Everyone had tea. Nita made it several times (as did everyone else). People went out to town for fast food and brought it back, and a lot of baking and cooking went on back in the kitchen; Doris made soda bread seven or eight times, smiling more and more (even through the stress) as the compliments got louder. But Nita had noticed that there was a certain desperate quality to a lot of the conversations...the kind of talk meant to keep people from noticing that they themselves were nervous.
The nerves were not just among the less senior wizards, and there were other worries as well. Nita had watched Johnny that morning as he carried the Spear in from the field. He was wincing as he carried it. “Are you all right?” she said to him.
“Well,” he said, and put the Spear down to lean it against the doorpost—hurriedly, Nita thought, and rather gratefully. Johnny rubbed his hands together. “Not really. It really is hard to hold for even a little while. It burns.” And he laughed. “It can hardly help it—we went to enough trouble to make it do that! But there’s someone else it wants.”
“We could all take turns carrying it.”
“No, I think it’s made its choice. He just has to stop fighting it...” Johnny shook his head. “I think he will.”
Nita was confused. “Is there something the matter with it, that it hurts to carry it?”
“The matter? Nothing! The matter’s with us, I’m afraid. We called the Spirit of Fire, and we got it—the essence of purification, and triumph…” He trailed off, then said, “Patience isn’t one of its attributes. It sees the dross in us...and wants to see it burned away, and us made perfect, now. Not possible, of course. It’s not easy, meeting one of the cardinal virtues face to face…” He picked up the Spear again and went off in a hurry. She could feel it looking at her, though, and she understood now what Johnny had said about some weapons being able to speak. She knew what this one wanted.
Nita looked over her shoulder and was not even slightly surprised to find Ronan there, looking after Johnny. “Hey, Paddy,” she said softly.
“Hey, Miss Yank.” But there was none of the good old abrasiveness in his voice now: nothing but soft fear. He was quiet for a moment, and then said, “I hear it calling all the time now. Not just calling me, either. Him.”
For a moment Nita wasn’t sure what Ronan meant—until the flash of scarlet, of wings or a sword that burned, flickered in her mind’s eye. “Oh,” she said, and laughed slightly. “Sorry. I usually think of Him as a Her—that’s how we saw—”
“Her??” Ronan sounded outraged, as if this were one shock too many.
Nita burst out laughing: for the moment, at least, Ronan sounded normal. “Give me a break! As if the Powers care about something like gender. They change names and shapes and sexes and bodies the way we change clothes.” She rubbed one ear. The One’s Champion, in the last shape She commonly wore, had bitten Nita there several times. “Doesn’t make Them any less effective on the job.”
The two of them wandered off into the field a little way, absently. Nita looked at the scorched place on the ground and veered aside from it.
“He’s in there, all right,” Ronan said. He sounded like a man admitting he had cancer. “I hear this other voice—not mine— He wants the Spear. It’s his, from a long way back. Lugh.” He coughed slightly: Nita realized then, blushing with embarrassment for him, that he was trying to control the thickening in the throat, the tears. “Why me?” he said softly.
“You’re related,” Nita said.
He stared at her.
But it was true: the Knowledge made that much plain to her. “You’ve got some of His blood,” she said, “from a ways back. You remember what the Queen said, about the Powers dipping in from outside of time, and getting into relationships with people here for one reason or another. So He loved somebody when He was here physically, once. Maybe even as Lugh himself. Does it matter? When He finished the other job he was on, the One set Him—or Her, whatever—another one. Busy guy. But as soon as He could, He came hunting—a suitable vessel. Like the Spear did.” And Nita smiled at him slightly. “Would you rather a blow-in got the job?”
Ronan smiled, but it was a weak smile. After a moment he said, “You knew Him. What’s He like?”
She shook her head, not sure how to describe anything to Ronan that that flicker of scarlet across a dark mind didn’t convey in itself. “Tough,” she said. “Cranky, sometimes. But kind too. Funny, sometimes. Always—very fierce, very—” She fumbled for words for a moment. “Very strong, very certain. Very right—”
Ronan shook his head. “It’s not right for me,” he said. “Why don’t I get any say in this?”
“But you do,” Nita said.
He didn’t hear her. “I don’t want certainty!” Ronan said softly. “I don’t want answers! I don’t even know what the questions are yet! Don’t I get any time to find things out for myself, before Saint bloody Michael the Archangel or whatever else He’s been lately moves in upstairs in my head and starts rearranging the furniture?”
Nita shook her head. “You can always throw Him out,” she said. “You know what it says. ‘Power will not live long in the unwilling heart.’ Goes for the Powers, too, I think. But first you’d better see what you’ve got to replace Him with that will be able to use the Spear to cope with Balor, ‘cause I can’t think of anything offhand.”
“If I once let Him run me,” Ronan said, bitter in this certainty at least, “He’s in to stay.”
Nita shook her head. She could think of nothing useful to say.
“Miss tough mouth,” Ronan said softly. “Ran out of smart lines at last. Had to happen eventually.”
“If the advice was any good before it ran out,” Nita said, halfway between annoyance and affection, “better make the most of it.”
Ronan was quiet for a breath. Then he said, “The other night—”
Nita held very still.
Ronan looked away from her, toward the castle. After a moment he headed off that way.
Nita stood and watched him go. A few moments later, Kit said from behind her, “He’s in a bind.”
Nita nodded. “It’s a real pain,” she said softly. “What happens if he’s right?”
“Just hope he’s saved everybody in the meantime,” Kit said.
***
They went back to join up with the many new arrivals. By three o’clock, there were some three hundred wizards there; by eight there were perhaps another two hundred, from all over. “What are all those things they’re carrying?” Kit said to her Aunt Annie, during one quiet moment outside.
“Johnny told everybody to come armed,” her aunt said. They had, though they made a most peculiar-looking army. There were a lot of rakes and shovels. Some people actually had swords, and there were many wands and rods in evidence, of rowan and other woods; there were staves of oak and willow and beech. One wizard, for reasons Nita couldn’t begin to guess, was carrying an eggbeater. Another one, the dark-haired sprightly lady that Nita had seen in the Long Hall, had a Viking axe of great beauty and age, and was stalking around looking most intent to use it on something.
“‘It is a great glory of weapons that is in it,’” said a voice down by Nita’s foot, “‘borne by the fair-haired and the beautiful; all mannerly they are as young girls, but with the hearts of boon-comrades and the courage of lions; whoever has been with them and parts from them, he is nine days fretting for their company—’”
“Tualha,” Nita said, bending down to pick her up, “you’re really getting off on this, aren’t you. But what’re you doing here?”
“Where else would I be? A bard’s place is in battle,” Tualha said, perching on Nita’s shoulder uncertainly, and digging her claws in. “And a cat-bard’s doubly so, for we have an example of fortitude and of boldness and of good heart to set for the rest of you.”
Kit looked at her with bemusement. “What would you do in a battle?” he said.
“What she’s doing to me now wouldn’t be bad,” Nita said, grit
ting her teeth.
Tualha ignored her. “I would make poems and satires on the enemy,” she said, “the way they would curl up and die of shame; and welts would rise up all over them if they did not die straight away, so that they would wish they were dead from that out. And those that did not work on—” She flexed her claws.
“—you’d give them cat-scratch fever,” Kit said, and laughed. “Remind me to stay on your good side.”
Tualha started scrambling into Nita’s backpack again. “Anne, what about this one?” someone shouted from the castle. Nita’s aunt sighed and said, “I’ll see you two later.”
“Aunt Annie,” Nita said, “have you seen Biddy since this morning?”
“Huh? Yes.” Her aunt’s face looked suddenly pinched.
“She’s not any better,” Nita said, her heart sinking.
“One of us who’s a doctor had a look at her.” Aunt Annie shook her head. “The body—well, it’s comatose. No surprise. What lived in it has gone elsewhere.” She sighed. “It’ll wind up in the hospital in Newcastle, I would guess, and hang on a little while before giving up and dying. Bodies tend to do that...”
She shook her head and went off toward the wizard who was calling her.
“Listen,” Kit said, “I was supposed to tell you. Johnny wants people to start coming into the big hall,” he said, “as many of us as can fit, anyhow.”
Not everyone could, though they spent a while trying. Many wizards lined the gallery above, or stood and listened in the outer halls and corridors. Others hung about outside in the parking lot, eavesdropping with their wizardry. Not that the ones closest to the door couldn’t hear Johnny anyway. The acoustics in the great hall were very bright, and his sharp voice echoed there as he stood in the center of the floor, his arms folded.
“We’re about ready to go,” Johnny said, when the assembled wizards got quiet. “I take it you’re all as ready as you can be.” The crowd shifted slightly. “I can’t tell you a great deal about what to expect, except that we’re going into what is, for us, the country of myth...so expect to see even more of the old stories coming true, the legends that have been invading our world over the past few weeks. They’ll be real. Just don’t forget,” and he smiled now, “that we are the myths to them. In the plains of Tethra, we are what they tell stories about, around the fire at night. So don’t be afraid to use your wizardry; there aren’t any overlays where we’re going, or none that matter to what we’re doing.”
There was a mutter of approval: apparently Nita wasn’t the only one who felt chafed by the need to be worrying about overlays all the time. “At some point we’ll be faced by an army,” Johnny said. “I don’t know what it’s going to look like. We’ve seen all kinds of Fomori over here in the last couple of weeks. I don’t know how they’ll appear on their own ground, but the important thing is not to be fooled by appearances. Anything can look like anything...so feel for essence, and act accordingly. Don’t forget that the People of the Hills, and the other nonphysicals who live over on that side, are as much oppressed by the Fomori and Balor as we have been in our world...maybe more so, and whether they actively come to our assistance or not, they’re on our side. Be careful not to mistake them for Fomori and take them out. Don’t get carried away in the excitement of things; remember your Oaths. No destruction that’s not necessary.”
He paused. “And one last thing,” Johnny said. “Most of us will never have been in an intervention this crucial, or this dangerous. The odds against us are extremely high. Some of us,” and his glance swept across the group with great unease, “will not come back. It’s a certainty. Please, please, please... be careful with your choice. One thing a wizard cannot patch, as you know, is any situation in which his or her own death occurs...so any of you with dependents, or responsibilities which you think may supersede this one, please think about whether you want to cross over. We’ll need guardians on this side too, to keep an eye on the worldgate in case the Fomori try to stage a breakthrough behind the main group. Bravery is valuable, but irresponsibility will doom us. Later, if not now. So think.”
There was a great silence at this. Nita looked at Kit, and saw him swallow.
“Those of you who need to recuse yourselves from combat, just remain here when we pass through,” Johnny said. “Meanwhile, let’s open the gate.”
He turned to Nita’s aunt. “Anne? This was always one of your specialties. You want to do the honors?” He reached over to the table and handed Nita’s aunt the Sword Fragarach.
She took it. A breath of wind went through the hall; the hangings whispered and rustled among themselves. Then Aunt Annie laid the sword over her shoulder and headed up the narrow spiral stairway to the top of the castle.
The wizards in the hall began to empty out into the graveled parking lot in front. Nita and Kit went along. Nita was curious to see what would happen. Gatings were an air sorcery; the business of parting the fabric of spacetime was attached to the element of air, with all those other subtle forces that a wizard could feel but not see. Nita paused out there with the others in the parking lot and craned her neck.
Against the low golden sunset light, her aunt’s silhouette appeared at the top of the tower, between two of the battlements. It was incongruous; a slightly portly lady with her hair tied back, in jeans and sneakers and a baggy sweatshirt, lifting up the Sword of Lugh in her two hands. She said, just loud enough to be heard down below, “Let the way be opened.”
That was all it took; no complex spelling, not tonight. The barriers between things were worn too thin already. A wind sprang up behind them; light at first, so that the trees merely rustled. Then harder, and leaves began to blow away, and the cypresses down by the water moaned and bent in the wind. Hats blew off; people’s clothing tried to jump off them. Nita hugged herself; the wind was cold. Beside her, Kit zipped up his windbreaker, which was flapping around him like a flag. He stared back into the teeth of the wind. “Here it comes,” he said.
Nita turned to look over her shoulder. It looked like a rainstorm coming, the way she had seen them slide along the hills here; the darker kind of light, wispy, trailing from sky to earth, sweeping down on them. Behind it, the landscape darkened, silvered, muted, as if someone had turned the brightness control down on a TV. Everything went vague and soft. The effect swept toward them rapidly, swallowing the edges of the horizon, and then passed over, roiling like a thundercloud. The wind dropped off as it passed.
Everything had gone subdued, quiet; that warm light of sunset had faded down to a dull, livid sort of light. The only bright thing to be seen was Fragarach, which had its own ideas about light and shining, and scorned to take local conditions into account.
Aunt Annie lowered her arms, looked around her, and disappeared from the battlements. Nita glanced around and saw that everything in sight was muted down to this pallid, threatening twilight. The sunset was a shadow, fading away. Overhead was only low cloud and mist; no stars, no Moon.
“That’s it,” Johnny said. “Someone get the Spear. Doris, the Cup—”
“Which way do we go?” said one of the wizards.
“East, toward the sea, and the dawn. Always toward the East. Don’t let yourselves get turned around.”
Kit looked around. “There are a lot more trees here than there were before…”
“Yeah.” The only thing that was about the same was Matrix, which surprised her. Nita had thought it would take some other shape here, as Sugarloaf had. But it looked like itself; no change. The cars in the parking lot were gone, though, and so was the parking lot itself. There was nothing but longish grass, stretching away to a ride between the trees of the forest and out into a clearing on the far side. It was still a beautiful-looking place, but there was now a grimness about it.