(It hurts to hold!) Kit shut the book hurriedly and held it out to Fred for him to check, for externally it looked no different from any other book there. (Is this what we're looking for?)
Fred's faint glimmer went out like a blown candle flame with the nearness of the book. (The darkness—it blinds—)
Kit bundled the book into his backpack and rubbed his hands on his jacket. (Now if we can just get out of here...)
"Oh, come on, Mike," the voice was saying in the other office. "Don't get cute with me. I had an incident on top of one of my buildings. One of my favorite constructs got shot up and the site stinks of wizardry. Your brand, moonlight and noon-forged metal." The voice of the handsome young man in the three-piece suit was still pleasant enough, but Nita, peering around the edge of the door, saw his face going hard and sharp as the edge of a knife. He swiveled around in his chair again to look out the window at that thin plume of ascending smoke, and Nita waved Kit past the door, then scuttled after him herself. "That's a dumb question to be asking me, Michael. If I knew, would I tell you where the bright Book was? And how likely is it that I know at all? You people keep such close tabs on it, at least that's what I hear. Anyway, if it's not read from every so often, don't I go ffft! like everything else?—You're absolutely right, that's not a responsive answer. Why should I be responsive, you're not being very helpful—"
Kit and Nita peeked back into the hall. Fred floated up to hang between them. (I get a feeling—) Kit started to say, but the sudden coldness in the voice of the man on the phone silenced him.
"Look, Mike, I've had about enough of this silliness. The Bright Powers got miffed because I wanted to work on projects of my own instead of playing follow the leader like you do, working from their blueprints instead of drawing up your own. You can do what you please, but I thought when I settled down in this little pittance of a Universe that They would let me be and let me do things my way. They said They didn't need me when They threw me out—well, I've done pretty well without Them, too. Maybe They don't like that, because now all of a sudden I'm getting interference. You say this operative isn't one of your sweetness-and-light types? Fine. Then you won't mind if when I catch him, her, or it, I make his stay interesting and permanent. Whoever's disrupting my status quo will wish he'd never been born, spawned, or engendered. And when you see the rest of Them, you tell Them from me that—Hello? Hello?"
The phone slammed down. There was no sound for a few seconds. "Akthanath," the young man's voice finally said into that silence, "someone's soul is going to writhe for this."
The slow cold of the words got into Nita's spine. She and Kit slipped around the door and ran for it, down the hall and into the elevator. "He's playing it close to the chest," that angry voice floated down the hall to them. "I don't know what's going on. The Eldest still has it safe?—Good, then see that guards are mounted at the usual accesses. And have Garm send a pack of his people backtime to the most recent gate opening. I want to know which universe these agents are coming from."
In the elevator, Kit whipped out the antenna and rapped the control panel with it. "Down!"
Doors closed, and down it went. Nita leaned back against one wall of the elevator, panting. Now she knew why that first crowd of perytons had come howling after them on top of the Pan Am Building, but the solution of that small mystery made her feel no better at all. "Kit, they'll be waiting downstairs, for sure."
He bit his lip. "Yeah. Well, we won't be where they think we'll be, that's all. If we get off a couple of floors too high and take the stairs—"
"Right."
"Stop at four," Kit said to the elevator.
The elevator stopped, opened its doors. Kit headed out the door fast and tripped—the elevator had stopped several inches beneath the fourth floor. "Watch your step," the elevator said, snickering.
Kit turned and smacked the open elevator door with his antenna as Nita and Fred got out. "Very funny. You stay here until I give the word. C'mon, let's get out of here!"
They ran down the hall together, found the stairs, and plunged down them. Kit was panting as hard as Nita now. Fred shot down past landing after landing with them, his light flickering as if it were an effort to keep up. "Kit," Nita said, "where are we going to go after we leave this building? We need time, and a place to do the spell to find the bright Book."
Kit sounded unhappy. "I dunno. How about Central Park? If we hid in there—"
"But you saw what it looks like from the top of Pan Am. It's all dark in there, there were things moving—"
"There's a lot of room to hide. Look, Nita, if I can handle the machines here, it's a good bet you can handle the plants. You're good with plants and live stuff, you said."
She nodded reluctantly. "I guess we'll find out how good."
They came to the last landing, the ground floor. Nita pushed the door open a crack and found that they were almost directly across from the green lobby and the elevators.
(What's the situation?) Kit said silently.
(They're waiting.) Six perytons—black-coated, brown-coated, one a steely gray—were sitting or standing around the middle elevator with their tongues hanging out and looks of anticipation and hunger in their too-human eyes.
(Now?) Fred said, sounding eager.
(Not yet. We may not need a diversion, Fred.) "Go!" he whispered then in the Speech. The antenna in his hand sparked and sputtered with molten light, and Kit pressed close behind Nita. (Watch them!)
There was no bell, but even if there had been one, the sound of it and of the elevator doors opening would have been drowned out in snarls as the perytons leaped in a body into the elevator. The moment the perytons were out of sight, Nita pushed the door open and headed for the one to the garage. It stuck and stung her as the dark Book had; she jerked her hand away from it. Kit came up behind her and blasted it with the antenna, then grabbed it himself. This time it came open. They dashed through and Kit sealed the door behind them.
No one was in the garage, but a feeling was growing in the air as if the storm of rage they'd heard beginning upstairs was about to break over their heads. Kit raised the antenna again, firing a line of hot light that zapped the ceiling-mounted controls of the delivery door. With excruciating slowness the door began to rumble upward. (Now?) Fred said anxiously as they ran toward it.
(No, not yet, just—)
They bent over double, ducked underneath the opening door, and ran up the driveway. It was then that the perytons leaped at them from both sides, howling, and Nita grabbed for her wand and managed one slash with it, yelling, "Now, Fred! Now!"
All she saw clearly was the peryton that jumped at her, a huge, blue-eyed, brindled she-wolf, as the rowan wand spat silver moonfire and the peryton fell away screaming. Then came the explosion, and it hurled both her and Kit staggering off to their right. The street shook as if lightning struck, and part of the front of the dark building was demolished in a shower of shattered plate glass as tons and tons and tons of red bricks came crashing down from somewhere to fill the street from side to side, burying sidewalks and perytons and doors and the delivery bay twenty feet deep.
Nita picked herself up. A few feet away Kit was doing the same, and Fred bobbed over to them as an ominous stillness settled over everything. (How was I?) Fred asked, seeming dazed but pleased.
"Are you all right?" Kit asked.
(I'm alive, but my gnaester will never be the same,) Fred said. (You two?)
"We're fine," Kit said.
"And I think we're in trouble," Nita added, looking at the blocked street. "Let's get going!"
They ran toward Fifth Avenue, and the shadows took them.
Contractual Magic:
AN INTRODUCTION
A FOUR-FOOT-HIGH wall ran down the west side of Fifth Avenue, next to a sidewalk of gray hexagonal paving stones. Nita and Kit crouched behind it, just inside Central Park, under the shadows of barren-branched trees, and tried to catch their breath. Fred hung above them, watching both Fifth Avenue an
d Sixty-fourth Street for signs of pursuit.
Nita leaned against the dirty wall, careless of grime or roughness or the pigeon droppings that streaked it. She was scared. All through her life, the one thing she knew she could always depend on was her energy—it never gave out. Even after being beaten up, she always sprang right back. But here and now, when she could less afford exhaustion than she had ever been able to in her life, she felt it creeping up on her. She was even afraid to rest, for fear it would catch up with her quicker. But her lungs were burning, and it felt so good to sit still, not have death or something worse chasing her. And there was another spell to be cast....
If I'd known I was going to get into a situation like this, she thought, would I ever have picked that book up at all? Would. I have taken the Oath? Then she shook her head and tried to think about something else, for she got an inkling of the answer, and it shocked her. She had always been told that she wasn't brave. At least that's what Joanne and her friends had always said: Can't take a dare, can't take a joke, crybaby, crybaby. We were only teasing....
She sniffed and rubbed her eyes, which stung. "Did you find the spell?"
Kit had been paging through his wizards' manual. Now he was running a finger down one page, occasionally whispering a word, then stopping himself to keep from using the Speech aloud. "Yeah. It's pretty simple." But he was frowning.
"What's the matter?"
Kit slumped back against the wall, looked over at her. "I keep thinking about what—you know who—was talking about on the phone."
"Sounded like he was hiding something."
"Uh-huh. They know where the bright Book is, all right. And somebody's watching it. Whoever the 'Eldest' is. And now there're going to be more guards around it."
"'The usual accesses,' he said. Kit, there might be an unusual access, then."
"Sure. If we had any idea where the thing was hidden."
"Won't the spell give us a vision, a location, like the last one?"
"No. It's a directional." Kit dropped his hands wearily on the book in his lap, sighed, looked over at Nita. "I don't know ... I just don't get it."
"What?" She rolled the rowan wand between her hands, watching the way its light shone between her fingers and through the skin.
"He didn't look evil. Or sound that way, at least not till right at the end there."
(The Snuffer was always glorious to look at before it scorned the light,) Fred said. (And it kept the beauty afterward—that's what the stars always used to say. That's one reason it's dangerous to deal with that one. The beauty ... seduces.) Fred made a small feeling of awe and fear. (What a blaze of darkness, what a flood of emissions. I was having a hard time keeping my composure in there.)
"Are you all right now?"
(Oh yes. I was a little amazed that you didn't perceive the power burning around the shell he was wearing. Just as well—you might have spoken to him, and everything would have been lost. That one's most terrible power, they say, is his absolute conviction that he's right in what he does.)
"He's not right, then?" Kit asked.
(I don't know.)
"But," Nita said, confused, "if he's fighting with ... with Them ... with the ones who made the bright Book, isn't he in the wrong?"
(I don't know,) Fred said again. (How am I supposed to judge? But you're wizards, you should know how terrible a power belief is, especially in the wrong hands—and how do you tell which hands are wrong? Believe something and the Universe is on its way to being changed. Because you've changed, by believing. Once you've changed, other things start to follow. Isn't that the way it works?)
Nita nodded as Fred looked across the dark expanse of Central Park. The branches of trees were knotted together in tangled patterns of strife. Ivy strangled what it climbed. Paths were full of pitfalls; copses clutched themselves full of threat and darkness. Shadows moved secretively through shadows, making unnerving noises. (This is what—he—believes in,) Fred said sadly, (however he justifies the belief.)
Nita could find nothing to say. The wordless misery of the trees had been wearing at her ever since she set foot inside the wall. All the growing things there longed for light, though none of them knew what it was; she could feel their starved rage moving sluggishly in them, slow as sap in the cold. Only in one place was their anger muted—several blocks south, at Fifth and Central Park South, where in her own New York the equestrian statue of General Sherman and the Winged Victory had stood. Here the triumphant rider cast in black bronze was that handsome young man they had seen in the black glass building, his face set in a cold proud conqueror's smile. The creature he rode was a skull-faced eight-legged steed, which the wizards' manual said brought death with the sound of its hooves. And Victory with her palm branch was changed to a grinning Fury who held a dripping sword. Around the statue group the trees were silent, not daring to express even inarticulate feelings. They knew their master too well.
Nita shook her head and glanced at Kit, who was looking in the same direction. "I thought it'd be fun to know the Mason's Word and run around bringing statues to life," he said unhappily, "but somehow I don't think there's any statue here I'd want to use the Word on... You ready? We should start this."
"Yeah."
The spell was brief and straightforward, and Nita turned to the right page in her manual and drew the necessary circle and diagram. Kit got the dark Book out of his backpack and dropped it in the middle of the circle. Nita held up her wand for light. They began to recite the spell.
It was only three sentences long, but by the end of the first sentence Nita could feel the trees bending in close to watch—not with friendly, secretive interest, as in her first spell with Kit, but in hungry desperation. Even the abstract symbols and words of the Speech must have tasted of another Universe where light was not only permitted, but free. The rowan wand was blazing by the end of the second sentence, maybe in reaction to being so close to something of the dark powers, and Nita wondered whether she should cover it up to keep them from being noticed. But the spell held her immobile as usual. For another thing, the trees all around were leaning in with such piteous feelings of hunger that she would as soon have eaten in front of starving children and not offered them some of what she had. Branches began to toss and twist, reaching down for a taste of the light. Nita and Kit finished the spell.
Kit reached right down to pick up the dark Book, which was as well, for immediately after the last word of the spell was spoken it actually hitched itself a little way along the ground, southward. Kit could only hold it for a moment before stuffing it back into his backpack. It no longer looked innocent. It burned, both to touch and to look at. Even when Kit had it hidden away and the backpack slung on, neither of them felt any easier. It was as if they were all now visible to something that was looking eagerly for them.
"Let's get out of here," Kit said, so subdued that Nita could hardly hear him. Nita stood and laid a hand against the trunk of the nearest tree, a consoling gesture. She was sorry she couldn't have left them more light. (I wish there was something I could do,) she said silently. But no answer came back. These trees were bound silent, like the car Kit had tended.
She rejoined Kit, who was looking over the wall. "Nothing," he said. Together they swung over the dropping-streaked stone and hurried down Fifth Avenue, crossing the street to get a safe distance between them and the strange cries and half-seen movements of the park. "Straight south?" Nita said.
"Pretty nearly. It's pushing straight that way on my back. The bright Book looked like it was way downtown, didn't it, in that spell?"
"Uh-huh. The financial district, I think." She gulped. It was a long way to walk—miles—even without having to worry about someone chasing you.
"Well, we'd better hurry," Kit said. He paused while they both stopped at the corner of Fifth and Sixty-first. When they were across, he added, "What gets me is that he's so sure that we're interference from the bright side. We haven't done anything yet."
"Huh," Nita sa
id, gently scornful. "Sure we haven't. And anyway, whaddaya mean we aren't 'interference from the bright side'? You were the one who said we'd been had."
Kit mulled this over as they approached Sixtieth. "Well ... maybe. If they know about us, do you think they'll send help?"
"I don't know. I get the feeling that maybe we are the help."
"Well, we're not dead yet," Kit said, and peered around the corner of Sixtieth and Fifth—and then jumped back, pale with shock. "We're dead," he said, turned around, and began running back the way they had come, though he limped doing it. Nita looked around that corner just long enough to see what he had seen—a whole pack of big yellow cabs, thundering down Sixtieth. The one in front had a twisted fender that stuck out slightly on one side, a jagged piece of metal. She turned and ran after Kit, frantic. "Where can we hide?"
"The buildings are locked here, too," Kit said from up ahead. He had been trying doors. "Fred, can you do something?"
(After that last emission? So soon?) Fred's thought was shaken. (It's all I can do to radiate light. I need time to recover.)
"Crud! Kit, the park, maybe the, trees'll slow them down."
They both ran for the curb, but there was no time. Cabs came roaring around the corner from Sixtieth, and another pack of them leaped around the corner of Sixty-first and hurtled down Fifth toward them; they would never make it across the street.
Kit grabbed for his antenna, and Nita yanked out the wand, but without much hope—it hadn't worked that well on the helicopter. The cabs slowed, closed in from both sides, forming a half-circle with Kit and Nita and Fred at the center, backing them against the wall of a dingy building. The cordon tightened until there were no gaps, and one cab at each side was up on the sidewalk, blocking it. No matter where Nita looked, all she saw were chromed grilles like gritted teeth, hungry headlights staring. One of the cabs shouldered forward, its engine snarling softly. The jagged place at one end of its front fender wore a brown discoloration. Not rust—Kit's blood, which it had tasted. Kit lifted the antenna, the hand that gripped it shaking.