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 and 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 a deadly weariness creeping up on her. She was even afraid to rest for so short a time, 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 to try to get them to stop stinging. “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’ll 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 sighed, then dropped his hands wearily on the book in his lap and 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 Nita’s 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 tall and 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 clutched 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.
It took a minute or two for Nita and Kit to finish the spell. As soon as they were done Kit reached down to pick up the dark Book, which was as well — for immediately after the last word of the spell was spoken, it actually started hitching itself along the ground, southward.
“Oww,” he said as he picked it up. He stuffed it hastily back into his backpack, seeming as eager to get it out of sight as out of his hands: for it no longer looked innocuous. It burned Nita’s eyes to look at as it had burned Kit’s hands to touch. And even when he had it hidden away and the backpack slung on again, 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 loo
king 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.
“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 said, gently scornful. “Sure we haven’t. And anyway, what do you mean we’re not ‘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 hate to say this, but 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—
He jumped back, pale with shock. “We’re dead,” he said, turned around, and started running back the way they had come, though he limped doing it.
Nita looked around that corner just long enough to see what Kit had—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.
“Crap! 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’d never make it across the street.
Kit grabbed for his antenna. Nita yanked out her rowan wand, but without much hope—it hadn’t worked that well on the helicopter. As they got close 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.
Slowly 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—but Kit’s blood, which it had tasted.
Kit lifted the antenna, the hand that gripped it shaking.
And then a high-pitched yowl of rage and defiance from outside the circle jerked Kit’s head up. Nita stared. All around them fenders scraped and rattled against one another as the tight-wedged cabs jostled, trying to see what was happening. Even the bloodstained cab, the pack leader, looked away from Kit.
But none of them could move any way but backward, and one cab paid immediately for that limitation as a viciously fanged grille bit deep into its hindquarters and dragged it screaming out of the circle. Metal screeched and tore and glass shattered as the Lotus Esprit’s jaws crushed through the cab’s trunk, ripped away its rear axle, and with a quick sideways shake of its front end flung the bitten-off axle crashing down Fifth Avenue. Then the Lotus slashed sideways, its fangs opening up the side of another cab like a can opener. The circle broke amid enraged roaring; cabs circled and feinted while the first victim dragged itself away by its front wheels to collapse in the street.
Everything started happening at once. Nita slashed at the front of the cab closest to her. The whip of moonfire cracking across its face seemed to confuse and frighten it, but did no damage. Hope it doesn’t notice that right away! she thought desperately, for Kit had his hands full at the moment. He had the antenna laid over his forearm again and was snapping off shot after shot of blinding-hot light, cracking headlights, burning holes in hoods, and exploding tires, a hit here, a hit there—nothing fatal, Nita noticed with dismay. But Kit was managing to hold the cabs at their distance as they harried them.
Out in the street one cab lunged at the Lotus, a leap, its front wheels clear of the ground and meant to come crashing down on the racer’s hood—until suddenly the Lotus’s nose dipped under the cab and heaved upward, sending the cab rolling helplessly onto its back. A second later the Lotus came down on top of the cab, took a great shark bite out of its underbelly, and then whirled around, whipping gas and transmission fluid all over, to slash at another cab about to leap on it from behind. This was the king cab, the pack leader, and as the Lotus and the Checker circled one another warily in the street, the other cabs drew away from Kit and Nita to watch the outcome of the combat.
There were two more cabs dead in the street that Nita hadn’t seen fall—one with everything from right rear door to right front fender torn away, another horribly mangled in its front end and smashed sideways into a tree on the other side of Fifth, as if it had been thrown there. Amid the wreckage of these and the other two cabs, the cab and the Lotus rolled, turning and backing, maneuvering for an opening that would end in a kill. The Lotus was scored along one side but otherwise unhurt, and the whining roar of its engine sounded hungry and pleased. Infuriated, the Checker made a couple of quick rushes at it, stopping short with a screech of tires and backing away again each time in a way that indicated it didn’t want to close in. The Lotus snarled derisively –
Without warning the Checker swerved around and threw itself full speed at Kit and Nita, still braced against the wall.
This is it, Nita thought with curious calm. She flung up the rowan wand in one last useless slash and then was thrown back against the wall with terrible force as a thunderstorm of screaming metal flew from right to left in front of her and crashed not five feet away. She slid down the wall limp as a rag doll, stunned, aware that death had gone right past her face. When her eyes and ears started working again, the Lotus was standing off to her left, its back scornfully turned to the demolished pack leader, which it had slammed into the wall.
The Checker looked like the remains of a front-end collision test—it was crumpled up into itself like an accordion, and bleeding oil and gas in pools. The Lotus roared triumphant disdain at the remaining two cabs, then threatened them with a small mean rush. They turned tail and ran a short distance, then slowed down and slunk away around the corner of Sixty-first. Satisfied, the Lotus bent over the broken body of one dead cab, reached down, and with casual fierceness plucked away some of the front fender, as a falcon plucks its kill before eating.
Nita turned her head to look for Kit. He was several feet farther down the wall, looking as shattered as she felt. Very slowly he pushed himself to his feet, wobbling a little, and then walked out into the street. The Lotus glanced up, left its kill, and went to meet him.
For a moment they simply looked at each other from a few feet apart. Kit held one hand out, and the Lotus slowly inched forward under the hand, permitting the caress. They stood that way for the space of four or five gasps, and then the Lotus rolled closer still and pushed its face roughly against Kit’s leg, like a cat.
“How about that,” Kit said, his voice cracking. “How about that.”
Nita put her face down in her hands, wishing very much that she could cry if that would just buy her a little relief from the stress of the last few minutes… but all she could manage were a couple of crooked, whooping sobs. Worse is coming, said something inside her, some stern part of her she hadn’t known was there: way worse. Better not to let it all go
now, because if you do you may not be able to get it back in time…
Nita just sat for a moment with her eyes scrunched closed until she thought her voice was working again. Then she let her hands fall and looked up. “Kit, we’ve got to—”
Then she broke off. The Lotus had rolled up and was staring at her—a huge, dangerous, curious, brown-hided beast, its glowing eyes fixed on her. She lost what she was saying, hypnotized by the fierce, interested stare. Then the Lotus smiled at Nita, a slow, chrome smile – sharp, silver and sanguine.
“Uhh,” she said, disconcerted, and glanced up at Kit, who had come to stand alongside the racer. “Kit… We’ve gotta get out of here. It’s got to be the spell that brought these things down on us. And when those two cabs that got away let that guy up in the Tower know we didn’t get caught, or killed—”
Kit nodded, looked down at the Lotus; it glanced sideways up at him, from headlights bright with amusement and triumph. “How about it?” Kit said in the Speech. “ Could you give us a lift?”
In answer the Lotus shrugged, flicking its doors open like a bird spreading its wings.
Nita stood up, staggering slightly. “Fred?”
He appeared beside her, making a feeling of great shame. “Fred, what’s the matter?” Kit said, catching it too.
I couldn’t do anything.
“Of course not,” Nita said, reaching up to cup his faint spark in one hand. “Because you just did something huge, dummy. We’re all right. So come on for a ride.” She perched Fred on the upstanding collar of her down vest; he settled there with a sigh of light.
Together she and Kit lowered themselves into the dark seats of the Lotus, into the dim, warm cockpit, alive with dials and gauges, smelling of leather and metal and oil. They had barely strapped themselves in before the Lotus gave a great glad shake that slammed its doors shut, and burned rubber down Fifth Avenue—out of the carnage and south toward the joining of two rivers, and the oldest part of Manhattan.