A Wizard Abroad, New Millennium Edition

by Diane Duane

  We hope, Kit said silently. Hang in there, 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 other-world, it was normally a great flowery plain that ran down to the sea; but the darkness that lay over everything had shut the flowers’ eyes. It was a featureless place now, 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. Isn’t that weird, she thought. That almost looks like a sort of squashed head, there. And really ugly. Huge twisted lips it had, and a face that looked as if someone had malformed it on purpose. It was like a sculptor’s model of a gargoyle’s head all squashed down, the nose pushed out of place, one eye squinted away to nothing and the other abnormally huge, bulging out, the lid a thin warty skin over it. All this smashed down onto 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 wasn’t the way she had expected the Lone One to appear. Always when Nita had found herself up against it before, she’d seen the Lone Power as young and dynamic, dangerous, actively evil. It had been nothing like 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’d 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 really 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 his 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 a Fragarach that looked dulled and tired. She glanced at him, looking slightly confused. Johnny 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 Fragarach 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 destroying 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 toward Balor. But it lost momentum, and soaked into the muddy ground around the Balor-hill, and was swallowed up; and afterwards 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 then 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 that from happening again—

  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 particular 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 the bag and splatted onto the ground, then climbed up hurriedly onto 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 out of lying and shadows?

  No army here, just some shattered stonework,

  some poor bruised goblins, all running away?

  No ships at all, but just the old darkness,

  the kind that they use 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 forever?

  Some run-down old 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 specter

  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 a clever noise,” the voice said, hugely, slowly, with infinite malice.

  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 dragging 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’d 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 night 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. At the moment she could look nowhere but that dark face, see only the bitter smile. But there was as yet no glance from Its eye. The Balor-shape still bound It to that shape’s rules.

  He put the Spear right through Its eye, Nita thought abruptly. That’s it! Unless It opens Its eye first—

  Here it comes, Kit said to Nita. This had better work!—

  Off to one side, Ronan was holding the Spear. It was immobile no longer; it was shaking in his hands, its point leaning toward the terrible dark shape before them, the fires writhing in its point. “Not yet,” Nita said under her breath, “Ronan, not yet—!”

  She knew he couldn’t hear her; even if he could, it was a good question whether the being he was becoming would recognize Nita as someone it might be useful to listen to. Ronan was wrestling with the spear, holding it back as it pulled and strained in his hands.

  A bare slit of light opened in the dark face of the bulk before them, like the first sliver of the sun coming up over a hill. It hit Nita in the eyes and face like thrown acid, searing. She cried out, fell down and crouched in on herself, trying to make herself as small as possible, as the light hit her all over and seared her with pain.

  All around her she could hear the screams of others going down, and right next to her, on top of her she thought, the sound and feel of Kit crying out hoarsely and rolling over in agony. It was worse than almost anything she could remember, worse than the time the dentist was drilling and the novocaine wore off and he couldn’t give her any more; the pain scraped down her nerves and burned in her bones, and no writhing or crying helped at all. The tears ran out and mixed with the mud that Nita’s face was grinding into.

  But at the same time, something in her refused to have anything to do with all this, and was embarrassed, and angry—the same kind of anger that had awakened in her while she was fighting, and liking it. Shaking her head in that anger, Nita pushed herself up on her hands and knees, even though it felt like she would die doing it, and squinted ahead of them. Through the mud and her tears of pain she could just make out Ronan, still struggling with the Spear. Further ahead, the darkness was broken only by that awful sliver of evil light, getting wider now as the Eye opened. And if it had opened all the way, all Ireland would have burnt up in that one flash, she heard Tualha half-singing, half-saying.

  But it has to be open enough for him to get a clean shot. He won’t get another chance, and if he misses it’ll all have been for nothing. Ronan, Ronan, don’t let it go yet!

  Tualha yowled and fell off the stone onto Nita. She scooped the kitten up, fumbled for her backpack, couldn’t reach it, and stowed Tualha, writhing, inside her shirt, where her clawing made little difference against the storm of pain Nita was already feeling. It could be fought, but not much longer; she could feel the onslaught of the light increasing, its power building. Soon it would be ready—Beside her, Kit stirred and bumped up against her. “Come on,” she moaned, grabbed him by one arm and tried to get him up at least on his hands and knees. “Come on. Oh, God, Kit, Ronan—!”

  She looked over and saw that the Eye was open enough. But Ronan was still holding the Spear, despite its struggles. It was roaring now, a desperate noise, trying to get loose. What’s the matter? Nita thought. “Ronan!!”

  He was nothing but a silhouette against that light, writhing himself, kept on his feet by the Power that had been dwelling in him more and more since they came here. “Ronan, let it go!” she cried. “Kit, he has to—he won’t—”

  Their minds fell together, as they had before. That reassuring presence: frightened, as she was, but also perturbed, looking for an answer. What’s the matter with him? she heard Kit think. With me, Neets. RONAN!

  Their minds hit him together, fell into his. Only for a second, for something larger than both of them was fighting for control, and losing. Ronan was holding that Power off, and he had only one thought, all fear and horror: if I let it go now, if once I throw the Spear, I become the Power, become Lugh, become the Champion. Never mortal again—

  Make him do it, Kit cried, frantic, to him and the Other who listened. He’s going to get the whole world killed!

  No! It doesn’t work that way! Nita was equally frantic. He has to do it himself! Ronan, and she gulped,—go on!

  Silence—

  —and then Ronan lifted the Spear.

  It shouted triumph as Ronan leaned back, and then it leapt out of his hands, roaring like the shock wave of a nuclear explosion, trailing lightnings and a wild wind behind it as it went. That terrible eye opened wide in shock as a fire more terrible than its own hurtled at it. In the instant of the Eye’s opening the pain increased a hundred
times over. Nita screamed and fell—