by Diane Duane
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 Lughnasád. 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 timeless-ness. 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 this, 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.
"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 toget
her, 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 out 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…