by Диана Дуэйн
One of the riders turned aside from the bright tide, and paused by them, looking down at Nita. He said, "Are you repaid, then?"
Nita looked up at him, the crimson and emerald and golden splendour of his clothing, the impossible handsomeness of his face, and she felt dingy and shopworn by comparison. Her heart ached in her with pity for the wretched ordinariness of life, seen next to this awful, assured beauty.
But she said, "Yes, thank you. Thank you.very much."
"I would have saved the favour, myself," said the black-haired rider, "for you'll need it more later. But what's done, is done. And now get up and ride, for the Queen desires to speak with you." Ronan put his eyebrows up at that. "Which queen?"
"Not any mortal one," said the young rider on the horse, looking at him with mild amusement. "The Queen whom it is unwise to refuse. as it is unwise to refuse her Fool." "The Amadaunl" Ronan said, his eyes going wide. "Do what he says," he said to Nita. And she caught a flash of unnerved thought from him: he can kill with a look or a touch, this one, if offended.
"No problem with that," Nita said, at the moment having no time for Ronan's nervousness. "But one thing first." She looked around her with distress: the cars stopped or crashed in the street, the shattered glass, the stunned townspeople standing around. She beckoned Kit and Ronan off to one side a little, and said, "We can't leave the place this way. Little hiccups in daily reality, people can deal with — but this? They'll never be able to explain it to themselves. ."
"Or their insurance companies," Kit muttered.
Nita shook her head. "They'll lose their grip. ."
Ronan looked at them curiously. "What are you thinking of doing?"
Kit looked thoughtfully at Nita. "Patch it?"
Nita nodded. Ronan stared at her. " 'Patch it?' Patch what'? With what?"
Nita bit her lip. "Time," she said. "With a spare piece. It's basic alternate-universe theory; Johnny mentioned patching in the pub. Somewhere parallel to our universe, where this happened, there has to be one where this didn't. where the drows never popped out, where this damage wasn't done. You patch this timeline with an equivalent piece of that one." She looked around her, considering. "The area and the timespan's small enough not to have to get an authorization, like you would for a full timeslide. And the reason's good, which is the whole point." "But the overlays. ."
"Ronan," Kit said, holding his voice very steady in a way that Nita knew meant he was fighting not to lose his temper, "we can't sit around arguing about this all day. A few minutes more, and what's happened will have printed itself too strongly on these people's minds to be patched over. We'll be careful of the overlays. You in, or what?"
Ronan looked from him to Nita. She shrugged, nodded.
"All right. ."
"Here it is," Kit said, riffling through his manual. "We're inside the time limit, we can do the short form. Ronan?" He offered him the manual.
"No," he said, looking slightly off to one side like someone having an idea, "I see it. You start." Kit and Nita started reading together: Ronan joined them. It was a little odd to hear the Speech for the first time in an Irish accent, but Nita didn't let that distract her, concentrating instead on the part of the spell that located and verified the piece of alternate spacetime they needed, 'copied' it into the spell buffer prepared for it, and held it ready. Then came the second part of the spell, which bilocated the copied spacetime with the one presently proceeding locally. Kit looked up after a moment, breathing hard. Everything around them suddenly looked a little peculiar, as if every object had two sets of outlines, which were vibrating, jarring against one another. "Come on," he said to Nita and Ronan, "let's get out of here and drop it in place." "How are we going?" Nita said, glancing up at the Amadaun.
There were abruptly three more horses beside him; bridled and saddled, ready to go. "Can you ride?"
"I can be carried," Nita said, utterly unhappy about the idea. "Up, then."
Kit helped her up. "Where is the Queen?" she said to the Amadaun. "Did she come out with you?" "She did not: she goes not foraying any more," the Amadaun said. "Though because of you, that may change."
Nita thought about that one for a minute. Ronan meanwhile swung up in his saddle with perfect ease, gathered up the reins and sat there like a lord. Kit clambered up into his saddle, clutching the pommel of it.
"Don't fear," the Amadaun said. "You won't fall."
Nita desperately hoped that was true. "OK," she said to Kit. "As soon as we're clear, let it drop." The Amadaun turned his mount and led them at a walk up Herbert Road. By the entrance to the church parking lot Kit paused, looked over his shoulder, said one word. Looking back towards the main street with Ronan, Nita saw the outlines of everything tremble, then suddenly solidify. With that, the glitter of broken glass in the road was gone, and a sudden confused silence fell over the shouting that had started in the street. "Good enough," Kit said. "It took, nice and solid. Let's go."
And they rode. Nita knew these horses from old stories, but she still was not prepared for how fast they went. One moment she was trying to find a way to sit so that she wouldn't slip sideways: the next, she was galloping. Though it physically felt as if she was trapped in a dream sequence in a film, the horse moving in slow motion, everything else blurred past her with such speed that she could hardly tell which way they were going. Apparently the Good People's horses didn't care about roads; rough or smooth was all one to them, for they ran 'sideways', across water, or fetlock- deep through a hillside in their path. The country around them now appeared as it had — how many hundreds of years ago? — before there were roads, or people, or anything else to trouble the serenity of the world. It was an Ireland of apple trees in flower, of long hillsides green with flowery meadows, deep forests, thickets of hazel and rowan. They rode westward out of Bray, and made for Great Sugarloaf.
In the sideways world it was no mountain, but a city that stood up huge and golden, the towers lancing up as Nita had seen them from a distance that afternoon, back in Kilquade. The rider alongside them looked at Nita, and at the view ahead, and smiled slightly. "It is the chief of our duns in these parts," he said. "And the fairest. Other mountains are higher, but none was so well shaped, we thought." "I saw."
"So you did. You have the gift; it comes of the blood, I suppose." The Fool looked at her. "Not a safe gift, though."
"Neither is wizardry," Nita said.
The Fool nodded. "As you will no doubt keep discovering, before the end. No matter. We're here." They dismounted before the great gates. The horses tossed their heads, somehow losing their saddles and tack at the same time, and wandered off into the surrounding meadows. "Come then," said the Fool. "The Queen holds summer court."
They did not go through the gates. The Fool led them instead a short distance around the high shining walls, to where an open pavilion of white silk was pitched in the meadow. Inside it was a simple chair, and several young women standing around it; in the chair sat another woman, who watched them come.
The Fool led them just inside the pavilion, before the lady in the chair. Afterwards Nita had some trouble remembering her face; what chiefly struck her was the woman's hair, masses of it, a beautiful mellow gold like the wheat ripening in Aunt Annie's third field over. The thick plaits of it that hung down reached almost to the ground; the rest was coiled up, braided and wound around her head, the only crown she wore. She was dressed all in a white silk much finer than that of the pavilion, and she held something wrapped in more silk in her lap. "The greeting of gods and man to you, wizards," she said.
They all bowed. "And to you, madam," Ronan said, "our greeting and the One's."
She bowed her head in return. "I may not keep you long here," she said; "you are on errantry, and we respect that. But word has come to us of what the wizards are doing. We know a little of draoiceacht ourselves, and we have something here that may be of use to you." She turned her attention to the bundle in her lap.
'Madam," Kit said, 'may I ask a questi
on?"
She looked up, and her eyes glinted a little with merriment. 'Could I stop you?" 'Who are you, please?"
She sat back in the chair at that. 'Bold one," she said. 'But the stranger in the gate has a right to ask. I am one who 'died into the hills'." Ronan turned his face away. "Feel no shame," she said. "The name is long given to us by humans, and we are used to it. The first of us who lived here after the Making, and could not bear to leave, slipped sideways here, by what art you know; it is part of wizardry. We took ourselves to live outside of the world's time, and exiled ourselves as a result; we cannot go back except for a little while, every now and then. A night of moon to dance in; a morning, or an afternoon, on each of the four great turning-days of the year, when the hills stand open, and there is some commerce between this world and yours. We are near one of them now, which is why you can be here at all."
She turned back a bit of the silk of the wrapped thing in her lap, toying with it. "Now and then, the desire for the physical world becomes too much for us, and one or another of us crosses back into it — to live the lives of human beings, in a world where things are definite and deadly, and what one does matters for ever. We age swiftly when we do that, and our passions rule us; we do terrible deeds sometimes, forgetting the calm of the slower-running time outside the world. I have been back several times, and returned here after each visit, which makes me unusual. for many of us have gone over to try death, and have not come back from it. Your world would know me by several names. I was called Aoife, and Fand, and Macha, and other names besides: but most important at the moment, I was called Emer, the wife of Cuchullain mac Sualtim, who was Hero of Ulster. And that is how I come by this."
She looked down at the bundle in her lap, and slowly unfolded the wrappings around it. "After Cuchullain died," she said, "I gave it to Conall of the Hundred Battles. It passed from him, eventually; he could not bear the spirit that was in the thing. It was in pain, because there was no hand mighty enough to wield it any more, and no mind that understood its power. Our wise folk thought at last that it ought to be brought out of the world, and "into the hills", to spare its pain. And so it was. See. ."
She slipped the silk aside, and held up what had been in it. It was a sword. There were no jewels on it; the hilt was plain gold, riveted with silver, and the blade was a long graceful willow-leaf curve of mirror-polished steel, nearly a meter long, coming to a 'waist' about a third of a meter above the hilt, and then flaring slightly outward again. There was a wavy pattern in its steel, but more than that, the blade itself seemed to waver slightly in the vision, as if seen through a heat-haze. Even in this golden light, with the summer of the Otherworld all around them, the Queen looked pale and plain as she held it up; the sword made whatever one looked at with it seem less than real, as the Sidhe had done in Bray.
"Cruaidin Cailidcheann, he called it; the Hard, Hard-Headed. But it had another name, first.
Cuchullain's father was Lugh of the Long Reach; and this is Fragarach, the Answerer, the Sword of Air, which Lugh sent to him. Take it."
Nita put her hand out to it, and felt a cold fire burning, and a pressure of wind forcing her hand away. "It doesn't want me," she said.
"No. It has its own desires, and I can only hold it because I am one of the Undying. One of you," she said to Kit and Ronan.
Ronan put a hand out, and then snatched it back, and scowled. "It doesn't want me either." "You then," she said to Kit. "Take it, young wizard: and give it to the Senior, with my blessing. He will be the one to wield it, I think. Say also to him," she said, turning to Ronan,"that I ask him again the question I have asked him before; and ask whether he has any new answer for me." "I will," Ronan said, but his eyes slid sideways to Fragarach.
Kit bowed slightly. "And I'll deliver this." He took the sword, and apparently had no trouble with it.
"Go, then. The Amadaun will see you home. And have a care; for the One-Eyed is very strong. He is not as strong as he was once. but neither are the Treasures." The Queen's green eyes were troubled. "Nonetheless, they may serve. They must serve." They nodded. "Go now."
The horses were brought for them, and they rode back to Nita's aunt's. The dual carriageway wasn't there, but they could recognize the Glen of the Downs as the Good People's horses left it swiftly behind them. The sea glinted before them with colours they had never seen before, under the Otherworld's sun, as they rode down the hill towards Kilquade; then the new colours faded, and there was nothing shining on the sea but mundane sunlight. The road faded into visibility around them at the end of Aunt Annie's drive.
"Go well," said the Amadaun as they dismounted, and their three horses faded away. "We can do no more for you. One Treasure from the land itself; one from the hand of the People; one from humankind. The fourth must come from elsewhere: from one of the Powers, or not at all." "You say you're a Fool," Nita said. "Are you making a joke?"
"Always. But the jokes are always true. Beware," he said. "And the One go with you."
He faded away as well. They turned and headed down the drive, Kit carrying the sword across his hands and looking extremely nervous.
"You said things around here are getting weird?" he said to Nita.
She sighed. "Don't ask me for hints that they might get less weird," she said. "My money says things get worse yet."
8. Chearta na Chill Pheadair / Kilpedder Forge
There it lay in the middle of the kitchen table, along with old Lotto tickets and a tea-stained copy of the Bray People, on top of the placemats, next to a plastic biscuit tray with nothing but crumbs left in it, and the milk jar and sugar bowl; Fragarach the Answerer, shining under the light that hung down from the ceiling. They sat around it, nursing their tea, and looking at it. It was hard to look at anything else. The cats sat up on the kitchen worktop, the way they did when waiting to be fed, and stared at it too, big-eyed.
"And that was it," Kit said to Nita's aunt. "They said we would have to come up with the fourth one ourselves, somehow."
"Did they give you any hints?" Aunt Annie said.
Nita shook her head. "Unless you caught something that I didn't, Ronan. I can't always understand the way people talk around here."
Ronan shook his head. "I heard what you heard, more's the pity. I was hoping they might come up with the Spear, too."
"You and me both," said Aunt Annie. She stretched, and slumped in her chair. Nita noticed how tired she looked, and felt sorry for her.
"Did you do the warding you were going to do?" she said.
Her aunt nodded. "The back office is ready for the Cup," she said. "Johnny went to help Doris with it; apparently it's more alive than they had expected, and it was causing them trouble. They should be here in a while. Anyway, when you're in the back of the house, be careful of the office door. I had to draw the spell pattern partway up the inside of it to miss the rug in there, and if you open the door, it'll break the circuit. Just reach in through the door if you need something." They nodded. "Aunt Annie," Nita said, "I was going to ask you. Where does Biddy the farrier live?"
She tried to make it sound nonchalant, and had no idea whether she had succeeded. Her aunt looked at her a little curiously. "Just up the road in Kilpedder," she said. 'Next to the shop across the dual carriageway. She has her ordinary forge there. Why?"
Nita tried not to squirm. "I had a couple of questions I wanted to ask her," she said.
"About her forge," Kit said. "It's really great. I hadn't seen a portable one like that before."
"Oh. Well, it's getting close to teatime: you should be able to find her up there in a while — her work rarely keeps her out much later than this."
Nita became aware of a low buzzing, and looked around her. "Is that the oven-timer?" she said. Aunt Annie looked bemused. "No, the oven's not on."
They looked at each other as the buzzing got louder. Some of the spoons on the table began to vibrate gently, moving along the table a little. "Look at the Sword!" Kit said. "It's vibrating."
It
was. The low humming sound that Nita had mistaken for the oven-timer was coming from it, and it was getting louder. "It sounds a little like feedback," she said.
A faint beep-beep sound came from outside. The Sword's hum got louder, and (Nita thought) more threatening. "Ohmigosh," her aunt said, "it's Doris and Johnny, and they've got the Cup!" "Neat!" Kit said, and got up. "Let's go and see!"
"Wait a minute!" Aunt Annie said, sounding panic-stricken. "We don't have the place prepared to have two of the Treasures here at once! Put two of these things together without adequate preparation, and you're going to get something that makes atomic critical mass look like a wet firework!" She looked around hurriedly. "Crikey, I can't leave now! Kit, quick, take it and get out of here!"
He picked it up, rather nervously. It jumped and jittered in his hands, and the hum started to scale up into a howl. "Where?!"
"Anywhere! Somewhere far! More than fifty miles. I'll cover you for the overlays, just go!"
He looked at Nita. "Copernicus," he said, and muttered three words, and vanished.
The air went whoomfinto where he had been: not the usual explosion. Nita smiled slightly, considering that Kit had been as impressed by Johnny's expertise as she had.
Outside, car doors slammed. "Here, let me get that for you, Doris," Johnny's voice said.
They all went to the door. Johnny was pulling the glass sliding door aside. Behind him came Doris Smyth, holding something wrapped in a pastel-striped pillowcase. The something shone through the pillowcase as if it were on fire: a still, cool, changeless fire that nonetheless rippled and wavered on everything it touched, like the sun looked at from underwater. "Back office, Anne?" said Doris's voice, sounding strained but cheerful.
"Right. Don't open the door, just walk through it."
"Certainly. Johnny, you handle that; I have my hands full."
There was no room for them all, down that narrow hall. Nita and Ronan stood there and watched as the three older wizards walked down past the bookshelves and turned the corner, out of view. Except that they weren't entirely out of view at all; they were faintly visible in the reflected light from the Cup, even through the intervening walls. Nita shook her head. "Don't do things like this at home, do you?" Ronan said.