A Wizard Abroad, New Millennium Edition (23 page)

They rode westward out of Bray, and made for Sugarloaf. In the sideways world it was no mountain, but a city that stood up huge and green-golden there, 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 barley ripening in Aunt Annie’s third field over. The thick braids of the woman’s hair hung down 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 question?”

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 easy commerce between this world and yours. We are near one of those days 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 forever. 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 Cúchullain 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 Cúchullain 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, in the shape of a little man with outflung arms and legs: and the blade was a long graceful willow-leaf curve of mirror-polished steel, about two and a half feet long, coming to a “waist” above the hilt, then flaring outward again. There was a faint wavy pattern in its steel, but more than that, the blade itself seemed to it 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. Cúchullain’s true father was not Sualtim, but 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 colors they had never seen before, under the Otherworld’s sun, as they rode down the hill toward Kilquade; then the new colors 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 driveway.

“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.” Then he faded away as well.

The three of them turned and headed down the driveway, 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 they’ll get way worse yet.”

There it lay in the middle of the kitchen table, along with full and half-f teacups and a much-abused copy of the
Wicklow People,
amid biscuit wrapper and milk cartons: Fragarach the Answerer, shining under the light that hung down from the ceiling. They all 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 counter, 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’d have to come up with the fourth one ourselves, somehow.”

“They give you any hints as to how?” 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 giving them trouble. They should be here in a while. Anyway, when you’re in the back of the house, watch out for 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 wood of 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 regular 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 neat... 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 see!”

“No!” 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 firecracker!” 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 said three words, and vanished.

The air went
whoomf
into 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’ve got 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.

She grinned at him and headed back into the kitchen. “Neither do you, smartass. Not as a rule, anyway.”

She went to fill the kettle for the next inevitable round of tea. “Where’s Copernicus?” Ronan said.

“On the Moon. Southern hemisphere.”