"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.)
"Not 'almost,' " Kit said. "No wonder you-know-who wants it kept out of the hands of the Senior wizards. It can make even a beginner's spell happen. " did the same thing with the Moebius spell. If someone wanted to take this Place apart—or if someone wanted to make more places like it, and they had the Book——"He gulped. "Look, where's the gate?" 'Where it should be," Nita said, finding her breath. "Underground— under Grand Central. Not in the deli, though. It's down in one of the train tunnels."
Kit gulped again, harder. "Trains… . And you knowthat place'll be Bearded. Fred, are you up to another diversion?" (will it get us back to tne sun anci the stars again? Try me.) Nita closed her eyes to lean back and take a second's rest — the power that ad run through her for that moment had left her amazingly drained — but nearly jumped out of her skin the next moment as the Lotus braked wildly fishtailing around a brace of cabs that leaped at it out of a side street. With a scream of engine and a cloud of exhaust and burned rubber it found its traction again and tore out of the intersection and up Third Avenue, leaving the cabs behind.
"They know, they know," Nita moaned, "Kit, what're we going to do? Is the Book going to be enough to stand up to him?"
"We'll find out, I guess," Kit said, though he sounded none too certain. "We've been lucky so far. No, not lucky, we've been ready. Maybe that'll be enough. We both came prepared for trouble, we both did our reading—"
Nita looked sheepish. "You did, maybe. I couldn't get past Chapter Forty, No matter how much I read, there was always more."
Kit smiled just as uncomfortably. "1 only got to Thirty-three myself, then I skimmed a lot."
"Kit, there's about to be a surprise quiz. Did we study the right chapters?"
"Well, we're gonna find out," Kit said. The Lotus turned left at the corner of Third and Forty- second, speeding down toward Grand Central. Forty-second seemed empty; not even a cab was in sight. But a great looming darkness was gathered down the street, hiding the iron overpass. The Lotus slowed, unwilling to go near it.
"Right here is fine," Kit said, touching the dashboard reassuringly. The Lotus stopped in front of the doors to Grand Central, reluctantly shrugging first Nita's, then Kit's door open. They got out and looked around them. Silence. Nita looked nervously at the doors and the darkness beyond, while the Lotus crowded close to Kit, who rubbed its right wheelwell absently. The sound came. A single clang, like an anvil being struck, not too far away. Then another clang, hollow and metallic, echoing from the blank-eyed buildings, dying into bell-like echoes. Several more clangs, close together. Then a series of them, a slow drumroll of metal beating on stone. The Lotus pulled out from under Kit's hand, turning to face down Forty-second the way they had come, growling deep under its hood.
The clangor grew louder; echoes bounced back and forth from building to building so that it was impossible to tell from what direction the sound was coming. Down at the corner of Lexington and Forty-second, a blackness jutted suddenly from behind one of the buildings on the uptown side. The shape of it and its unlikely height above the pavement, some fifteen feet kept Nita from recognizing what it was until more of it came around the corner, until the blackness found its whole shape and swung it around inW the middle of the street on iron hooves. Eight hooves, ponderous and deadly, dented the asphalt of the street-They belonged to a horse — a huge, misproportioned beast, its head skinned to a skull, leaden-eyed and grinning hollowly. All black iron that steeds as if it had stepped down from a pedestal at its rider's call; and the one lo rode it wore his own darkness on purpose, as if to reflect the black mood within. The Starsnuffer had put aside his three-piece suit for chain mail like hammered onyx and a cloak like night with no stars. His face was still hand-some, but dreadful now, harder than any stone. His eyes burned with the burning of the dark Book, alive with painful memory about to come real. About the feet of his mount the perytons milled, not quite daring to look in their master's face, but staring and slavering at the sight of Kit and Nita, waiting the command to course their prey. Kit and Nita stood frozen, and Fred's light, hanging small and constant as a star behind them, dimmed down to its faintest.
The cold, proud, erect figure on the black mount raised what it held in its right hand, a steel rod burning dark and skewing the air about it as the dark Book had. "You have stolen something of mine," said a voice as cold as space, using the Speech with icy perfection and hating it. "No one steals from me. "
The bolt that burst from the rod was a red darker than the Eldest's fiery breath. Nita did not even try to use the rowan wand in defense — as well try to use a sheet of paper to stop a laser beam. But as she and Kit leaped aside, the air around them went afire with sudden clarity, as if for a moment the darkness inherent in it was burned away. The destroying bolt went awry, struck up sideways and blasted soot-stained blocks out of the facing of Grand Central. And in that moment the Lotus screamed wild defiance and leaped down Forty-second at the rider and his steed.
"NO!" Kit screamed. Nita grabbed him, pulled him toward the doors. He wouldn't come, wouldn't turn away as the baying perytons scattered, as the Lotus hurtled into the forefront of the pack,
flinging bodies about. It leaped up at the throat of the iron beast, which reared on four hooves and raised the other four and with them smashed the Lotus flat into the street.
The bloom of fire that followed blotted out that end of the street. Kit responded to Nita's pulling then, and together they ran through the doors, UP the ramp that led into Grand Central, out across the floor—
Nita was busy getting the rowan wand out, had gotten ahead of Kit, who couldn't move as fast because he was crying — but it was his hand that shot put and caught her by the collar at the bottom of the ramp, almost choking
Jr. and kept her from falling into the pit. There was no floor. From one side the main concourse to the other was a great smoking crevasse, the floor lower levels and tunnels beneath all split as if with an axe. Ozone smell a cinder smell and the smell of tortured steel breathed up hot in their c^s, while from behind, outside, the thunder of huge hooves on concrete the howls of perytons began again, clow them severed tunnels and stairways gaped dark. There was no seeing the bottom — it was veiled in fumes and soot, underlit by the blue arcs of shorted-out third rails and an ominous deep red, as if the earth itself had broken open and was bleeding lava. The hooves clanged closer.