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 ncl human 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 'ast wild 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, rof Kit'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
, the Sun had come quietly back to life. But its light would not reach for another eight minutes yet, and as Nita and Kit watched, slowly the star in the heavens faded, and the Moon faded with it — from daylight to silver fire, to steel- gray glow, to earthlight shimmer, to nothing. star went yellow, and red, and died. Nothing was left but a stunning, n y-wide aurora, great curtains and rays of rainbow light shivering and crack-mg all across the golden-glowing city night.
"He forgot the high-energy radiation again," Kit said, tears constricting his voice to a whisper. Nita closed the Book she held in her hands, now dark and ordinary-looking except for the black depths of its covers, the faint shimmer of starlight on page edges. "He always does," she said, scrubbing at her eyes, and then offered Kit the Book. He shook his head, and Nita dropped it into her backpack and slung it over her back again. "You think he'II take the chance?" she said. "Huh? Oh." Kit shook his head unhappily. "I dunno. Old habits die hard. If he wants to, . " Above them the Moon flicked on again, full and silver-bright through the blue and red shimmer of the auroral curtain. They stood gazing at it, a serene, remote brilliance, seeming no different than it had been an hour before, a night before, when everything had been as it should be. And now— "Let's get out of here," Nita said.
They walked out of the park unhindered by the cops and firemen who were already arriving in squad cars and fire trucks and paramedic ambulances. Evidently no one felt that two grade-school kids could possibly have anything to do with a street full of wrecked cabs and violently uprooted trees. As they crossed Fifth Avenue and the big mesh-sided Bomb Squad truck passed them, Nita bent to pick up a lone broken-off twig of oak, and stared at it sorrowfully. "There wasn't even anything left of him," she said as they walked east on Sixty-fourth, heading back to the Pan Am Building and the timeslide.