Диана Дуэйн - So You Want To Be A Wizard

(Well, this is moonlight.) Nita held up the rowan wand over the opened Book Very vaguely they could make out something printed, the symbols of the Speech, too faint to read. (Then again, maybe secondhand moonlight isn't good enough. Kit, what're you going to do? You have to seal this place up now. You promised.)

{I'm gonna do what I said. One of the blank-check wizardries.)

(But when you do those you don't know what price is going to be asked later.)

(We have to get this Book, don't we? That's why we're here. And this is something that has to be done to get the Book. I don't think the price'll be too high. Anyway you don't have to worry, I'll do it myself.)

Nita watched Kit getting out his wizards' manual and bit her lip. (Oh, no, you're not,) she said. (If you're doing it, I'm doing it too. Whatever you're doing…)

(One of the Moebius spells,) Kit said, finding the page. Nita looked over his shoulder and read the spell. It would certainly keep thieves out of the hoard. When recited, a Moebius spell gave a specified volume of space a half-twist that left it permanently out of synch with the spaces surrounding it. The effect would be like stopping an elevator between floors, forever. (You read it all through?) Kit said. (Uh huh.)

(Then let's get back in the tunnel and do it and get out of here. I'm getting this creepy feeling that things aren't going to be quiet on ground level when we get up there.)

They wanted to say good-bye to the Eldest, but it had forgotten them already. "Mine, mine, mine, "it was whispering as garbage and gold flew in all directions from the place where it dug. (Let's go,) Fred said.

Out in the tunnel, the firefungus seemed brighter to Nita — or perhaps that was only the effect of looking at the Book of Night with Moon. They halted at the spot where the tunnel curved and began with great care to read the Moebius spell. The first part of it was something strange and unsettling— 311invocation to the Powers that governed the arts of wizardry, asking help this piece of work and promising that the power lent would be returne They required. Nita shivered, wondering what she was getting herself i nt0' (or use of the Speech made the promise more of a prediction. Then came the definition of the space to be twisted, and finally the twisting itself. As they spoke the words Nita could see the Eldest, still digging away at his hoard, going pale and dim as if with distance, going away, though not moving. The words pushed the space farther and farther away, toward an edge that could be sensed more strongly though not seen—then, suddenly, over it. The spell broke, completed. Nita and Kit and Fred were standing at the edge of a great empty pit, as if someone had reached up into the earth and scooped out the subway station, the hoard, and the Eldest, whole. Someone had.

"1 think we better get out of here," Kit said, very quietly. As if in answer to his words came a long, soft groan of strained timber and metal—the pillars and walls of the tunnel where they stood and the tunnel on the other side of the pit, bending under new stresses that the pillars of the station had handled and that these were not meant to. Then a rumble, something falling. Nita and Kit turned and ran down the tunnel, stumbling over timbers and picking themselves up and running again. Fred zipped along beside like a shooting star looking for the right place to fall. They slammed into the wall at the end of the track as the rumble turned to a thunder and the thunder started catching up behind. Nita found bare concrete, said the Mason's Word in a gasp, and flung the stone open. Kit jumped through with Fred behind him. The tunnel shook, roared, blew out a stinging, dust-laden wind, and went down in ruin as Nita leaped through the opening and fell to the tracks beside Kit.

He got to his knees slowly, rubbing himself where he had hit. "Boy," he said, "if we weren't in trouble with you-know-who before, we are now… ."

Hurriedly Kit and Nita got up and the three of them headed for the ledge and the way to the open air.

Major Wizardries Termination and

Recovery

With great caution and a grunt of effort, Kit pushed up the grille at the top of the concrete steps and looked around. "Oh, brother," he whispered, "sometimes I wish I wasn't right." He scrambled up out of the tunnel and onto the sidewalk, with Nita and Fred following right behind. The street was a shambles reminiscent of Fifth and Sixty-second. Corpses of cabs and limousines and even a small truck were scattered around, smashed into lampposts and the fronts of buildings, over-turned on the sidewalk. The Lotus Esprit was crouched at guard a few feet away from the grille opening, its engine running in long, tired-sounding gasps. As Kit ran over to it, the Lotus rumbled an urgent greeting and shrugged its doors open. "They know we're here," Nita said as they hurriedly climbed in and buck-led up. "They have to know what we've done. Everything feels different since the dark Book fell out of this space."

(And they must know we'll head back for the worldgate at Pan Am,) Fred said. (Wherever that is.)

"We've gotta find it — oof!" Kit said, as the Lotus reared back, slamming its doors shut, and dove down the street they were on, around the corner and north again. "Nita, you up for one more spell?"

"Do we have a choice?" She got her manual out of her pack, started thumbing through it. "What I want to know is what we're supposed to try on whatever they have waiting for us at Grand Central. You-know-who isn't just going to let us walk in there and leave with the bright Book—"

"We'll burn that bridge when we come to it." Kit had his backpack open in his lap and was peeking at the Book of Night with Moon. Even in the sullen dimness that leaked in the Lotus's windows, the edges of the pages of the Book shone, the black depths of its covers glowed with the promise of light. Kit ran a finger along the upper edge of one cover, and as Nita watched his fa cesettled into a solemn stillness, as if someone spoke and he listened intently. It was a long moment before the expression broke. Then Kit glanced over at her with a wondering look in his eyes. "It really doesn't look like that much," he said. "But it feels—Nita, I don't think they can hurt us while we have this. Or if they can, it won't matter much."

"Maybe not, if we read from it," Nita said, reading down through the spell that would locate the worldgate for them. "But you remember what Tom said—"

"Yeah." But there was no concern in Kit's voice, and he was looking soberly at the Book again.

Nita finished checking the spell and settled back in the seat to prepare for it, then started forward again as a spark of heat burned into her neck, "Ow!"

(Sorry.) Fred slid around from behind her to perch farther forward on her shoulder.

"Here we go," Nita said.

She had hardly begun reading the imaging spell before a wash of power such as she had never felt seized her and plunged her into the spell headfirst. And the amazing thing was that she couldn't even be frightened, for what-ever had so suddenly pulled her under and into the magic was utterly benevolent, a huge calm influence that Nita sensed would do her nothing but good, though it might kill her doing it. The power took her, poured itself into her, made the spell part of her. There was no longer any need to work it; it was. Instantly she saw all Manhattan laid out before her again in shadow outlines, and there was the worldgate, almost drowned in the darkness created by the Starsnuffer, but not hidden to her. The power let her go then, and she sat back gasping. Kit was watching her strangely. (I think I see what you mean,) she said. (The Book- — it made the spell happen by itself, almost.)