The scream ripped his decision. It was a strange cry, thin and short, terror with no breath to vent it. He could not decide if it came from deep inside himself or only echoed mere. It was a sharp sound, pained and despairing and gray. He crossed his arms on his chest, holding it in and muffling it- He heard three quick scuffs, soles against pavement, and me gong of a heavy body colliding with a dumpster. Then silence. Fear rolled through Wizard. He wanted to stopper his ears and keep walking. He had reached a decision for his gray Mir, and he wanted it to be a final one. He doubted he had the strength to face anything else this night. But his traitorous ears brought him the harsh breathing of a predator on a blood trail. It came from an alley mourn, less than a half a block away.
Wizard kept walking, his steps reflexively silent. He would reach the alley mourn and pass it, search for his rope elsewhere.
His own burden was all he could carry, and his mission was clear in his mind. If other evil walked in Seattle, that was no affair of his. Someone else would have to handle it. He was already doing as much as he could-
The alley loomed on his right, blacker than me night itself.
It was a deadend alley, walled up so that it offered no light or escape at the far end. Entering it was a one-way journey to me pit. Coldness emanated from it. He kept his eyes down and straight, watching me sidewalk in front of him. He walked soundlessly past the mourn of me alley and continued walking.
The grayness wriggled inside him, chuckling. He clenched his arms tighter around it.
“Oh. please!”
The cry, whimpered with no hope of clemency, halted him.
The stalker had found his prey and was upon her. The grayness giggled inside him, rejoicing in wickedness and the turmoil in Wizard’s soul. If it was no affair of his, why did he Know that me plea was directed to him?
“Ah!” A soft little sound, beyond terror or pain. He knew it well. Once. in a small hot black place, he had made that sound, not once, but many times. Death was better than me uttering of such a sound. He had to turn to it.
The alley was black, the grayness inside him a cold, heavy thing be must guard. He stepped with care, straining all his senses. Soft, ugly sounds were coming from a far black end.
With no wanting, he felt me knife. It was hot and keen, and its razor edge was being scraped slowly up and down his throat, paring away layers of skin thai left exposed new cells stinging.
It had not drawn blood yet. It made a paralyzing whispering against his skin that left him powerless to dunk of anything else, not even the fingers (hat prodded and probed in a parody of tenderness.
It was too real. It froze Wizard for a long instant, until he realized it was a Knowing. This was happening, but not to him. To someone who lay amid the trash at me end of me alley, knowing that to scream was to the, and that to keep silent was to the more slowly. The magic had come back to him, but he could not rejoice in it. What it was showing him was too great an atrocity. “If this be Knowing, I would rather walk in ignorance,” he muttered soundlessly. And Knew it was not me first time he had made that decision. But this time the magic ignored his wishes and pressed the Knowing into his brain, if he touched the man, me knife would kill her. He must draw the attack to himself.
“Stand up!” he barked. “Drop me knife and put your hands above your head.”
He didn’t expect obedience and he wasn’t disappointed. But the man was quicker man Wizard expected a man interrupted in such a game to be. He turned, rose, and attacked in one motion. Wizard made me perfect counter, a kick that would take his attacker in the chest and keep his knife at a distance.
It would have stopped the man dead, if Wizard had been wearing pants.
The robe was cut full and loose, but not loose enough to allow for the full swing of the kick. It snapped tight, jerking the balance from Wizard’s other leg. He staggered sideways and me hungry knife went slipping past his ear. He caught himself and spun to face it, but me knife was already before him, weaving a song of blood as it hovered before his face.
Like a steel hummingbird, it moved faster than his eyes could follow. Feet planted, hands loose and ready. Wizard shifted and wove before it. The magic limned it for him, setting it glowing with a toadstool light in the blackness of the alley. He saw nothing of the one who held it and commanded the dance.
The mind behind the blade trusted its cutting edge implicitly.
There would be no kicks, no sudden jabs of fist to spoil the perfection of the knife’s killing skill. Wizard’s eyes followed the blade as hands hung loose and ready, slightly away from his body. He tried to remember there was a man behind the blade, but the magic forced his attention back to the steel edge.
He struggled with it and then, with relief, let go. The knife, then. Counter to all his embedded training, he would fight the knife and not the man behind it. He relaxed and felt the tingling of power run over his limbs and up his spine.
From hand to hand the knife leapt nimbly in its wriggling, gliding dance. Wizard himself moved with it, in a swaying counterpoint that kept all parts of his body just beyond the knife’s leap. The knife, the knife! Why was the magic focused on me knife? Was he supposed to grab the damned thing? He imagined a sudden successful clutch, and the fingers slipping silently from his hand. No. That couldn’t be it. Silence but for two men panting, the soft scuff of wet socks against the pavement, and the far whimpering of the one who huddled at the end of the alley. The knife flickered and flashed, burning before his eyes. He reached and felt for it with the magic.
This knife was a Ruana, a fine old blade shamed by this new owner. Its tempered steel haft was enclosed on both sides by bone grips. It was balanced, it was boned, it was a joyous tool perverted to butchery. It fit the killer’s hand like an extension of his body. He sensed the man’s twisted soul pulsing in the blade.
So he froze it.
Swifter than any kick of leg, than any twitch of muscle could ever be, as swift as the flicker of a thought, the Knowing came to Wizard and he used it. As simple as snuffing a candle flame with a pinch. He reached and froze it, the metal cooling past imaginable temperatures and then exploding into icy shards in the killer’s grip. The man screamed aloud, clutching at his wrist with his other hand and squeezing it, trying to hold out the pain invading his body. He doubled over with the agony of it, holding the mangled hand out away from his body as if he were bowing and offering it to Wizard.
Wizard stepped back from his glimpse of that familiar face.
The killer bolted past him, grunting with the pain of every jolting step. Wizard smiled and followed him. The man heard his shadowing steps and moaned in terror. He staggered on, pain dazing him, the terrible warmth of his own blood soaking him as he tottered. When he fell, mere was the awful shape of the man from his nightmares, the man cloaked and robed with UK night sky itself. The stars and crescent moons glittered balefully, but the man’s face was shadowed into blackness by the broad brim of his hat. He did not find me bent tip of that hat-amusing. It pointed at him like an accusing finger. And when Wizard spoke, his eyes glittered like two chunks of blue glacier ice. He whispered.