by Диана Дуэйн
That was something of a problem, of course, for that same flow was likely to perceive the building energies of the wizardry itself as a dangerous influence, and try to carry it away as well. Nita had particularly noticed the careful reinforcement that Johnny had done around the edges of the spell to prevent this.
The spell was taking. It was always a sure sign when you began to perceive it as a physical thing, rather than just words spoken: reality was being affected by it. Nita put up a tentative hand to the air in front of her and felt smooth cool stone, though the air was clear and empty before her, or seemed that way. The Lia Fail was performing its function, holding the boundaries closed against whatever forces might come loose inside them.
The darkness was slowly falling outside, but not in the hall where they stood. Fragarach and the Cup blazed, throwing long shadows back and up on to the walls from everyone who stood there; a clear, warm, pale light from the Sword, a bluer, cooler burning from the Cup. One moment the Cup was brighter, the next the Sword; Nita could hear Johnny's voice straining a little as his mind worked to keep them in balance until the symmetries of the first part of the spell were complete. There was no telling how long it would take. One moment he seemed to have been speaking for ever, and the next, for only a few seconds. It was the usual confusion about time when you were in the middle of a spell. The world seemed to hold still while you redescribed it. . His voice stopped. Johnny looked over at Dairine.
She nodded, folded her arms, and began speaking. And if the hair had stood up all over Nita before, now she felt as if every hair had turned into a pin, and it was sticking her. Dairine was building the timeslide, the long pipeline through spacetime that would conduct the star steel where they needed it. It would not, of course, actually exist in space or time, but would circumvent them both; and normal matter disliked such circumventions of the rules, when you set them up, and complained bitterly during the process. Nita looked at Kit and saw him nearly in the same distress, his jaw clenched to help bear it. Ronan looked no better, and neither did any of the grownups. But Dairine looked completely unaffected. She paused for a moment, examined the spell diagram, and then said five words, carefully, a second or so between them. She waited again.
Abruptly there was no room. They stood, all of them, on or around a glowing webwork in the middle of nothingness. But a nothingness that was strewn with stars, cluttered with them, crowded with them. They're too dose together! was Nita's first panicked thought. Not even in the hearts of young galaxies or new globular clusters was there stellar density like this; these stars were so close that some of their coronae were mingling. In other spots, three or four stars were pulling matter out of one another in bizarrely warped accretion discs. New stars were forming all over the place, or trying to, as they stole matter from one another, swirled, kindled as she watched. This was the view from the other end of the timeslide that Dairine had constructed.
She's crazy, Nita thought. We're barely out of the Big Bang here — the universe can't be more than a few hundred thousand years old! But if Dairine heard Nita's thought, she gave no sign of it. One after another of the stars nearby seemed to veer close, then away again, as Dairine considered it, rejected it. For a few seconds the sunspotted globes of stars seemed to pour past them, twisting and skewing. Then one loomed up close, a big white star with a tinge of gold. Dairine closed her eyes and spoke one more word.
It was as if the world had caught fire. Nita was frozen as much by her own horror as the spell itself. With the outward senses she knew that everything was fine, that the darkness of Matrix and the light of the Treasures was all around her; but her mind saw nothing but annihilation, a ravening light so desperately destructive as to make the thought of physical existence seem ridiculous in the face of it. Pressure and heat beyond anything she could imagine; she saw straight into the heart of this, and could not look away. Vaguely she could feel Dairine doing something, speaking again, naming in the Speech the amount and type of matter she wanted, the form, the place of delivery — all as casually as if she was filling out an order form. She came to the end of her specifications, and was about to sign her name. .
The rushing sound suddenly became deafening, and the perception of unquenchable fire was suddenly invaded by something; that cooler, bluer light, the feeling of liquid, quelling and subduing. Then, for the first time, she felt something from Dairine: panic, just barely controlled. The Cup had sensed fire, and was trying to put it out — the essence of all quenchings was trying to flow up the timeslide, into the core of a live star. The least that could happen was that the timeslide would be deranged, and the whole energy output of that star would backfire down it. . Two more voices were raised then, in the Speech, quite suddenly; Doris's and Aunt Annie's, and their tone was astonishing. Nita almost burst out laughing, despite her terror, as the two of them scolded one of the Elements of the Universe as if it was an unruly child. They sounded as if they intended to send it to bed without supper. Funny it might have been, but if the two of them had anything, they had certainty. The Cup struggled, the blue light washed higher — then abruptly fell away again.
Nita sagged with relief. Dairine had calmed down from her bad moment, and was completing her end of the spell. Through the blinding images still in her mind, Nita could see Dairine look carefully at the metal mold resting on the floor, then crouch down, and poke her finger most carefully at a spot in the air about thirty centimeters above it. She lowered the finger carefully to the mold, and said another word.
Fire followed her gesture. It paused in the spot where Dairine's finger had first paused, and Nita smelled ozone as the tiny spark of plasma took shape at this end of the timeslide and destroyed the air molecules in the spot where it had arrived. That one pinpoint of light drowned out even the fire of the Treasures, and threw back shadows from everyone as stark as if they had been standing on the Moon. Then it began to flow downwards in a narrow incandescent pencil-line, cooling rapidly out of the plasma state, into incandescent iron vapour and then a molten solid again, as Dairine let it pass out of the small magnetic-bottle part of the spell and down into the mold. Slowly the mold filled, the steel of it smoking. All the air began to smell of burnt metal. Nita looked over at Dairine; she could see her beginning to shake — even Dairine couldn't hold a wizardry like this in place for long. Come on, Dari, she thought. Hang on there. .
The mold kept filling. Nita could feel the Cup trying to get out of hand again, and her aunt and Doris holding it quiet by sheer skill in the Speech and calculated bad temper. Dairine was wobbling where she crouched, and put one hand behind her to steady her, and sat down on the floor, but never once took her eyes off that spot in the air where the plasma was emerging — her end of the timeslide. If it moved, if it got jostled. .
Come on, come on. . Nita thought. How long can it take? Oh please God, don't let my sister get fried! Or the rest of us, she added hurriedly, as that possibility suddenly occurred to her. Come on, Dan, you little monster, you can do it. .
The light very suddenly went out, with a noise like a large short-circuit happening. Dairine fell over sideways. They all blinked; nothing was left but the light of the Treasures, now looking very pale to their light-traumatized eyes. One other light was left in the room, though. The steel mold was full of it; iron, still liquid and burning red, skinning over and going dark, like cooling lava. Just the sight of it unnerved Nita, and filled her with awe and delight. It somehow looked more definite and real than anything else in the area. anything else but Fragarach and the Cup. Nita went over to help Dairine up. Her sister tried to stand, couldn't, sagged against Nita. "What's this "little monster" stuff?" she whispered. "It never even got really tough." And she passed out.
"Here," Johnny said from above Nita, and bent down to pick Dairine up. "I'll put her on the couch. She's going to be out of it for a while. Biddy. ."
Biddy was standing there looking at the mold, and shaking all over. Nita glanced at Kit, who had noticed this as well. He shook his head, said
nothing.
"I think we're going to have a late night," Johnny said. "You're all welcome to stay — we've got room for you. I think we should all take a break for an hour or so. Then — we've got a Spear to forge."
He looked at Biddy. She was still trembling, as if with cold.
She looks worse than Dairine did, Kit said to her privately.
Nita glanced over at him. If she pulls her bit off that well, we'll be in good shape.
If, Kit said. But why am I getting nervous all of a sudden?
Nita shook her head and went off to see about a drink of something. She agreed with Kit. The problem was, wizards rarely got hunches that didn't have meaning, sooner or later. She had a feeling it would be sooner.
10. Lughnasad
Nita went and had a nap immediately. What she had seen had worn her out; and she had been drawn on for general energy assistance during the spell, too, so it was only understandable that she would feel a little wiped out afterwards. When she got up, it was two in the morning. Everything was very still except for a faint clanging sound, soft and repetitive, that wouldn't go away. She had an idea what it might be.
She got up off the ancient bed in the upstairs bedroom Johnny had shown her, and wandered down into the great hall. It was empty now: the spell diagram had been carefully scraped off, and the floor scrubbed. The clanging was closer. She went gently out the front door of the hall and stood there, in the night, listening. Far off on a hill, a sheep went baa. There was a faint hint of light about the far northeastern horizon, an indication that the sun was already thinking about coming up again, and would do so in a couple of hours. If it's like this now, Nita thought, what must it be like around midsummer? It must hardly even get dark at all.
The sound was coming from off to her left. She followed a little path around the edge of the castle towards where the drystone wall ran. The sound of water came chuckling softly up the riverbed beneath it, and the clanging continued, louder.
It was quite dark. She made a small wizard-light to help her go. It sprang out of the air by her, a small silver spark, and lit her way down the rough stone steps that went down towards the water. The clanging paused, then resumed again. Ahead of her was a small, low building with a rough doorway. There was no door in it, just an opening surrounded by stones. She paused there, and looked in.
The castle's forge was larger than it seemed from outside in the dark. Biddy's steel-walled portable forge had been carried in and set up on one side; her anvil stood in the middle of the floor, on a low stone table there. There was a stone trough, like a watering-trough for horses, off to one side, full of cold water that ran in and out from a channel to the river outside. Something else was there as well; the Ardagh Chalice, sitting all by itself on another stone sill to one side, shining. Its light was quiet at the moment, though it flickered ever so slightly in time with Biddy's hammer blows, when the sparks flew up.
Biddy kept hammering — not a simple single stroke, but a clang-tink, clang-tink, doubled with the rebound of the hammered ingot on the anvil; a sound like a heartbeat, but metallic. Biddy's shirtsleeves were rolled up, and her shirt was soaked with sweat, and sweat stood out on her forehead. Johnny was leaning against a wall, watching; Kit was sitting on the edge of the trough, swinging his legs. He raised his eyebrows at Nita as she came in.
"I couldn't sleep," he said. "Even after I went home. So I came back. My parents think I'm still in bed. it's not a problem." "What about Dairine?"
"I saw her home. If she needs to come back tomorrow, she can."
"I don't think we'll be needing her any more at this point," said Johnny. "Also I wouldn't like to put all my eggs in one basket. Some of us won't come back from this intervention, and the newer talents like Dairine may be needed for other defences elsewhere if we can't pull this off." Nita came in close enough to see what Biddy was doing, while at the same time staying out of her way so as not to spoil her concentration. The bar of starsteel had been hammered out into a flat now. As she watched, Biddy paused and picked up the hot steel in her tongs, shoving it back into the furnace. She turned up the feed to the propane bottle, and the steel began to glow cherry-red, and brighter. "When are you going to do it?" she said to Johnny.
He sighed and leaned back. "I think we have to make our move tomorrow. May as well be: it's Lughnasad. A good day for it." "But you can't have the spells ready by then," Biddy said to him. "You can't possibly. ."
"They're ready enough," Johnny said. "We can't wait for the poetry of them to be perfect. Brute force and the Treasures are going to have to carry the day. or nothing."
Biddy looked with a critical eye at the steel. It was getting crocus-yellow. She pulled it out hurriedly, put it back on the anvil and began beating it with the hammer in such a way that it folded over. Nita looked at the lines running up and down the length of the spear-blank and realized that she had already done this many, many times. This would strengthen the metal and give it a better edge. "When does the "forging in the fierce spirit" bit start?" Nita said.
Johnny laughed. "Oh, the re-ensoulment? As soon as Biddy's done. Fortunately we don't have to do what the Power that worked with her the first time did, and actually call that spirit out of timelessness. It's here already, somewhere. All it needs is to be slipped into this 'body'."
"It seems strange, sometimes," Kit said, leaning back and taking a drink out of a Coke he had with him. "The idea of weapons having souls."
"Oh, it was common in the older days. It was a rare sword that wouldn't tell you its history when you picked it up: and verbally, not just the way one would do it these days, to a wizard sensitive to such things. That may be our problem today. that our weapons don't nag us any more, or tell us what they think of what we're doing with them. just let themselves be used. But then they take their example from us. And bigger things than just people have lost their spirits, over time; planets, nations."
Nita looked at him curiously. "Nations have souls?"
"With so much life concentrated in them, how not? You must have seen how certain images, personifications, keep recurring. All our countries have their own "hauntings", good and bad. The bad ones get more press, unfortunately." He shifted against the stone of the wall. "But the good ones keep resurfacing."
Nita looked at the steel, cooling now on the anvil as Biddy rested for a moment. "How much more do you need to fold it?"
Biddy shook her head. "It's had enough. I've done it about thirty times, which means there are about three hundred thousand layers in there already."
"It's not the hardness of the steel itself that's going to make it useful as a weapon," Johnny said, "but you're right; something useful should be beautiful, too. Let me know when you're ready." "Not too long now," Biddy said. She put the spear-blank in the fire one last time, and turned the gas right up. The length of metal got hotter and hotter, reaching that buttercup-yellow shade again and getting brighter still. She watched the colour critically. "About seven hundred degrees," Biddy said then. "That's all it needs. Kit, you want to move out of the way."
Kit hopped down and went sideways hurriedly as Biddy plucked the steel out of the fire and came past him. It was radiating such heat that Nita could feel it clear across the room by the door. But Biddy seemed not to mind it. To Nita's surprise, Biddy headed not to the water-trough, but straight for the Chalice. "Straight in," Johnny said.
Nita opened her mouth to say, You're nuts, that won't fit in there! But Biddy, holding the length of metal by one end, eased it straight down into the water-light in the Cup — and in, and in, and in, far past the point where it should have come out the bottom of the Chalice, if the Chalice had been any ordinary kind of vessel. She held the metal there. A roar and a bubbling went up, and the light of the Chalice rose and fell; but none of its contents flowed over the edge, and finally the bubbling died away, and the roaring got quiet. Biddy pulled the metal up and out of it. It was dark again, almost a dark blue on its surface.
"So how exactly are we going to do t
his, Shaun?" Biddy said, as she laid the metal on the anvil again, and reached for a file.
"Well. All the Dark Power's forays so far have been into our own world — twistings of our reality. We're just a beachhead, of course; it's Timeheart that's really being attacked. It's true, we have some limited success against it here, because we're fighting on our own ground, so to speak. But we can't hope to prosper if we stay merely on the defensive. We'll take it over into the Lone One's reality, into one more central. What happens there will affect what happens here." "And what will happen here?" Kit said.
Johnny shook his head. "There's going to be a lot more trouble, and it can't be avoided. We'll move as fast as we can, try to finish the battle fast by forcing a fight with Balor immediately. I have a few ideas about how we can do that." He laughed ruefully. "Unfortunately, the only way I can test those ideas out is to try them. If they don't work. ." He shrugged.
"Then we're no worse off than we were," Nita said, "because the world looks like it's going to pieces at the moment anyway."
johnny laughed softly. "The directness of the young. But you're right." He looked over at Biddy. "Let's finish this first. We can't do anything until it's done."
She had been filing at the length of metal while they talked. The bar was now looking much more like a spearblade and less like a long, flat piece of metal. She was tapering it so that it came to a long, narrow point, then gracefully curved in again. The steel shone, glinting the way Fragarach did — as if it lay in sunshine that the rest of them couldn't see.
Biddy kept working on it, with file and polishing wheel and cloth, and then after about twenty minutes held it up for them to see. "Sloppy but fast," she said. Nita shook her head; she didn't see anything sloppy about it. The flat of the blade gleamed, and the point of it looked deadly, a wicked needle.
