was no reason to feel relieved. Things would be getting much worse shortly. Fred, though, felt no such compunctions. (The stars, the stars are back,) he almost sang, flashing with delight as they hurried along.
"Where?" Kit said skeptically. As usual, the glow of a million street lights was so fierce that even the brightest stars were blotted out by it. But Fred was too cheerful to be suppressed.
(They're there, they're there!) he said, dancing ahead of them. (And the Sun is there too. I don't care that it's on the other side of this silly place, 1 can feel — feel—)
His thought cut off so abruptly that Nita and Kit both stopped and glanced over their shoulders. A coldness grabbed Nita's heart and wrung it-The sky, even though clear, did have a faint golden glow to it, city ligW scattered from smog — and against that glow, high up atop the Pan Am Building, a form half unstarred night and half black iron glowered down л them like a statue from a dauntingly high pedestal. Nita and Kit froze like pinned to a card as the remote clear howl of perytons wound through the air.
"He'll just jump down," Nita whispered, knowing somehow that he could do it, But the rider did not leap, not yet. Slowly he raised his arms in summons. One hand still held the steel rod about which the air twisted and writhed as if in pain; as the arm lifted, that writhing grew more violent, more tortured.
And darkness answered the gesture. It flowed forward around the feet of the dark rider's terrible mount, obscuring the perytons peering down over the roof's edge, and poured down the surface of the building like a black fog. What it touched, changed. Where the darkness passed, metal tarnished, glass filmed over or shattered, lighted windows were quenched, went blind. Down all the sides of the building it flowed, black lava burning the brightness ou
t of everything it touched. Kit and Nita looked at each other in despair, knowing what would happen when that darkness spilled out onto the ground. The streets would go desolate and dark, the cabs would stop being friendly; and when all the island from river to river was turned into his domain, the dark rider would catch them at his leisure and do what he pleased with them. And with the bright Book—and with everything else under the sky, perhaps. This was no other-world, frightening but remote. This was their home. If this world turned into that one—
"We're dead," Kit said, and turned to run. Nita followed him. Perhaps out of hope that another Lotus might be waiting innocently at some curbside, the way Kit ran retraced their earlier path. But there was no Lotus — only bright streets, full of people going about their business with no idea of what was about to happen to them, cars honking at one another in cheerful ignorance. Fat men running newsstands and bemused bag-ladies watched Nita and Kit run by as if death and doom were after them, and no one really noticed the determined spark of light keeping pace. They ran like the wind down West Fiftieth, but no Lotus lay there, and around the corner onto r'fth and up to Sixty-first, but the carnage left in the otherworld was not reflected here — the traffic on Fifth ran unperturbed. Gasping, they waited tor a break in it, then ran across, hopped the wall into the park and crouched down beside it as they had in the world they'd left.
