“It’s not that, though,” Rhiow said after a moment, “is it? We’ve known each other long enough now … you know my moods, I know yours. What’s on your mind?”
Saash watched the mother with her children vanish into the Graybar passage.“It’s just… this job…”
Rhiow waited.
“Well, you know,” Saash said, turning her golden eyes on Rhiow at last, “I’m a lot of lives along.”
Rhiow looked at her with some surprise and misgiving.“No, I didn’t know.” She paused, and then when Saash kept silent, “Well, you brought it up, so: how many?”
“Almost all of them,” Saash said.
Rhiow stared at her, astounded.“Eighth?” she whispered. “Ninth?”
“Ninth.”
Rhiow was struck silent for some moments.“Oh, gods,” she said finally, “why didn’t you tell me this earlier?”
“We’ve never really had to do anything that dangerous, until the last couple of times. Besides, would it have made a difference? To what we have to do, I mean?”
“Well, no, but… yes, of course it would!”
“Oh, sure, Rhi. Come on. Would you really have done anything differently the past few days? Just formysake? You know you couldn’t have. We have our job to do; that’s why we’re still wizards—why we didn’t give up the power as soon as we realized itcostsomething.” Saash looked down at the concourse again: moreehhif were filtering in.“Rhi, we’ve just got to cope with it. If evenArhuis doing that, who am I to turn aside from this just because I’m on my last life?”
“But—” Rhiow started to say something, then shut herself up.
“I had to tell you, though,” Saash said. “It seemed to me—when we finally get down there again, if something happens to me there, or later, and I fall over all of a sudden and it’s plain that that’s the end of everything for me—I didn’t want you to think it was somehow your fault.”
Rhiow was quiet for a few breaths.“Saash,” she said, briefly leaning close to rub her cheek against her friend’s, “it’s just like you to think of me first, of the others in the team. But look, you.” She pulled back a little, stared Saash in the eye. “Haven’t you forgotten something? We’re going down in conjunct. If you don’t come back up with us,noneof us will come back up.”
“Don’t think that hasn’t occurred to me.”
“So don’t consider not coming back, that’s all. I won’t hear of it.”
“Yes, Queen Iau,” Saash said, dryly, “whatever you say, Queen Iau. I’ll tell Aaurh and Hrau’f the Silent that you said so.”
“You do that,” Rhiow said, and tucked herself down with a sigh—
Something screamed nearby. Rhiow leapt to her feet, and so did Saash; both of them looked around wildly. Arhu was running to them: Urruah was staggering to his feet, shaking his head as if he had been struck a blow.
“What was that?” Saash hissed.
“I don’t—” Rhiow started to say. But then she did, for the screaming was not in the air: it was in her mind.Ehhifvoices, shocked, in pain; and in the back of her mind, that sense of pressure, suddenly gone. Something blown out. Something running in through the blown place: something dark—
“Come on!” she said, and headed for the stairs.
The others followed. Rhiow nearly fell once or twice as she ran; the images of what wizards were seeing, down at the track level, kept overlaying themselves on her own vision of the terminaclass="underline" The gate hyperextending, its curvature bending inward toward the wizards watching at the platform, but also seeming bizarrely to curve away; the hyperstring structure warping out of shape, twisting into a configuration Rhiow had never seen before, unnatural, damaged-looking … and in the darkness, roaring shapes that poured seemingly more fromaroundthe gate rather than through it.
They’re all going,came Tom’s thought,all the gates— look out!
Rhiow and Saash hit the bottom of the stairs first and were about to run leftward toward the gates to the tracks— but a screaming, roaring wave of green and blue and pale cream-colored shapes came plunging through the gates first, spilling out into the main concourse.Ehhif screamed and ran in all directions—out into the Graybar and Hyatt passages, out onto Forty-second Street, up the stairs to the Vanderbilt Avenue exit—as the saurians charged across the marble floor, and their shrieks of rage and hunger echoed under the high blue sky. The chilly scent of dinosaur flesh was suddenly everywhere.The cold things,Rosie had said.They went by. I heard them roaring…
Panic was spreading in the terminal;ehhifwere struck still with shock and disbelief, staring at the impossible invasion from their distant past. Rhiow caught sight of one saurian racing across the concourse toward the Italian deli, and toward the mother, half-turned in the act of accepting her sandwich from the guy behind the counter; and toward the children, frozen, mouths open, staring, their bright balloons forgotten at the sight of the sharp claws stretched out toward them—
She thought about her Oath, to preserve life whenever possible—
Rhiow said the last word of the spell… a relief, for carrying a spell almost completely executed is an increasing strain that gets worse the longer you hold it in check. The unleashed power practically clawed its way up out of her, leaping away toward its targets and leaving Rhiow weak and staggery for the space of a breath or so.
All over the concourse, in a circle with Rhiow at its center, saurians crashed to the floor and lay immobile. But the range of the spell was limited; and more would be coming soon. Urruah came down behind her and Saash; to him Rhiow said,“You have that spell loaded?”
“You better believe it!”
“Get back there to the gates and keep them from getting up here! And pass it to as many of the other wizards as you can. If you push the saurians back fast enough and get close enough to the gates, you can knock them down almost as they come out. Saash, go down a level; do the same. I heard Tom say something about ‘all the gates.’ It may not just be the one at Thirty that’s popped. Arhu, come on, some of them went up toward the main doors—”
Saash and Urruah tore off through the doorways that led to the tracks. Rhiow ran toward the Forty-second Street doors, up the ramp, with Arhu galloping behind her.Ehhifscreams were coming from near the brass doors; Rhiow saw two saurians, a pair of deinonychi, kicking at something low. Rhiow gulped as she ran, half certain there was aehhifbody under those deadly hind claws; but as they got closer, she saw that they were kicking actually the glass and brass of the doors in frustration, possibly unable to understand the glass—and on the other side of the door was no slashed-up body, but a furioushouffwith its leash dangling, barking its head off and scrabbling wildly at the glass to get through, while shouting in its own language,“Lemme at ’em! Lemme at ’em! I can take “em!”
“Good dog,” Rhiow muttered, a rare sentiment for her, and once again spoke the last word of the neural-inhibitor spell. The power leapt out of her, and the deinonychi fell, clutching at the glass as they went down, their claws making a ghastly screeching against the metal and glass as they collapsed.
Rhiow stopped and looked back toward the concourse.“I don’t think any of them got any farther than this,” she said to Arhu, looking around the waiting room. “If we—”
Any further words got stuck in Rhiow’s throat for the moment as her glance fell on the mounted tyrannosaur in the waiting room. The fewehhifwho had stopped on their way through the terminal to look at the skeleton were now all clustered together in the farthest comer, holding on to one another with an intensity not usually seen in New Yorkers who until a moment or so ago had been perfect strangers. The air was filled with a peculiar groaning sound, like metal being twisted out of shape…