A Wizard Abroad, New Millennium Edition (20 page)

Silence, broken only by the noise of cheerful conversation in the frontmost, nonwizardly part of the pub. “Right,” said the silver-haired wizard again. “But in the meantime, while you seniors are intervening, Ireland’s dreams and nightmares are going to keep coming true—even more than they have been—and the past will keep happening, and the dead and the undead and the immortal will walk. And ‘other inconveniences.’”

“That’s exactly right, Richard,” Johnny said.

There was another long silence. Then a voice said, “I need another pint.”

A chorus of other voices went up in agreement. Nita noticed that her Coke was long gone, and she was very thirsty.

“I’ll get you another,” her Aunt Annie said, and got up. “Anybody else? Nuala? Orla? Hi, Jim—” She moved off.

Nita sat there feeling somewhat shaky. “Hey, you’re white as a sheet,” said a voice by her. She looked up: it was Ronan.

She smiled faintly at him as he sat down, and did her best to control herself. He looked, if possible, even cuter than he had previously. Black leather suited him, and so did this subdued lighting. “Thanks loads,” she said. “And none of this bothers
you?”

“Sounds pretty bad, yeah,” Ronan said. But he looked and sounded remarkably unconcerned. “But don’t worry about auld Shaun there, he just likes to sound like doom and destruction all the time. Comes of being Area Senior; they all sound like the world’s ending half the time.”

Probably because it is,
Nita thought. It was only the sheer number of wizards in the world, and the sacrifices they kept making from week to week, that kept civilization on an even keel; or so it seemed to her. “Look, can I ask you something?”

“Sure.”

“I’m just curious.” She had had a look at Ronan’s profile after meeting him, and her curiosity had been piqued by something she’d seen there. “Was your Ordeal particularly rough?”

He looked peculiarly at her. “Almost got me killed, if that’s what you mean.”

“So will crossing O’Connell Street,” Nita said. “Never mind… I don’t know what I mean. I mean, it seemed to me that my Ordeal was pretty awful. I was just curious whether I was an exception, or whether everyone had that bad a time. My sister did, but she’s not exactly a normal case. And I haven’t had that many chances to discuss it with other wizards.”

Ronan looked thoughtful and took a drink of his orange-and-lemon drink. “I got timeslid,” he said.

Nita shrugged slightly. “We bought a timeslide from our local Seniors for ours,” she said.

“I didn’t buy mine,” Ronan said. “I
got
it.” He took another drink. “One day I took the Oath—the next I was walking up Vevay Road, you know, at the top of Bray up by the McDonald’s we passed? Well, it stopped being Vevay Road. It was just a dirt track with some thatched huts down near where the school would be, at the bottom of the hill, and it was raining cats and dogs. Thunder and lightning.”

Nita shivered: she disliked being caught out in the rain. “What did you do?”

“I went up Bray Head,” Ronan said, and then laughed short and harsh a himself, as if in retrospect, he didn’t believe his own craziness. “I wanted to see where everything was, you know? It was a mess. You know how the sea gets during a storm. Well, maybe you don’t—”

“I live on Long Island,” Nita said. “We get high-force gales on the Great South Bay, when the hurricanes come through. The whole sea’s one big whitecap, spray’s so thick in the air you can’t see—”

“Like that. But driving inland,” Ronan said. “Between the rain and the spray, there was almost no difference between being in the water and on the land. Well, I saw the boat come in, straight for the rocks. Little thing.” He saw Nita’s blank look and said, “Romans.”

That made her raise her eyebrows. In the library she’d seen the Roman coins that had been found at the base of Bray Head, and a reconstruction of the archaeological site, with their bones. “They were going to try to set up a colony, weren’t they?” she said.

Ronan nodded. Nita watched him. She remembered that afternoon in the chicken place in Bray, and the vehemence of Ronan’s feelings about colonizers of any kind. But at the moment, Ronan just sat, and flushed a little, and looked away from Nita as he said, “Well, they were going to get killed, weren’t they? Them and their little boat and all, in that sea. An RNLI lifeboat couldn’t have stood it, let alone
that
little smack. So I ‘took the sea in.’”

Nita stared at him. What Ronan was describing was temporary but complete control of a pure element: using the wizardly Speech to describe every molecule of an object or area so completely and accurately that for a short period you became it. Control was barely the word for it. It became as much part of you as your body...for a while. Then came the backlash: for human beings are not really meant to have more than one physical body at a time. You might find the association impossible to break—and have to spend the rest of your life coexisting with what you had described: which would surely drive you insane. Or the strain of the wizardry itself might kill you. An adult wizard, full of experience, might have done such a wizardry once… and no other wizardry, ever again. A young wizard, on Ordeal, or soon after, could have done it and lived… maybe. It was a good question whether his head would ever be entirely right again.

But here sat Ronan, still blushing slightly, and said, “It wasn’t much of it I had to take, just the sea around Bray Head. The lads in the boat jumped ship and made it ashore. I couldn’t save the boat, it went all to pieces when I lost control. I must have passed out up there—the timeslide came undone after a while, and some tourists doing the cliff walk from the Greystones side found me slipping down the rocks on the seaward side, and called the Guards. I spent a few days in the hospital.” He shrugged, then laughed. “Hypothermia, they called it. Too true—but they never knew from what.”

“Wow,” Nita said under her breath, almost lost in admiration of him. She was starting to blush, but she ignored it as she looked at him again. “But you knew,” she said. “That there was just the one boat. The Romans never made it here except for those people. Britain was giving them too much trouble. You could have let them go under.”

If there was a little challenge in her voice, Ronan didn’t rise to it. “Could I?” he said. “I knew it was a timeslide. Would I have been changing history? Did I have any choice?”

“Damn straight you did,” Nita said, again under her breath.

Ronan heard it. He looked up from under his brows at her, that familiar scowl. “That’s as may be. What could I do? Seeing them waving their arms and trying to get off, and knowing they would drown if they tried it, in that water.” He looked away again, as if slightly embarrassed. “Sure nothing came of it anyway. They were marooned there; no one ever came after them. They settled down there, and married the people there, some of them. I’m related to them, for all I know.”

Nita smiled slightly. “You didn’t know that no one would come after them, though. Suppose you had changed history? Suppose you’d just saved the lives of the people who were going to report back to Rome and bring in the conquerors?”

Ronan drank his drink and looked away. Nita reached out and patted his arm—a casual enough gesture, she did it with Kit all the time, but as she did it to Ronan, the shock of it, the closeness of actually touching him, ran up the arm like fire and half wilted her. “Never mind,” she said, trying to get some control back. After all, the point of each wizard’s Ordeal was always a private thing: that Ronan should share this much of it with her was more than he had to do. “You want another of those?” she said. “What did you call it?”

“A St. Clements. ‘Oranges and lemons, say the bells of St. Clements—’” He burst out laughing at Nita’s uncomprehending look. “Don’t know that one, I take it. Not on ‘America’s Top 40.’”

Nita knew when she was being made fun of, and knew when not to take it seriously: her heart warmed that he liked her enough to do it at all. “Eat turf and die, Paddy,” she said, and got up, feeling in her pocket for change.

She got Ronan’s drink, and when she got back, found her own waiting for her, and rather to her surprise, Johnny was sitting in her seat and chatting with Ronan. “Here,” Johnny said, and got up; “I was holding it for you. Listen, dear, I have a message for you. Tom and Carl send their best.”

“You know them? How are they?!” Nita said, sitting right up. “Are they okay? It
was
them, then!”

“They’re fine. I consult with them fairly often, especially Tom: he’s a consultant to the North American Regional group for compositional spelling.
What
was ‘them’?”

“I mean, it was them who sent me on assignment. They, I mean.”

Johnny smiled very slightly, and all his wrinkles deepened. “Ahh...no. Not even a Regional Senior or a Planetary can actually
put
a wizard on active assignment. No matter how certain we are that the world’s ending.” He shot a humorous look at Ronan, and Ronan looked like he was tempted to try to pull his head down inside his black turtleneck. “Those decisions are made higher up. I might have mentioned North American Regional, but there are more than humans involved in that. Never mind for now. I take it Doris had a talk with you about our local problems.” Nita opened her mouth to answer, and was startled by a sudden shout from up front. “LAST ORDERS NOW, TEN MINUTES GENTLEMEN, LAST ORDERS PLEASE—!”

Johnny laughed at the look her face must have been wearing. “The pubs close at eleven-thirty this time of year,” he said. “Anyway, Doris says she told you the ropes.”

“If you mean she told me not even to sneeze in the Speech,” Nita said, “yes.”

Johnny laughed under his breath. “It must seem hard. Believe me, it’s for the best… and there’ll be enough magic around here for anybody, come the end of the month, if things keep going the way they’ve been going. We’ll be in touch with you, of course.”

“Johnny,” Ronan said suddenly, “this may be out of turn—”

“Knowing you, my lad,” Johnny said, “probably.”

“Johnny—Look, it’s nothing personal,” Ronan said, glancing at Nita and blushing furiously again. “But why can’t this be handled locally? Why do we need blow-ins?”

Nita went red too, with annoyance. She thought of about six different cutting things to say, and kept her mouth shut on them all.

But Johnny simply looked mildly surprised. “Self-sufficiency, is it?” he said. “Have you fallen for that one? It’s an illusion, Ro. Why do we ‘need’ the help of the Tuatha de Danaan? Why do we need the Powers that Be? Or even the Lone Power?—for that One has a function in the universe, too. You know that. The whole lot of us are interconnected, and there’s no way we can get away from it, or any one group of us solve even the littlest problem entirely by ourselves. This matter
is
being handled locally. It’s being handled on
Earth.
Next thing you’ll be asking me what the Northern Irish wizards are doing here.” His eyebrows went up and down. “You’ve been listening to too many politicians. —Better apologize to her before she turns you into a soggy beermat,” Johnny said, patted Nita on the shoulder, and moved on.

“TIME NOW GENTLEMEN, TIME NOW, TAKE THOSE GLASSES AWAY CHARLIE!” Jack was shouting from the front of the pub. Nita did her best to keep her face still. She had gone quite hot and tight inside, and was holding onto herself hard; controlling her emotions had never been her strongest suit, and she had no desire to say something stupid here, where she was a guest and could make her aunt look bad.
Besides, I’m a wizard among wizards. It should take more than some provincial punk with a chip on his shoulder to get me annoyed—!

“Look, Nita,” Ronan said. He sounded slightly desperate. “I didn’t—”

“You bet you didn’t,” she said. And shut herself up: and then lost it again. “Look,” she said, her voice low but fierce, “do you think this was
my
idea? Do you think I wouldn’t rather be back home with my partner taking care of business, than messing around in this dumb little place where you can’t even twitch without permission? Do you think I don’t have better things to do? ‘Blow-ins,’” she said bitterly, and picked up her drink and began to drink the whole thing at once, to shut herself up. At least she couldn’t say what she was thinking while she was drinking something.

Unfortunately, it was the wrong drink. In the middle of the second swallow she spluttered in shock at the alcoholic black-bread taste of it, and from beside her Aunt Annie said, “You’re going to get us thrown out of here, you know that? Here, have a napkin.”

Nita gasped and choked and took the napkin gratefully, and began mopping Guinness off herself and the table. Ronan was leaning against the wall and laughing—soundlessly, but so hard that he was turning twice as red as he had been. Furious, Nita felt around in her head for the small simple spell that would dump his own drink in his lap: then remembered where she was, and in rapid succession first shoved the sodden napkin down the neck of his turtleneck, and while Ronan was fumbling for it, knocked his glass sideways with her elbow. “Oops,” she said in utter innocence, as it went all over him.

“COME ON NOW GENTS, TIME NOW, TIME, HAVE YOU NO HOMES TO GO TO? YOU TOO LADIES, NO OFFENSE MEANT,” Jack shouted from the front of the pub. The conversations were getting louder, if anything. Ronan sat and stared at his lap, and just as he lifted his eyes to Nita’s, Johnny went by and patted him on the shoulder, and said, “I
told
you she was going to turn you into a soggy beermat. No one ever listens to me. ‘Night, Annie, call me in the morning…” And he was away.