Диана Дуэйн - A Wizard Abroad

She was too nervous to sit there much longer. Nita got up and dusted herself off. "Have you seen my aunt?" she said.

"She was down in front with Johnny, last I saw her. That was before the fighting started, though." "Tualha, you any good at finding people? There's quite a crowd down there." "In this case it won't be hard. I should look for Fragarach's light, or the Cup's." It was as good a hint as any. After about twenty minutes' walking they found her, and Tualha had been right; she was with Doris Smyth, and it was the blue-green fire of the Cup that gave their presence away. Doris was working with one of the more seriously wounded people. Two of the larger and more muscular wizards were easing a young woman with a torn leg down into the Cup. She seemed no smaller than she should have been, and the Cup seemed no larger; but nevertheless the woman was lost from the waist down in that cool light, and a few moments later, when the other wizards helped her to her feet again, the leg was whole.

Doris was looking wobbly. "I'll not be doing much more of this," she said to Nita's aunt. 'The Cup's able enough for it, but it's just a tool; it can't work by itself without someone to tell it what to do. And neither I nor anyone else will be able to keep doing this again and again — not here. Not today." She looked over at Nita and Kit as if seeing them there for the first time, and her face was very distressed. "Away with you out of here," she said, "you shouldn't be seeing things like this at your age." And she turned her attention away to another hurt wizard who was being brought over. Nita looked over at Kit; his expression was wry, and a little sad. He motioned Nita over to one side, where her aunt was looking nearly as pale as Doris. "You OK, Aunt Annie?" Nita said, anxious. Her aunt nodded. "What about you?"

Nita's aunt was wearing an understandably preoccupied expression. She was looking off down the hillside, towards the place where Enniskerry would have been, and past it. "It's awfully dark down there," she said softly.

Nita looked down the slope, past where the valley fell away along either side of the thirteen-bend road. Down where Bray and Shankill should have been, there was a wall of blackness, so opaque as to seem nearly solid. It gave Nita a bad feeling just looking at it.

"Something's on the other side of that," Kit said. "And it's watching us."

Her aunt looked at Nita regretfully. "I'm beginning to wish I'd left you at home."

"You couldn't have. I would have found a way to come along, and you know it."

Her aunt suddenly reached out and hugged her. "Don't do anything stupid," she said.

"Anne," Johnny said from one side. "Can I have a word?"

Feeling slightly embarrassed, Nita brushed herself off, and was a little amused to see her aunt doing the same thing. "Look," Johnny said, "we can't have another set-to like that. Too many people got killed." It was then that Nita noticed the tears running down his face, incongruous when taken together with his calm voice. "I think we're going to have to play our aces a little early," Johnny continued.

Nita's aunt hefted Fragarach. Or was it the sword itself that lifted eagerly in her hand? Nita had a hard time telling the difference. "If we use them too early," her aunt said slowly, "we won't have them for later. You've seen the way wizardry is behaving here."

"That's precisely the problem. First of all, these three Treasures were never much good against Balor the last time. And secondly, if we're all killed or driven off by his creatures before we get to him — or if they delay us past the point where our wizardry, or even that of the Treasures, still works, then all of this will have been for nothing. I want you to use Fragarach on the next lot — because they're out there waiting for us, under cover of those next two patches of woodland. If we get hit again after that, Doris will use the Cup. And I can use the Stone the same way, if there's need." He paused and looked at her. "Something wrong? You look a little pale." She shook her head. "Shaun," she said, "I just don't know if I can do this." "Not lack of power, surely."

"Oh, no. It's just. ." She held Fragarach up. "Shaun, we speak so lightly of "re-ensouling" these things. The trouble is, it worked. There's a soul in this, and an intelligence and a will — one much older and stronger than mine, one that considers me mainly a form of transportation. Once I actually start to use it. ." She laughed a little. "It's a good question which is going to be the tool and which the user. I don't know how much of me is going to be left afterwards; even now I can feel it pushing, pushing at my mind all the time. I don't know if you get the same sense down your rapport with the Stone — it's Earth, after all, and mostly passive. But if Air, the lightest and most malleable of the Elements, behaves this way. ." She shook her head. "And what about Fire, then? I have some experience, some ability to resist. But what's going to come of that poor child? What happens when the Power that comes with the Spear puts forth Its full force. .?" She mentioned no names. Johnny shook his head. "Anne," he said, "we'd better just hope that it does; otherwise we're lost. Meanwhile, can you do your part? If not, I'll look around for someone else. But you do have the rapport." She looked at him. "I'll manage," she said.

Johnny headed off. "Get yourselves together," he said to the wizards he passed. "We're moving out, and the Fomori are going to come after us again."

Nita's aunt went after him. Nita watched her go, and stood thinking a moment about Ronan. He doesn't have her experience, she thought. But he has the power.

Not as much, she heard Kit thinking. Not as much as he might if he were younger… What's this going to do to him?

She glanced over at Kit, unnerved. They tended not to hear each other thinking that much any more: but evidently this otherworld had more effects than on merely active wizardry. And the shout went up from down the slope. Nita saw the mass of dark forms come charging down at the wizards, out of the trees again.

There were a few more moments of confusion, milling around, screams. Then Kit grabbed her arm, and pointed. Down the slope, she saw it, the upraised little line of red light that grew from a spark to a tongue of fire, and from a tongue to a lance of it that arrowed up into the threatening sky. The wind began to rise behind them, moaning softly, then louder, a chorus of voices in the trees, uncertain at first, then threatening themselves, long howls of rage; and the wind rose and rose, bending the trees down before it, whipping leaves and dirt through the air so that it became hard to see. The wizards staggered against the blast of it, but even as she fought to stay upright, Nita had a feeling that the wind was avoiding her, and the threat in it was for someone else. . She and Kit headed downhill, because that was the way the wind was pushing them; but the great mass of wizards were pushing down that way too, their cries mingling with the wind's. The two fronts of Fomori that had struck them from either side were staggering back and away, further down the slope, blown that way, forced down by the raging wind that blew them over and over, that dropped trees on them and tossed logs from the wood after them like matchsticks. The Fomori were almost at the bottom of the hill now, into the little dell where Enniskerry village would have stood. There was no bridge over the Glencree River, in this world; they would have to ford it. The wizards and the relentless wind pushed them down into the dell. .

The wind rose to a scream, then; and there were more sounds in it than screams. An odd sound of bells, that Nita recognized; and the sound of hooves, like glass ringing on metal. Nita looked up and saw what few mortals have seen and lived afterward: the Sluagh Ron, the Dark Ride of the Sidhe. In our time the People of the Hills leave their anger at home when they ride — their day is done, and their angers are a matter of the songs their bards sing to while away the endless afternoon. But that afternoon was broken, now, and the legendary past had come haunting them as surely as it had come after the mortals. The Sidhe rode in anger now, as the People of the Air, in the whirlwind, with a clashing of spears that shone with the pale fire that flickers around the faery hills on haunted nights. Their horses burnt bright and dark as stormclouds with the sun behind them as they came galloping down the air. There was no more chance of telling how many of the riders there were than there was of counting the raindrops in a downpour. But two forms stood out at the head of them: the Queen with her wild hair flying, on a steed like night, and the Fool on one like stormy morning, with their spears in their hands and a wind and a light of madness about them. At the sight of them, a great shriek of despair and terror went up from the Fomori. The Sidhe cried out in answer, a cry of such pure delighted rage that Nita shuddered at the sound of it, and the Sluagh Ron hit the great crowd of Fomori from the southward side. The wizards parted left and right to let them through, and the Sidhe drove the Fomori straight downward into the Glencree ford, and up against the ridge on the far side. Wailing the Fomori went, and the press of riders and the darkness borne on the wind hid them from sight.