Grayness lunged for her. Wizard pressed it back, feeling the far snapping of restraints as small bits of his magic gave way before it. It laughed like the wind booming through tattered sails, and the world swayed beneath Wizard’s feet. Impossibly, the magic he had woven to hold it back was falling in on him, like a net dropping onto a tiger. The chase had stirred its appetite; it would have both of them this night. Wizard squeezed his eyes to slits and threw the last of his power up before it.
The great mass of power he had so shortly wielded had been thrown back against him. What was his own small magic against that omnipotence? He could not win. It knew it- It leaned into him, enjoying me slow crumbling of his defenses.
“Run!” he gasped to the woman, but she only stared at him, blank-eyed. When his strength failed, she would be helpless before the grayness. His demon would rend her.
He reached to the silver tassels at his throat. His fingers were stiff claws that ripped them free of their knot. One-handed, he swirled the cloak free of his shoulders and over her. He felt a part of his strength go with it, a peeling away like a layer of skin. The woman stood up within the cloak, finding the presence of mind to clutch it around her chilled body.
“Run!” he commanded her again, and this time she seemed to hear him. Enough sanity returned to her face that her fear was rational. She saw Wizard with his hand upraised before the gray shape in the gathering mist. Her wide eyes smote him, echoing of Cassie’s. She turned and ran away. He was glad.
Cheated of its second victim, Mir fell on him with me weight of the earth itself. Real, Cassie had said. She was right. A talon or tooth or blade penetrated Wizard’s guard, slashing at him. Blood welled along his ribs. The cloak would have protected him, he realized vainly, and let the thought run away unconsidered. He tried to focus his own powers to a jabbing point, but it was like trying to roll a quilt into a spear. It could buffer the attacks of the grayness, but it could not prevent them, and it was no weapon. Mir surrounded him, its pressure building. His eardrums pressed in against his brain. He felt me leap of Mood from his nose, felt his lungs squashing up high in his chest. He went as small and hard as a nut in its grasp.
For a second he felt relief. Then the trick failed him. The pressure mounted again; he had nowhere left to flee. He could not close his eyes, had no breath left to scream.
A softness that smelled like ginger and vanilla settled over him, forcing Mir back and offering respite. He took a breath, opened bloodshot eyes.
Mir loomed over them both. Cassie was wrapped in his cloak, her black hair spilling down her back and gleaming like polished ebony. One of Wizard’s hands clutched at the crumpled front of his stained robe; his hat with its crooked point was sliding down over one of his ears. Her hand was on his shoulder, joining them. He drew a breath, and with it Knew that Cassie’s power was strained to its limits, was screaming with the load of the grayness against it. Even together, they were not enough.
She had come on a fool’s errand, to go down with him. It was Just as hopeless, but slower. He wished be had the breath to tell her so.
“Hold on!” she shouted, and her voice reached him from across a vast dark plain. “They’re coming. Night makes it hard for them.”
He gave his head a minuscule shake, taking no meaning from her words. But he took the last reserve of his power, the small bit he had not known he was saving, the piece that meant he expected to live, and flung it into the face of the grayness.
Mir laughed with triumph.
And screamed with sudden pain.
Pigeons are not nocturnal. At night they are plump puffs of feathers perched in high sheltered places, sleeping more soundly than fat cats on sunny window ledges. They do not see well at night. They seem weaponless, lacking the taloned feet and hooked beaks of me raptors. But a mower pigeon can accurately crack (he knuckles of an intruding hand venturing into her nest with a sharp stroke of her wing. The pointed pink or black beak that pricks out bits of popcorn from cracks in cobblestones occasionally jabs even the soft palm of one who offers largesse.
And the battering wings and Jabbing beaks of a thousand hungry pigeons in competition for food are not to be ignored. By anything.
They had heard, had received the call of Wizard summoning them to be fed- So they came, hungry always, blundering through the darkness. They dove to his feast, squabbling and crowding one another as they fought for the writhing threads and juicy gobs of grayness. Plucking and gulping, they dismantled it. Mir roared its agony through Wizard’s bones. Its pain exploded inside him in the place where it had sheltered, burning like phosphorous in his guts. The night turned black and red before his eyes. To his ears came only the cooing and fluttering of pigeons, pecking one another in their eagerness as they snatched up wet, gray chunks. The agonized roar inside him became a shriek that rose up in pitch, passing through the scales of his hearing until it reached a shrillness that his ears could no longer perceive. Wizard sat rocking in the darkness, his hands over his tortured eardrums, wondering if it had stopped, or if it would scream on endlessly inside him, too high to be consciously perceived.
The wondering was his own. When he recognized that, he opened his clenched eyes to the grayness of city night. A simple grayness, unthreatening. Just the gray light of streetlamps, blessedly empty of any cognizance. He wished he could sit and bask in it and rest. Not yet. It was not quite finished. He heaved himself up, wiping blood from his face onto the sleeve of his robe. Cassie he saw leaning against the wall of me alley, beside the Great Winds dumpster. She looked drained, but he sensed that she strained still to hold Mir at bay.
He reached her side and touched her arm gently. “No need,” he whispered hoarsely. “That part is done.”
Her legs gave way beneath her and she sank to the cold pavement. He crouched beside her on nerveless legs that trembled with weariness. Together they watched the pigeons clean it up. It seemed to take forever, but Wizard did not mind.
Cassie was leaning against him, warning him, and her soft hair beneath his chin smelled of the garden. They sat silently, watching the busy beaks of the pigeons. He knew they both thought of that summer day when he had left the cavalcade to find her. Threads of gold and silver, woven together so seldom, and always so briefly. He pulled her closer, thinking of the befores they shared.
When at last me pigeons were sated, no bones or teeth remained at the core of the thing. The plump birds sat about on the paving stones, blinking sleepy round eyes, full to capacity at last- In the center of the alley, untouched by beaks, rested a small gray document box. -
“This part’s for me,” Wizard sighed. He dragged himself to his feet, reluctantly pushing Cassie back when she would have joined him. He stepped softly up to the box and stood over it. When he nudged it with his toe, he heard a ghastly scuttling inside it. “Still,” he marveled. He lifted his foot and brought it down sharply, concentrating on smashing the paving stones that lay beneath the box. The shock of the blow jolted up through his spine. He felt the lock and lid give way, to crush down upon whatever was in there. The heel of his sock grew warm and heavy with his own blood.
But when he nudged the box again, all was silent within.