The three on the stage—a tall, pale, dark-haired tom-ehhif,a shorter tom, more tan but also dark-haired, both in the black-and-white clothes, and a tall, beautiful, dark-skinned queen-ehhif in a dress glittering like starlit night— were no more aware of anything amiss than the conductor. The toms, singing the Lone Power and the doomed wizard, cursed one another melodiously; the queen, ignoring them both, relentlessly declared her own salvation, requiring the aid of the Powers That Be. In a final blast of pure sound, a chord in three perfect notes, all three took up their fates, to the accompaniment of a final, mighty orchestral crash.
Theehhif inthe audience roared approval and applauded, a sound like the sea on the shore, rolling from one side of the great space to the other: thetehn’hhirsand thessoh’pra-ohtook their bows and walked off the stage, almost close enough for Rhiow to have reached out with a claw and snagged thessoh’pra-oh’sgown. But out at the edge of that sound, over toward the east side of the park, something was going wrong. The sound leaned up and up in pitch as the queen’s voice had. Rhiow, Urruah, Arhu, Tom, all the wizards looked that way, straining to see what was happening—
“It’s coming,”Arhu said.
“What?” Rhiow hissed, as the thirdtehn’hhir,the big furry one Urruah had shown her the other day, went up the stairs to the stage past her, and more applause rolled across the meadow at the sight of him. He too was resplendent in the ceremonial black and white now, with a long white scarf around his neck, and he once again held the scrap of cloth he had used to wipe his face in the heat. This he waved at the conductor: once more the music began. There was a further rush of applause just at the sound of it—
He smiled.“Tu pure, o Principessa,”he began to sing—
“It can’t be coming,” Arhu said, furious and afraid. “It’s not fair… itcan’tbe coming! Ikilled it!—”
—The tehn’hhirlooked alarmed as now, above even the amplified music, he could hear the strange sound coming from the east side of the meadow …the sound, getting louder by the second, of screaming.
He stopped and looked up, and saw the dinosaurs coming.
The screaming got worse: thousands of voices now, rather than just hundreds, as the dark shapes plunged through into the humanity in the Sheep Meadow, confused, enraged, hungry, and in many cases half blind—for many of the Children of the Serpent do not see well by night, and hunt by scent. Scent there was, in plenty, and possibly all the picnic food bought some of theehhifprecious time to pick themselves up and run away while furious and hungry saurians threw themselves on whole roast chickens and a great deal of Chinese take-out. But the biggest of the saurians, those with well-developed eyesight, had more than enough light to make do with, and many of them, particularly the biggest, homed in on the brightest source of light they could find— the stage. A great herd of them, maybe twenty or thirty big ones, went wading through the crowds, loping along at terrific speed, trampling anyone not quick enough to get away; and the screams became more intense and drowned out the orchestra’s last efforts.
Some of the saurians were beginning to drop now as various of theehhifwizards who had come with Rhiow’s team in the circle did their own short-distance transports, out into the empty areas beginning to open in the tightly packed crowd. Actinic-bright sources of wizardly light began to appear here and there, drawing the light-sensitive saurians away from the surroundingehhif;once they got within range, the neural-inhibitor spell finished them. But, as before, they just never seemed to stop coming…
Near Rhiow, Saash hissed softly.“I’ve got to get over there and pull the locus off that last gate,” Saash said. “Someone come and run interference for me—”
“I’m with you,” Urruah said.
“Good. That spot over there—”
They vanished together. Around them, backstage,ehhifwere running in all directions: Rhiow wished fervently that she could do the same.
The bigtom-ehhifstared out into the darkness, much more bemused than afraid, if Rhiow was any good at readingehhifexpressions. More of the big saurians waded toward the stage; seeing them perhaps more clearly than thetom-ehhifcould, the orchestra fled to right and left in a frantic double wave; though Rhiow noticed, with grim amusement, that very few of them left their instruments behind.
Next to her, Arhu was crouched down, hissing in rage.“See what I meant,” Rhiow said, “when I asked you which one you saw—”
“It was one of these,” Arhu said, furious. “They’re all the same one.”
“What? Do you mean they’re clones?”
“No.They’re the same one—”
“If that’s the case,” Rhiow said, watching the vanguard of the saurians coming toward the stage more—tyrannosaurs, indeed, all identical to the one in the waiting room—“then you can kill them the same way.”
Arhu’s expression became an entirely feral grin. He turned his attention toward the approaching saurians, started getting his spell ready again.
Another sound started to mix with the screams out in the meadow: the bright sharp sound of gunfire, stitching through the night.This is New York, after all… and entirely too many of the crowd will be armed, legally or not.Roars followed, and some unnatural bleats and bellows of rage and pain as bullets went home. Still more screams came as some of the fallen saurians fell on nearbyehhif. Iau grant theseehhifdon’t get so confused, they start shooting each other—
But there were worse things to think about. Tom reappeared nearby, glanced around to see how they were doing, was gone again in a breath. Almost in the same breath, a saurian came out from the farther backstage area, where the trailers had been parked: it had leapt over or dodged around the security barriers—
The saurian loomed over Rhiow, snatched at her with jaws and claws. Rhiow leapt sideways out of the claws’ grasp, said the last word of the neural-inhibitor spell; the saurian, along with a companion behind it, came crashing to the ground.Too close,Rhiow thought, jumping out of the way. She was starting to get tired; and“burn-in” was setting in, the wizardry problem that came of doing the same spell too often. The spell’s range decreased, and its effectiveness dwindled, until you could get some rest and recharge yourself—
Arhu was hissing, hissing again; outside, well beyond the stage, there were horrific noises.“It’s—it’s not working so great any more—” he gasped. “I don’t think I can get all of them—”
Big spell, big burn-in,Rhiow thought,and worse than usual for a young wizard, who doesn’t know how to pace himself yet. “Stop it for a moment,” she said, “and use something else. Try the neural inhibitor—”
Rhiow felt Arhu rummaging briefly in her head for the complete spell, as he had taken the explosive spell from Saash: a most unnerving sensation. Then he said the last word of the spell—
Another large saurian that had invaded the backstage area died. This was followed by a small clap of air exploding outward, almost lost in the massive sound of a hundred thousand people panicking, and Urruah was there again.“Saash took the gate out,” he said. “They’ve stopped coming—”
Arhu opened his mouth to hiss at the next of the huge shapes loping toward the stage.
Nothing happened.
The big tom-ehhif had been standing and staring in utter astonishment, probably simply unable to believe what he was seeing. Now fear finally won out over disbelief. He turned to flee, heading for the side exit from the stage…