by Диана Дуэйн
After what seemed a very long while, the wind died down, leaving the riders standing there, and the wizards looking at them, among the dead bodies of Fomori, and the twitching, witless ones, driven mad by the sight of the onslaught. Johnny went from where he had been talking to Nita's aunt, who held a Fragarach much darnped-down and diminished-looking, and stood by the tallest of the riders, taking the bridle of her horse. "Madam," he said, "we hadn't looked to see you here." "We were called by our own element," the Queen said, looking down at Nita's aunt, and Fragarach. "Besides, it has been too long since I went foraying; and since our world seems like enough to die here, this is a good time to ride out again. We have not done badly. But I think we may not be able to do much more. All magics are diminishing in the face of our enemy's draoiceacht, and I feel the weariness in my bones. Do not you?" Johnny nodded. "Nevertheless we will press on," he said.
"We will go with you and look on this ending," said the Amadaun; and paused. "If an ending is indeed what we are coming to." "One way or another," Johnny said.
12. Tir na nOg
Johnny waved the wizards forward, and they started down the winding way that paralleled the river, and led towards Bray. "Did you hear that?" Kit said.
Nita shook her head; she was very tired. "Hear what?" "What the Queen said. 'The weariness.' "
She had to laugh at that. "After what we've been through today, you'd be nuts not to be tired." "Yeah, but that's not it. Don't you feel tireder than you were when we were up at the top of the hill?"
Nita blinked. "You're right."
Kit nodded down at the darkness in front of them. "That," he said. "There's some kind of energy- sapping spell tied up with it. Don't exert yourself if you can avoid it — you may need that energy for later."
She looked at him with very mild annoyance; sometimes Kit's practical streak came close to getting him hit. "What I really need right now in terms of energy is a chocolate bar," she said, "but the only thing I've got left in my pack is a cat. And I can't eat that." She made an amused face. "Too many bones."
Tualha hissed in her ear, not amused. Kit grinned, and produced a chocolate bar from one pocket. Nita took it, squinted at it in the dimness. "It's got peanuts in it!" she said. "I hate peanuts!" "Oh, OK," Kit said, grabbed it back, and started to unwrap it.
Nita grabbed it away from him, scowled at him, and began eating. Tualha snickered at her. They kept walk-ing, along the course of the river: it would have been the route of the thirteen-bend road, in the real world. Trees arched close overhead in the gloom, and the sound of the river down in its stony watercourse was muted. If something should hit us here, we'd have nowhere to go, Nita thought, as she took another bite out of the choco-late bar. And then the screaming began again, very close. It's not fair! she thought, as she saw the drows and other monsters come crashing in among them from down the steep slope to their right. At that point she also dis-covered something else: that a wizard with a mouthful of caramel and peanuts is not much good for saying spells, even the last word of one that's already set up. She pushed backwards out of the way while fighting to swallow, managed it, and shouted the one word she needed just in time to blow away the drow that was heading for Kit on his blind side while he did the same for a pooka.
Something grabbed her from behind by her throat and chest, choking her. Nita fought to turn, for you can't blast what you can't see, but the stony hands held her hard, and she couldn't get her breath; her vision started to go.
Then there was a roaring noise behind her, the pressure released suddenly, and Nita fell sprawling and gasping. She levered herself up, looking around her. "Kit. ." she said,"did you. .?" And she ran out of words. All around them, the path through the forest was awash in blue-green light that rolled and flowed like water; and off to one side, the river was climbing up out of its banks in response, and running up on to the path. Both flows, of light and water together, were rushing with increasing speed eastward, leaving the wizards untouched, but washing the drows and pookas and other monsters away like so much flotsam. Nita struggled to get to her feet again, against the flow. To Kit she said, "Looks like Doris is using the Cup."
Kit nodded. "Come on, we should be breaking out into the open pretty soon. This path comes out in that flat ground by the main road, doesn't it?" 'The dual carriageway, yeah."
Several more bends of the watercourse brought them out into the open ground. There was a great scattering of drows there, half-buried in the earth as if about a year's worth of mud had buried them; many others, dealt with by the wizardry of individuals, lay broken or helpless. The last traces of the blue-green light of the Cup's wiz-ardry were sinking into the ground like water, along with the real water, which was running down into the water-course of the Dargle, which the Glencree stream had just met. Kit and Nita splashed across the ford and up the other side, looking around them.
Nita sagged against Kit as she looked northward along the flood-plain of the Dargle, towards Bray. The dark-ness was getting solider and solider, and she felt about ready to collapse. You and me both, he said. She could feel the fatigue in the thought, and Nita looked around at the other wizards with them and saw that they were suf-fering too; some of them were having to be helped along by others, and not because of injuries. And far down the flood plain, there was a long line of darkness hugging the ground, coming slowly towards them. It was bigger than all three of the previous forces that had attacked them, all put together.Oh, no, she thought. I can't. And neither can a lot of the rest of us.
"There never was any counting them, even in the old days," Tualha said. "It seems that nothing has changed."
There was an awful silence. Many of the wizards looked at each other helplessly, hefted their weapons and watched the Fomori come. Nita looked over at Johnny, who was off to the side of one small crowd, frowning, with his arms folded. The ground began to shake.
The Stone, Kit said silently, immediately doing the smartest thing: he looked up and around to make sure no tree or rock was likely to fall on him, and then sat down. Nita followed suit. All around them, the earth groaned alarmingly as it was held still where they were, but encouraged to move, and violently, half a mile away. Down by that advancing line of darkness, trees toppled over and huge boulders of Wicklow granite rolled down the hill-sides towards the ranks of the Fomori. They broke, screaming and running in all directions. It did them little good. One of the hillsides shrugged itself up and up until it fell over on the Fomori vanguard. Behind them the rest milled about in confusion between the two ridges that paralleled the open ground where it sloped gently away down towards Bray.
The thunder of the quaking ground suddenly became a roar. Nita clutched at the ground as a single awful shock went through it — not one of the rippling waves they had been feeling, but a concussion like two huge rocks being struck together.
Down towards Bray, the horde of dark forms were abruptly missing from the ground. Nothing could be seen but smoke and dust rising upward in the gloom. "Let's go," Johnny said quietly, and started forward.
No-one had much to say as they passed the great smoking chasm that had been a green meadow, half a mile long between two hills. One of the hills was flat now, the other had great cracks in it, and from far down among the rock-tumble in the chasm, as the wizards passed slowly by it, faint cries could be heard. Nita shuddered as she followed Kit; they had to squeeze their way along the side of the meadow, or what was left of it. The ground tilted dangerously downward towards the chasm. The riders of the Sidhe paced casually along the air above the huge smoking hole, but it occurred to Nita that the wizards might have a slightly harder time of it if they had to leave the area suddenly. The gloom grew about them, and the tiredness got worse and worse, so that it was al-most as much as she could do just to drag herself along. Only the sight of Kit in front of her, doggedly putting foot in front of foot, kept her doing the same. At least they're leaving us alone now, she thought. Or maybe there are none of them left.
We hope, Kit said silentl
y. Hang on, Neets. Look, Johnny's stopped up at the top of that hill there. They went up after him, paused at the hillcrest and looked down over where Bray would have been in the real world. In this otherworld, it was normally a great flowery plain; but the darkness that lay over everything had shut the flowers' eyes. It was a featureless place, flat as heartbreak, right up to where Bray Head should have been; and a wall of black cloud rose there, shutting the sight away.
Nita squinted along the coastline, looking for some sight of the sea. That wall of blackness prevented her, though. Is it clouds, or some other kind of storm? Why isn't it moving…? But it was not cloud, as she had thought. There were regular shapes in that darkness, barely visible. It was a line of ships — but ships like none she had ever imagined before, ships with hulls the size of mountains, with sails like thunderheads. They were livid-dark as if full of thunder, and she could see the chains of pallid lightning that held them to the shore. This was the black wizardry that would drag this alternate Ireland out of its place in the sea, up into the regions of eternal darkness and cold, into another Ice Age perhaps. What would happen to the real Ireland, and the rest of the world after it, Nita had no idea. . and under that wall of darkness. .
Her mind was dulled with that awful weariness, and at first Nita thought she was looking at a hill, between them and the sea. Funny about that, she thought. That almost looks like a sort of squashed head, there. But no head could be that ugly. Huge twisted lips and a face that looked as if someone had malformed it on purpose; a sculptor's model of a gargoyle's head all squashed down, the nose pushed out of place, and one eye squinted away to nothing; the other abnormally huge, bulging out, the lid a thin warty skin over it. All this smashed down on to great rounded shoulders, a crouching shape, great flabby arms and thighs and a gross bulging belly — all the size of a hill. Face and body together combined to make an expression of sheer spite, of long-cherished grudges and self-satisfied immobility. The look of it made Nita feel a little sick. And then she saw it breathe. And breathe again.
Loathing, that was almost all she could feel. She was afraid, too, but it seemed to take too much energy. So this is Balor.
It was not the way she had expected the Lone One to appear. Always she had seen It before as young and dynamic, dangerous, actively evil. Not this crouching, lethargic horror, this lump of inertia, of blindness and old unexamined hates. Before, when confronted by the rogue Power that wizards fight, she had always wanted to fight It too, or else run away in sheer terror. This made her simply want to sneak away somewhere and throw up.
But this was what they had to get rid of; this was what was going to destroy this island, and then the world.
It's gross, came the thought; Kit, tired too, but not as tired as she was. They'd better get rid of it quick.
Nita agreed with him. Off to one side she saw Johnny, looking almost too tired for words. But Johnny's back was straight yet. "Lone One," he said, his voice calm and clear, "greeting and defiance, as always. You come as usual in the shape you think we'll recognize least. But this one of our hauntings we know too well, and intend to see the back of. Your creatures are defeated. Two choices are before you now; to leave of your own will, or be driven out by force. Choose now!" There was no answer; just that low, thick breathing, unhurried, untroubled. "Ronan," Johnny said quietly. "The Spear."
Ronan moved up, but he looked uneasy. The Spear seemed heavy in his hands, and Johnny looked at him sharply. "What's the matter?" he said. "It — I don't know. It's not ready."
Johnny looked at Ronan with some concern, and then said, "Well enough. Anne. ."
Nita's aunt came up, carrying Fragarach. A Fragarach that looked dulled and tired. She glanced at him, looking slightly confused. He shook his head.
"Don't ask me," he said. "I think we've got to play this by ear. Do what you did before." She held up Fraga-rach and said the last word of the spell of release. The wind began to blow again, but there was a tentative feel to it this time, almost uncertain. The gross motionless figure did nothing, said nothing. The wind rose, and rose, but there was still that feeling of a hollowness at the heart of it; and when it fell on Balor at last, there was no de-stroying blast, no removal. It might have been any other wind blowing on a hill, with as much result. It died away at last, with a moan, and left Fragarach dark. "Doris," Johnny said.
Doris came up, holding the Cup. She spoke the word of release, and tilted it downward. That blue- green light rose and flowed out of it again, washing towards Balor. But it lost momentum, and soaked into the muddy ground around the Balor-hill, and was swallowed up; and afterwords the Cup was pallid and cold, just a thing of gold and silver, indistinct in the shadows. "All right," Johnny said, sounding, for the first time since Nita had met him, annoyed. "Ronan, ready or not, you'd better use that thing,"
Ronan looked unnerved, but he lifted the Spear. The fires twisted and writhed in the metal of its head; he leaned back, balanced it, and threw. The Spear went like an arrow, struck Balor. . . and bounced, and fell like a dead thing. Silence. The wizards looked at each other.
. .and the laughter started. It was very low, hardly distinguishable as laughter at all, at first. It sounded as if the ground should have trembled with it, and with malice, and amusement. Invulnerable, Nita thought. It's not fair. He could be stopped, the last time. Lugh put that spear right through Its eye. Nothing should be able to stop it. .
Another sound began, a shadow of the first: rocks grating against rocks, a low tortured rumbling that grew louder and louder. With it, the earth really did start to tremble. People fell over in all directions, tried to find their footing, lost it and fell again. Nita was one of them; when she got up again, she noticed a par-ticular feeling of insecurity, as if something she had been depending on had suddenly vanished.
Johnny was standing up again, having fallen himself. He looked at Nita's aunt in shock, and said, "That was the Stone going. The linkage to it is dead."
Nita's aunt looked at the shadows down by the seashore and said softly, "Then there's nothing to prevent. that."
Johnny shook his head. "And what happens here Nita swallowed.
The groaning of the earth subsided; many who had fallen managed to get back to their feet. But there was no relief, for unchanged before them squatted the huge, dark, immobile form with its spiteful, pleased look. A soft protesting noise of distress and anger went up all around. "It's enjoying this," Kit muttered. "We've lost, and It knows it, and It's prolonging it for fun." "That's as much fun as it's going to have, then," came a sudden small voice: Tualha. She struggled down out of Nita's bag and splatted on to the ground, then climbed up hurriedly on to a nearby stone. She panted a little, and paused; and then her little voice rang out in that sick silence, louder than Nita had ever heard it before. "See the great power of Balor lord of the Fomor!
See the ranks of his unconquerable army! See how they parade in their pride before him! See how they trample the earth of Eriu!"
Nita stared at first, wondering what Tualha was up to. But the irony and sarcasm in her small voice got thicker and thicker, and she was staring at Balor in wide-eyed amusement, the way Nita had seen her stare at captive bugs.
"Is it not the way of his coming in power? His splendor is very great, he bows down all resistance! Never was a better way for the conqueror to come here; May all who follow him fare just the same way!
See how the children and beasts flee before him, And their elders, just hoary old men and women, With their few bits of rusty ironmongery, And a crock and a stone, that's all they have with them!
Can it really be so, what we see before us. .? or is it a trick of the Plains of Tethra, where everything seems otherwise than it is, and night might be day, if one's will was in it?
Is it truly what we see, the mighty conqueror, with his armies ranged and his ships all ready? Or something much less, just a misconception, a fakery made of lying and shadows?
No army here, just some shattered stonework, some poor bruised goblins, all r
unning away? No ships at all, but just the old darkness, the kind that used to scare children at bedtime?
And no mighty lord, no mastering horror, just a bad dream left over from crazier times, a poor ghost, wailing for what's lost for ever? Some run-down spook complaining about hard times, and what he can't keep? Can it be that mortals are too strong for him even here, on his own ground?.
that accountants and farmers, housewives and shopkeepers, and children and cats are even too mighty?
Then all hail the ragged lord of the Fomor, a power downthrown, a poor weak spectre that ought to take himself off to the West Country and haunt some castle for American tourists! Be off somewhere and beg your bread honestly, and don't come around our doors with your threats, you shabby has-been! Just slouch yourself off, crooked old sloth-pile: show some initiative! "Get up and. ."
The voice that spoke then made the earth shake again, and a violent pain went right through Nita at the sound of it, as if she had been stabbed to the heart with something not only cold, but actively hateful. "Let me see this chatterer who makes such clever noise," the voice said, hugely, slowly, with infinite mal-ice.
Tualha stood her ground. "Get up and do something useful, if you dare. .' It got up.
The terrified screams of many of the wizards made this seem to take much longer than it did; seconds drag-ging out to minutes of horror, as the huge shape began to tear itself up out of the ground, bulking up against the darkening sky huger than Bray Head. Indeed the Head looked to be crouching down in terror itself, getting smaller as that form rose up beside it, not just the ugly warped man-shape, but a steed for it as well — black as rotting earth, eyes filled with the decaying light of marshfire, fanged, taloned, breathing corruption. Above it its Rider rose, and Nita heard Its breathing and knew her old enemy again, knew by sight the One that she had been desperately afraid would catch her, that night after the foxhunt went by. Its pack was gathering to It out of the shadows now, ready to hunt the wizards' souls out into everlasting nights and tear them to shreds like coursed hares, screaming: in the pack's longing thoughts, dangerously close to becoming real in this otherworld, Nita could hear the shrieks, smell the blood already. But at the moment she could look nowhere but that dark face: see the bitter smile. But there was as yet no glance from Its eye. The Balor-shape still bound It to that shape's rules.
