A Wizard Abroad, New Millennium Edition (21 page)

“I guess we’d better go,” Aunt Annie said, as the lights began flashing on and off to remind people that it was time to drink up and get out. “Doris is waiting. Ronan, do you need a ride home?”

“No thank you, Mrs. Callahan,” he said, “I came in with Barry.”

“Right, then. Come on, Nita, let’s call it a night.”

Nita got up, and looked down at Ronan. He was gazing back at her with an expression she couldn’t interpret. Not anger, not amusement—what was it? She refused to waste her time trying to figure it out. “Keep your pants dry,” she said to him, trying desperately to keep her face straight, and losing it again. Gratefully she followed Mrs. Smyth and Aunt Annie out, grinning to herself.

Blow-ins. Hah.

She grinned all the way home...and wasn’t quite sure why.

“What’s going on?” Kit said the next afternoon. “How are things going with the Treasures?”

They were sitting around the kitchen table, looking at the papers. “Well,” Nita’s aunt said, “Doris and a couple of the other Seniors are going to go in tonight and lift the Ardagh Chalice. They’ll leave a perfect copy in its place. They think they have a guess at how to make it wake up. Apparently whatever they did with the Stone worked better than they thought; it seems your friend Tom is quite an asset,” she said to Nita. “They were able to wake it up on the first try, using the spell he wrote for them.”

Nita nodded. “He says it’s because he used to write so many commercials.”

Aunt Annie chuckled. “Well, anyway, it’s awake. As you’ll have noticed, the land is getting, uh, restive...more than it was, anyway.”

“Are they going to bring the stone here? Or somewhere special?” said Kit.

“Oh, no...there’s no need for that. The Stone
is
the earth of Ireland, some ways; anywhere there is earth of Ireland, the Stone is there in essence. The same way that the Cup
is
the water of Ireland, and all wells and pools; the Sword
is
the air of Ireland, the Spear
is
the fire. The Treasures exist in essence in all the things they represent. But when they’re awake, they co-exist many times more powerfully than before. They themselves become weapons of considerable power; and the earth and air and water and fire themselves become weapons that we can turn to our advantage. We sincerely hope.” She took a drink of her tea.

“What about the Sword?” Kit said.

“It’s hard to say,” said Annie. “The Cup is more awake than any of the envelopes they’re thinking about using for the Sword; so they’re going to try the spell on the Chalice first, and see how the reanimation works on that. If it does, they’ll move on and try it on the sword in the Museum.”

“And the Spear?” Kit said.

Aunt Annie shook her head. “No news. There are a lot of spears and pikes and whatnot lying around, but none of them seem ever to have been the Spear Luin. Which is a problem, for Luin was the weapon that overthrew Balor. The others were basically support for it.”

Kit shrugged. “Well, something’ll turn up. Something always does.”

“I wish I had your confidence,” Aunt Annie said, getting up to pour herself another cup.

“Something has to turn up,” Kit said.
“We’re
here.”

Nita gave him a look. “Something’s always turned up
before,”
she said. “This is not a lot like before...”

Kit shrugged again. “Listen, if I can’t keep your spirits up, you won’t do good work.”

“How can my spirits be other than wonderful when I have
this
to look at?” she said, pushing the paper at him.

The Wicklow People had come out that morning, and the usual details of the fortunes and misfortunes of Wicklow people overseas, or the failure of the county council to do something about an urgent local problem, or the accusations of one of the local political parties about the purported bad behavior of one of the others, had been forced off the front pages. Other people besides Nita had been having problems.

SILLY SEASON COMES TO NORTH WICKLOW, said the headline. Underneath it was the beginning of a three-page feature story concerning the bizarre occurrences in the county that week. The trouble had started in the country. A farmer had claimed that a dinosaur—a small one, but still plainly a dinosaur—had been eating his sheep. These claims had been greeted with amusement by his neighbors, some of whom had suggested that he had, in the local way of putting it, “drink taken.”

The Gardaí declined comment on this business, as they did about the reports of rocks rolling uphill at Ballywaltrim, or the problem incurred by the dairy cattle farmer over by Kilmacanogue, who claimed his Guernsey herd was stolen—driven away across the dual carriageway by a man who said he was Finn MacCumhal, and was entitled to take any cattle that their owner was not strong enough to defend in battle. There were a chorus of noisy protests to Bray Urban District Council and Wicklow County Council about this—some people insisting that the local psychiatric hospital needed to look into its security.

Matters were no better anywhere else in Ireland. There were reports from all over of people’s lives being suddenly turned topsy-turvy by the appearance of ancient heroes, ancient villains, and ancient monsters, with which Ireland was well supplied. Several people dug up buried treasures after being told where to find them by kindly ghosts; unicorns were seen in Avonmore Forest Park: merfolk were heard singing off Howth. The Gardaí had no comment on these matters, either.

They were perusing these accounts when Johnny O’Driscoll arrived. Nita put the newspaper aside and introduced Kit to him. “You’re very welcome,” Johnny said to him. “Your friend here will have warned you about the overlays, though.”

“She mentioned, yes.”

“Well, be careful. We have enough problems at the moment.” Nita poured a cup of tea for Johnny; he took it, drank it with a thankful air, and said, “Everyone else I’ve talked to this morning has had a problem, so I might as well hear yours, too. What happened to you yesterday?”

“Nothing really,” Nita said. “But I had a really interesting chat with a fox the day before.” And she described her meeting with the dog-fox, and the information he had given her.

Johnny looked thoughtful at that. “I have to say,” he said, “that I’d suspected for some time that at least one of the Bright Powers was in the area, in human form. I had no solid confirmation. Normally, if one of Them is going to be in the area on business, the manuals give warning of it: or the Knowledge does, depending on which you use. But there’s been no such warning. Then again, this situation’s not normal. —Anyway, I had other indications. Interesting to hear them confirmed.”

Nita glanced over at Kit. “Why would They hide?” she said.

“To keep the other side from knowing that they’re here. Except that the other side seems to know already, so
that
reason doesn’t work in this case.” He shook his head. “I don’t know. The Powers are frequently beyond our ability to explain...but there’s nothing strange about that. They’re the next major level of creation up from us, after all. Should a rock expect to be able to explain a human being?”

“We have enough trouble with that ourselves,” Kit said.

“Just so. Anyway, whatever Power it is doubtless has good reasons for wanting to stay hidden. I wouldn’t want to break Its cover prematurely.”

Kit and Nita looked at each other.

“Meanwhile,” Johnny said, “Anne, if it’s all right with you, Doris will be stopping in this afternoon with what she’s picked up. The Enniskerry area is too badly overlaid for her to keep it up there for a few minutes without the place remembering all kinds of things that are better not roused. Down here things are a little cleaner; you and I can do something to suppress those memories about the church and Cromwell’s people.”

“No problem,” said Aunt Annie. “We’ll put it in the back office.”

“Fine. Your staff don’t usually go in there?”

“Only my secretary. I can ask her not to.”

“Fine. These Treasures are proving a little more dangerous than we thought. Harry, who went up to do the work on the Stone, did it all right...but I think he’s probably not going to be worth much of anything for the next few days. We have to be very careful that we don’t let people spend too long near these things. If you show me where you want to put it, I’ll build a warding for that room, and see that it doesn’t do anyone any damage.”

“But how can these be hurting people?” Nita said. “They’re
good!”

“Oh, absolutely,” Johnny said. “There are probably no more powerful forces for good on the planet...except for human beings, naturally. But just because they’re good, doesn’t mean they’re
safe.”

“Listen, Shaun,” Aunt Annie said then, “is there any plan yet for where we’re going to do the big ceremony, the reenactment?”

“It’ll have to start up at Matrix,” Johnny said. “It has all the necessary ‘equipment.’ That’s right,” he said to Nita, “you haven’t seen my place yet, have you? Not really ‘my’ place, of course. No one owns Castle Matrix but itself...and whatever’s under it. You’ll see.” He got up. “Anyway, Matrix is where it’ll start. But where it’ll end...” He shook his head. “I have to go down to Bray. Either of you need a ride?”

“Thanks,” Nita said. “We were going to take the bus, but if it’s OK...”

“Sure, come on.”

Johnny dropped them more or less in the center of town, where Herbert Road crosses Main Street. They waved goodbye to him as  he drove off, and Kit said, “I didn’t have any breakfast...I’m an empty shell. Is there anywhere to eat around here?”

“There’s a chicken place over here that’s not too bad,” Nita said. “I’ve got some money. Let’s go in there.”

They walked in, went to the counter and ordered. Nita took one quick glance at the back of the restaurant, and her stomach turned over inside her in nervous response. Ronan was sitting back there. He shot Nita one quick glance and then looked down again at the Coke he was busy with.

“You okay?” Kit said, as they turned away with their own drinks and went to sit down at a table. “Your face went all weird.”

“Uh,” Nita said. “I poured a drink over a guy the other night.”

“You were out with a guy?”

Nita blushed. “Not that way. A bunch of us were out.”

“What, a bunch of the kids around here?”

“What is this, the Spanish Inquisition? I was out with my aunt. There was a big wizards’ meeting in town.”

“Oh,” Kit said. He started to go red again.

Nita rolled her eyes and said, “Never mind, it’s really not important…” She took a drink of her Coke—her mouth was suddenly dry—and said, “Half a second.” Then she got up and went back to Ronan’s table.

He looked up at her with an expression partly unease and partly annoyance; and he still managed to smile on top of it all. “You forgot your Coke,” he said.

“No, it’s back there.”

“I mean, I thought you were going to pour it on me.”

She looked at him ruefully. “Listen, Ronan, I’m sorry. Look, come on meet my partner.”

“That’s him?” He craned his neck a little.

“Yeah, he’s just in from the States. Come sit with us.”

Somewhat reluctantly, Ronan got up, bringing his Coke, and went and stood by the table. “Kit,” she said, “this is Ronan. Ronan, Kit Rodriguez.”

They nodded to each other, looked each other over.
“Dai stihó,”
Kit said.

Ronan raised his eyebrows as he sat down. “You can tell?”

Kit looked surprised. “It sticks out all over you.”

“Your partner couldn’t.”

Nita went hot with embarrassment at that. Kit shrugged. “It’s always easier for guy wizards to tell guys, and girls to tell girls. Anyway, Neets has other things to think about. And she’s in a weird place: you get thrown off. I didn’t know her aunt was one of us till she was pointed out to me.”

Despite the apparent ease of the conversation, there was tension in the air. Nita had thought this would be a good idea, at first. Now she was beginning to regret it. “I was just telling Ronan,” she said to Kit, “that I was sorry I dumped the drink on him the other night.”

Ronan looked bemused. “Watch out for her. She’s got a temper.”

“I’ve noticed,” Kit said. “Just hope you never see her sister lose hers. Whoo! But Neets is no prize either.”

“Will you two stop talking about me as if I’m not here?” Nita said, annoyed. Then they both grinned at her, and she went hot again.
Bad enough being teased from just one direction...

“Shove over, Kit,” she said, sat down next to him, and started working on her Coke again. Then she said to Ronan, “How was your day yesterday?”

There was an abrupt sound of breaking glass from outside. All three of their heads jerked up at the same time. “What the heck—!” Kit said.

“Probably an accident,” Ronan said, getting up hurriedly. “The corner next to here’s a bad one, people are always coming around it too fast—”

The next sound of glass breaking was the shop’s own window, and it was not a car that broke it. Something big, dark and blunt slammed into it from one side, and plate glass rained in. The ladies behind the counter cried out in surprise and headed for the back of the shop in a hurry. The shop’s three other patrons followed them, leaving Kit and Nita and Ronan standing there.