Диана Дуэйн - A Wizard Abroad

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!