So You Want to Be a Wizard

  "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 Pan Am Building at the mezzanine level. The one guard 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.

  The restaurant level was dark, for the place served only lunch, and there was no one to see them go back up 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. A helicopter was moored in the middle of the pad with steel pegs and cables, crouching on its skids and staring at them with clear, sleepy, benevolent eyes. The blue high-intensity marker lights blazed about it like the circle of a protection spell. Nita looked away, not really wanting 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.

  She opened her eyes, found her hands full of moonlight that trembled like bright water, its surface sheened with fading aurora glow. "All right," she said after a moment. "All right." She opened her hands to let the light run out. "Kit?" she said, saying his name in the Speech.

  He had gone to stand beside the helicopter and was standing with one hand laid against its side. It stared at him mutely. "Yeah," he said, and patted the cool metal, and left the chopper to rejoin Nita. "I guess we pass the test. "

  They took their packs off and got out the materials necessary for the timeslide. When the lithium-cadmium battery and the calculator chip and the broken teacup handle were in place, Kit and Nita started the spell—and without warning were again caught up by the augmenting power of the bright Book and plunged more quickly than they expected into the wizardry. It was like being on a slide, though they were the ones who held still, and the events of the day as seen from the top of the Pan Am Building rushed backward past them, a high-speed 3-D movie in reverse. Blinding white fire and the nova Moon grew slowly in the sky, flared, and were gone. The Moon, briefly out, came on again. Darkness flowed backward through the suddenly open worldgate, following its master on his huge dark mount, who also stepped backward and vanished through the gate. Kit and Nita saw themselves burst out of the roof door, blurred with speed; saw themselves run backward over the railing, a bright line of light pacing them as they plunged out into the dark air, dove backward through the gate, and vanished with it. The Sun came up in the west and fled back across the sky. Men in coveralls burst out of the roof door and unpegged the helicopter; two of them got into it and it took off backward. Clouds streamed and boiled past, jets fell backward into La Guardia. The Sun stood high....

  The slide let them go, and Kit and Nita sat back gasping. "What time have you got?" Kit said when he had enough breath.

  Nita glanced at her watch. "Nine forty-five."

  "Nine forty-five! But we were supposed to—"

  "It's this Book, it makes everything work too well. At nine forty-five we were—"

  They heard voices in the stairwell, behind the closed door. Kit and Nita stared at each other. Then they began frantically picking up the items left from their spelling. Nita paused with the lithium-cadmium battery in her hand as she recognized one of those voices coming up the stairs. She reared back, took aim, and threw the heavy battery at the closed door, hard, CRACK!

  Kit looked at her, his eyes wide, and understood. "Quick, behind there," he said. Nita ran to scoop up the battery, then ducked around after Kit and crouched down with him behind the back of the stairwell. There was a long, long pause before the door opened and footsteps could be heard on the gravel. Kit. and Nita edged around the side of the stairwell again to peer around the corner. Two small, nervous-looking figures were heading for the south-facing rail in the bright sunlight. A dark-haired girl, maybe thirteen, wearing jeans and a shirt and a down vest; a dark-haired boy, small and a touch stocky, also in jeans and parka, twelve years old or so. The boy held a broken-off piece of antenna, and the girl held a peeled white stick, and they were being paced by a brilliant white spark like a will-o'-the-wisp plugged into too much current and about to blow out.

  "'There are no accidents,'" Kit whispered sadly.

  The tears stung Nita's, eyes again. "G'bye, Fred," she said softly in English, for fear the Speech should attract his attention, or hers.

  Silently and unseen, Kit and Nita slipped through the door and went downstairs for the shuttle and the train home.

  Timeheart

  THE WALK HOME FROM the bus stop was weary and quiet. Three blocks from Nita's house, they reached the corner where their ways usually parted. Kit paused there, waiting for the light to change, though no traffic was in sight. "Call me tomorrow?" he said.

  What for? Nita felt like saying, for there were no more spells in the offing, and she was deadly tired. Still..."It's your turn," she said.

  "Huh? Right." The light changed, and Kit headed across the street to Nita's left. In the middle of the street he turned, walking backward. "We should call Tom and Carl," he shouted, sounding entirely exhausted.

  "Yeah." The light changed again, in Nita's favor; Kit jumped up onto the sidewalk on the other side and headed south toward his place. Nita crossed east, watching Kit as she went. Though the look on his face was tired and sad, all the rest of his body wore the posture of someone who'd been through so much fear that fear no longer frightened him. Why's he so afraid of getting heat up? Nita thought. Nobody in their right mind would mess with him.

  In midstep she stopped, watching him walk away. How about that. How about that. He got what he asked for.

  After a second she started walking home again. The weight at her back suddenly reminded her of something. (Kit!) she called silently, knowing he could hear even though he was now out of sight. (What about the Book?)

  (Hang on to it,) he answered. (We'll give it to the Advisories. Or they'll know what to do with it.)

  (Right. See ya later.)

  (See ya.)

  Nita was so tired that it took three or four minutes before the identity of the blond person walking up East Clinton toward her registered at all. By then Joanne was within yelling distance, but she didn't yell at Nita at all, much to Nita's surprise. This was such an odd development that Nita looked at Joanne carefully as they got closer
, something she had never done before. There was something familiar about Joanne today, a look that Nita couldn't quite pin down—and then she recognized the expression and let out a tired, unhappy breath. The look was less marked, less violent, and terrible than that of the pride-frozen misery of the dark rider, but there all the same. The angry fear was there too—the terror of what had been until now no threat but was now out of control; the look of the rider about to be cast out by a power he had thought himself safe from, the look of a bully whose victim suddenly wasn't a victim anymore.

  Nita slowed down and stopped where she was, in the middle of the sidewalk, watching Joanne. Even he can be different now, she thought, her heart beating fast— her own old fear wasn't entirely gone. But that was partly because we gave him the chance.

  She stood there, watching Joanne slow down warily as she got closer to Nita. Nita sweated. Doing something that would be laughed about behind her back was almost as bad as being beaten up. But she stood still until Joanne came to a stop four or five feet away from her. "Well?" Joanne said, her voice full of anger and uncertainty.

  I don't know what to say to her, we have absolutely nothing in common, Nita thought frantically. But it has to start somewhere. She swallowed and did her best to look Joanne in the eye, calmly and not in threat. "Come on over to my place after supper sometime and look through my telescope," she said. "I'll show you Jupiter's moons. Or Mars—"

  Joanne made that old familiar haughty face and brushed past Nita and away. "Why would I ever want to go to your house? You don't even have a wide-screen TV."

  Nita stood still, listening to Joanne's footsteps hurrying away, a little faster every second—and slowly began to realize that she'd gotten what she asked for too—the ability to break the cycle of anger and loneliness, not necessarily for others, but at least for herself. It wouldn't even take the Speech; plain words would do it, and the magic of reaching out. It would take a long time, much longer than something simple like breaking the walls between the worlds, and it would cost more effort than even the reading of the Book of Night with Moon. But it would be worth it—and eventually it would work. A spell always works.

  Nita went home.

  That night after supper she slipped outside to sit in Liused's shadow and watch the sky. The tree caught her mood and, after greeting her, was quiet—until about ten o'clock, when it and every other growing thing in sight suddenly trembled violently as if stricken at the root. They had felt the Sun go out.

  (It's all right,) she said silently, though for someone whose tears were starting again, it was an odd thing to say. She waited the eight minutes with them, saw the Moon blink out, and leaned back against the rowan trunk, sheltering from the wind that rose in the darkness. Branches tossed as if in a hurricane, leaves hissed in anguish—and then the sudden new star in the heavens etched every leaf's shadow sharp against the ground and set the Moon on fire. Nita squinted up at the pinpoint of brilliance, unwilling to look away though her eyes leaked tears of pain. She'd thought, that afternoon, that living through the loss a second time would be easier. She was wrong. The tears kept falling long after the star went out, and the Moon found its light again, and the wind died to a whisper. She stopped crying long enough to go back inside and go to bed, and she was sure she would start again immediately. But she was wrong about that too. Exhaustion beat down grief so fast that she was asleep almost as soon as her head touched the pillow under which she had hidden the Book of Night with Moon....

  The place where they stood was impossible, for there's no place in Manhattan where the water level in the East River comes right up to the railed path that runs alongside it. There they stood, though, leaning with their backs against the railing, gazing up at the bright city that reared against the silver sky, while behind them the river whispered and chuckled and slapped its banks. The sound of laughter came down the morning wind from the apartments and the brownstones and the towers of steel and crystal; the seabirds wheeled and cried over the white piers and jetties of the Manhattan shoreline, and from somewhere down the riverside came the faint sound of music—quiet rock, a deep steady backbeat woven about with guitars and voices in close harmony. A jogger went by on the running path, puffing, followed by a large black-and-white dog galloping to catch up with its master.

  Are we early, or are they late? Kit asked, leaning back farther still to watch an overflying Learjet do barrel-roll after barrel-roll for sheer joy of being alive.

  Who cares? Nita said, leaning back too and enjoying the way the music and the city sounds and the Learjet's delighted scream all blended. Anyway, this is Timeheart. There's nothing here but Now...

  They turned their backs on the towers and the traffic and the laughter, and looked out across the shining water toward Brooklyn and Long Island. Neither was. there just then—probably someone else in Timeheart was using them, and Kit and Nita didn't need them at the moment. The silver expanse of the Atlantic shifted and glittered from their feet to the radiant horizon, endless. Far off to their right, south and west of the Battery, the Statue of Liberty held up her torch and her tablet and looked calmly out toward the sunrise as they did, waiting. Nita was the first to see the dark bulge out on the water. She nudged Kit and pointed. Look, a shark!

  He glanced at her, amused. Even here I don't think sharks have wheels...

  The Lotus came fast, hydroplaning. Water spat up from its wheels as it skidded up to the railing and fishtailed sideways, grinning, spraying them both. On its wildly waving antenna rode a spark of light. Nita smiled at her friend, who danced off the antenna to rest momentarily on one of her fingers like a hundred-watt firefly. Well, Nita said, is it confusing being dead?

  Fred chuckled a rainbow, up the spectrum and down again. Not very. Beside him, the Lotus stood up on its hind wheels, putting its front ones on the railing so that Kit could scratch it behind the headlights.

  We brought. it, Kit said.

  Good, said the Lotus, as Nita got the bright Book out of her backpack and handed it to Kit. The Powers want to put it away safe. Though the precaution may not really be necessary, after what you did.

  It worked? He's changed? Nita said.

  Fred made a spatter of light, a gesture that felt like the shake of a head. Not changed. Just made otherwise, as if he'd been that way from the beginning. He has back the option he'd decided was lost—to put aside his anger, to build instead of damn...

  Then if he uses that option—you mean every place could be like this some day? Kit looked over his shoulder at the city and all the existence behind it, preserved in its fullest beauty while still growing and becoming greater.

  Possibly. What he did remains. Entropy's still here, and death. They look like waste and horror to us now. But if he chooses to have them be a blessing on the worlds, instead of anger's curse—who knows where those gates will lead then?... The Lotus sounded pleased by the prospect.

  Kit held out the Book of Night with Moon. Most delicately the Lotus opened fanged jaws to take it, then rubbed its face against Kit and dropped to all four wheels on the water. It smiled at them both, a chrome smile, silver and sanguine—then backed a little, turned, and was off, spraying Kit and Nita again.

  Fred started to follow, but Nita caught him in cupped hands, holding him back for a moment. Fred! Did we do right?

  Even here she couldn't keep the pain out of her question, the fear that she could somehow have prevented his death. But Fred radiated a serene and wondering joy that took her breath and reassured her and filled her with wonder to match his, all at once. Go find out, he said.

  She opened her hands and he flew out of them like a spark blown on the wind—a brightness zipping after the Lotus, losing itself against the dazzling silver of the sea, gone. Nita turned around to lean on the railing again, and after a moment Kit turned with her. They breathed out, relaxing, and settled back to gaze at the city transfigured, the city preserved at the heart of Time, as all things loved are preserved in the hearts that care for them—gazed up into the rad
iance, the life, the light unending, the light....

  The light was right in her eyes, mostly because Dairine had yanked the curtain open. Her sister was talking loudly, and Nita turned her head and quite suddenly felt what was not under her pillow. "You gonna sleep all morning? Get up, it's ten thirty! The Sun went out last night, you should see it, it was on the news. And somebody blew Up Central Park; and Kit Rodriguez called, he wants you to call him back. How come you keep calling each other, anyhow?" Halfway out the bedroom door, realization dawned in her sister's eyes. "Maaaaa!" she yelled out the door, strangling on her own laughter. "Nita's got a boyfriend!"

  "Oh, jeez, Dairiiiiiiiine!"

  The wizard threw her pillow at her sister, got up, and went to breakfast.

  Turn the page for an exciting peek at

  Deep Wizardry

  The second book in the Young Wizards series

  Summer Night's Song

  NITA SLIPPED OUT THE back door of the beach house, careful not to let the rickety screen door slam, and for a second stood silently on the back porch in the darkness. It was no use. "Nita"—her mother's voice came floating out from the living room—"where're you going?"

  "Out," Nita said, hoping to get away with it just this once.

  She might as well have tried to rob a bank. "Out where?"

  "Down to the beach, Mom."

  There was a sigh's worth of pause from the living room, broken by the sound of a crowd on TV shouting about a base that had just been stolen somewhere in the country. "I don't like you walking down there alone at night, Neets ..."

  "Nhhnnnnn," Nita said, a loud noncommittal noise she had learned to make while her mother was deciding whether to let her do something. "I'll take Ponch with me," she said in a burst of inspiration.