A Wizard Abroad

12. Tir na nOg

Johnny waved the wizards forward, and they started down the winding way that paralleled the river, and led towards Bray. "Did you hear that?" Kit said.

Nita shook her head; she was very tired. "Hear what?" "What the Queen said. 'The weariness.' "

She had to laugh at that. "After what we've been through today, you'd be nuts not to be tired." "Yeah, but that's not it. Don't you feel tireder than you were when we were up at the top of the hill?"

Nita blinked. "You're right."

Kit nodded down at the darkness in front of them. "That," he said. "There's some kind of energy- sapping spell tied up with it. Don't exert yourself if you can avoid it — you may need that energy for later."

She looked at him with very mild annoyance; sometimes Kit's practical streak came close to getting him hit. "What I really need right now in terms of energy is a chocolate bar," she said, "but the only thing I've got left in my pack is a cat. And I can't eat that." She made an amused face. "Too many bones."

Tualha hissed in her ear, not amused. Kit grinned, and produced a chocolate bar from one pocket. Nita took it, squinted at it in the dimness. "It's got peanuts in it!" she said. "I hate peanuts!" "Oh, OK," Kit said, grabbed it back, and started to unwrap it.

Nita grabbed it away from him, scowled at him, and began eating. Tualha snickered at her. They kept walk-ing, along the course of the river: it would have been the route of the thirteen-bend road, in the real world. Trees arched close overhead in the gloom, and the sound of the river down in its stony watercourse was muted. If something should hit us here, we'd have nowhere to go, Nita thought, as she took another bite out of the choco-late bar. And then the screaming began again, very close. It's not fair! she thought, as she saw the drows and other monsters come crashing in among them from down the steep slope to their right. At that point she also dis-covered something else: that a wizard with a mouthful of caramel and peanuts is not much good for saying spells, even the last word of one that's already set up. She pushed backwards out of the way while fighting to swallow, managed it, and shouted the one word she needed just in time to blow away the drow that was heading for Kit on his blind side while he did the same for a pooka.

Something grabbed her from behind by her throat and chest, choking her. Nita fought to turn, for you can't blast what you can't see, but the stony hands held her hard, and she couldn't get her breath; her vision started to go.

Then there was a roaring noise behind her, the pressure released suddenly, and Nita fell sprawling and gasping. She levered herself up, looking around her. "Kit. ." she said,"did you. .?" And she ran out of words. All around them, the path through the forest was awash in blue-green light that rolled and flowed like water; and off to one side, the river was climbing up out of its banks in response, and running up on to the path. Both flows, of light and water together, were rushing with increasing speed eastward, leaving the wizards untouched, but washing the drows and pookas and other monsters away like so much flotsam. Nita struggled to get to her feet again, against the flow. To Kit she said, "Looks like Doris is using the Cup."

Kit nodded. "Come on, we should be breaking out into the open pretty soon. This path comes out in that flat ground by the main road, doesn't it?" 'The dual carriageway, yeah."

Several more bends of the watercourse brought them out into the open ground. There was a great scattering of drows there, half-buried in the earth as if about a year's worth of mud had buried them; many others, dealt with by the wizardry of individuals, lay broken or helpless. The last traces of the blue-green light of the Cup's wiz-ardry were sinking into the ground like water, along with the real water, which was running down into the water-course of the Dargle, which the Glencree stream had just met. Kit and Nita splashed across the ford and up the other side, looking around them.

Nita sagged against Kit as she looked northward along the flood-plain of the Dargle, towards Bray. The dark-ness was getting solider and solider, and she felt about ready to collapse. You and me both, he said. She could feel the fatigue in the thought, and Nita looked around at the other wizards with them and saw that they were suf-fering too; some of them were having to be helped along by others, and not because of injuries. And far down the flood plain, there was a long line of darkness hugging the ground, coming slowly towards them. It was bigger than all three of the previous forces that had attacked them, all put together.Oh, no, she thought. I can't. And neither can a lot of the rest of us.

"There never was any counting them, even in the old days," Tualha said. "It seems that nothing has changed."

There was an awful silence. Many of the wizards looked at each other helplessly, hefted their weapons and watched the Fomori come. Nita looked over at Johnny, who was off to the side of one small crowd, frowning, with his arms folded. The ground began to shake.

The Stone, Kit said silently, immediately doing the smartest thing: he looked up and around to make sure no tree or rock was likely to fall on him, and then sat down. Nita followed suit. All around them, the earth groaned alarmingly as it was held still where they were, but encouraged to move, and violently, half a mile away. Down by that advancing line of darkness, trees toppled over and huge boulders of Wicklow granite rolled down the hill-sides towards the ranks of the Fomori. They broke, screaming and running in all directions. It did them little good. One of the hillsides shrugged itself up and up until it fell over on the Fomori vanguard. Behind them the rest milled about in confusion between the two ridges that paralleled the open ground where it sloped gently away down towards Bray.

The thunder of the quaking ground suddenly became a roar. Nita clutched at the ground as a single awful shock went through it — not one of the rippling waves they had been feeling, but a concussion like two huge rocks being struck together.

Down towards Bray, the horde of dark forms were abruptly missing from the ground. Nothing could be seen but smoke and dust rising upward in the gloom. "Let's go," Johnny said quietly, and started forward.

No-one had much to say as they passed the great smoking chasm that had been a green meadow, half a mile long between two hills. One of the hills was flat now, the other had great cracks in it, and from far down among the rock-tumble in the chasm, as the wizards passed slowly by it, faint cries could be heard. Nita shuddered as she followed Kit; they had to squeeze their way along the side of the meadow, or what was left of it. The ground tilted dangerously downward towards the chasm. The riders of the Sidhe paced casually along the air above the huge smoking hole, but it occurred to Nita that the wizards might have a slightly harder time of it if they had to leave the area suddenly. The gloom grew about them, and the tiredness got worse and worse, so that it was al-most as much as she could do just to drag herself along. Only the sight of Kit in front of her, doggedly putting foot in front of foot, kept her doing the same. At least they're leaving us alone now, she thought. Or maybe there are none of them left.

We hope, Kit said silently. Hang on, 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 otherworld, it was normally a great flowery plain; but the darkness that lay over everything had shut the flowers' eyes. It was a featureless place, 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. Funny about that, she thought. That almost looks like a sort of squashed head, there. But no head could be that ugly. Huge twisted lips and a face that looked as if someone had malformed it on purpose; a sculptor's model of a gargoyle's head all squashed down, the nose pushed out of place, and one eye squinted away to nothing; the other abnormally huge, bulging out, the lid a thin warty skin over it. All this smashed down on to 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 was not the way she had expected the Lone One to appear. Always she had seen It before as young and dynamic, dangerous, actively evil. Not 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 had 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 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 Johnny's 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 Fragarach. A Fragarach that looked dulled and tired. She glanced at him, looking slightly confused. He 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 Fraga-rach 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 de-stroying 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 towards Balor. But it lost momentum, and soaked into the muddy ground around the Balor-hill, and was swallowed up; and afterwords 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 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 it. .

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 par-ticular 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 Nita's bag and splatted on to the ground, then climbed up hurriedly on to 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 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 used 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 for ever? Some run-down 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 spectre 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 clever noise," the voice said, hugely, slowly, with infinite mal-ice.

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 drag-ging 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 had 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 nights 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. But at the moment she could look nowhere but that dark face: see 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 towards the terrible dark shape before them, the fires writhing in its point. "Not yet," Nita said un-der 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 burned her. 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 remem-ber, 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 her 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 on to Nita. She scooped the kitten up, fumbled for her rucksack, couldn't reach it, and stowed her, 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 per-turbed, looking for an answer. What's the matter with him? she heard him think. With me, Meets. 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: // 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. .

. .and then came the piercing. Nothing alive on that field failed to feel it, for everything alive had entropy in its bones; all cries went up together as the essence of all burning ate the darkness to its heart, and however briefly, to each of theirs. It was painful, but a terrible relief: terrible because the mortals present knew that, once they returned to the real world, that small personal darkness would be back with them again.

Something else, though, did not find it a relief; something that had almost nothing but entropy about it. The scream of the Lone Power in Its shape as Balor went up, and up, and would have torn the sky if the sky were made of anything solider than air. It took a long time to die away. The pain was gone, at least. Nita got up to her knees and looked around her, blinded no longer, though her ears were ringing. Kit was just getting up next to her: she helped him up, hugged him. "Are you all right?"

"I'll live," he said, sounding dazed, and hugging back. "Where's Ronan?" He was standing there not too far away, looking fairly dazed himself. The Spear was in his hand again, but quiet now, not straining to go any-where. Ronan was leaning on it, panting, his forehead against the shaft of it; so he did not see the tall shadow rising up over him, towering higher and higher; the immense shape of a woman dressed in black, but with light flickering in the folds of the darkness like a promise, and long dark hair stirring in the wind that had begun to come down from the heights, blowing the blackness of the clouds out over the sea, so that high up the sky began to show again, dark blue, with here and there a star.

Against the growing light, and the clean darkness, that woman raised her arms, and her voice went up into the silence like thunder. "Let the hosts and the royal heights of Ireland hear it," the Morrigan cried, and even Ronan looked up now in terror and wonder, "and all its chief rivers and invers, and every rock and tree; victory over the Fomori, and they never again to be in this land! Peace up to the skies, the skies down to the earth, the earth under the skies; power to every one!" The wizards and the Sidhe shouted approval. And the wind rose, and took the clouds away; and the Morrigan's great shape too bent sideways in that wind and dissipated like a mist, though Nita particularly noticed how her eyes seemed to dwell on Ronan before they vanished completely. You know, Kit said in Nita's head, it's funny, but she looks kind of like Biddy. She shook her head in bemusement, and she and Kit went over to Ronan. He was looking up at the sky, still leaning on the Spear. But when he looked down at last, and saw them coming, he straightened up slightly and smiled. Even through her weariness, Nita was very relieved; that abstracted, inhuman look was gone completely.

"It came back," he said to Nita, sounding very bemused. "By itself." He looked ahead of him. The great bulk that had first been Balor and then the Hunter was nothing but a hill now; there was only the vaguest shape about it that suggested that awful bloated bulk. Grass grew on it, and as they looked a rabbit hopped out of cover under a thorn bush growing on it, and began to graze.

"I didn't dare let it go," Ronan said.

Nita nodded. "I know. But you're OK — aren't you?"

He looked at her. "He's still in there, if that's what you mean."

Kit shook his head. "I think you may be stuck with Him," he said. 'But remember which side He's on. I think He'll behave. if you do. If you're lucky, you'll never hear from Him again." "And if I'm not lucky?" Ronan said.

"Those who serve the Powers,"' said the small voice from down by their feet," "themselves become the Pow-ers." It's usually the way."

"You," Nita said, picking Tualha up. "I didn't know you knew language like that — that last bit. Don't think I didn't hear."

"I got carried away," Tualha said, sounding pleased.

All around them the light was growing. Nita looked up and around, watching the clouds retreating, and the brightness growing still, though there was no sun now, but a soft violet evening all around them. Everything was beginning to burn with a certainty surpassing anything Nita hatt seen even in the duns of the Sidhe.

Beside her, one of the wizards, that handsome woman with the dark hair, said with a chuckle, "Ah. the Celtic twilight." But Nita knew a joke when she heard one, and also knew that more excellent clarity drawing it-self about them; she had seen it before. All around them, the wizards gathered there began to shine in that light, seeming more perfectly themselves than ever before; the Sidhe, already almost too fair to bear, began to acquire a calmer beauty, more settled, older, deeper.

Johnny was standing by the Queen's steed. He looked up at her now, and said, "Well, madam, you asked me a question once. Would your world ever draw closer to Timeheart, and end your exile? And I could only give you the answer that the bards gave us long ago: not until the Champion comes with His Spear, and the world of your desire is lost." He laughed softly. "But then the fulfillment of a prophecy rarely looks like our images of it. There is no journeying from your world to Timeheart. for Timeheart is widening to take your world in. Will this do?" She bowed her head. 'This will do, Senior. Do you take your people home, for shortly this world will per-fect itself beyond their ability to bear it. at least, just yet. And we…" She looked towards the sunset and said, "We will prepare for the dawn."

Johnny looked at Nita's aunt. "We've got a dawn of our own waiting for us," he said. "Do the honors?"

She lifted Fragarach. It burned like a star in her hands, and the other Treasures blazed in answer as the wind rose in the east and blew into the opening gap in the air before her. The dark outline of Castle Matrix grew in the early morning of their own world, and the song of a single early blackbird drifted through it.

As one the heads of the People of the Hill turned towards that thin, sweet music. But then one by one they looked towards the light slowly growing in their own northeastern sky; sunrise following hard on the heels of sunset, as was normal in this part of the world, in the heart of summer. The splendor of morning in a world growing ever nearer to Timeheart began to swell in the sky, blinding, glorious. .

The wizards looked around them with regret and moved through the doorway in the air. Nita and Kit and Tu-alha, followed by Ronan, were near the rear of the group; they turned, there in the parking lot of Castle Matrix, and looked through the gateway back into Tir na nOg. "I am sorry," Nita's aunt said softly to Johnny,"to have to leave our dead there. Another world, so far away."

Johnny looked sorrowful as well — but there was a strange edge of thoughtfulness to the look, an expression of mystery, almost of joy. 'Yes, but. look what's happening to the place. It won't be just another world for long. it's being drawn into the very centre of things. Can you really be dead if you're in Timeheart?" he said. "Can anything.?"

Northeastward, over the sea, a line of light, blinding, brighter than a sun, broke over the water. The Spear Luin in Ronan's hands flamed at the touch of that light on its steel. All that country on the other side of the gate-way flushed with a light more powerful, seemingly more solid than the solid things it fell on, and burned, trans-figured. . The gateway closed.

'So," Johnny said, turning away."Little by little, we make the Oath come true."

Nita and Kit and Ronan looked at each other. Behind them, the blackbird sang: and they heard the young wizard in the leather jacket say, "Oh, well. What's for breakfast?"

They went to find out.

"Now that things have quietened down somewhat," Johnny was saying to Nita's aunt in her kitchen the day after next,"the Chalice goes back to the museum, obviously. And the Stone naturally stays where it is. But Fraga-rach."

"You take it," Aunt Annie said. "The neighbors would talk, if they saw something like that in here. You've got a castle. hang it on the wall there some place." "The Spear," Johnny said, "will stay with Ronan, natu-rally."

"I wouldn't try to take it away from him," Kit said from the living-room, where he was playing with the teletext functions of the TV set. "It'd probably eat you alive." "Quite." He chuckled. "And I see that we're losing you two."

"My mum," Nita said,"says they can change my flight home after all. So I go home at the weekend. Not that it hasn't been worthwhile. but every wizard knows her own patch of ground best." And she smiled at Ronan.

He smiled back and said nothing that the others could hear.

"Well, you come back any time," her aunt said, and grabbed her and hugged her one-armed. "She always does the washing-up," she said to Johnny. "And without wizardry, even."

"Impressive," Johnny said. "But there was something else I was meaning to tell you. ." He sipped his tea. "Oh, that was it. I'd say the odd things aren't quite done happening yet." "Oh?" Everyone at the table looked at him.

"No. I was out for a walk after things settled down last night, and I saw the strangest thing. A party of cats carrying a little coffin. I stopped to watch them go by, and one of them said to me, "This is Magrath. Magrath na Chualainn is dead." And they walked off. ."

Tualha's eyes flew open at that. "What?" she cried. "What? Did you say Magrath?"

"Why, uh, yes. ." Johnny said, sounding uncertain, and concerned. "If it's a relative, I'm. ."

"Relative, never mind that, what relative! Great Powers about us, if Magrath is dead, then I'm the Queen of the Cats!"

She leaped off the table and tore away into the living-room. There was a brief sound of scrabbling, and then from the living-room, sounding slightly bemused, Kit said, "Uh, Annie, your cat just went up the chimney. ."

There was a moment of silence in the kitchen. "Ahem," Nita's aunt said to her after a breath or two.". .Welcome to Ireland. ."

"Are you sure you don't want to stay another couple of weeks?" Johnny said. Nita smiled at him, and went out to the caravan to start packing.