"This is not good," Nita muttered. "We can't just leave these things running all over the place!"
"There's no wizardry that can deal with these," Ronan said, "not with overlays all over the place! You've just got to get away! If they. . ."
That was when the heavy hand fell on Ronan's shoulder. "No way!" Kit said. He said three words, very short and sharp. The drow screamed, a high thin whine, and reeled back, mostly because it had no head left. Rock dust sifted down past Ronan as
Kit pulled him away. "You were saying?" Kit said, breathing hard.
The drow kept screaming. A great crack or fissure ran down it, from its head straight down its centreline. It staggered, and the crack spread. But something else happened as well. The drow got wider. It seemed to have two heads. Then six arms; then eight. It fell to the ground with a terrible crash, and broke in two; and got up… twice. It had twinned.
"I was saying that," Ronan said. "Run!"
The way westward down Herbert Road
was blocked by more drows. They dodged around the formerly single drow and ran into Main Street
. People were running and screaming in all directions. Cars were being overturned, windows and walls being bashed in or pulled down. Two drows were in the process of overturning the monument in front of the Royal Hotel. “What on earth are these things?" Nita said.
"It's not a re-enactment. They're Fomori."
Nita looked up Main Street
towards the old beam-and-plaster building that had been the town's market hall, and was now the tourist centre and museum. It was still fairly clear up there. "Come on," she said.
They ran up that way, accompanied by a lot of other people who apparently had the same idea. They didn't get much further than the little arcade of shops in the middle of the main street before they saw the first squat, grey forms appearing down at the other end of the road. One of them began pulling at the gryphon-topped granite fountain in front of the heritage centre.
They stopped. "No good," Nita said. "We don't dare use wizardry in case it backfires. We've got to do something else."
"Such as?" Ronan said, desperate. "There's no river to throw them in!"
She smiled at him, rather crookedly. She was beginning to shake. "Let's try this," she said.
There was a format for these things. She called the name once; she called it twice. The second time, it made her throat hurt - more in warning, she thought, than because of the sound of it. Something was saying to her, Are you sure? Very sure? She gulped, and said the name the third time. It shook her, and flung her down.
She sat up on the pavement, slightly dazed. It took a swallow or two to get her throat working again. Then she shouted in the Speech, "Pay me back what you owe me - and do it now!"
It being wizardry involved, she expected immediate results. It being wizardry involved… she got them.
Over the screams and the breaking glass, over the crashes of cars and the howling of the sirens of the Gardai, came another sound: bells. Not church bells. It was as if someone had taken the sound of hoofbeats, and tuned them; as if what came galloping did so on hooves of glass, or silver, a clangour of relentless and purposeful harmonies. Other bells were the sounds that bridles might make if each one were built like a musical instrument, made to be carried into battle and shaken to frighten the enemy - a sharp, chilly sound. The galloping and the sound of the bells came closer together, and were joined by a third sound, a high, eerie singing noise, the sound that metal might make if you woke it up and taught it how to kill. The faces of the buildings up near the heritage centre flushed bright, as if a light came near them.
And then the tide of colour poured itself down into Main Street
from both sides of the Heritage Centre, and the first of the drows fell away from the gryphon fountain, screaming as a crystal sword pierced it. The horses shone, the riders shone; not with any kind of light. They were simply more there than the main street was, more there than the broken glass, and the crashed cars, and the grey things; more vivid, more real. Everything went pallid or dull that was seen in the same glance with them - the crimson of cloaks and banners that burned like coals, the blues and emerald greens like spring suddenly afire amid the concrete, the gold of tores and arm-rings glowing as if they were molten, the silver of hair burning like the moon through cloud, the raven of hair burning like the cold between the stars. The riders poured down into Main Street
, and the drows fled screaming before them - not that it helped. Two of them took refuge in the smoked-glass-and-aluminium phone booths down at that end of the street; the faery horses smashed them to splinters with their hooves, and the drows afterwards. Down past the Chinese restaurant, down past the estate agents and the electrical shops, the riders came storming down between the cars, or through them, as if the cars were not real to them: and perhaps they were not. The riders' hands were not empty. Their swords shone and sang where the sunlight fell on them, that high, inhumanly joyous keen of metal that will never know rust. The riders had spears like tongues of fire, and sickles like sharpened moons, and bows of glass which fired arrows that did not miss. The grey things went down like lumps of stone when the weapons struck them, and lay like stone, and didn't move again. The only screams left were those of the drows, now; everything mortal was hiding, or standing very still, hoping against hope it wouldn't be noticed by the terrible, deadly beauty raging down through the main street of Bray.
The riders swept down the street to where Nita and Ronan and Kit stood, backs against the wall next to the pub by the arcade; and swept on past them, towards the Dargle, driving a crowd of the drows before them. A Garda sergeant in his blue shirtsleeves stood astounded on the corner and watched them pass, too dumbfounded to do anything at the moment but cross himself; and several of the riders bowed to him as they passed, and smiled as they did it.
One of the riders turned aside from the bright tide, and paused by them, looking down at Nita. He said, "Are you repaid, then?"
Nita looked up at him, the crimson and emerald and golden splendour of his clothing, the impossible handsomeness of his face, and she felt dingy and shopworn by comparison. Her heart ached in her with pity for the wretched ordinariness of life, seen next to this awful, assured beauty. But she said, "Yes, thank you. Thank you .very much."
"I would have saved the favour, myself," said the black-haired rider, "for you'll need it more later. But what's done, is done. And now get up and ride, for the Queen desires to speak with you."
Ronan put his eyebrows up at that. "Which queen?"
"Not any mortal one," said the young rider on the horse, looking at him with mild amusement. "The Queen whom it is unwise to refuse… as it is unwise to refuse her Fool."
"The Amadaunl” Ronan said, his eyes going wide. "Do what he says," he said to Nita. And she caught a flash of unnerved thought from him: he can kill with a look or a touch, this one, if offended. . .
"No problem with that," Nita said, at the moment having no time for Ronan's nervousness. "But one thing first." She looked around her with distress: the cars stopped or crashed in the street, the shattered glass, the stunned townspeople standing around. She beckoned Kit and Ronan off to one side a little, and said, "We can't leave the place this way. Little hiccups in daily reality, people can deal with - but this? They'll never be able to explain it to themselves. . ."
"Or their insurance companies," Kit muttered.
Nita shook her head. "They'll lose their grip. . ."
Ronan looked at them curiously. "What are you thinking of doing?"
Kit looked thoughtfully at Nita. "Patch it?"
Nita nodded. Ronan stared at her. " 'Patch it?' Patch what'? With what?"
Nita bit her lip. "Time," she said. "With a spare piece. It's basic alternate-universe theory; Johnny mentioned patching in the pub. Somewhere parallel to our universe, where this happened, there has to be one where this didn't… where the drows never popped out, where this damage wasn't done. You patch this timeline with an eq
uivalent piece of that one." She looked around her, considering. “The area and the timespan's small enough not to have to get an authorization, like you would for a full timeslide. And the reason's good, which is the whole point."
"But the overlays. . ."
"Ronan," Kit said, holding his voice very steady in a way that Nita knew meant he was fighting not to lose his temper, "we can't sit around arguing about this all day. A few minutes more, and what's happened will have printed itself too strongly on these people's minds to be patched over. We'll be careful of the overlays. You in, or what?"
Ronan looked from him to Nita. She shrugged, nodded.
"All right. . ."
"Here it is," Kit said, riffling through his manual. "We're inside the time limit, we can do the short form. Ronan?" He offered him the manual.
"No," he said, looking slightly off to one side like someone having an idea, "I see it. You start."
Kit and Nita started reading together: Ronan joined them. It was a little odd to hear the Speech for the first time in an Irish accent, but Nita didn't let that distract her, concentrating instead on the part of the spell that located and verified the piece of alternate spacetime they needed, 'copied' it into the spell buffer prepared for it, and held it ready. Then came the second part of the spell, which bilocated the copied spacetime with the one presently proceeding locally.
Kit looked up after a moment, breathing hard. Everything around them suddenly looked a little peculiar, as if every object had two sets of outlines, which were vibrating, jarring against one another. "Come on," he said to Nita and Ronan, "let's get out of here and drop it in place."
"How are we going?" Nita said, glancing up at the Amadaun.
There were abruptly three more horses beside him; bridled and saddled, ready to go. "Can you ride?"
"I can be carried," Nita said, utterly unhappy about the idea.
"Up, then."
Kit helped her up. "Where is the Queen?" she said to the Amadaun. "Did she come out with you?"
"She did not: she goes not foraying any more," the Amadaun said. "Though because of you, that may change."
Nita thought about that one for a minute. Ronan meanwhile swung up in his saddle with perfect ease, gathered up the reins and sat there like a lord. Kit clambered up into his saddle, clutching the pommel of it.
"Don't fear," the Amadaun said. "You won't fall."
Nita desperately hoped that was true. "OK," she said to Kit. "As soon as we're clear, let it drop."
The Amadaun turned his mount and led them at a walk up Herbert Road
. By the entrance to the church parking lot Kit paused, looked over his shoulder, said one word. Looking back towards the main street with Ronan, Nita saw the outlines of everything tremble, then suddenly solidify. With that, the glitter of broken glass in the road was gone, and a sudden confused silence fell over the shouting that had started in the street.
"Good enough," Kit said. "It took, nice and solid. Let's go."
And they rode. Nita knew these horses from old stories, but she still was not prepared for how fast they went. One moment she was trying to find a way to sit so that she wouldn't slip sideways: the next, she was galloping. Though it physically felt as if she was trapped in a dream sequence in a film, the horse moving in slow motion, everything else blurred past her with such speed that she could hardly tell which way they were going. Apparently the Good People's horses didn't care about roads; rough or smooth was all one to them, for they ran 'sideways', across water, or fetlock-deep through a hillside in their path. The country around them now appeared as it had - how many hundreds of years ago? - before there were roads, or people, or anything else to trouble the serenity of the world. It was an Ireland of apple trees in flower, of long hillsides green with flowery meadows, deep forests, thickets of hazel and rowan. They rode westward out of Bray, and made for Great Sugarloaf.
In the sideways world it was no mountain, but a city that stood up huge and golden, the towers lancing up as Nita had seen them from a distance that afternoon, back in Kilquade. The rider alongside them looked at Nita, and at the view ahead, and smiled slightly. "It is the chief of our duns in these parts," he said. "And the fairest. Other mountains are higher, but none was so well shaped, we thought."
"I saw."
"So you did. You have the gift; it comes of the blood, I suppose." The Fool looked at her. "Not a safe gift, though."
"Neither is wizardry," Nita said.
The Fool nodded. "As you will no doubt keep discovering, before the end. No matter. We're here."
They dismounted before the great gates. The horses tossed their heads, somehow losing their saddles and tack at the same time, and wandered off into the surrounding meadows. "Come then," said the Fool. "The Queen holds summer court."
They did not go through the gates. The Fool led them instead a short distance around the high shining walls, to where an open pavilion of white silk was pitched in the meadow. Inside it was a simple chair, and several young women standing around it; in the chair sat another woman, who watched them come.
The Fool led them just inside the pavilion, before the lady in the chair. Afterwards Nita had some trouble remembering her face; what chiefly struck her was the woman's hair, masses of it, a beautiful mellow gold like the wheat ripening in Aunt Annie's third field over. The thick plaits of it that hung down reached almost to the ground; the rest was coiled up, braided and wound around her head, the only crown she wore. She was dressed all in a white silk much finer than that of the pavilion, and she held something wrapped in more silk in her lap.
"The greeting of gods and man to you, wizards," she said.
They all bowed. "And to you, madam," Ronan said, "our greeting and the One's."
She bowed her head in return. "I may not keep you long here," she said; "you are on errantry, and we respect that. But word has come to us of what the wizards are doing. We know a little of draoiceacht ourselves, and we have something here that may be of use to you." She turned her attention to the bundle in her lap.
'Madam," Kit said, 'may I ask a question?"
She looked up, and her eyes glinted a little with merriment. 'Could I stop you?"
'Who are you, please?"
She sat back in the chair at that. 'Bold one," she said. 'But the stranger in the gate has a right to ask. I am one who 'died into the hills'." Ronan turned his face away. "Feel no shame," she said. "The name is long given to us by humans, and we are used to it. The first of us who lived here after the Making, and could not bear to leave, slipped sideways here, by what art you know; it is part of wizardry. We took ourselves to live outside of the world's time, and exiled ourselves as a result; we cannot go back except for a little while, every now and then. A night of moon to dance in; a morning, or an afternoon, on each of the four great turning-days of the year, when the hills stand open, and there is some commerce between this world and yours. We are near one of them now, which is why you can be here at all."
She turned back a bit of the silk of the wrapped thing in her lap, toying with it. "Now and then, the desire for the physical world becomes too much for us, and one or another of us crosses back into it -to live the lives of human beings, in a world where things are definite and deadly, and what one does matters for ever. We age swiftly when we do that, and our passions rule us; we do terrible deeds sometimes, forgetting the calm of the slower-running time outside the world. I have been back several times, and returned here after each visit, which makes me unusual… for many of us have gone over to try death, and have not come back from it. Your world would know me by several names. I was called Aoife, and Fand, and Macha, and other names besides: but most important at the moment, I was called Emer, the wife of Cuchullain mac Sualtim, who was Hero of Ulster. And that is how I come by this."
She looked down at the bundle in her lap, and slowly unfolded the wrappings around it. "After Cuchullain died," she said, "I gave it to Conall of the Hundred Battles. It passed from him, eventually; he could not bear the spirit
that was in the thing. It was in pain, because there was no hand mighty enough to wield it any more, and no mind that understood its power. Our wise folk thought at last that it ought to be brought out of the world, and "into the hills", to spare its pain. And so it was. See. . ."
She slipped the silk aside, and held up what had been in it. It was a sword. There were no jewels on it; the hilt was plain gold, riveted with silver, and the blade was a long graceful willow-leaf curve of mirror-polished steel, nearly a meter long, coming to a 'waist' about a third of a meter above the hilt, and then flaring slightly outward again. There was a wavy pattern in its steel, but more than that, the blade itself seemed to waver slightly in the vision, as if seen through a heat-haze. Even in this golden light, with the summer of the Otherworld all around them, the Queen looked pale and plain as she held it up; the sword made whatever one looked at with it seem less than real, as the Sidhe had done in Bray.
"Cruaidin Cailidcheann, he called it; the Hard, Hard-Headed. But it had another name, first. Cuchullain's father was Lugh of the Long Reach; and this is Fragarach, the Answerer, the Sword of Air, which Lugh sent to him. Take it."
Nita put her hand out to it, and felt a cold fire burning, and a pressure of wind forcing her hand away. "It doesn't want me," she said.
"No. It has its own desires, and I can only hold it because I am one of the Undying. One of you," she said to Kit and Ronan.
Ronan put a hand out, and then snatched it back, and scowled. "It doesn't want me either."
"You then," she said to Kit. "Take it, young wizard: and give it to the Senior, with my blessing. He will be the one to wield it, I think. Say also to him," she said, turning to Ronan,"that I ask him again the question I have asked him before; and ask whether he has any new answer for me."
"I will," Ronan said, but his eyes slid sideways to Fragarach.
Kit bowed slightly. "And I'll deliver this." He took the sword, and apparently had no trouble with it.
"Go, then. The Amadaun will see you home. And have a care; for the One-Eyed is very strong. He is not as strong as he was once… but neither are the Treasures." The Queen's green eyes were troubled. "Nonetheless, they may serve. They must serve."