Read Online The Book of Night With Moon by Diane Duane - Free Book Online Page A

and defining the area where she wanted the new ones to anchor. When the anchors were in place, looking like a cage of vertical bright lines around the edges of the circle, Saash added the only ingredient needed: the words. She said one word in the Speech, and the anchors leaned inward above them, knotting into the tip of a cone. Then three more words— the medium-precision versions of Saash's and Rhiow's and Urruah's names, and a fourth generic medium-precision term for their "passenger," with only the physical characteristics of his size and color added in, since they didn't know his name or anything about his personality. With the details completed, the dirt and cinders under their feet went webbed with more bright lines, the anchors that would hold the four of them inside the spell. "Location's coming," Saash said to Urruah. "Ready?"
    He turned and snagged one of the anchor strands in his teeth, ready to feed power down it. "Go."
    Saash recited a string of coordinates in the Speech, and then said the last word that knotted the spell closed and turned it loose. Urruah bit hard on the string, feeding power down it. The whole structure blazed: the "cone" of strings collapsed down on them, pushed them down and out through its bottom. A moment when the world was a tangle of lines of fire—
    Then dimness reasserted itself. The four of them stood and sat and lay on a concrete shelf four feet wide and ten feet long, high up at the far end of a room much longer than it was wide. The shelf's edge was a sheer drop of twenty feet to a floor painted with white lines and covered with blocky machinery, in which ehhif 's cars were stacked three high.
    The string structure snapped away to nothing. " Au, I'm glad there are gates," Saash said, and flopped down on her side. "Who'd want to do that every time you wanted to go any distance? It's bad enough for ten blocks."
    "That's why Iau gave us feet," Rhiow said. "Urruah? You okay?"
    He sat down, blinking. "I will be after I eat something."
    He's fine, Rhiow thought, amused. "Now let's see about this one—" She peered at the kitling. Under the grime, most of which Saash had gotten off, he was white with irregular black patches on back and flanks and face: one splotch sat on his upper lip, creating an effect like Carl's mustache. Ear-tips, tail-tips, and feet were black. Hu-rhiw was the Ailurin name for this kind of pattern: day-and-night. He lay there breathing hard, ears back, eyes squeezed shut.
    Conscious, Rhiow thought, but unwilling to accept what's been happening to him. And why wouldn't he be? For not all People believed in wizards. Many who did believe were suspicious of them, thinking they somehow desired to dominate other People, or else they mocked wizards as unnecessary or ineffective, saying that they'd never seen a wizard do anything useful. Well, that's the whole point, Rhiow thought, to do as much good as possible, as quietly as possible. What the Lone One doesn't have brought to Its attention, It can't ruin. But the generally dismissive attitude of other People was something you got used to and learned to work around. After all, the situation could have been much worse… like that of the ehhif wizards. Rhiow often wondered how they got anything done, since hardly any of their kind knew they existed or believed in them at all, and preserving that status quo was part of their mandate.
    That little body still lay curled tense; Rhiow caught a flicker of eyelid. Conscious, all right. We'll have some explaining to do, but it can wait. "Saash," she said, "would you feel inclined to give him a bit more of a wash? He'll wake."
    "Certainly." Saash too had seen that betraying flicker. She curled closer to the youngster and began enthusiastically washing inside one ear. Only the most unconscious cat could resist that for long.
    The youngster's eyes flew open, and he sneezed: possibly from the washing, or the smell that still lingered about him. He tried to get up, but Saash put a paw