Kit kept reading. Nita looked around her and began to see an answer. The darkness had not retreated from around them. Out on the Fifth Avenue side of the tree-wall, the crashes of cabs were getting more frequent, the howls of perytons were closer, the awful clanging hoofbeats seemed almost on top of them. There was nowhere to run, and Nita knew with horrible certainty that not all the trees in the park would be enough to stop the Starsnuffer when he came there. Keeping New York real was one answer to this problem, but not the answer. The darkness and the unreality were symptoms, not the cause. Something had to be done about him.
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—”
And then the sound of heavy hoofbeats coming from behind them, from the park side, choked her silent. H’s got a twin brother! Nita thought. We are dead.
But the hoofbeats she heard didn’t crash into the trees. They divided around the trees’ battered circle 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 Joan of Arc in her armor, and Simón Bolívar and General San 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 threats 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 the pavement; El Cid Campeador rode there, his bannered lance striking down one peryton after another.
Behind all these came a wild assortment of creatures, pouring past the tree circle and into the street—eagles, bears, huge dogs, a hunting cat, a crowd of doughboys from the first World War with bayoneted rifles—all the most warlike of the nearby statuary—even some not so warlike, such as several deer and the Ugly Duckling. From down Fifth Avenue came striding golden Prometheus from his pedestal in Rockefeller Center, 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 roar like the sky falling, the great white lions from the steps of the Public Library 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 in 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 howls and crashes and the clash of arms, Nita grabbed Kit to pull him away from the tree-wall, behind the protection of 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 touching 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.
An undertow of blinding power and irresistible light poured into her, over her, drowned her deep. She couldn’t fight it. She didn’t want to. Nita understood now the clear-burning transfiguration of Kit’s small plain human face and body, for it was not the wizard who read the Book; it was the other way around. The silent Power that had written the Book reached through it now and read what life had written in her body and soul—joys, hopes, fears, and failings all together—then took her intent and read that too, turning it into fact.
She was turning the bright pages now without even thinking about it, finding the place in the Book that spoke of creation and rebellion and war among the stars—the words that had once before broken the terrible destroying storm of death and darkness that the angry Starsnuffer had raised to break the new-made worlds and freeze the seas where life was growing, an eternity ago. “I am the wind that troubles the water,” Nita said, whispering in the Speech. The whisper smote against the windowed cliffs until they echoed again, and the clash and tumult of battle began to grow still as the wind rose at her naming. “I am the water, and the waves; I am the shore where the waves break in rainbows; I am the sunlight that shines in the spray—”
The power rose with the rhythms of the old, old words, rose with the wind as all about her the earth and air and waters of the park began to remember what they were—matter and energy, created, indestructible, no matter what darkness lay over them. “I am the trees that drink the light; I am the air of the green things’ breathing; I am the stone that the trees break asunder; I am the molten heart of the world—”
“NO!” came his scream from beyond the wall of trees, hating, raging, desperate. But Nita felt no fear. It was as it had been in the Beginning; all his no’s had never been able to stand against life’s I Am. All around her trees and stones and flesh and metal burned with the power that burned her, self-awareness, which death can seem to stop but can never keep from happening, no matter how hard it tries.
“Where will you go? To what place will you wander?” she asked sorrowfully, or life asked through her, hoping that the lost one might at last be convinced to come back to his allegiance. Of all creatures alive and otherwise, he had been and still was one of the mightiest. If only his stubborn anger would break, his power could be as great for light as for darkness—but it could not happen. If after all these weary eons he still had not realized the hopelessness of his position, that everywhere he went, life was there before him…. Still she tried, the ancient words speaking her solemnly “… in vale or on hilltop, still I am there…”
Silence, silence, except for the rising wind. All things seemed to hold their breath to hear the words; even the dark rider, erect again on his iron steed and bitter of face, ignoring the tumult around him. His eyes were only for Nita, for only her reading held him bound. She tried not to think of him, or of the little time remaining before the Moon went out, and gave herself over wholly to the reading. The words shook the air and the earth, blinding, burning.
“Will you sound the sea’s depth, or climb the mountain? In air or in water, still I am there; Will the earth cover you? Will the night hide you? In deep or in darkness, still I am there; Will you kindle the nova, or kill the starlight? In fire or in death-cold, still I am there—”
And the Moon went out.
Fred cried out in soundless anguish, and Nita felt the los
s of light like a stab in the heart. The power fell away from her, quenched, leaving her small and cold and human and alone, holding in her hands a Book gone dark from lack of moonlight. She and Kit turned desperately toward each other in a darkness rapidly becoming complete as the flowing blackness put out the last light of the city. Then came the sound of low, satisfied laughter and a single clang of a heavy hoof, stepping forward.
Another clang.
Another.
Now, Fred said suddenly, now I understand what all that emitting was practice for. No beta, no gamma, no microwave or upper-wavelength ultraviolet or X rays, is that about right?
“Fred??” Kit said, but Fred didn’t wait. He shot upward, blazing, a point of light like a meteor falling the wrong way, up and up until his brightness was as faint as one more unremarkable star. “Fred, where are you going?”
To create a diversion, his thought came back, getting fainter and fainter. Nita, Kit—
They could catch no more clear thoughts, only a great wash of sorrow and loss, a touch of fear…
And then brightness intolerable erupted in the sky as Fred threw his claudication open, emitting all his mass at once as energy, blowing his quanta. He could hardly have been more than halfway to the Moon, for a second or two later it was alight again, a blazing, searing full Moon such as no one had ever seen. There was no looking at either Fred’s blast of light or at the Moon that lit trees and statues and the astounded face of the Starsnuffer with a light like a silver sun.
The dark rider spent no more than a moment being astounded. Immediately he lifted his steel rod, pointing it at Fred this time, shouting in the Speech cold words that were a curse on all light everywhere, from time’s beginning to its end. But Fred burned on, more fiercely, if possible. Evidently not even the Starsnuffer could quickly put out a white hole that was liberating all the bound-up energy of five or six blue-white giant stars at once.
“Nita, Nita, read!” Kit shouted at her. Through her tears she looked down at the Book again and picked up where she had left off. The Lone One was cursing them all in earnest now, knowing that another three lines in the Book would bring Nita to his name. She had only to pronounce it to cast him out into the unformed void beyond the Universes, where he had been cast the first time those words were spoken.
Cabs and perytons screamed and threw themselves at the barrier in a last wild attempt to break through, the statues leaped into the fray again, stone and flesh and metal clashed. Nita fell down into the bright power once more, crying, but also reading in urgent haste so as not to waste the light Fred was giving himself to become.
As the power began again to read her, she could hear it reading Kit, too, his voice matching hers as it had in their first wizardry, small and thin and brave, and choked with grief like hers. The power was burning in her tears, an odd hot feeling as she wept for Fred, for Kit’s Lotus, for everything horrible that had happened all that day—all the fair things skewed, all the beauty twisted by the dark Lone Power watching on his steed. If only there were some way he could be otherwise if he wanted to!
For here was his name, a long splendid flow of syllables in the Speech, wild and courageous in its own way—and it said that he had not always been so hostile; that he got tired sometimes of being wicked, but his pride and his fear of being ridiculed would never let him stop. Never, forever, said the symbol at the very end of his name, the closed circle that binds spells into an unbreakable cycle and indicates lives bound the same way.
Kit was still reading. Nita turned her head in that nova moonlight and looked over her shoulder at the one who watched. His face was set, furious and bitter, but yes, weary too. He knew he was about to be cast out again, frustrated again, and he knew that because of what he had bound himself into being, he would never know fulfillment of any kind. Nita looked back down to the reading, feeling sorry even for him, opened her mouth and along with Kit began to say his name—
Don’t be afraid to make corrections!
Whether the voice came from her memory or was a last whisper from the blinding new star far above, Nita never knew. But she knew what to do. While Kit was still on the first part of the name she pulled out her pen, her space pen that Fred had saved and changed, and clicked it open.
The metal still tingled against her skin, the ink at the point still glittered oddly—the same glitter as the ink with which the bright Book was written. Nita bent quickly over the Book and, with the pen, in lines of light, drew from that final circle an arrow pointing upward, the way out, the symbol that said change could happen—if, only if—and together they finished the Starsnuffer’s name in the Speech, said the new last syllable, made it real.
And the wind died.
Fearfully Nita and Kit turned around, looked at Fifth Avenue—and found it empty. The creeping blackness was gone with the breaking of its master’s magic and the sealing of the worldgate he had held open. Silent and somber, the statues stood among the bodies of the slain—crushed cabs and perytons, shattered trees—one by one began to pace off into the park or down Fifth Avenue, each one making its way back to its pedestal and its long quiet regard of the city. The howl of sirens, lost for a while in the wind that had risen, now grew loud again. Kit and Nita stood unmoving as the trees ringing them moved away to their old places, sinking roots back into torn-up earth and raising branches to the burning Moon.
Some ninety-three million miles away, the Sun had come quietly back to life. But its light would not reach Earth for another eight minutes yet, and as Nita and Kit watched, slowly the new star in the heavens faded, and the Moon faded with it—from daylight brilliance to silver fire, to steel-gray glow, to earthlight shimmer, to nothing. The star went yellow, and red, and died. Nothing was left but a stunning, sky-wide aurora, great curtains and rays of rainbow light shivering and crackling all across the golden-glowing city night.
“He forgot the high-energy radiation again,” Kit said, grief constricting his voice to a whisper.
Nita closed the Book she held in her hands, now dark and ordinary looking except for the black depths of its covers, the faint shimmer of starlight on page edges. “Yeah, he always does,” she said, scrubbing at her eyes, and then offered Kit the Book. He shook his head, and Nita dropped it into her backpack and slung it over her back again. “You think he’ll take the chance?” she said.
“Huh? Oh.” Kit shook his head unhappily. “I dunno. Old habits die hard. If he wants to…”
Above them the Moon flicked on again, full and silver bright through the blue-and-red shimmer of the auroral curtain. They stood gazing at it, a serene, remote brilliance, seeming no different than it had been an hour before, a night before, when everything had been as it should be. And now…
“Let’s get out of here,” Nita said.
*
They walked out of the park unhindered by the cops and firemen who were already arriving in squad cars and fire trucks and paramedic ambulances. Evidently no one felt that two grade-school kids could possibly have anything to do with a street full of wrecked cabs and violently uprooted trees. As they crossed Fifth Avenue and the big mesh-sided Bomb Squad truck passed them, Nita bent to pick up a lone broken-off twig of oak, and stared at it sorrowfully. “There wasn’t even anything left of him,” she said as they walked east on Sixty-fourth, heading back to the MetLife Building and the timeslide.
“Only the light,” Kit said, looking up at the aurora. Even that was fading now.
Silently they made their way to Grand Central and entered the MetLife Building at the mezzanine level. The one guard at the security desk was sitting with his back to them and his feet on the desk, reading the Post. Kit went wearily over to one elevator, laid a hand on it, and spoke a word or three to it in the Speech. Its doors slid silently open, and they got in and headed upstairs to the roof.
Kit opened the door at the top of the stairs, and together they walked out into peace and darkness and a wind off the ocean. Nita stood there looking out over the city and sighed, not really want
ing to think about spells or anything else to do with wizardry. The book said it would be hard. That I didn’t mind. But I hurt! And where’s the good part? There was supposed to be happiness too…
The bright Book was heavy on her back as she looked out across the night. All around, for miles and miles, was glittering light, brilliant motion, shining under the Moon; lights of a thousand colors gleaming from windows, glowing on streets, blazing from the headlights of cars. The city, breathing, burning, living the life they had preserved. Ten million lives and more. If something should happen to all that life—how terrible! Nita gulped for control as she remembered Fred’s words of just this morning, an eternity ago. And this was what being a wizard was about. Keeping terrible things from happening, even when it hurt. Not just power, or control of what ordinary people couldn’t control, or delight in being able to make strange things happen. Those were side effects—not the reason, not the purpose.
She could give it up, she realized suddenly. In the recovery of the bright Book, she and Kit had more than repaid the energy invested in their training. If they chose to lay the Art aside, if she did, no one would say a word. She would be left in peace. Magic does not live in the unwilling soul.
Yet never to hear a tree talk again, or a stone, or a star…
On impulse Nita held out her hands and closed her eyes. Even without the rowan rod she could feel the moonfire on her skin as a tree might feel it. She could taste the restored sunlight that produced it, feel the soundless roar of the ancient atomic furnace that had burned just this way while her world was still a cloud of gas, nebulous and unformed. And ever so faintly she could taste a rainbow spatter of high-energy radiation, such as a white hole might leave after blowing its quanta.