by Диана Дуэйн
The wind was rising, not just a night breeze off the East River, but a chill wind with a hint of that other place's coldness to it. Kit unslung his pack as drew in close, and by his light Kit brought out the Book of Night with. The darkness of its covers shone, steadying Kit's hands, making Fred seern to burn brighter. Kit and Nita sat gasping for breath, staring at each other. ' rn out of ideas," Kit said. "I think we're going to have to read from this to keep the city the way it should be. We can't just let him change things until he catches us. Buildings are one thing; but what happens to people after that black hits them?" "And it might not stop here either," Nita said between gasps, thinking of her mother and father and Dairine, of the quiet street where they lived, the garden, the rowan, all warped and darkened — if they would survive at all.
Her eyes went up to the Moon shining white and full between the shifting branches. All around them she could feel the trees stirring in that new, strange, cold wind, whispering uneasily to one another. It was so good to be in a place where she could hear the growing things again. The idea came. "Kit," she said hurriedly, "that dark was moving pretty fast. If we're going to read from the Book we may need something to buy us time, to hold off the things that'll come with it, the perytons and the cabs."
"We're out of Lotuses," Kit said, his voice bleak.
"I know. But look where we are! Kit, this is Central Park! You know how many trees there are in here of the kinds that went to the Battle in the old days? They don't forget." He stared at her. "What can they—"
"The Book makes everything work better, doesn't it? There's a spell that— I'll do it, you'll see. But you've got to do one too, it's in your specialty group. The Mason's Word, the long version—" "To bring stone or metal to life." He scrubbed the last tears out of his eyes and managed ever so slight and slow a smile. "There are more statues within screaming distance of this place—" "Kit," Nita said, "how loud can you scream?" "Let's find out."
They both started going through their manuals in panicky haste. Far away on the east side, lessened by all the buildings and distance that lay between, but still much too clear, there was a single, huge, deep-pitched clang, an immense weight of metal hitting the ground with stone- shattering force. Fred hobbled a little in the air, nervously. (How long do you think—) "He'll be a while, Fred," Kit said, sounding as if he hoped it would be a long while. "He doesn't like to run; it's beneath his dignity. But I think—' He broke off for a moment, reading down a page and forming the syllables or the Mason's Word without saying them aloud. "I think we're going to have a few friends who'll do a little running for us."
He stood up, and Fred followed him, staying close to light the page. "Nita, hand me the Book." She passed it up to him, breaking off her own frantic л reading for a moment to watch. "It'll have to be a scream," he said as if himself. "The more of them hear me, the more help we get."
Kit took three long breaths and then shouted the Word at the top of 1 lungs, all twenty-seven syllables of it without missing a one. The sound be-1 impossibly more than the yell of a twelve-year-old as the Book seized the sound and the spell together and flung them out into the city night. Nita had to hold her ears. Even when it seemed safe to uncover them again, the echoes bounced back from buildings on all sides and would not stop. Kit stood there amazed as his voice rang and ricocheted from walls blocks away. "Well," he said, "they'll feel the darkness, they'll know what's happening. I think."
"My turn," Nita said, and stood up beside Kit, making sure of her place. Her spell was not a long one. She fumbled for the rowan wand, put it in the hand that also held her wizards' manual, and took the bright Book from Kit. "1 hope—" she started to say, but the words were shocked out of her as the feeling that the Book brought with it shot up her arm. Power, such sheer joyous power that no spell could fail, no matter how new the wizard was to the Art, Here, under moonlight and freed at last from its long restraint, the Book was more potent than even the dark rider who trailed them would suspect, and that potency raged to be free. Nita bent her head to her manual and read the spell.
Or tried to. She saw the words, the syllables, and spoke the Speech, but the moonfire falling on the Book ran through her veins, slid down her throat, and turned the words to song more subtle than she had ever dreamed of, burned behind her eyes and showed her another time, when another will had voiced these words for the first time and called the trees to battle.
All around her, both now and then, the trees lifted their arms into the wind, breathed the fumes of the new-old Earth and breathed out air that men could use; they broke the stone to make ground for their children to till and fed the mold with themselves, leaf and bough, and generation upon generation. They knew to what end their sacrifice would come, but they did it anyway, and they would do it again in the Witherer's spite. They were doing it now. Oak and ash and willow, birch and alder, elm and maple, they teit the darkness in the wind that tossed their branches and would not stand still for it. The ground shook all around Nita, roots heaved and came free— "rst the trees close by, the counterparts of the trees under whicb she and Kit and Fred had sheltered in the dark otherworld. White oak, larch, twisted Crabapp]e, their leaves glittering around the edges with the flowering radiance of the rowan wand, they lurched and staggered as they came rootloose, arld then crowded in around Kit and Nita and Fred, whispering with wind, Joking a protecting circle through which nothing would pass but moonlight, ne effect spread out and away from Nita, though the spell itself was fin-ned, and that relentless power let her sag against one friendly oak, gasping. ror yards, for blocks, as far as she could see through the trunks of the trees * crowded close, branches waved green and wild as bushes and vines and hundred-year monarchs of the park pulled themselves out of the ground and moved heavily to the defense. Away to the east, the clangor of metal hooves and the barks and howls of the dark rider's pack were coming closer. The trees waded angrily toward the noise, some hobbling along on top of the ground, some wading through it, and just as easily through sidewalks and stone walls. In a few minutes there was a nearly solid palisade of living wood between Kit and Nita and Fred and Fifth Avenue. Even the glare of the street lights barely made it through the branches.
Kit and Nita looked at each other. "Well," Kit said reluctantly, "I guess we can't put it off any longer."
Nita shook her head. She moved to put her manual away and was momentarily shocked when the rowan wand, spent, crumbled to silver ash in her hand. "So much for that," she said, feeling unnervingly naked now that her protection was gone. Another howl sounded, very close by, and was abruptly cut off in a rushing of branches as if a tree had fallen on something on purpose. Nita fumbled in her pocket and pulled out a nickel. "Call it," she said. "Heads."
She tossed the coin, caught it, slapped it down on her forearm. Heads. "Crud," she said, and handed the bright Book to Kit.
He took it uneasily, but with a glitter of excitement in his eye. "Don't worry," he said. "You'll get your chance."
"Yeah, well, don't hog it." She looked over at him and was amazed to see him regarding her with some of the same worry she was feeling. From outside the fence of trees came a screech of brakes, the sound of a long skid, and then a great splintering crashing of metal and smashing of glass as an attack-ing cab lost an argument with some tree standing guard. Evidently reinforcements from that other, darker world were arriving.
"I won't," Kit said, "You'll take it away from me and keep reading if—
He stopped, not knowing what might happen, Nita nodded. "Fred," she said, "we may need a diversion. But save yourself till the last minute."
fl will. Kit—) The spark of light hung close to him for a moment. (Be careful.) Suddenly, without warning, every tree around them shuddered as if Vl°" lently struck. Nita could hear them crying out in silent anguish, and cried out in terror herself as she felt what they felt — a great numbing cold that smote at the heart like an axe. Kit, beside her, sat frozen with it, aghast. Fred went dim with shock. (Not again!) he said, his voice fain
t and horrified. (Not here, where there's so much life!)
"The Sun," Nita whispered. "He put out the Sun!" Starsnuffer, she thought. That tactic's worked for him before. And if the Sun is out, pretty soon there won't be moonlight to read by, and he can—
Kit stared up at the Moon as if at someone about to die, "Nita, how long jo we have?" "Eight minutes, maybe a little more, for light to get here from the Sun. gight minutes before it runs out "
Kit sat down hurriedly, laid the bright Book in his lap, and opened it. The light of the full Moon fell on the glittering pages. This time the print was not vague as under the light of Nita's wand. It was clear and sharp and dark, as easily read as normal print in daylight. The Book's covers were fading, going clear, burning with that eye-searing transparency that Nita had seen about Kit and herself before. The whole Book was hardly to be seen except for its printing, which burned in its own fashion, supremely black and clear, but glistening as if the ink with which the characters were printed had moonlight trapped in them too. "Here's an index," Kit whispered, using the Speech now. "/think — the part about New York—"
Yes, Nita thought desperately, as another cab crashed into the trees and finished itself. And what then? What do we do about— She would not finish the thought, for the sound of those leisurely, deadly hoofbeats was getting closer, and mixing with it were sirens and the panicked sound of car horns. She thought of that awful dark form crossing Madison, kicking cars aside, crushing what tried to stop it, and all the time that wave of blackness wash-ing alongside, changing everything, stripping the streets bare of life and light. And what about the Sun? The Earth will freeze over before long, and he'll have the whole planet the way he wants it— Nita shuddered. Cold and darkness and nothing left alive — a storm-broken, ice-locked world, full of twisted machines stalking desolate streets forever., .
Kit was turning pages, quickly but gently, as if what he touched was a live thing. Perhaps it was. Nita saw him pause between one page and the next, holding one bright-burning page draped delicately over his fingers, then let-ting it slide carefully down to He with the others he'd turned. "Here," he whispered, awed, delighted. He did not look up to see what Nita saw, the wave of darkness creeping around them, unable to pass the tree-wall, passing onward, surrounding them so that they were suddenly on an island of grass in a sea of wrestling naked tree limbs and bare-seared dirt and rock. "Here—"
He began to read, and for all her fear Nita was lulled to stillness by wonder. Kit's voice was that of someone discovering words for the first time arter a long silence, and the words he found were a song, as her spell to free the trees had seemed, She sank deep in the music of the Speech, hearing the story told in what Kit read.
Kit was invoking New York, calling it up as one might call up a spirit; and °°edient to the summons, it came. The skyline came, unsmirched by any 'ackness — a crown of glittering towers in a smoky sunrise, all stabbing points n
The iron hooves paused. For an awful moment there was no sound; howls and screeching tires fell silent. Then metal began to smash on stone in a thunderous canter, right across the street, and with a horrible screeching neigh the rider's iron steed smashed into the tree-wall, splintering wood, bowing the palisade inward. Nita wanted to shut her mind against the screams of the trees broken and flung aside in that first attack, but she could not- All around her the remaining trees sank their roots deep in determination, but even they knew it would be hopeless. There were enough cracks in the wall that Nita could see the black steed rearing back for another smash with its front four hooves, the rider smiling, a cold cruel smile that made Nita shudder. One more stroke and the wall would be down. Then there would be wildfire in the park, Kit, oblivious, kept reading. The iron mount rose to its full height. "Fred," Nita whispered, "I think you'd better—" The sound of heavy hoofbeats, coming from behind them, from the park side, choked her silent. He has a twin brother, Nita thought. We are dead.
But the hoofbeats divided around the battered circle of trees and poured past in a storm of metal and stone, the riders and steeds marble pale or bronze dark, every equestrian statue in or near Central Park gathered together into an impossible cavalry that charged past Nita and Kit and Fred and into the street to give battle. Perytons and cabs screamed as General sherman from Grand Army Plaza crashed in among them with sword raised, closely followed by loan of Arc in her armor, and Simon Bolivar and General fi* aan Martin right behind. King Wladislaw was there in medieval scale mail, galloping on a knight's armored charger; Don Quixote was there, urging poor broken-down Rosinante to something faster than a stumble and shouting weats against the whole breed of sorcerers; Teddy Roosevelt was there, cracking off shot after shot at the cabs as his huge horse stamped them into he pavement; El Cid Campeador rode there, his bannered lance striking
/> Own one peryton after another. Behind all these came a wild assortment of Matures, pouring past the tree circle and into the street—eagles, bears, huge °§s, a hunting cat, a crowd of doughboys from the first World War with aXoneted rifles—all the most warlike of the nearby statuary—even some not Warlike, such as several deer and the Ugly Duckling. From down Fifth enue came striding golden Prometheus from his pedestal in Rockefeller er)ter, bearing the fire he brought for mortals and using it in bolt after bolt to melt down cabs where they stood; and from behind him, with a stony A like the sky falling, the great white lions from the steps of the Public Librarv leaped together and threw themselves upon the iron steed and its dark rider For all its extra legs, the mount staggered back and sideways, screaming (n a horrible parody of a horse's neigh and striking feebly at the marble claws that tore its flanks.
Under cover of that tumult of bowls and crashes and the clash of arms Nita grabbed Kit to pull him away from the tree-wall, behind another row of trees. She half expected her hands to go right through him, he was becoming so transparent. Unresisting, he got up and followed her, still holding the Book open, still reading as if he couldn't stop, or didn't want to, still burning more and more fiercely with the inner light of the bright Book's power. "Fred," she said as she pushed Kit down onto the ground again behind a looming old maple, "I've got to do this now. I may not be able to do anything else. If a diversion's needed—"
(I'll do what's necessary,) Fred said, his voice sounding as awed and frightened as Nita felt at the sight of what Kit was becoming. (You be careful too.)
She reached out a hand to Fred. He bobbed close and settled at the tip of one finger for a moment, perching there delicately as a firefly, energy touch-ing matter for a moment as if to reconfirm the old truth that they were just different forms of the same thing. Then he lifted away, turning his attention out to the street, to the sound of stone and metal wounding and being wounded; and in one quick gesture Nita grabbed the Book of Night with Moon away from Kit and bent her head to read.
