"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? 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're going to ask 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 on to 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 would 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. . ."
"Of course 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 stupid 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.
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 tissue."
Nita gasped and choked and took the tissue 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 tissue 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, give me a call in the morning… “ And he was away.
"I guess we'd better go," Aunt Annie said, as the lights began flashing on and off. "Doris is waiting. Ronan, do you need a lift 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 work 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. Huh.
She grinned all the way home… and wasn't quite sure why.
7.
Slieve Na Chulainn Great
Sugarloaf Mountain
“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 get 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 adverts."
Aunt Annie chuckled. "I guess I can see the point. Well, anyway, it's awake. As you will 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 re-animation 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 punched him lightly. "Something's always turned up before," she said. "This is not like before j
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 Bray People had come out that morning, and the usual details of the fortunes and misfortunes of Bray 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 behaviour 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 a story concerning some of the bizarre occurrences in the county that week. The trouble had started out in the country. A farmer had claimed that a dinosaur a small one, but still plainly a dinosaur - had been eating his sheep. Thes
e 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 Gardai declined comment on the business, as they did about the rocks rolling uphill at Ballywal-trim, 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 clean battle. There were a chorus of noisy protests to Bray Urban District Council and Wicklow County Council about this - some people insisting that the psychiatric hospital at Newcastle needed to look into its security.
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, just, you know, don't. 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," she said. "But I did have an interesting conversation with a fox the other day." 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 had 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 isn't a normal situation. Anyway, I had other indications. Interesting to hear them confirmed."
Nita glanced over at Kit. "Why do 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 too soon."
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 area remembering all kinds of things that are better not roused. Down here is 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 re-enactment?"
"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 lift?"
“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 centre 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 OK?" Kit said, as they turned away with their own drinks and went to sit down at a table. "Your face is all weird."
"Uh," Nita said. "I poured a drink over a guy the other night."
"You were out with a guy?"
Nita blushed. "No, not me. 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, "Spare me! Never mind that." She took a drink of her Coke - her mouth was suddenly dry - and said, "Haifa 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 and sit with us, and meet my partner."
"That's him?" He craned his neck a little.
"Yeah, he's just in from the States. Come on and 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, my partner."
They shook hands, Kit willingly enough, Ronan with some reserve, and they looked at each other. "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. Besides, she's in a weird place. You get thrown off. I didn't know her aunt was one until she was pointed out to me."
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 on earth. . .!" Kit said.
"Probably an accide
nt," Ronan said, getting up hurriedly. "The corner next to here is 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.
Something stepped in through the broken glass. If you had taken a human being, and coated it with tar, and rolled it in gravel, and then turned it loose to walk around blindly smashing things, it might look something like this. At least, it would if it were nearly two meters tall, and more than a meter broad, with arms and thighs as thick as a man's waist, and a round ugly face like a boulder.
They looked at it in shock as it came towards them. "It's a drow," Ronan whispered. "Fomori…"
They could see others like it stalking past, out in the street. The sounds of breaking plate glass were spreading down the road; cars screeched to a halt, horns blasted. There was one long screech followed by the sound of more breaking glass, and the crunch of metal too, this time.
"Someone's hit one," Kit said.
"I feel sorry for their car," Ronan said. "Come on."
"How do you stop them?" said Nita.
"Stop them? You don't stop them. You run away!" Ronan said. He grabbed Nita's arm with one hand, and Kit's with the other, and hustled them out the back door.
They ducked out the back of the chicken place and into Castle Terrace behind it. Nita looked down to the end of the street, towards the remains of the old castle. Several of the drows were busily throwing down the last few stones. They appeared to be made of good Wicklow granite, and to dislike everything they saw. Several of them, a little nearer down the street, were punching holes in the walls of the Bank of Ireland: its alarm bell was ringing disconsolately. Another one, in Herbert Road
, was busy turning a car over, while people struggled and screamed and tried to get out of it.