Doris and Johnny were got pints by another of the gathered wizards, and people started settling down, leaning against the walls when they ran out of seats. Johnny didn't sit, but stood in the middle of the room, waiting for them to settle, like a teacher with a big unruly class.
"Thanks for coming," he said. "I know this was short notice, but we've had some serious problems crop up in the past few days, and there was no way to hope to manage them except by requiring an intervention meeting."
There were some heads turned at this, and some murmuring under breath among the assembled wizards. "I know that wasn't the way it was announced," Johnny said, "but we turn out to have less time for this discussion than was originally thought when we organized this meeting via the phone tree last night and this morning. We have had serious transitional leakages all over the island, with some sympathetic transitionals on mainland Europe; and this condition has to be contained as quickly as possible. There have been echoes and ripples as far away as China and Peru."
More stirring at this. "Anyway," Johnny said, "I want to thank those of you who were in the middle of other assignments and found them changed, or who were off active and were suddenly reactivated. The Powers that Be may not thank you until later, but I like to do it early. I also want to welcome those of you who have come unusual distances, including Nita Callahan. Stand up, Nita."
Nita flushed fiercely, and hoped it didn't show too much in the pub's dimmish light. She stood up.
"Nita has been reassigned here temporarily courtesy of North American Regional. She has blood affinities with this area, and was recently involved in the New York incursion and the Hudson Canyon intervention in June, and more recently, with the Reconfiguration; Dairine Callahan is her sister."
There was a stir at this. Nita nodded, smiled a little uncertainly at Johnny; he gestured her to sit down. "We're glad to have you," he said. "Bear with us: we do things a little differently here than you're used to, and if you think of anything that seems useful during this discussion, don't hesitate to sing out."
Huh, Nita thought, sitting down. And, Reassigned courtesy of North American Regional? Who's that? Not Tom and Carl. Someone - or something - further in, or higher up? But she put the thought aside for the moment.
"Over the past four nights we've had "sideways" leakages in twenty-three out of twenty-six counties," Johnny said, "and how Monaghan, Wexford and Westmeath were missed is a mystery to us, especially since Westmeath contains the Hill of Tara. In the twenty-three counties, about ninety wizards have experienced timeslides, live remembrances of the so-called "mythological" period, "solid" remembrances that returned interactions, viewings of extradimensional objects without doing the wizardries required for such viewings, and even physical intervention by nonphysical entities or creatures not native to this reality, including physical attacks on occasion. Some of these incursions have required timeline patching to keep innocent bystanders from thinking they'd lost their minds - or actually losing them. One of us met Cuchullain hi warp spasm, which is enough to turn anyone's hair: that it happened in the middle of the big shopping centre in Tallaght didn't help, either. The Brown Bull of Cooley was seen crossing the dual carriageway north of Shannon; it wandered down on to the larnrod Eireann tracks and caused a derailment, though fortunately neither the train drivers nor any of the other people on the train saw it, and by great good luck no-one was hurt. Possibly most to the point, there was an earthquake in the fields north of Naas, at the old site of the Battle of Moytura."
More stirring over this, and some anxious looks. Johnny made quiet-down gestures. “It was only about three point one on the Richter scale, and nothing came of it but some broken china. The Lia Fail is still managing to hold this island in one place and one piece, no matter what the politicians say. But how long it can hold matters so stable is a good question. Much of its old virtue is gone, as you all know. Another such attack will certainly be more effective, on both natural and supernatural levels."
“Johnny," said one of the wizards sitting back by the wall, a handsome little dark-haired woman,
"these transitional leakages - are we sure that something else isn't causing them? Something European?"
Johnny shook his head. "I'd prefer to blame Local Europe myself, Morgan, but we're out of luck on this one. All indications point back at us."
"Then what are we going to do?"
Johnny looked grim. "We're going to have to recreate Moytura, I think. Unless someone else can think of something better."
Half the room started muttering to the other half. Johnny waited for it to settle down.
"Recreate Moytura with what?" said the young wizard Nita had been talking to, the young guy in the leather jacket.
"Good question," Johnny said. "Two of the Four Treasures are still with us. The Stone is awake again, re-ensouled. The "souls" of the other three Treasures are still in the world, or the Worlds, somewhere. We are going to have to recall them to suitable physical envelopes, and then take them out into battle against the Lone Power. We know that with them, we have a chance. Without them...” He shrugged.
Relative silence fell for a few moments. "Who does the "going into battle" bit?" said another voice from somewhere against the back wall.
"Lacking one of the Powers that Be, probably Doris and I to lead," Johnny said. "And all of you we can get together in one place."
"Where are you going to get "suitable envelopes", then?" said another voice.
"In most cases, we'll try to use the old ones," Doris said. "They've worked before: with a little coercion, they may work again… The Lia Fail is awake; the Ardagh Chalice, we think we can reawaken."
"Don't you think the museum will miss it?" said the young wizard in the leather jacket.
Doris smiled slightly. "Not if a wizardry that looks and weighs exactly the same is sitting in the museum case," she said. "If the Taoiseach can borrow the Chalice to show it off at a politicians' dinner party, I think we might take the loan of it for a night or so and not feel too guilty afterwards. But it all depends on the circumstances, and the power of the ritual used to call the Cup's soul back. Which is what we're going to have to work on. It's not just warriors we're going to need to make this work, but poets. Where are Charles and Alison?"
"Stuck in traffic," said someone from the bar side of the room.
Johnny grinned. "Ah, the real world. But at least Liam and Mairead and Nigel are here. I'll be wanting to talk to you three afterwards. The rest of you: I want you all to talk to your Area Supervisors about your schedules for the next two weeks. Any one of you may have to drop everything at a moment's notice and lend a hand. Also, given the seriousness of the situation, travel restrictions on teleportation are off for the duration. Just use your judgement and be very careful about the overlays!"
More chatter erupted. In the middle of it, someone said, "But Johnny, wait a tick! Isn't this going to make things worse?"
Johnny waved for relative quiet. The room settled a little. "How do you mean?" he said.
"If you're going to call back the souls of the Treasures - if you can," said the speaker, a tall dignified-looking wizard with a mighty moustache, "isn't the land going to get even more awake and aware than it already is? I mean, the Treasures are the land, in some ways. At least that's what we were always told: four of the five Elements, in their most personified forms. Air and Water and Earth and Fire are going to wake up more than ever, until the situation is resolved and everything is laid to rest again."
Johnny nodded slowly. The room went quiet as people looked at his expression. "Yes," he said after a while. "It's going to get much worse. Which makes it to our advantage to get the situation resolved, as you say, as quickly as possible. Otherwise first Ireland, then the rest of Europe, and eventually all the other continents, are going to be overrun with the past happening again, and the dead walking, and all kinds of other inconveniences. If we can't stop this, then the barriers between present and past will break down everywhere, and the physical
world will be progressively overrun by the nonphysical: all the myths, and truths that became myth, all the dreams and nightmares, all the more central and more peripheral realities, will superimpose themselves on this one… inextricably."
“For how long?" said a small voice out of the hush.
"If that level of imposition ever takes hold fully," Johnny said, "I don't see how the process could ever be reversed."
Silence, broken only by the noise of cheerful conversation in the frontmost, nonwizardly part of the pub. "Right," said the man with the moustache again. “But in the meantime, while you Seniors are intervening, Ireland's dreams and nightmares are going to keep coming true - even more than they have been - and the past will keep happening, and the dead and the undead and the immortal will walk. And 'other inconveniences'."
"That's exactly right, Scott," Johnny said.
There was another long silence. Then a voice said, "I need another pint."
A chorus of other voices went up in agreement. Nita noticed that her Coke was long gone, and she was very thirsty.
"I'll get you another," Aunt Annie said, and got up. "Anybody else? Katherine? Nuala? Orla? Hi, Jim. . ." She moved off.
Nita sat there feeling somewhat shaky. "Hey, you look like a sheet," said a voice by her. She looked up: it was Ronan.
She smiled faintly at him as he sat down, and did her best to control herself. He looked, if possible, even more attractive than he had previously. Black leather suited him, and so did this subdued lighting. "I feel like one," she said. "How about you?"
"Sounds pretty bad," Ronan said. But he looked and sounded remarkably unconcerned. "Don't worry about auld Shaun there, he just likes to sound like doom and destruction all the time. Comes of being Area Senior; they all sound like the world's ending half the time."
Probably because it is, Nita thought. It was only the sheer number of wizards in the world, and the sacrifices they kept making from week to week, that kept civilization on an even keel; or so it seemed to her. "Look, can I ask you something?"
"Sure."
"I'm just curious. Was your Ordeal bad?"
He looked peculiarly at her. "Almost got me killed, if that's what you mean."
"So will crossing O'Connell Street
," Nita said. "Never mind… I don't know what I mean. I mean, it seemed to me that my Ordeal was pretty awful. I was just curious whether I was an exception, or whether everyone had that bad a time. My sister did, but she's not exactly a normal case. And I haven't had that many chances to discuss it with other wizards."
Ronan looked thoughtful and took a sip of his orange-and-lemon drink. "I got timeslid," he said.
Nita shrugged slightly. "We bought a timeslide from our local Seniors for ours," she said.
"I didn't buy mine," Ronan said. "I got it." He took another drink. "One day I took the Oath -the next I was walking up Vevay Road
. You know, at the top of Bray by the Quinnsworth? Well, it stopped being Vevay Road
. It was just a dirt track with some thatched huts down near the school, at the bottom of the hill, and it was raining cats and dogs. Thunder and lightning."
Nita shivered: she disliked being caught out in the rain. "What did you do?"
"I went up Bray Head," Ronan said, bursting out in a laugh that sounded as if, in retrospect, he didn't believe his own craziness. "I wanted to see where everything was, you know? It was a mess. You know how the sea gets during a storm. Well, maybe you don't...”
"I live on Long Island," Nita said. "We get high-force gales on the Great South Bay, when the hurricanes come through."
"Well, this storm was driving inland," Ronan said, "between the rain and the spray, there was almost no difference between being in the water and on the land. Well, I saw the boat come in, straight for the rocks. Little thing." He saw Nita's blank look and said, "The Romans."
That made her raise her eyebrows. She had seen the Roman coins that had been found at the base of Bray Head: she had seen a reconstruction of the archaeological site, with their bones. "They were going to try to set up a colony, weren't they?" she said.
Ronan nodded. Nita watched him. She remembered that afternoon in the chicken place in Bray, and the vehemence of Ronan's feelings about colonizers of any kind. But at the moment, Ronan just sat, and flushed a little, and looked away from Nita as he said, "Well, they were going to get killed, weren't they? Them and their little boat and all, in that sea. One of the lifeboats couldn't have stood it, let alone that little smack. So I 'took the sea in'."
Nita stared at him. What Ronan was describing was temporary but complete control of a pure element: using the wizardly Speech to describe every molecule of an object or area so completely and accurately that for a short period you became it. Control was barely the word for it. It became as much part of you as your body… for a while. Then came the backlash: for human beings are not really meant to have more than one physical body at a time. You might find the association impossible to break - and have to spend the rest of your life coexisting with what you had described: which would surely drive you insane. Or the strain of the wizardry itself might kill you. An adult wizard, full of experience, might have done such a wizardry once… and no other wizardry, ever again. A young wizard, on Ordeal, or soon after, would have done it and lived… maybe. It was a good question whether his head would ever be entirely right again.
But here sat Ronan, still blushing slightly, and said, "It wasn't much of it I had to take, just the sea around Bray Head. They jumped ship and made it ashore. I couldn't save the boat, it went all to pieces when I lost control. I must have passed out up there - the slide came undone after a while, and some tourists doing the cliff walk from the Greystones side found me slipping down the rocks on the seaward side, and they called the Guards. I spent a few days in the hospital." He shrugged. "Hypothermia," he added, and laughed. "Too true -but they never knew from what."
"Wow," Nita said under her breath, almost lost in admiration of him. She was starting to blush, but she ignored it as she looked at him again. "But you knew," she said. "That there was just the one boat. The Romans never made it here except for those people. Britain was giving them too much trouble. You could have let them go under."
If there was a little challenge in her voice, Ronan didn't rise to it. "Could I?" he said. "I knew it was a timeslide. Would I have been changing history? Did I have any choice?"
"Too right you did," Nita said, again under her breath.
Ronan heard it. He looked up from under his brows at her, that familiar scowl. "That's as may be. What could I do? Seeing them waving their arms and trying to get off, and knowing they would drown if they tried it, in that water." He looked away again, as if slightly embarrassed. "Sure nothing came of it anyway. They were marooned there; no one ever came after them. They settled down there, and married the people there, some of them. I'm related to them, for all I know."
Nita smiled slightly. "You didn't know that no-one would come after them, though. Suppose you had changed history? Suppose you had just saved the lives of the people who were going to report back to Rome and bring in the conquerors?"
Ronan drank his drink and looked away.
Nita reached out and patted his arm - a casual enough gesture, she did it with Kit all the time, but as she did it to Ronan, the shock of it, the closeness of actually touching him, ran up the arm like fire and half wilted her. "Never mind," she said, trying to get some control back. The point of each wizard's Ordeal was always a private thing: that Ronan should share this much of it with her was more than he had to do. "You want another of those?" she said. "What did you call it?"
"A St Clements. 'Oranges and lemons, say the bells of St Clements. . .' “ He burst out laughing at Nita's uncomprehending look. “Don't know that one, I take it. Not in the Top Forty."
Nita knew when she was being made fun of, and knew when not to take it seriously: her heart warmed that he liked her enough to do it at all. "Eat turf and die, Paddy," she said, and got up, fee
ling in her pocket for change.
She got Ronan's drink, and when she got back, found her own waiting for her, and rather to her surprise, Johnny sitting in her seat and chatting with Ronan. "Here," Johnny said, and got up; "I was holding it for you. Listen, dear, I have a message for you. Tom and Carl send their best."
"You know them? How are they?" Nita said, sitting right up. 'Are they OK? It was them, then!"
"They're fine. I consult with them fairly often, especially Tom: he's an Advisory to the North American Regional for compositional spelling. But "Them"?"
"I mean, it was them who sent me on assignment. Wasn't it?"
Johnny smiled very slightly, and all his wrinkles deepened. "Ahh… no. Not even a Regional Senior, or one of the Planetaries, can actually put a wizard on active assignment. No matter how certain we are that the world's ending." He shot a humorous look at Ronan, and Ronan looked like he was tempted to try to pull his head down inside his black turtle-neck. "No, those decisions are made higher up. I might have mentioned North American Regional, but there are more than humans involved in that. Never mind for now. I take it Doris had a little talk with you about our local problems."
Nita opened her mouth to answer, and was startled by a sudden shout from up front. "LAST ORDERS NOW! TEN MINUTES, GENTLEMEN. LAST ORDERS, PLEASE. . .!"
Johnny laughed at the look her face must have been wearing. "All the pubs have to close at eleven-thirty this time of year," he said. "Anyway, Doris says she told you the ropes."