Kit was reading from his wizards' manual, as fast as he had read down in the train tunnel. He stopped and then looked at Nita in panic as she got up. "I can't close the gate!" She gulped. "Then he can follow us ., through… ." In an agony of haste she fumbled her own book out of her pack, checked the words for the air-hardening spell one more time, and began reading herself. Maybe panic helped, for this time the walkway spread itself out from their feet to the roof of the building very fast indeed. "Come on," she said, heading out across it as quickly as she dared. But where will we run to? she thought. He'll come behind, hunting. We can't go home, he might follow. And what'll he do to the city? She reached up to the heliport railing and swung herself over it. Kit fol-lowed, with Fred pacing him. "What're we gonna do?" he said as they headed across the gravel together. "There's no time to call the Senior wizards, wherever they are—or even Tom and Carl. He'll be here shortly."
"Then we'll have to get away from here and find a place to hole up for a little. Maybe the bright Book can help." She paused as Kit spoke to the lock on the roof door, and they ran down the stairs. "Or the manuals might have something, now that we need it." "Yeah, right," Kit said as he opened the second door at the bottom of the stairs, and they ran down the corridor where the elevators were. But he didn't sound convinced. "The park?" "Sounds good."
Nita punched the call button for the elevator, and she and Kit stood there panting; There was a feeling in the air that all hell was about to break loose, and the sweat was breaking out all over Nita because they were going to have to stop it somehow. "Fred," she said, "did you ever hear anything, out where you were, any stories of someone getting the better of you-know-who?" Fred's light flickered uncomfortably as he watched Kit frantically consult-In8 his manual. (Oh, yes,) he said. (I'd imagine that's why he wanted a universe apart to himself—to keep others from getting in and thwarting him. '* used to happen fairly frequently when he went up against life.) rred's voice was too subdued for Nita's liking. "What's the catch?" 'Well … it's possible to win against him. But usually someone dies of >*) Nita gulped again. Somehow she had been expecting something like that. Kit?" 'he elevator chimed. Once inside, Kit went back to looking through his manual. "I don't see anything," he said, sounding very worried. "There's a general-information chapter on him here, but there's not much we don't know already. The only thing he's never been able to dominate was the Book of Night with Moon. He tried — that's what the dark Book was for; he thought by linking them together he could influence the bright Book with it diminish its power. But that didn't work. Finally he was reduced to simply stealing the bright Book and hiding it where no one could get at it. That way no one could become a channel for its power, no one could possibly defeat him… "
Nita squeezed her eyes shut, not sure whether the sinking feeling in her stomach was due to her own terror or the elevator going down. Read from it? No, no. I hope I never have to, Tom's voice said in her mind… Reading it, being the vessel for all that power — I wovldn't want to. Even good can be terribly dangerous.
And that was an Advisory, Nita thought, miserable. There was no doubt about it. One of them might have to do what a mature wizard feared doing: read from the Book itself. "Let me do it," she said, not looking at Kit.
He glanced up from the manual, stared at her. "Bull," he said, and then looked down at the manual again. "If you're gonna do it, I'm gonna do it."
Outside the doors another bell chimed as the elevator slowed to a stop. Kit led the way out across the black stone floor, around the corner to the en-trance. The glass door let them out onto a street just like the one they had walked onto in the Snuffer's otherworld — but here windows had lights in them, and the reek of gas and fumes was mixed with a cool smell of evening and a rising wind, and the cabs that passed looked blunt and friendly. Nita could have cried for relief, except that there was no reason to feel relieved. Things would be getting much worse shortly. Fred, though, felt no such compunctions. (The stars, the stars are back,) he almost sang, flashing with delight as they hurried along.
"Where?" Kit said skeptically. As usual, the glow of a million street lights was so fierce that even the brightest stars were blotted out by it. But Fred was too cheerful to be suppressed.
(They're there, they're there!) he said, dancing ahead of them. (And the Sun is there too. I don't care that it's on the other side of this silly place, 1 can feel — feel—)
His thought cut off so abruptly that Nita and Kit both stopped and glanced over their shoulders. A coldness grabbed Nita's heart and wrung it-The sky, even though clear, did have a faint golden glow to it, city ligW scattered from smog — and against that glow, high up atop the Pan Am Building, a form half unstarred night and half black iron glowered down л them like a statue from a dauntingly high pedestal. Nita and Kit froze like pinned to a card as the remote clear howl of perytons wound through the air.
"He'll just jump down," Nita whispered, knowing somehow that he could do it, But the rider did not leap, not yet. Slowly he raised his arms in summons. One hand still held the steel rod about which the air twisted and writhed as if in pain; as the arm lifted, that writhing grew more violent, more tortured.
And darkness answered the gesture. It flowed forward around the feet of the dark rider's terrible mount, obscuring the perytons peering down over the roof's edge, and poured down the surface of the building like a black fog. What it touched, changed. Where the darkness passed, metal tarnished, glass filmed over or shattered, lighted windows were quenched, went blind. Down all the sides of the building it flowed, black lava burning the brightness out of everything it touched. Kit and Nita looked at each other in despair, knowing what would happen when that darkness spilled out onto the ground. The streets would go desolate and dark, the cabs would stop being friendly; and when all the island from river to river was turned into his domain, the dark rider would catch them at his leisure and do what he pleased with them. And with the bright Book—and with everything else under the sky, perhaps. This was no other-world, frightening but remote. This was their home. If this world turned into that one—