Диана Дуэйн - So You Want To Be A Wizard

"We're out of Lotuses," Kit said, his voice bleak.

"I know. But look where we are! Kit, this is Central Park! You know how many trees there are in here of the kinds that went to the Battle in the old days? They don't forget." He stared at her. "What can they—"

"The Book makes everything work better, doesn't it? There's a spell that— I'll do it, you'll see. But you've got to do one too, it's in your specialty group. The Mason's Word, the long version—" "To bring stone or metal to life." He scrubbed the last tears out of his eyes and managed ever so slight and slow a smile. "There are more statues within screaming distance of this place—" "Kit," Nita said, "how loud can you scream?" "Let's find out."

They both started going through their manuals in panicky haste. Far away on the east side, lessened by all the buildings and distance that lay between, but still much too clear, there was a single, huge, deep-pitched clang, an immense weight of metal hitting the ground with stone- shattering force. Fred hobbled a little in the air, nervously. (How long do you think—) "He'll be a while, Fred," Kit said, sounding as if he hoped it would be a long while. "He doesn't like to run; it's beneath his dignity. But I think—' He broke off for a moment, reading down a page and forming the syllables or the Mason's Word without saying them aloud. "I think we're going to have a few friends who'll do a little running for us."

He stood up, and Fred followed him, staying close to light the page. "Nita, hand me the Book." She passed it up to him, breaking off her own frantic лreading for a moment to watch. "It'll have to be a scream," he said as if himself. "The more of them hear me, the more help we get."

Kit took three long breaths and then shouted the Word at the top of 1 lungs, all twenty-seven syllables of it without missing a one. The sound be-1 impossibly more than the yell of a twelve-year-old as the Book seized the sound and the spell together and flung them out into the city night. Nita had to hold her ears. Even when it seemed safe to uncover them again, the echoes bounced back from buildings on all sides and would not stop. Kit stood there amazed as his voice rang and ricocheted from walls blocks away. "Well," he said, "they'll feel the darkness, they'll know what's happening. I think."

"My turn," Nita said, and stood up beside Kit, making sure of her place. Her spell was not a long one. She fumbled for the rowan wand, put it in the hand that also held her wizards' manual, and took the bright Book from Kit. "1 hope—" she started to say, but the words were shocked out of her as the feeling that the Book brought with it shot up her arm. Power, such sheer joyous power that no spell could fail, no matter how new the wizard was to the Art, Here, under moonlight and freed at last from its long restraint, the Book was more potent than even the dark rider who trailed them would suspect, and that potency raged to be free. Nita bent her head to her manual and read the spell.

Or tried to. She saw the words, the syllables, and spoke the Speech, but the moonfire falling on the Book ran through her veins, slid down her throat, and turned the words to song more subtle than she had ever dreamed of, burned behind her eyes and showed her another time, when another will had voiced these words for the first time and called the trees to battle.

All around her, both now and then, the trees lifted their arms into the wind, breathed the fumes of the new-old Earth and breathed out air that men could use; they broke the stone to make ground for their children to till and fed the mold with themselves, leaf and bough, and generation upon generation. They knew to what end their sacrifice would come, but they did it anyway, and they would do it again in the Witherer's spite. They were doing it now. Oak and ash and willow, birch and alder, elm and maple, they teit the darkness in the wind that tossed their branches and would not stand still for it. The ground shook all around Nita, roots heaved and came free— "rst the trees close by, the counterparts of the trees under whicb she and Kit and Fred had sheltered in the dark otherworld. White oak, larch, twisted Crabapp]e, their leaves glittering around the edges with the flowering radiance of the rowan wand, they lurched and staggered as they came rootloose, arld then crowded in around Kit and Nita and Fred, whispering with wind, Joking a protecting circle through which nothing would pass but moonlight, ne effect spread out and away from Nita, though the spell itself was fin- ned, and that relentless power let her sag against one friendly oak, gasping. ror yards, for blocks, as far as she could see through the trunks of the trees * crowded close, branches waved green and wild as bushes and vines and hundred-year monarchs of the park pulled themselves out of the ground and moved heavily to the defense. Away to the east, the clangor of metal hooves and the barks and howls of the dark rider's pack were coming closer. The trees waded angrily toward the noise, some hobbling along on top of the ground, some wading through it, and just as easily through sidewalks and stone walls. In a few minutes there was a nearly solid palisade of living wood between Kit and Nita and Fred and Fifth Avenue. Even the glare of the street lights barely made it through the branches.

Kit and Nita looked at each other. "Well," Kit said reluctantly, "I guess we can't put it off any longer."

Nita shook her head. She moved to put her manual away and was momentarily shocked when the rowan wand, spent, crumbled to silver ash in her hand. "So much for that," she said, feeling unnervingly naked now that her protection was gone. Another howl sounded, very close by, and was abruptly cut off in a rushing of branches as if a tree had fallen on something on purpose. Nita fumbled in her pocket and pulled out a nickel. "Call it," she said. "Heads."

She tossed the coin, caught it, slapped it down on her forearm. Heads. "Crud," she said, and handed the bright Book to Kit.

He took it uneasily, but with a glitter of excitement in his eye. "Don't worry," he said. "You'll get your chance."

"Yeah, well, don't hog it." She looked over at him and was amazed to see him regarding her with some of the same worry she was feeling. From outside the fence of trees came a screech of brakes, the sound of a long skid, and then a great splintering crashing of metal and smashing of glass as an attack-ing cab lost an argument with some tree standing guard. Evidently reinforcements from that other, darker world were arriving.

"I won't," Kit said, "You'll take it away from me and keep reading if—

He stopped, not knowing what might happen, Nita nodded. "Fred," she said, "we may need a diversion. But save yourself till the last minute."

fl will. Kit—) The spark of light hung close to him for a moment. (Be careful.) Suddenly, without warning, every tree around them shuddered as if Vl°" lently struck. Nita could hear them crying out in silent anguish, and cried out in terror herself as she felt what they felt — a great numbing cold that smote at the heart like an axe. Kit, beside her, sat frozen with it, aghast. Fred went dim with shock. (Not again!) he said, his voice faint and horrified. (Not here, where there's so much life!)

"The Sun," Nita whispered. "He put out the Sun!" Starsnuffer, she thought. That tactic's worked for him before. And if the Sun is out, pretty soon there won't be moonlight to read by, and he can—

Kit stared up at the Moon as if at someone about to die, "Nita, how long jo we have?" "Eight minutes, maybe a little more, for light to get here from the Sun. gight minutes before it runs out "

Kit sat down hurriedly, laid the bright Book in his lap, and opened it. The light of the full Moon fell on the glittering pages. This time the print was not vague as under the light of Nita's wand. It was clear and sharp and dark, as easily read as normal print in daylight. The Book's covers were fading, going clear, burning with that eye-searing transparency that Nita had seen about Kit and herself before. The whole Book was hardly to be seen except for its printing, which burned in its own fashion, supremely black and clear, but glistening as if the ink with which the characters were printed had moonlight trapped in them too. "Here's an index," Kit whispered, using the Speech now. "/ think — the part about New York—"