Disclaimer: the people/things/ideas you recognize from elsewhere belong to Diane Duane.
Chapter 10: Fire
Josh's pale features tightened. "Oh, you have got to be kidding me." For the first time since he'd met him, Tom saw Josh get angry. His bright eyes flashed. "I trusted you, Tom! What kind of joke is this!"
"If it were a joke, how would we know the exact words, huh?" Tom attempted to reason with him.
"Come on," said Carl. "You're right. Public transportation sucks. Let's go a faster route, if you're so sure that time is of the essence."
"Faster? What do you mean?"
Tom grabbed the boy's arm and took them to a rather secluded grove of trees, ignoring Josh's protests. Finally the boy yelled, "Tom, let go of me!" His eyes were wide and terrified.
Tom felt a pang of guilt. He hadn't considered what painful memories that might bring up. He immediately released the kid's arm as if he'd been branded by the shout and backed up a couple of steps. "I'm sorry, Josh, I wasn't thinking. But you know wizardry's real. We're just going to the city the fast way. Maybe it'll jolt your memory."
Carl was quickly writing the spell with a finger in the leaves, and the flowing Speech glowed faintly blue, humming with the power of creation. "C'mon, Josh. Your name's got to have changed since the last time you wrote it. Date of birth? Favorite color? Favorite novel? Favorite animal?"
Josh absentmindedly rattled off the answers, staring with some confusion at the jumble of script that was appearing on the ground.
"Do you remember?" Tom asked quietly, writing his own name in the space Carl had left for it and entering the coordinates for an unused alley.
The black-haired boy just stared. First skeptically, then with a flicker of surprise, then a dawning recognition that lit his eyes from within. Suddenly he said, almost in a whisper, "I'll write my own name."
Broad grins appeared on Tom's and Carl's faces as they stood back. Josh looked at the patterns and mouthed the syllables without speaking them aloud, slowly at first, then with increasing confidence as he looked over the spell. He found where his name would go and started to fill it in. The partners were amazed by how fluidly and gracefully he wrote; but they realized his mind and body were merely remembering at long last what his heart had never forgotten.
Josh took a deep breath and looked around, as if for the first time. "I can't believe I forgot about that," he said wonderingly, glancing at the trees and the grass and the leaves and smiling, because he could hear them again.
On a whim, Tom checked his Manual for Joshua D. Grogan's listing. He was no longer "on hiatus"; furthermore, the numbers listed for his rating made the boy's eyes widen. "Josh, Carl, look at this."
"Holy shit," said the two almost in unison when they saw.
"No wonder the Lone One wanted you out of commission," Carl said in awe. Josh kept staring, not quite able to believe it. "Think our Ordeal's done?"
"Let's check," Tom suggested, flipping to his own listing. He frowned. "No, it still says we're on our Ordeal. Huh."
"Um, guys?" Josh piped up. "We still have to go to Manhattan. There's something we need to do there. I don't know what, but I know it's important, and my gut's telling me we need to hurry."
"Right," Carl said decisively. "Then let's go."
"A moment," Josh said, going through the spell and making a few minor changes to air and space displacement. "Just so we go unnoticed," he said by way of explanation, then stood back with a small smile. "Now it's ready. Shall we?"
The three of them nodded and began to read the spell together. The hairs stood up on the back of Tom's neck. The wind stilled; the trees stopped their rustling and seemed to lean in. The world quieted and listened to the words that would bend time and space, becoming convinced that the natural order could be bent, just this once, in exchange for a certain amount of energy...
At the final word of the spell they felt the air collapse around them. For a split second they couldn't breathe; then they were in a dim alley, and air rushed into their lungs. They had arrived with barely a sound.
"Nice," Tom said between panting breaths to Josh, marveling at how cleanly they had landed.
He shrugged and smiled. The boy was barely breathing hard. "It was one of my specialty spells," he said modestly. "I guess I got pretty good at it. I used to be able to teleport silently, but it gets harder when you have more people."
"You can always tell you're in the city," Carl observed dryly once he had caught his breath, "by all the car horns you hear. But this is even worse than usual."
The three of them walked to the entrance of the alley. "No wonder. Traffic's awful today. Look, they're barely moving," Tom added. Then he looked expectantly at Josh. "Now where to?"
Joshua closed his eyes and bit his lip, turning slowly. "I think we should move that way," he said at last, pointing roughly east.
"That's convenient. We can stay on the sidewalk and just go straight," Tom said. "What're we waiting for?"
The three started walking again. They had gone sixteen blocks when Josh's nose twitched. Carl and Tom would've laughed if he hadn't said, "Guys, d'you hear something?"
They listened. Their eyes widened. They did indeed hear something—the sound of firetruck sirens wailing. The recognized it immediately from the dream and broke into a run. When they looked into the sky, a thin curl of black smoke guided them to where they should go. Soon they could hear and see the flame itself, as well as the yells and cries of pedestrians desperate to find a way to keep the conflagration from spreading.
"The trucks'll never make it in time," Josh panted. "The traffic's terrible, nobody's moving. They're packed too tightly."
Tom noticed the wild gleam in Carl's eyes. His own eyes widened. "Carl, no, you can't, I know you're good with fire but that one's too big!"
"I have to try, don't I?" he said, with an almost dreamy quality to his voice and a small smile playing on his lips.
"What's going on?" Josh looked thoroughly confused—well, as confused as he could look with panic creeping in on the edges of his expression.
Keeping up with Carl, Tom explained in a rush. "He can get fire to listen to him, but it's terrifying. He showed me once with a little alcohol fire. This one's too big! He'll get carried away, it's too much power he has to use, he's obsessed!" He realized he was babbling and closed his mouth.
Josh's expression was grim. "Then we'll just have to lend him some power, won't we? We can't let the fire spread."
Tom saw nothing for it. He gulped and nodded. "Guess so. Carl?" he said. Carl was walking slowly now, still with that terrifyingly calm expression. He didn't answer. "Carl!" the blond-haired boy practically screamed to be heard over the crackling flames.
Still no answer.
CARL! he yelled with as much mental force as he could muster. Finally his partner did turn around. We're going with you. You can't hold the flames by yourself. Make sure we don't get burned?
Yeah, of course. Come on, we have to let it burn itself out. With that he started a stream of words in the Speech and, taking Tom and Josh by the shoulders, steered them inside and through the wall of fire. His steps were sure and confident, even taking on a bounce. Carl let out a wild, free peal of laughter that made Tom doubly determined to not let him get lost in the flames. He knew his partner was flirting with danger every time he got the fire to dance under his will. Failure now would be...
He couldn't even think it.
Walking through the mass of heat should have hurt. It should have burned them all to a crisp. But it didn't; Carl was weaving sentences in the Speech to keep them alive and unharmed. It was eerie. All of his instincts told Tom to run, screaming, from the building. Instead, he swallowed his fear and pressed on.
Surprisingly, the inside of the building wasn't nearly as bad as the outside. In fact, there were only a few smoldering embers here and there, and the undamaged parts looked very sound. Josh looked confused and suspicious; Tom felt the same way. Why wasn't this place a charred hulk? Then he brushed it off. Carl was fast using his reserves of strength.
"Josh, you ready? Can you feed him power next?"
The boy nodded resolutely. Tom breathed a sigh of relief. He wanted to be able to jump in if Josh looked like Carl was taking too much power. The more experienced wizard concentrated and created a link between Carl and himself; then he looked surprised. "It's not that bad," he told Tom, puzzled.
"You're also an insanely powerful wizard," Tom retorted dryly, then went on to brace the ceiling and the walls so they wouldn't come crashing down on them. Or if they did, it would buy them enough time to get out of the way.
With nothing left to do, the blonde wizard watched his partner in awe laced with a healthy dose of fear. Carl had a beatific expression on his face, his hands and face turned to the fire. He was doing it. He was convincing the flame to burn what it had already burned, and not to go out to those nasty people who would make the beautiful smoke so oily and disgusting. He told it to burn hot and bright, to flicker and make patterns, to send its heat out and make the air shimmer around it. Beautiful, he praised it, and Tom knew he was speaking the truth. It was beautiful in its own way. Harsh and fierce and wild and beautiful. It flared brighter, pleased with the compliment, almost preening.
Then came a shriek from Josh, as well as a psychic ripping sound. Carl's concentration faltered for an instant; heat surged around them, then subsided as he took up the slack, showering the fire with compliments and reasons to char already-charred material. Tom instinctively knew what had happened. The link between Josh's power and Carl's had broken. But why?
He looked over to where Josh was. The boy had fallen to the floor and was rocking himself back and forth, holding his knees, trembling like a leaf. A mumbled "No, stay away, no, please...leave me alone, please no..." poured out of his mouth in a constant stream. Tears began to trickle from his eyes.
On the other side of the room stood a tall man dressed in a dark suit. He had pale skin and shockingly red hair, and he was smiling slightly. Tom started. How'd he get in here without us seeing him? And what was wrong with Josh?
"Well, well," said the newcomer in a pleasant tone. "What a happy little gathering we have here."
Tom's stomach clenched. The voice was deep and rich, like molten chocolate against his ears. But there was something wrong. It had a boiling undercurrent of pure, dark malice.
"And aaahh yes. Thank you for bringing Joshua here along. I see he remembers me." The man walked with sure steps toward the shaking boy, who squeezed his eyes shut. His trembles turned to shudders as the man knelt before him. When he brushed his hand oh-so-gently against his cheek, Josh involuntarily cried out and backed against the wall, scrambling to get as far away from him as possible. In his haste he hit his temple on one of the building's supports. His eyes rolled back in his head and he collapsed. The man merely laughed. "Such a sweet young thing," he said, almost indulgently.
"Fairest..." Tom whispered, his throat suddenly gone dry. He cleared it and glared. "Fairest and Fallen, Greeting and Defiance." The young wizard strove to mask his terror with anger. It worked a little bit; he could at least think. Somewhat.
The Lone Power stood and rolled his eyes. "You wizards can be so boring sometimes," he said disdainfully. "So. I have a little proposition for you. Instead of just crushing you where you stand—for what would be the fun in that?—I'll play a little game." He grinned. It would have been charming on anyone else. "I'll let you stand here for precisely three minutes. I'll even hold the fire for you. You can make whatever useless plans you'd like; then I'll come back and squash you like the annoying little wizarding bugs you are. It'll be so much more fun once you've squirmed here for a while, knowing there's no hope. Or will you just give up? You could, you know. You could leave. I won't stop you. But just think of all those poor people you'd doom to die because of it." He laughed and walked into the fire. "Have fun! And your clock starts...now!"
The partners wasted five precious seconds just staring speechlessly at each other. Then Carl got a determined expression on his face. "We're not quitting," he said, and there was steel in his voice. "We're not letting the fire spread to the other buildings."
Tom shook his head, then ran to the fallen wizard. "Josh?" he called, taking him by the shoulders and shaking the boy roughly. "Josh. Can you hear me?" There was no answer. Heart in his throat, he felt for Joshua's pulse on his wrist, and almost cried with relief when he found it. "He's alive!"
"But we can't take him anywhere. We don't know his name in the Speech." Carl's words were an unwelcome reminder that their situation was grim.
For a fleeting instant Tom entertained the notion that he and Carl could leave together and no one would be the wiser. Then he banished the treacherous thought. "Guess we'll have to stay and hold the flames as long as we can," he whispered.
Carl's eyes darkened. "That won't do any good. It'd only be a matter of time before our power ran out." He started to draw up a teleportation spell, speaking as he did so. "You have to go for help. I can hold out here for a little while longer. It'll at least give us a chance."
"What!" Tom cried. "No! I can't leave you here! I won't do it!"
"You don't have a choice!" Carl snapped, showing that flash of temper that meant he was desperate. "This is our only chance. Write in your name."
Tom did so, numb with shock and fear. It couldn't end like this. It couldn't! Was there no justice in the world?
Carl's voice softened after Tom had finished. "Remember your promise," he said, the sorrow and, yes, acceptance plain in his eyes. Then the took the younger boy's face in his hands and kissed him. There was nothing gentle about this kiss. It was harsh; it was rough; bruising, fierce, pure defiance. Then the sophomore shoved his partner hard towards the glowing spell. "I love you. Now go." And with that, he turned away from Tom, talking to the flames again.
Tom spoke the words of the teleportation spell, tears running down his cheeks. As he did, the Lone Power walked through the wall of fire; even the sense of the universe listening could not block the delighted grin directed his way and the terrifying, gently amused words: "Well, my dear boy, I am afraid you've run out of time."
And then the wizardry took hold and hurled him into nothingness.
Okay, dear readers. Please don't hate me after that chapter. Do you really think I'd be so cruel as to kill off the characters and change what happens in the actual series? Well, maybe I am that cruel. But not in this particular story. I promise you, all is not lost! This is not an alternate universe interpretation where they never become Advisories.
I had this scene planned out for a while now, ever since...was it chapter three? Oh, sure, the details changed a lot. But there was always going to be a fire in Manhattan. And I think there was always going to be that particular kiss. I'm not sure I'm totally happy with it; please let me know what you think!