Диана Дуэйн - So You Want To Be A Wizard

Under cover of that tumult of bowls and crashes and the clash of arms Nita grabbed Kit to pull him away from the tree-wall, behind 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 touch-ing 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 under-stood 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 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 01 death and darkness that the angry Starsnuffer had raised to break the ne*' made worlds and freeze the seas where life was growing, an eternity ago. am the wind that troubles the water," Nita said, whispering in the SpeeC"-The whisper smote against the windowed cliffs until they echoed again, anfl the clash and tumult of battle began to grow still as the wind rose at» enaming. "I am the - water, and the waves; I am the shore where the waves bt$ 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 wip 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. '7 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 lire or in deathcold, still I am there—" The Moon went out.

'red cried out soundlessly, and Nita felt the loss of light like a stab in the art The power fell away from her, quenched, leaving her small and cold nclhuman and alone, holding in her hands a Book gone dark from lack of °° n"ght She and Kit turned desperately toward each other in a darkness Pidly 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 all?) "Fred?" Kit said, but Fred didn't wait- He shot upward, blazing, a point of light like a falling star 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 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 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 dark rider was cursing them all in earnest now, knowing that another three lines in the-#00* 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 ' astwild 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 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. She couldn't stop crying, and the power burned in her tears too, an odd hot feeling, as she cried bitterly for Fred, ro fKit's Lotus, for everything horrible that had happened all that day — all l"* 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 shoul-der at the one who watched- His face was set, and bitter stil], but weary. 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 best pen that Fred had saved and changed. She 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 Starsnuf-fer's name in the Speech, said the new last syllable, made it real. The wind was gone. 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 — then one by one each paced off into the park or down Fifth Avenue, back to its pedestal and its long quiet Tegard 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