by Диана Дуэйн
Kit peered over the railing at the walkway. "This better be some pen," he said, and turned his back to the worldgate, watching the roof. "Go ahead.'
Nita made sure her backpack was slung properly, checked the rowan wand again, and slowly swung over the guardrail, balancing on the stone in which it was rooted. She was shaking, and her hands were wet. If I don't just do this, she thought, I never will. Just one step down, Callahan, and then a nice solid walkway straight across. Really. Believe. Believe. Ouch! The air was so transparent that she misjudged the distance down to it— her foot hit before she thought it would, and the jolt went right up her spine-Still holding the railing, Nita lifted that foot a bit, then stomped down hard on the walkway. It was no different from stomping on a sidewalk. She let he' weight down on that foot, brought the second down, and stomped with that too. It was solid. fjj rock, Kit!" she said, looking up at him, still holding the rail.
"Sure," Kit said, skeptical. "Let go of the rail first."
Nita made a face at Kit and let go. She held both arms out at first, as she might have on a balance beam in gym, and then waved them experimentally. "See? It works. Fred?" Fred bobbed down beside her, looking with interest at the hardened air of the walkway. (And it will stay this way?)
"Until I turn it loose. Well?" She took a step backward, farther onto the walkway, and looked up challengingly. "How about it?"
Kit said nothing, just slung his own backpack over his shoulders and swung over the railing as Nita had done, coming down cautiously on the hardened air. He held on to the rail for a moment while conducting his own tests of the air's solidity. "Come on," Nita said. "The wind's not too bad."
"Lead the way."
Nita turned around, still holding her arms a little away from her to be sure of her balance, and started for the worldgate as quickly as she dared, with Fred pacing her cheerfully to the left. Eight or ten steps more and it was becoming almost easy. She even glanced down toward the walkway — and there she stopped very suddenly, her stomach turning right over in her at the sight of the dirty, graveled roof of Grand Central, a long, long, long fall below. "Don't look down," a memory said to her in Machu Picchu's scratchy voice. She swallowed, shaking all over, wishing she had remembered the advice earlier. "Nita, what's the—"
Something went whack! into the walkway. Nita jumped, lost her balance, and staggered back into Kit. For a few awful seconds they teetered back and forth in wind that gusted suddenly, pushing them toward the edge together — and then Kit sat down hard on the walkway, and Nita half fell on top of aim, and they held very still for a few gasps. "Wh-what—"
'I think it was a pigeon," Nita said, not caring whether Kit heard the trernulousness of her voice. "You okay?"
Sure," Kit said, just as shakily. "I try to have a heart attack every day Aether I need one or not. Get off my knee, huh?"
They picked each other up and headed for the gate again. {Even you have ouble with gravity,) Fred said wonderingly as he paced them. (I'm glad I left my mass elsewhere.) So are we," Nita said. She hurried the last twenty steps or so to the 'uened place at the end of the walkway, with Kit following close. knelt down in a hurry, to make sure the wind wouldn't push her over, and looked up at the worldgate. Seen this close it was about four feet by eight, the shape of a tear in a piece of cloth. It shone with a glowing, shifting, soap-bubble iridescence. Finally, finally, my pen! she thought — but somehow, the thought didn't make Nita as happy as it should have. The uneasy feeling that had started in the stairwell was still growing She glanced over her shoulder at Kit. He was kneeling too, with his back to her, watching the walkway and the rooftop intently. Beside her, Fred hune i • quietly waiting.
(Now what?) he asked.
Nita sighed, pulled the rowan rod out of her belt, and inserted one end of it delicately into the shimmering veil that was the surface of the worldgate. Though the city skyline could be seen very clearly through the shimmer, the inch or so of the wand that went through it appeared to vanish. "]ust perch yourself on the free end here," Nita said, holding the wand by its middle. "Make contact with it the same way you did with those keys. Okay?"
(Simple enough.) Fred floated to the end of the rod and lit there, a bright, still spark. (All right, I'm ready.)
Nita nodded. "This is a retrieval," she said in the Speech. "Involvement confined to a pen with the following characteristics: m 'sedh-zayin six point three—"
(Nita!)
The note of pure terror in Kit's mind-voice caused Nita to do the unforgivable — break off in the middle of a spell and look over her shoulder. Shapes were pouring out of the little glass shelter building, which had been empty, and was still somehow empty even as Nita looked. She got a first impression of grizzled coats, red tongues that lolled and slavered, fangs that gleamed in the sunlight, and she thought, Wolves!
But their eyes changed her mind as ten or twelve of the creatures loped across the roof toward the transparent walkway, giving tongue in an awful mindless cacophony of snarls and barks and shuddering howls. The eyes. People's eyes, blue, brown, green, but with almost all the intelligence gone out of them, nothing left but a hot deadly cunning and an awful desire for the taste of blood. From her reading in the wizards' manual, she knew what they were: perytons. Wolves would have been preferable — wolves were socta-ble creatures. These had been people once, people so used to hating that at the end of life they'd found a way to keep doing it, by hunting the souls of others through their nightmares. And once a peryton caught you…
Nita started to hitch backward in total panic and then froze, realizing that there was nowhere to go. She and Kit were trapped. Another second ana the perytons would be on the bridge, and at their throats, for eternity. K» whipped his head around toward Nita and the worldgate. "Jump through artf break the spell!" he yelled.
"But—" And she grabbed his arm, pushed the rowan wand through ne , u ^d yelled, "Come on, Fred!" The first three perytons leaped the guard- i anj landed on the bridge, running. Nita threw herself and Kit at the Ideate, being careful of the edges, as she knew she must, while screaming
• absolute terror the word that would dissolve the walkway proper. For a fraction of a second she caught the sound of screams other than her own, howls of creatures unseen but falling. Then the shimmer broke against her face like water, shutting out sound, and light, and finally thought. Blinded, deafened, and alone, she fell forever… .
Exocontinual Protocols
She lay with her face pressed against the cold harsh gravel, feeling the grit of it against her cheek, the hot tears as they leaked between her lashes, and that awful chill wind that wouldn't stop tugging at her clothes. Very slowly Nita opened her eyes, blinked, and gradually realized that the problem with the place where she lay was not her blurred vision. It was just very dim there. She leaned on her skinned hands, pushed herself up, and looked to see where she was. Dark-gray gravel was all around. Farther off, something smooth and dark, with navy-blue bumps. The helipad. Farther still, the raiting, and beyond it the sky, dark. That was odd—it had been morning. The sound of a moan made Nita turn her head. Kit was close by, lying on his side with his hands over his face. Sitting on his shoulder, looking faint as a spark about to go out, was Fred.
Nita sat up straighter, even though it made her head spin. She had fallen a long way, she didn't want to remember how far… . "Kit," she whispered. "You okay? Fred?" Kit turned over, pushed himself up on his hands to a sitting position, and groaned again. Fred clung to him. "I don't think I busted anything," Kit said-slow and uncertain. "I hurt all over. Fred, what about you?"
(The Sun is gone,) Fred said, sounding absolutely horrified.
Kit looked out across the helipad into the darkness and rubbed his eyes-"Me and my bright ideas. What Have I got us into?"
"As much my bright idea as yours," Nita said. "If it weren't for me, *e wouldn't have been out by that worldgate in the first place. Anyway, Kltr where else could we have gone? Those perytons—"
Kit shuddered. "Don't ev
en talk about them. I'd sooner be here than SO YOU WANTTOBE A WIZARD81 them get me." He got to his knees, then stood up, swaying for a moment. "Oooh. C'mon, let's see where the worldgate went."
He headed off across the gravel. Nita got up on her knees too, then caught sight Of a bit of glitter lying a few feet away and grabbed at it happily. Her pen, none the worse for wear. She clipped it securely to the pocket of her shirt and went after Kit and Fred. Kit was heading for the south-facing railing. "I guess since you only called for a retrieval, the gate dumped us back on top of the . ,"
His voice trailed off suddenly as he reached the railing. Nita came up beside him and saw why.
The city was changed. A shiver ran all through Nita, like the odd feeling that comes with an attack of deft vu—but this was true memory, not the illusion of it. She recognized the place from her first spell with Kit — the lowering, sullen-feeling gloom, the shadowed island held prisoner between its dark, icy rivers. Frowning buildings hunched themselves against the oppres-sive, slaty sky. Traffic moved, but very little of it, and it did so in the dark. Few headlights or taillights showed anywhere. The usual bright stream of cars and trucks and buses was here only dimly seen motion and a faint sound of snarling engines. And the sky! It wasn't clouded over; it wasn't night. It was empty. Just a featureless grayness, hanging too low, like a ceiling. Simply by looking at it Nita knew that Fred was right. There was no Sun behind it, and there were no stars—only this wall of gloom, shutting them in, imprisoning them with the presence Nita remembered from the spell, that she could feel faintly even now. It wasn't aware of her, but— She pushed back away from the rail, remembering the rowan's words. (The Other. The Witherer, the Kindler of Wildfires—)
"Kit," she said, whispering, this time doing it to keep from perhaps being overheard by that. "I think we better get out of here."
He backed away from the rail too, a step at a time. "Well," he said, very '°w, "now we know what your pen was doing in New York City… ."
"'The sooner it's out of here, the happier I'll be. Kit—where did the world-gate go!" "e shook his head, came back to stand beside her. "Wherever it went, it's "ot out there now." Nita let out an unhappy breath. "Why should it be? Everything else is cl)anged." She looked back at the helipad. The stairwell was still there, but s door had been ripped away and lay buckled on the gravel. The helipad J*'r had no design painted on it for a helicopter to center on when landing. e glass of the small building by the pad was smashed in some places and med all around; the building was full of rubble and trash, a ruin. "Where "*we?" Nita said,' he place we saw in the spell. Manhattan—"
"But different." Nita chewed her lip nervously. "Is this an alternate world maybe? The next universe over? The worldgate was just set for a retrieval but we jumped through; maybe we messed up its workings. Carl said this one was easy to mess up." "I wonder how much trouble you get in for busting a worldgate," Kit muttered. "I think we're in enough trouble right now. We have to find the thing."
(See if you can find me the Sun and the stars and the rest of the Universe while you're at it,) Fred said. He sounded truly miserable, much worse than when he had swallowed the pen. (I don't know how long I can bear this silence.)
Kit stood silent for a moment, staring out at that grim cold cityscape. "There is a spell we can use to find it that doesn't need anything but words," he said. "Good thing. We don't have much in the way of supplies. We'll need your help, though, Fred. Your claudication was connected to the worldgate's when we went through. You can be used to trace it." {Anything to get us out of this place,) Fred said. "Well," Nita said, "let's find a place to get set up."
The faint rattling noise of helicopter rotors interrupted her. She looked westward along the long axis of the roof, toward the dark half-hidden blot that was Central Park, or another version of it. A small flying shape came wheeling around the corner of a skyscraper a few blocks away and cruised steadily toward the roof where they stood, the sharp chatter of its blades ricocheting more and more loudly off the blank dark faces of neighboring skyscrapers. "We better get under cover," Kit said. Nita started for the stairwell, and Kit headed after her, but a bit more slowly. He kept throwing glances over his shoulder at the approaching chopper, both worried by it and interested in it. Nita looked over her shoulder too, to teO him to hurry — and then realized how close the chopper was, how fast it was coming. A standard two-scat helicopter, wiry skeleton, glass bubble protect-ing the seats, oval doors on each side. But the bubble's glass was filmed over except for the doors, which glittered oddly. They had a faceted look. No pilot could see out that, Nita thought, confused. And the skids, the landing skids are wrong somehow. The helicopter came sweeping over their heads, low, too low.
"KIT!" Nita yelled. She spun around and tackled him, knocking him flat, as the skids made a lightning jab at the place where he had been a momem before, and hit the gravel with a screech of metal. The helicopter soared on past them, refolding its skids, not yet able to slow down from the speed of i*5 first attack. The thunderous rattling of its rotors mixed with another sound,z high frustrated shriek like that of a predator that has missed its kill — and almost immediately they heard something else too, an even SO yOU WANTTOBE A WIZARD83 uea]ing, ratchety and metallic, produced by several sources and seeming to come from inside the ruined glass shelter.
Kit and Nita clutched at each other, getting a better look at the helicopter from behind as it swung around for another pass. The "skids" were doubled-back limbs of metal like those of a praying mantis, cruelly clawed. Under what should have been the helicopter's "bubble," sharp dark mandibles worked hungrily — and as the chopper heeled over and came about, those faceted eyes looked at Kit and Nita with the cold, businesslike glare reserved for helpless prey. "We're dead," Nita whispered.
"Not yet." Kit gasped, staggering up again. "The stairwell—" Together he and Nita ran for the stairs as the chopper-creature arrowed across the rooftop at them. Nita was almost blind with terror; she knew now what had torn the door off the stairwell and doubted there was any way to keep that thing from getting them. They fell into the stairwell together. The chopper roared past again, not losing so much time in its turn this time, coming about to hover like a deadly dragonfly while positioning itself for another jab with those steel claws. Kit fell farther down the stairs than Nita did, hit his head against a wall and lay moaning. Nita slid and scrabbled to a stop, then turned to see that huge, horrible face glaring into the stairwell, sighting on her for the jab. It was unreal. None of it could possibly be real; it was all a dream; and with the inane desperation of a dreamer in nightmare, Nita felt for the only thing at hand, the rowan rod, and slashed at the looming face with it.
She was completely unprepared for the result. A whip of silver fire the color of the Moon at full cracked across the bubble-face from the rod, which glowed in her hand. Screaming in pain and rage, the chopper-creature backed up and away, but only a little. The razor-combed claws shot down at her. She slashed at them too, and when the moonfire curled around them, the creature screamed again and pulled them back.
Kit!" she yelled, not daring to turn her back on those raging, ravenous eyes. "Kit! The antenna!" She heard him fumbling around in his pack as the hungry helicopter took another jab at her, and she whipped it again with fire. Quite suddenly some-"»ng fired past her ear — a bright, narrow line of blazing red light the color of metal in the forge, The molten light struck the helicopter in the underbelly, Pattering in bright hot drops, and the answering scream was much more terrible this time.
<('ts a machine," Nita said, gasping. "Your department."
threat," Kit said, crawling up the stairs beside her. "How do you kill alcopter?" But he braced one arm on the step just above his face, laid the enna over it, and fired again. The chopper-creature screeched again and away.
Kit scrambled up to his feet, pressed himself flat against what remained of the crumbling doorway, pointed the antenna again. Red fire lanced out followed by Nita's white as she dove back out int
o the stinging wind and thunder of rotors and slashed at the horror that hung and grabbed from midair. Gravel flew and stung, the wind lashed her face with her hair, the air was full of that car- tearing metallic scream, but she kept slashing. White fire snapped and curled — and then from around the other side of the chopper-creature there came a sharp crack! as a bolt of Kit's hot light fired upward. The scream that followed made all the preceding ones sound faint. Nita wished she could drop the wand and cover her ears, but she didn't dare — and anyway she was too puzzled by the creature's reaction. That shot hadn't hit anywhere on its body that she could see. Still screaming, it began to spin helplessly in a circle like a toy pinwheel. Kit had shattered the helicopter's tail rotor. It might still be airborne, but it couldn't fly straight, or steer. Nita danced back from another jab of those legs, whipped the eyes again with the silver fire of the rowan wand as they spun past her. From the other side there was another crack! and a shattering sound, and the bubble-head spinning past her again showed one faceted eye now opaque, spiderwebbed with cracks. The helicopter lurched and rose, trying to gain altitude and get away. Across the roof Kit looked up, laid the antenna across his forearm again, took careful aim, fired. This time the molten line of light struck through the blurring main rotors. With a high, anguished, ringing snap, one rotor flew off and went pinwheeling away almost too fast to see. The helicopter gave one last wild screech, bobbled up, then sideways, as if staggering through the air. "Get down!" Kit screamed at Nita, throwing himself on the ground. She did the same, covering her head with her arms and frantically gasping the sylla-bles of the defense-shield spell. The explosion shook everything and sent gravel flying to bounce off the hardened air around her like hail off a car roof, fagged blade shards snapped and rang and shot in all directions. Only when the roaring and the wash of heat that followed it died down to quiet and flickering light did Nita dare to raise her head. The helicopter-creature was a broken-backed wreck with oily flame licking through it. The eye that Kit had shattered stared blindly up a* the dark sky from the edge of the helipad; the tail assembly, twisted and bent, lay half under the creature's body. The only sounds left were the wind and that shrill keening from the little glass building, now much muted. rid herself of the shielding spell and got slowly to her feet. "Fred?" whispered.