by Диана Дуэйн
"OK," Johnny said. "Let's get it mounted. Then around dawn, we'll finish the job." "Dawn will be fine. Then what?" "Then this afternoon we go to war." " 'We'?"Nita said.
"They'll be coming in this afternoon," Johnny said. "Wizards on active assignment. some just along for the ride, but they live here, and they feel involved. And when everybody's together, we go have us a fight."
He headed off. Biddy was still standing by the anvil, looking at the head of the Spear, her expression very still. She looked up, after a little while, to gaze over at Nita. "Do you know what I've forged here?" she said.
Nita looked at the spearhead, and found that there were two answers to that question. One of them had something to do with Ronan, and the way he had run from her after she had seen the Champion buried in him the other night. That answer was still partially obscure. But as for the other. .The edge of the spearhead glinted in the low light, and Nita suddenly saw the way Johnny had written Biddy's name in the circle, and the way it had seemed to cut off short. . "Your death," Nita said: or rather the answer spoke itself.
Biddy folded her arms and leaned back against the stone wall of the forge. "I gave up making," she said after a while. "At least, the kind of making that I used to do once. Can you have any idea. .?" She shook her head, smiling a little: a hopeless look. "What it's like to ensoul your consciousness in a mountain range while it's still molten, and spend a century watching every crystal form? And planning the long slides of strata, the way erosion wears at your work, even the scrape of glaciers. To be what you make. " Biddy sighed. "And to know what it'll become. You can't do that in one of these bodies. And I said I would do so no more, and that I would give myself back to the One sooner. ."
Nita threw a glance at Kit. She had been there: she knew the sound of the kind of promise that means one thing when you make it. and then later you find that the meaning has changed, but you are going to be held to the promise nonetheless. Or you hold to it.
"And now," Nita said, " you're making that way again. And you will have to do what you said. Become part of the making, as the Powers do. " But the Powers existed partly outside of time. One living in time, in a human body, might not find that body working too well after it came back from such an act of making. Nita shivered. "I may not," Biddy said. But her voice was still full of doubts.
This tone of mind Nita knew as well. Her heart turned over inside her with pity and discomfort. Any advice would sound hollow to someone in Biddy's position, poised between sacrifice and refusal. But Nita thought of how it must have felt to the wizards who had advised her, at one point or another: and they never shirked reminding her of what she needed to do, though their hearts bled from it. It was the basic courtesy one wizard owed another — not to lie. How much more did a wizard owe that courtesy to one of the Powers?
"You can't very well get out of it at this point," Nita said. "Your name in the Speech is bound into the spelling we did yesterday. The name says who and what you are. and for how long." She swallowed. "Change the truth of that now, and the whole spell is ruined. You know that. No Spear. no chance of ensouling it. No chance of saving Ireland." Not to mention the rest of the world, Nita thought.
But that would hardly seem germane to Biddy at the moment. "Refuse this making," Nita said, "and you'll be part of the destruction of your first one. You of all people should know what to do to keep this island healing, I would have thought." Biddy looked at her and said nothing.
Nita was immediately mortified. She had completely messed it up. "Sorry," she said,"sorry, never mind, forget I said anything. ." She went out of the forge hurriedly, feeling completely hopeless and ineffective. Kit came along after her.
He said nothing to her until they were about halfway up to the house. "Sounding a little rattled back there, Neets," Kit said then. "Is there anything. .?"
"No," she said, and regretted it instantly. "Yes, but you can't do anything. Oh, Kit. .!" So how do I tell him about last night? About what I saw inside Ronan? And the sight of that cool, sharp metal on the anvil had given her something else to think about. Its image resounded against the image of Ronan in her mind, leaving her with a feeling bizarrely compounded of disaster and triumph. But the resonance was incomplete. It must be finished, something, the Knowledge perhaps, said to her. It has to be fully forged. Otherwise. .
Nita breathed out. "I can't," she said: and she wasn't even sure who she was saying it to, or about what, any more.
Kit punched her lightly in the arm a couple of times and said nothing. They went back up to the quiet room together. Dawn wasn't that far away. "It's not like the last time," Kit said, "or the time before."
The room had big overstuffed chairs in it, and a big glass case full of books. "Look at this," Kit said, reaching up for one. "How to Build Your Own Staircase. " He started leafing through it. "How do you mean, not like the last time?" Nita said, getting up on the bed and leaning back against the big headboard.
"We've always been doing our stuff pretty much by ourselves," he said. "This is different. We don't have a lot of say about what's going on." Kit looked over at her. "Don't know if I like it." Nita knew what he meant. "Maybe this is more what it's like for grownups," she said. "I guess this is what it'll be like when we're older. If we survive it." "You think we might not?" said Kit.
"I don't know. We've been in a lot of situations we thought might kill us. Or that looked bad for part of a continent, part of an ocean." "Sometimes part of a universe."
"I know. But this time it just seems more. it seems bigger this time, even though it's smaller. You know what I mean?"
"It means you're away from home." Kit said. "I feel it too, a little."
Nita yawned. "But among other things," Kit added, "it means that if we get killed, it's not our fault."
"Oh, great," said Nita. "You find the strangest ways to be positive."
"The only thing I don't understand," Kit said, and then stopped. A moment later he said, "I think we're missing somebody." "Like who?"
"I don't know. But there's something we're missing."
"Well, I hope you figure out who it is pretty quick," Nita said. "Tomorrow."
"Today," Kit said.
Nita yawned at him again.
"Neets," Kit said. "What happens if we do die?"
"We get yelled at," Nita said, and then burst out laughing at herself. "I don't know." "Timeheart?"
"I suppose." She shook her head. "I mean, you know it's going to happen some day. but I don't think I've ever thought it would happen today." She thought a moment, then said, "Well, maybe once or twice. Why? You got a bad feeling?"
"No. That's sort of what worries me. All the times we've been in real big trouble and come through, I've had awful bad feelings. But this time, nothing." He leaned back in the big fat chair and stared at the ceiling. "I keep wondering if that means something."
Nita looked at him. "Would it be so bad?" she said. "I mean, if you know you're going to die anyway. Might as well go down fighting as die in a bed somewhere, or a car crash or something. It's more useful."
"You sound like Dairine," Kit mumbled.
"Insults," Nita said. "Not very mature of you. I do not."
He fell asleep as she watched him. He had always had a gift for that, except on the night before a wizardry. He was feeling as wiped out as she was, though: or else he considered himself off-duty at the moment. Nita sighed, and leaned back herself.
When she woke up again, it was very suddenly indeed, and with that feeling of having pins stuck into her all over. She swung herself off the bed. Kit was sitting in the chair with his mouth open; she nudged him with her foot. His eyes flew open, and she said, "Kit. ."
He felt it. He spared himself just time for one long stretch, then bounced up and headed out of the room. "They're doing it. ."
She followed him around the upper gallery and down a tightly-spiralling staircase in a corner tower of the castle. They came out on the bottom level, peered into the great hall, and saw nothing. They're ou
t in the forge, Kit said in her head. The pre-dawn stillness was too much for even him to break. Come on. .
They slipped out the front door: the squeak of it opening seemed as loud as a scream in that great quiet. Nothing spoke; outside, no bird sang; there was only that pale hint of light, high all around in the sky, omnidirectional, bemusing — morning twilight, with thin cloud all over everything, mist clinging low, running along the ground, hanging in wisps and tatters from bushes, hovering over trees.
The top of the dry wall was just visible. Nita and Kit paused by it and looked down to the forge; there was no-one there. Out in the field, Nita said. That way. .
They turned and made their way through the dew-wet grass, quietly, towards the shadow that lay beneath a nearby oak tree. Ahead of them they heard voices, speaking in unison in the Speech. There was no light, there was no diagram drawn; just four people standing there at the cardinal points of a circle. Struck down into the centre of the circle, on a long shaft, was the Spear. The shaft was very plain: some pale wood — ashwood, maybe. The blade of the Spear, almost a meter long, had been socketed into it and bound with more of the starsteel. Very plain, it was; there it stood, pale shaft, paler blade, with wizards around it, setting up the spell. Nita's aunt stood at one quarter of the circle, Doris Smyth at the second, Johnny at the third. The fourth was wrapped in shadow — tall, thin, wearing a long, dark cloak. Only above the thrown-back hood did anything show: a faint gleam of silver hair, cropped short. Nita swallowed at the sight of it, kept quiet, watching. The spell was about half-built, to judge by the feeling of anticipation in the air. More than anticipation — it was a sort of insistent calling. Nita's nerves were jangling at the edges with it, even though she knew perfectly well that it wasn't meant for her. Something very powerful was being called, something that lived in her in some small way, and that fragment or fraction was responding.
The long chorus in the Speech went on, the sound of the wizards' voices twining together, building, insistent, demanding that something, some great power should come here, come bind itself, come be in the world, be physical, real as this world counts reality.
Nita listened to them and heard the wizardry begin to fold in on itself: the knot being tied, the insistence growing that something from outside the world, outside time, should wake up, heed the call, come here now! All four voices ended on that tone of command, and the silence fell; and they waited.
Everything waited.
The Spear stood there in the cool light, still as a tree. Nita stood there watching it, holding her breath, not knowing what to expect.
Then it moved. Leaned, ever so slightly, eastward; leaned like a branch of a tree being blown that way in a wind. Leaned further. And it was beginning to make a sound as well. No, Nita thought then. Not making it itself. But the sound was happening around it, a low vibration that sounded like the noise that there ought to be just before an earthquake; a low rumble in the bones and the blood. It wasn't audible. The mind heard it — the fabric of things, the structure of spacetime all around, rumbling, being pushed up from under, or down from above. The feeling of some immense pressure being brought to bear on this spot. .
She looked at Kit, and with him put her back up against the tree.
The sense of pressure got stronger. And benevolence: that was the strange part. What was coming definitely meant well. maybe a little too well for mortals to bear. It wanted all things healed, everything made well, no matter what pains it cost: everything being put right, straightened, filled. .Nita held on to the tree as she felt that down-pressing force trying to tamper with her, with the cells of her body, her mind. They resisted, in their dumb way, and so did she, thinking, Leave me the way I am! Leave me alone! I know you want. .I know. .
And that was exactly it. It wasn't a pressure, it was a being; not a thing, but a person; not just a person, but a Power. Coming down, here, now, swift to answer the call, fiercer than even Nita had thought, unstoppable now that it had heard the summons — and with a frightful violent strength, because it wasn't bodied, not chained by entropy and the other forces that worked on matter, not yet.
Get in there, she thought, clinging to the tree as if she might be swept away; get in there! The Spear trembled, the blade of it shook on its shaft, a faint creaking sound of the wood betraying the strain as the metal binding tried to break, as the power they had called tried to pour itself into this thing of wood and metal. The metal began to glow, the same cherry-red that Nita had seen in the furnace, getting hotter and realer-looking — more solid and concrete and real than anything in this world should look, as that power pressed down into it.
Expressions were visible now in this light, but the only one Nita could look at, though she could hardly bear to, was Biddy's. Biddy's eyes were fixed desperately on the Spear, as if it were some truth she wanted to see denied; an awful look of anticipation, potentially of horror, was on her face. But there was something else there as well. Plain determination. .
The metal was golden now, a hot bright gold that didn't bear looking at, and scaling up past it towards white, almost the colour of the star it had come from. White now, that blinding colour of plasma new-plucked from the core. But not just metal any more. Awake, alive, alert and looking; looking at Nita. .
That light fell on her. She hid her eyes and buried her face against the tree. It was useless. The light struck through everything. No escaping it — it would pierce through you, shake you apart. . And then it stopped.
She rubbed her eyes. They were useless for a few moments. Afterimages danced in them. Nita smelled burning. Wincing, squinting, she glanced around her.
The first light of the sun was coming between two hills to the east. It fell on grass that was scorched in a great circle. She could see the little flakes of ash going up from where leaves of the tree had been burned. And in the middle of the circle, where the four wizards stood, something stood and looked back at them. It was shaped like a spear, but this fooled no-one. They knew they were watched, and considered, cheerfully, gravely, by something that would kill any one, or all of them, to do its job — to find the darkness, pierce it, and be its end. The socket and binding of the Spear had held.
Only the wood of the shaft was scorched black, but it was otherwise sound. Above it, the spearhead stood plain and cool and silvery — but there was something moving in the blade. Those lines of layered metal that Biddy had hammered in, black once, now wavered and twisted: needle-thin lines of fire, white and yellow-white, swirling and writhing in the metal. The air above the Spear wrinkled and wavered the way air does above a hot pavement in the summer, and the ozone smell was thick.
"It's awake," Kit said, softly, as if afraid of being overheard. "It worked.!" And he looked over at Biddy just in time to see her collapse.
They hurried over to her. Nita looked helplessly at Johnny as he came over, hoisted Biddy up. Her eyes were closed: her breathing was so shallow it was hardly to be seen. He shook his head. "What's wrong with her?" Nita said.
"I'm not sure. We'll take her inside and find out. Meanwhile. ." He glanced over at the Spear, gleaming crimson where the early sun was catching it. "We're ready," he said. "It's Lughnasad. This evening we move."
She nodded, and looked across the field. Dark in his denims, Ronan was standing there. He had no eyes for anything but the Spear. He was wearing an expression like that of someone who finds something that's lost, something he has been wanting for a long time; something without which he's not complete. It was a frightened look, and a frightening one.
What unnerved Nita even more was the way she could feel the Spear looking back at him. It considered Ronan to be just such a lost object, recovered after a long time, that which completes. She turned away and did her best to keep her thoughts to herself.
11. ag na Machairi Teithra / The Plains of Tethra
All that day, cars came and went at Matrix: people being dropped off, coming to stay, other people heading out to pick up more people from the train station. The house g
ot full. All the wizards that Nita had seen in the Long Hall were there, and many that she had never seen before. The gravel parking lot in front got full, and people started parking in among the sheep. 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 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.
"Yes," he said, and put the Spear down to lean it against the doorpost — hurriedly, Nita thought, and rather gratefully. Johnny rubbed his hands together. "Well, no. It really is hard to hold for even a little while. it burns." 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 has 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, "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 Johhny had said about some weapons being able to speak. She knew what this one wanted.
