The high-pitched yowl of rage and defiance from outside the circle jerked Kit's head up. Nita stared. 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 fanged grille bit deep into its hindquarters and dragged it screaming out of the circle. Metal screeched and tore, 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. I hope it doesn't notice that right away, she thought desperately, for there was no use yelling for help. Kit had his hands full. 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 him.
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, and 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. He got up slowly and 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, wanting very much to cry, but all she could manage were a couple of crooked, whooping sobs. She had a feeling that much worse was coming, and she couldn't break down all the way. Nita hid her eyes until she thought her voice was working again, then let her hands fall and looked up. "Kit, we've got to—"
The Lotus had rolled up and was staring at her—a huge, dangerous, curious, brown-hided beast. She lost what she was saying, hypnotized by the fierce, interested stare. Then the Lotus smiled at Nita, a slow, chrome smile, silver and sanguine. "Uhh," she said, disconcerted, and glanced up at Kit, who had come to stand alongside the racer. "We've gotta get out of here, Kit. It has to be the spell that brought these things down on us. And when those two cabs let you-know-who know that 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. 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.
Nita sat at ease, taking a breather and watching the streets of Manhattan, rush by. Kit, behind the steering wheel, was holding the dark Book in his lap, feeling it carefully for any change in the directional spell. He was reluctant to touch it. The farther south they went, the more the Book burned the eyes that looked at it. The wizards' manual had predicted this effect—that, as the two Books drew closer to one another, each would assert its own nature more and more forcefully. Nita watched the Book warping and skewing the very air around it, blurring its own outlines, and found it easy to believe the manual's statement that even a mind of terrible enough purpose and power to wrench this Book to its use might in the reading be devoured by what was read. She hoped for Kit's sake that it wouldn't devour someone who just touched it.
"We're close," Kit said at last, in a quiet, strained voice.
"You okay?"
"I've got a headache, but that's all. Where are we?"
"Uh—that was just Pearl Street. Close to City Hall." She tapped the inside of her door, a friendly gesture. "Your baby moves"
"Yeah," Kit said affectionately. The Lotus rumbled under its hood, sped on.
"Fred? You feeling better?"
Fred looked up at her from her collar. (Somewhat. I'd feel better still if I knew what we were going to be facing next. If I'm to make bricks again, I'm going to need some notice.)
"Your gnaester, huh?" Kit said.
(I'm not sure I have a gnaester anymore, after that last emission. And I'm afraid to find out.)
"Kit, scrunch down," Nita said suddenly, doing the same herself. The Lotus roa
red past the corner of Broadway and Chambers, pointedly ignoring a pair of sullen-looking cabs that stared and snarled as it passed. They were parked on either side of an iron-railed stairway leading down to a subway station. About a block farther along Broadway, two more cabs were parked at another subway entrance.
From his slumped-down position, Kit glanced over at Nita. "Those are the first we've seen."
"'The usual accesses,'" Nita said. "They've got it down in the subway somewhere."
"Oh no," Kit muttered, and (Wonderful,) Fred said. Nita swallowed, not too happy about the idea herself. Subway stations, unless they were well lighted and filled with people, gave her the creeps. Worse, even in her New York, subways had their own special ecologies—not just the mice and rats and cats that everybody knew about, but other less normal creatures, on which the wizards' manual had had a twenty-page chapter. "They're all over the place," she said aloud, dealing with the worst problem first. "How are we going to—"
"Ooof!" Kit said, as the dark Book, sitting on his lap, sank down hard as if pushed. The Lotus kept driving on down Broadway, past City Hall, and Kit struggled upward to look out the back window, noting the spot. "That was where the other Book was—straight down from that place we just passed."
The Lotus turned right onto a side street and slowed as if looking for something. Finally it pulled over to the left-hand curb and stopped. "What—" Kit started to say, but the racer flicked open first Kit's door, then Nita's, as if it wanted them to get out.
They did, cautiously. The Lotus very quietly closed its doors. Then it rolled forward a little way, bumping up onto the sidewalk in front of a dingy-looking warehouse. It reached down, bared its fangs, and with great delicacy sank them into a six-foot-long grille in the sidewalk. The Lotus heaved, and with a soft scraping groan, the grillwork came up to reveal an electric-smelling darkness and stairs leading down into it.
"It's one of the emergency exits from the subway, for when the trains break down," Kit whispered, jamming the dark Book back into his backpack and dropping to his knees to rub the Lotus enthusiastically behind one headlight. "It's perfect!"
The Lotus's engine purred as it stared at Kit with fierce affection. It backed a little and parked itself, its motions indicating it would wait for them. Kit got up, pulling out his antenna, and Nita got out her wand. "Well," she said under her breath, "let's get it over with..."
The steps were cracked concrete, growing damp and discolored as she walked downward. Nita held out the wand to be sure of her footing and kept one hand on the left wall to be sure of her balance—there was no banister or railing on the right, only darkness and echoing air. (Kit—) she said silently, wanting to be sure he was near, but not wanting to be heard by anything that might be listening down there.
(Right behind you. Fred?)
His spark came sailing down behind Kit, looking brighter as they passed from gloom to utter dark. (Believe me, I'm not far.)
(Here's the bottom,) Nita said. She turned for one last glance up toward street level and saw a huge sleek silhouette carefully and quietly replacing the grille above them. She gulped, feeling as if she were being shut into a dungeon, and turned to look deeper into the darkness. The stairs ended in a ledge three feet wide and perhaps four feet deep, recessed into the concrete wall of the subway. Nita held up the wand for more light. The ledge stretched away straight ahead, with the subway track at the bottom of a wide pit to the right of it. (Which way, Kit?)
(Straight, for the time being.)
The light reflected dully from the tracks beside them as they pressed farther into the dark. Up on the streets, though there had been darkness, there had also been sound. Here there was a silence like black water, a silence none of them dared to break. They slipped into it holding their breaths. Even the usual dim rumor of a subway tunnel, the sound of trains rumbling far away, the ticking of the rails, was missing. The hair stood up all over Nita as she walked and tried not to make a sound. The air was damp, chilly, full of the smells of life—too full, and the wrong kinds of life, at least to Nita's way of thinking: mold and mildew; water dripping too softly to make a sound, but still filling the air with a smell of leached lime, a stale, puddly odor; wet trash, piled in trickling gutters or at the bases of rusting iron pillars, rotting quietly; and always the sharp ozone-and-scorched-soot smell of the third rail. Shortly there was light that did not come from Nita's wand. Pale splotches of green-white radiance were splashed irregularly on walls and ceiling—firefungus, which the wizards' manual said was the main food source of the subway's smallest denizens, dun mice and hidebehinds and skinwings. Nita shuddered at the thought and walked faster. Where there were hidebehinds, there would certainly be rats to eat them. And where there were rats, there would also be fireworms and thrastles....
(Nita.)
She stopped and glanced back at Kit. He was holding his backpack in one arm now and the antenna in the other, and looking troubled in the wand's silver light. (That way,) he said, pointing across the tracks at the far wall with its niche-shaped recesses.
(Through the wall? We don't even know how thick it is!) Then she stopped and thought a moment. (I wonder—You suppose the Mason's Word would work on concrete? What's in concrete, anyhow?)
(Sand—quartz, mostly. Some chemicals—but I think they all come out of the ground.)
(Then it'll work. C'mon.) Nita hunkered down and very carefully let herself drop into the wide pit where the tracks ran. The crunch of rusty track cinders told her Kit was right behind. Fred floated down beside her, going low to light the way. With great care Nita stepped over the third rail and balanced on the narrow ledge of the wall on the other side. She stowed the wand and laid both hands flat on the concrete to begin implementation of the lesser usage of the Word, the one that merely manipulates stone rather than giving it the semblance of life. Nita leaned her head against the stone too, making sure of her memory of the Word, the sixteen syllables that would loose what was bound. Very fast, so as not to mess it up, she said the Word and pushed.
Door, she thought as the concrete melted under her hands, and a door there was; she was holding the sides of it. (Go ahead,) she said to Kit and Fred. They ducked through under her arm. She took a step forward, let go, and the wall re-formed behind her.
(Now what the—) Kit was staring around him in complete confusion. It took Nita a moment to recover from the use of the Word, but when her vision cleared, she understood the confusion. They were standing in the middle of another track, which ran right into the wall they had just come through and stopped there. The walls there were practically one huge mass of firefungus. It hung down in odd green-glowing lumps from the ceiling and layered thick in niches and on the poles that held the ceiling up. Only the track and ties and the rusty cinders between were bare, a dark road leading downward between eerily shining walls for perhaps an eighth of a mile before curving around to the right and out of view.
(I don't get it,) Kit said. (This track just starts. Or just stops. It would run right into that one we just came off! There aren't any subway lines in the city that do that! Are there?)
Nita shook her head, listening. The silence of the other tunnel did not persist here. Far down along the track, the sickly green light of the firefungus was troubled by small shadowy rustlings, movements, the scrabbling of claws. (What about the Book?) she asked.
Kit nodded toward the end of the track. (Down there, and a little to the right.)
They walked together down the long aisle of cold light, looking cautiously into the places where firefungus growth was sparse enough to allow for shadow. Here and there small sparks of brightness peered out at them, paired sparks—the eyes of dun mice, kindled to unnatural brightness by the fungus they fed on. Everywhere was the smell of dampness, old things rotting or rusting. The burning-ozone smell grew so chokingly strong that Nita realized it couldn't be just the third rail producing it—even if the third rail were alive in a tunnel this old. The smell grew stronger as they approached the curve at the tu
nnel's end. Kit, still carrying the backpack, was gasping. She stopped just before the curve, looked at him. (Are you okay?)
He gulped. (It's close, it's really close. I can hardly see, this thing is blurring my eyes so bad.)
(You want to give it to me?)
(No, you go ahead. This place seems to be full of live things. Your department—)
(Yeah, right,) Nita agreed unhappily, and made sure of her grip on the rowan wand. (Well, here goes. Fred, you ready for another diversion?)
(I think I could manage something small if I had to.)
(Great. All together now...)
They walked around the curve, side by side. Then they stopped.
It was a subway station. Or it had been at one time, for from where they stood at one end of the platform, they could see the tons of rubble that had choked and sealed the tunnel at the far end of the platform. The rubble and the high ceiling were overgrown with firefungus enough to illuminate the old mosaics on the wall, the age-cracked tiles that said CITY HALL over and over again, down the length of the platform wall. But the platform and tracks weren't visible from where they stood. Heaped up from wall to wall was a collection of garbage and treasure, things that glittered, things that moldered. Nita saw gems, set and unset, like the plunder of a hundred jewelry stores, tumbled together with moldy kitchen garbage; costly fabric in bolts or in shreds, half buried by beer cans and broken bottles; paintings in ornate frames, elaborately carved furniture, lying broken or protruding crookedly from beneath timbers and dirt fallen from the old ceiling; vases, sculpture, crystal, silver services, a thousand kinds of rich and precious things, lying all together, whole and broken, among shattered dirty crockery and base metal. And lying atop the hoard, its claws clutched full of cheap costume jewelry, whispering to itself in the Speech, was the dragon.
Once more Nita tried to swallow and couldn't manage it. This looked nothing like the fireworm her book had mentioned—a foot-long mouse-eating lizard with cigarette-lighter breath. But if a fireworm had had a long, long time to grow—she remembered the voice of the young man in the three-piece suit, saying with relief, "The Eldest has it." There was no telling how many years this creature had been lairing here in the darkness, growing huger and huger, devouring the smaller creatures of the underground night and dominating those it did not devour, sending them out to steal for its hoard—or to bring it food. Nita began to tremble, looking at the fireworm-dragon's thirty feet of lean, scaled, tight-muscled body, looking at the size of its dark-stained jaws, and considering what kind of food it must eat. She glanced down at one taloned hind foot and saw something that lay crushed and forgotten beneath it—a subway repairman's reflective orange vest, torn and scorched; a wrench, half melted; the bones, burned black....