A four-foot-high wall ran down the west side of Fifth Avenue, next to a sidewalk of gray hexagonal paving-stones. Nita and Kit crouched behind it, just inside Central Park, under the shadows of barren-branched trees, and tried to catch their breath. Fred hung above them, watching both Fifth Avenue and Sixty-fourth Street for signs of pursuit.
Nita leaned against the dirty wall, careless of grime or roughness or the pigeon droppings that streaked it. She was scared. All through her life, the one thing she knew she could always depend on was her energy—it never gave out. Even after being beaten up, she always sprang right back. But here and now, when she could less afford exhaustion than she had ever been able to in her life, she felt it creeping up on her. She was even afraid to rest, for fear it would catch up with her quicker. But her lungs were burning, and it felt so good to sit still, not have death or something worse chasing her. And there was another spell to be cast . . .
If I’d known I was going to get into a situation like this, she thought, would I ever have picked that book up at all? Would I have taken the Oath? Then she shook her head and tried to think about something else, for she got an inkling of the answer, and it shocked her. She had always been told that she wasn’t brave. At least that’s what Joanne and her friends had always said: Can’t take a dare, can’t take a joke, crybaby, crybaby. We were only teasing . . .
She sniffed and rubbed her eyes, which stung. “Did you find the spell?” she said.
Kit had been paging through his wizards’ manual. Now he was running a finger down one page, occasionally whispering a word, then stopping himself to keep from using the Speech aloud. “Yeah. It’s pretty simple.” But he was frowning.
“What’s the matter?”
Kit slumped back against the wall, looked over at her. “I keep thinking about what—you-know-who—was talking about on the phone.”
“Sounded like he was hiding something.”
“Uh hah. They know where the bright Book is, all right. And somebody’s watching it. Whoever the ‘Eldest’ is. And now there’re going to be more guards around it.”
“The usual accesses, he said. Kit, there might be an unusual access, then.”
“Sure. If we had any idea where the thing was hidden.”
“Won’t the spell give us a vision, a location, like the last one?”
“No. It’s a directional.” Kit dropped his hands wearily on the book in his lap, sighed, looked over at Nita. “I don’t know . . . I just don’t get it.”
“What?” She rolled the rowan wand between her hands, watching the way its light shone between her fingers and through the skin.
“He didn’t look evil. Or sound that way, at least not till right at the end there.”
(The Snuffer was always glorious to look at before it scorned the light,) Fred said. (And it kept the beauty afterward—that’s what the stars always used to say. That’s one reason it’s dangerous to deal with that one. The beauty . . . seduces.) Fred made a small feeling of awe and fear. (What a blaze of darkness, what a flood of emissions. I was having a hard time keeping my composure in there.)
“Are you all right now?”
(Oh, yes. I was a little amazed that you didn’t perceive the power burning around the shell he was wearing. Just as well—you might have spoken to him, and everything would have been lost. That one’s most terrible power, they say, is his absolute conviction that he’s right in what he does.)
“He’s not right, then?” Kit said.
(I don’t know.)
“But,” Nita said, confused, “if he’s fighting with . . . with Them . . . with the ones who made the bright Book, isn’t he in the wrong?”
(I don’t know,) Fred said again. (How am I supposed to judge? But you’re wizards, you should know how terrible a power belief is, especially in the wrong hands—and how do you tell which hands are wrong? Believe something and the Universe is on its way to being changed. Because you’ve changed, by believing. Once you’ve changed, other things start to follow. Isn’t that the way it works?)
Nita nodded as Fred looked across the dark expanse of Central Park. The branches of trees were knitted together in tangled patterns of strife. Ivy tangled what it climbed. Paths were full of pitfalls, copses clutched themselves full of threat and darkness. Shadows moved secretively through shadows, making unnerving noises. (This is what—he—believes in,) Fred said sadly, (however he justifies the belief.)
Nita could find nothing to say. The wordless misery of the trees had been wearing at her ever since she set foot inside the wall. All the growing things there longed for light, though none of them knew what it was; she could feel their starved rage moving sluggishly in them, slow as sap in the cold. Only in one place was their anger muted—several blocks south, at Fifth and Central Park South, where in her own New York the equestrian statue of General Sherman and the Winged Victory had stood. Here the triumphant rider cast in black bronze was that handsome young man they had seen in the black glass building, his face set in a cold proud conqueror’s smile. The creature he rode was a skull-faced eight-legged steed, which the wizards’ manual said brought death with the sound of its hooves. And Victory with her palm branch was changed to a grinning Fury who held a dripping sword. Around the statue group the trees were silent, not daring to express even inarticulate feelings. They knew their master too well.
Nita shook her head and glanced at Kit, who was looking in the same direction. “I thought it’d be fun to know the Mason’s Word and run around bringing statues to life,” he said unhappily, “but somehow I don’t think there’s any statue here I’d want to use the Word on . . . You ready? We should start this.”
“Yeah.”
The spell was brief and straightforward, and Nita turned to the right page in her manual and drew the necessary circle and diagram. Kit got the dark Book out of his backpack and dropped it in the middle of the circle. Nita held up her wand for light. They began to recite the spell.
It was only three sentences long, but by the end of the first sentence Nita could feel the trees bending in close to watch—not with friendly, secretive interest, as in her first spell with Kit, but in hungry desperation. Even the abstract symbols and words of the Speech must have tasted of another Universe where light was not only permitted, but free. The rowan wand was blazing by the end of the second sentence, maybe in reaction to being so close to something of the dark powers, and Nita wondered whether she should cover it up to keep them from being noticed. But the spell held her immobile as usual. For another thing, the trees all around were leaning in and in with such piteous feelings of hunger that she would as soon have eaten in front of starving children and not offered them some of what she had. Branches began to toss and twist, reaching down for a taste of the light, and Kit finished the spell.
Kit reached right down to pick up the dark Book, which was as well, as immediately after the last word of the spell was spoken it actually lifted itself a little way along the ground, southward. Kit could only hold it for a moment before stuffing it back into his backpack. It no longer looked innocent. It burned, both to touch and to look at. Even when Kit had it hidden away and the backpack slung on, neither of them felt any easier. It was as if they were all now visible to something that was looking eagerly for them.
“Let’s get out of here,” Kit said, so subdued that Nita could hardly hear him—Nita stood and laid a hand against the trunk of the nearest tree, a consoling gesture. She was sorry she couldn’t have left them more light. (I wish there was something I could do,) she said silently. But no answer came back. These trees were bound silent, like the car Kit had tended.
She rejoined Kit, who was looking over the wall. “Nothing,” he said. Together they swung over the dropping-streaked stone and hurried down Fifth Avenue, crossing the street to get a safe distance between them and the strange cries and half-seen movements of the park. “Straight south?” Nita said.
“Pretty nearly. It’s pushing straight that way on my back. The bright Book looked like it was way downtown, didn’t it, in that spell?”
“Uh huh. The financial district, I think.” She gulped. It was a long way to walk—miles—even without having to worry about someone chasing you.
“Well, we’d better hurry,” Kit said. He paused while they both stopped at the corner of Fifth and Sixty-first. When they were across, he added, “What gets me is that he’s so sure that we’re interference from the bright side. We haven’t done anything yet.”
“Huh,” Nita said, gently scornful. “Sure we haven’t. And anyway, whaddaya mean we aren’t ‘interference from the bright side’? You were the one who said we’d been had.”
Kit mulled this over as they approached Sixtieth. “Well . . . maybe. If they know about us, do you think they’ll send help?”
“I don’t know. I get the feeling that maybe we are the help.”
“Well, we’re not dead yet!” Kit said, and peered around the corner of Sixtieth and Fifth—and then jumped back, pale with shock. “We’re dead,” he said, turned around, and began running back the way they had come, though he limped doing it. Nita looked around that corner just long enough to see what he had seen—a whole pack of big yellow cabs, thundering down Sixtieth. The one in front had a twisted fender that stuck out slightly on one slate, a jagged piece of metal. She turned and ran after Kit, frantic. “Where can we hide?”
‘The buildings are locked here too,” Kit said from up ahead. He had been trying doors. “Fred, can you do something?”
(After that last emission? So soon?) Fred’s thought was shaken. (It’s all I can do to radiate light. I need time to recover.)
“Crud! Kit, the park, maybe the trees’ll slow them down.”
They both ran for the curb, but there was no time. Cabs came roaring around the corner from Sixtieth, and another pack of them leaped around the corner of Sixty-first and hurtled down Fifth toward them; they would never make it across the street.
Kit grabbed for his antenna, and Nita yanked out the wand, but without much hope—it hadn’t worked that well on the helicopter. The cabs slowed closed in from both sides, forming a half-circle with Kit and Nita and Fred at the center, backing them against the wall of a dingy building. The cordon tightened until there were no gaps, and one cab at each side was up on the sidewalk, blocking it. No matter where Nita looked, all she saw were chromed grilles like gritted teeth, hungry headlights staring. One of the cabs shouldered forward, its engine snarling softly. The jagged place at one end of its front fender wore a brown discoloration. Not rust—Kit’s blood, which it had tasted. Kit lifted the antenna, the hand that gripped it shaking.
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, whopping sobs. She had a feeling as 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 besides 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 any more, after that last emission. And I’m afraid to find out.)
“Kit, scrunch down,” Nita said suddenly, doing the same herself. The Lotus roared 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 grille-work 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 besides 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 onward 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 said.
Kit nodded down 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 tunnel’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 scaled 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 . . .
The dragon had its head down and was raking over its hoard with huge claws that broke what they touched half the time. Its tail twitched like a cat’s as it whispered to itself in a voice like hissing steam. Its scales rustled as it moved, glowing faintly with the same light as the firefungus, but colder, greener, darker. The dragon’s eyes were slitted as if even the pale fungus light was too much for it. It dug in the hoard, nosed into the hole, dug again, nosed about, as if going more by touch than sight, “Four thousand and ssix,” it whispered, annoyed, hurried, angry. “It was here sssomewhere, I know it was. Three thousand—no. Four thousand and-and—”
It kept digging, its claws sending coins and bottlecaps rolling. The dragon reached into the hole and with its teeth lifted out a canvas bag. Bright things spilled out, which Nita first thought were more coins but that turned out to be subway tokens. With a snarl of aggravation the fireworm-dragon flung the bag away, and tokens flew and bounced down the hoard-hill, a storm of brassy glitter. One rolled right to Nita’s feet. Not taking her eyes off the dragon, she bent to pick it up. It was bigger than the subway token the New York transit system used these days, and the letters stamped on it were in an old-time style. She nudged Kit and passed it to him, looking around at the mosaics on the walls. They were old. The City Hall motif repeated in squares high on the train-sidewall of the platform looked little like the City Hall of today.
This station had to be one of those that were walled up and forgotten when the area was being rebuilt long ago. The question was—
(One problem is—) Kit started to say in his quietest whisper of thought.
He wasn’t quiet enough. With an expression of rage and terror, the dragon lifted up from its digging, looked straight at them. Its squinted eyes kindled in the light from Nita’s wand, throwing back a frightful violet reflection “Who’s there? Who’s there?” it screamed in the Speech, in a voice like an explosion of steam. Without waiting for an answer it struck forward with its neck as a snake strikes and spat fire at them. Nita was ready, though; the sound of the scream and the sight of many tiny shadows running for cover had given her enough warning to put up the shield spell for both herself and Kit. The firebolt, dark red shot with billowing black like the output of a flamethrower, blunted against the shield and spilled sideways and down like water splashing on a window. When the bolt died away, the dragon was creeping and coiling down the hoard toward them; but it stopped, confused when it saw that Kit and Nita and Fred still stood unhurt. It reared back its head for another bolt.
“You can’t hurt us, Eldest,” Nita said hurriedly, hoping it wouldn’t try; the smell of burned firefungus was already enough to turn the stomach. The dragon crouched low against the hoard, its tail lashing, staring at them.
“You came to ssteal,” it said, its voice quieter than before but angrier, as it realized it couldn’t hurt them. “No one ever comes here but to ssteal. Or to try,” it added, glancing savagely over at another torn and fire-withered orange vest. “What do you want? You can’t have it. Mine, all thiss is mine. No one takes what’ss mine. He promissed, he ssaid he would leave me alone when I came here. Now he breakss the promiss, is that it?”
The Eldest squinted wrathfully at them. For the second time that day, Nita found herself fascinated by an expression. Rage was in the fireworm-dragon’s face, but also a kind of pain; and its voice was desperate in its anger. It turned its back, then, crawling back up onto the hoard. “I will not let him break the promiss. Go back to him and tell him that I will burn it, burn it all, ssooner than let him have one ring, one jewel. Mine, all thiss is mine, no hoard has been greater than thiss in all times, he will not diminishhh it—” The Eldest wound itself around the top of the hoard-mound like a crown of spines and scales, digging its claws protectively into the gems and the trash. A small avalanche of objects started from the place where it had been laying the hoard open before. Gold bars, some the small collectors’ bars, some large ones such as the banks used, clattered or crashed down the side of the mound. Nita remembered how some ten million dollars’ worth of Federal Reserve gold had vanished from a bank in New York some years before—just vanished, untraceable—and she began to suspect where it had gone.
“Mine,” hissed the Eldest. “I have eight thousand six hundred forty-two diamonds, I have six hundred—no. I have four hundred eight emeralds. I had eighty-nine black opals—no, fifteen black opals. I have eighty-nine—eighty-nine—” The anxiety in its voice was growing, washing out the anger. Abruptly the Eldest turned away from them and began digging again, still talking, its voice becoming again as it had been when they first came—hurried, worried. “Eighty-nine pounds of silver plate. I have two hundred fourteen pounds of gold—no, platinum. I have six hundred seventy pounds of gold—”
“Nita,” Kit said, very softly, in English, hoping the Eldest wouldn’t understand it—”You get the feeling it’s losing its memory?”
She nodded—”Lord, how awful.” For a creature with the intense possessiveness of a fireworm to be unable to remember what it had in its hoard must be sheer torture. It would never be able to be sure whether everything was there; if something was missing, it might not be able to tell. And to a fireworm, whose pride is in its defense of its hoard from even the cleverest thieves, there was no greater shame than to be stolen from and not notice and avenge the theft immediately. The Eldest must live constantly with the fear of that shame. Even now it had forgotten Kit and Nita and Fred as it dug and muttered frantically, trying to find something, though uncertain of what it was looking for.
Nita was astonished to find that she was feeling sorry for a creature that had tried to kill her a few minutes before. “Kit,” she said, “what about the bright Book? Is it in there?”
He glanced down at the dark Book, which was straining in his backpack toward the piled-up hoard. “Uh huh. But how are we going to find it? And are you sure that defense shield is going to hold up at close range, when it comes after us? You know it’s not going to just let us take something—”
(Why not trade it something?) Fred asked suddenly.
Nita and Kit both looked at him, struck by the idea. “Like what?” Kit said.
(Like another Book?)
“Oh, no,” they said in simultaneous shock.
“Fred,” Kit said then, “we can’t do that. The—you-know-who—he’ll just come right here and get it.”
(So where did you get it from, anyway? Doubtless he could have read from it any time he wanted. If you can get the bright Book back to the Senior wizards in your world, can’t they use it to counteract whatever he does?)
Nita and Kit both thought about it. “He might have a point,” Nita said after a second. “Besides, Kit—if we do leave the dark Book here, can you imagine you-know-who getting it back without some trouble?” She glanced up at the mound, where the Eldest was whispering threats of death and destruction against whoever might come to steal. “He wouldn’t have put the bright Book here unless the Eldest was an effective guardian.”
Even through the discomfort of holding the dark Book, Kit managed to a small smile. “Gonna try it?”
Nita took a step forward. Instantly the dragon paused in its digging to stare at her, its scaly lips wrinkled away from black fangs in a snarl, but its eyes frightened. “Eldest,” she said in the Speech, “we don’t come to steal. We’re here to make a bargain.”
The Eldest stared at Nita a moment more, then narrowed its eyes further. “Hss, you’re a clever thiefff,” it said. “Why ssshould I bargain with you?”
Nita gulped. Wizardry is words, the book had said. Believe, and create the truth; but be careful what you believe. “Because only your hoard, out of all the other hoards from this world to the next, has what we’re interested in,” she said carefully. “Only you ever had the taste to acquire and preserve this thing.”
“What?”said the Eldest. Its voice was still suspicious, but its eyes looked less threatened. Nita began to feel a glimmer of hope. “What might thiss thing be?”
“A book,” Nita said, “an old book something like this one.” Kit took a step forward and held up the dark Book for the Eldest to see. This close to its bright counterpart, the dark volume was warping the air and light around it so terribly that its outlines writhed like a fistful of snakes.
The Eldest peered at the dark Book with interest. “Now there is ssomething I don’t have,” it said. “Sssee how it changes. That would be an interesting addition . . . What did you ssay you wanted to trade it for?”
“Another Book, Eldest. You came by it some time ago, we hear. It’s close in value to this one. Maybe a little less,”Nita added, making it sound offhand.
The dragon’s eyes brightened like those of a collector about to get the best of a bargain. “Lesss, you say. Hsss . . . Sssomeone gave me a book rather like that one, ssome time ago, I forget just who. Let me ssseee . . . ” It turned away from them and began digging again. Nita and Kit stood and watched and tried to be patient while the Eldest pawed through the trash and the treasure, making sounds of possessive affection over everything it touched, mumbling counts and estimating values.
“I wish it would hurry up,” Kit whispered. “I can’t believe that after we’ve been chased this far, they’re not going to be down here pretty quick. We didn’t have too much trouble getting in—”
“You didn’t open the wall,” Nita muttered back. “Look, I’m still worried about leaving this here.”
“Whaddaya want?” Kit snapped. “Do I have to carry it all the way home?” He breathed out, a hiss of annoyance that sounded unnervingly like the Eldest, and then rubbed his forearm across his eyes. “This thing burns—I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay,” Nita said, slightly embarrassed. “I just wish there were some way to be sure that you-know-who wouldn’t get his hands on it anytime soon.”
Kit looked thoughtful and opened his mouth to say something. It was at that moment that the Eldest put its face down into the hole it had been digging and came up again with something bright.
The Book of Night with Moon fell with a thump onto a pile of gold and gems and made them look tawdry, outshone them in a way that seemed to have nothing to do with light. Its cover was the same black leather as that of the dark Book—but as one looked at it, the blackness seemed to gain depth; light seemed hidden in it like a secret in a smiling heart. Even the dim green glow of the firefungus looked healthier now that the Book lay out in it. Where page edges showed, they glittered as if brushed with diamond dust rather than gilding. The Eldest bent over the bright Book, squinting as if into a great light but refusing to look away. “Aaaaaahhh,” it said, a slow, caressing, proprietary sigh. “Thisss is what you wisshed to trade your book ffor?”
“Yes, Eldest,” Nita said, starting to worry.
The dragon laid its front paws on either side of the Book. “Ffair, it is ssso ffair. I had forgotten how ssweet it was to look on. No. No, I will not trade. I will not. Mine, mine . . . ” It nosed the bright Book lovingly.
Nita bit her lip and wondered what in the world to try next. “Eldest,” Kit said from beside her, “we have something more to trade.”
“Oh?” The dragon looked away from the Book with difficulty and squinted at Kit. “What might that be?”
(Yeah, what?) Nita said silently.
(Sssh.) “If you will take our book in trade for that one, we’ll work such a wizardry about this place that no thief will ever enter. You’ll be safe here for as long as you please. Or forever,”
(What are you talking about!) Nita said, amazed. (We don’t have the supplies for a major wizardry like that. The only one you could possibly manage would be one of—)
(—the blank-check spells, I know. Nita, shaddup!)
The Eldest was staring at Kit. “No one would ever come in again to ssteal from me?” it said.
“That’s right.”
Nita watched the dragon’s face as it looked away from Kit, thinking. It was old and tired, and terrified of losing what it had amassed; but now a frightened hope was awakening in its eyes. It looked back at Kit after a few seconds. “You will not come back either? No one will trouble me again?”
“Guaranteed,” Kit said, meaning it.
“Then I will trade. Give me your book, and work your spell, and go. Leave me with what is mine.” And it picked up the Book of Night with Moon in its jaws and dropped it off the hoard-hill, not far from Kit’s feet. “Give me, give me”’ the Eldest said. Warily, Nita dropped the shield spell. Kit took a couple of easy steps forward and held out the dark Book, The dragon shot its head out, sank sharp teeth in the dark Book, and jerked it out of Kit’s hands so fast he stared at them for a moment, counting fingers.
“It’s mine,” it hissed as it turned away and started digging at another spot on the hoard, preparing to bury the dark Book. Kit stooped, picked up the Book of Night with Moon. It was as heavy as the dark Book had been, about the size of an encyclopedia volume, and strange to hold—the depth of the blackness of its covers made it seem as if the holding hands should sink right through. Kit flipped it open as Nita and Fred came up behind to look over his shoulder. (But the pages are blank,) Fred said, puzzled.
(It needs moonlight,) Kit said.
(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—an invocation to the Powers that governed the arts of wizardry, asking them to help this piece of work and promising that the power lent would be returned if They required. Nita shivered, wondering what she was getting herself into, for 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.
“I 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.