why you can be here at all.'
She turned back a bit of the silk of the wrapped thing in her lap, toying with it. 'Now and then, the desire for the physical world becomes too much for us, and one or another of us crosses back into it — to live the lives of human beings, in a world where things are definite and deadly, and what one does matters for ever. We age swiftly when we do that, and our passions rule us; we do terrible deeds sometimes, forgetting the calm of the slower- running time outside the world. I have been back several times, and returned here after each visit, which makes me unusual. for many of us have gone over to try death, and have not come back from it. Your world would know me by several names. I was called Aoife, and Fand, and Macha, and other names besides: but most important at the moment, I was called Emer, the wife of Cuchullain mac Sualtim, who was Hero of Ulster. And that is how I come by this.'
She looked down at the bundle in her lap, and slowly unfolded the wrappings around it. 'After Cuchullain died,' she said, 'I gave it to Conall of the Hundred Battles. It passed from him, eventually; he could not bear the spirit that was in the thing. It was in pain, because there was no hand mighty enough to wield it any more, and no mind that understood its power. Our wise folk thought at last that it ought to be brought out of the world, and 'into the hills', to spare its pain. And so it was. See. .'
She slipped the silk aside, and held up what had been in it. It was a sword. There were no jewels on it; the hilt was plain gold, riveted with silver, and the blade was a long graceful willow-leaf curve of mirror-polished steel, nearly a meter long, coming to a 'waist' about a third of a meter above the hilt, and then flaring slightly outward again. There was a wavy pattern in its steel, but more than that, the blade itself seemed to waver slightly in the vision, as if seen through a heat-haze. Even in this golden light, with the summer of the Otherworld all around them, the Queen looked pale and plain as she held it up; the sword made whatever one looked at with it seem less than real, as the Sidhe had done in Bray.
'Cruaidin Cailidcheann, he called it; the Hard, Hard-Headed. But it had another name, first.
Cuchullain's father was Lugh of the Long Reach; and this is Fragarach, the Answerer, the Sword of Air, which Lugh sent to him. Take it.'
Nita put her hand out to it, and felt a cold fire burning, and a pressure of wind forcing her hand away. 'It doesn't want me,' she said.
'No. It has its own desires, and I can only hold it because I am one of the Undying. One of you,' she said to Kit and Ronan.
Ronan put a hand out, and then snatched it back, and scowled. 'It doesn't want me either.' 'You then,' she said to Kit. 'Take it, young wizard: and give it to the Senior, with my blessing. He will be the one to wield it, I think. Say also to him,' she said, turning to Ronan,'that I ask him again the question I have asked him before; and ask whether he has any new answer for me.' 'I will,' Ronan said, but his eyes slid sideways to Fragarach.
Kit bowed slightly. 'And I'll deliver this.' He took the sword, and apparently had no trouble with it.
'Go, then. The Amadaun will see you home. And have a care; for the One-Eyed is very strong. He is not as strong as he was once. but neither are the Treasures.' The Queen's green eyes were troubled. 'Nonetheless, they may serve. They must serve.' They nodded. 'Go now.'
The horses were brought for them, and they rode back to Nita's aunt's. The dual carriageway wasn't there, but they could recognize the Glen of the Downs as the Good People's horses left it swiftly behind them. The sea glinted before them with colours they had never seen before, under the Otherworld's sun, as they rode down the hill towards Kilquade; then the new colours faded, and there was nothing shining on the sea but mundane sunlight. The road faded into visibility around them at the end of Aunt Annie's drive.
'Go well,' said the Amadaun as they dismounted, and their three horses faded away. 'We can do no more for you. One Treasure from the land itself; one from the hand of the People; one from humankind. The fourth must come from elsewhere: from one of the Powers, or not at all.' 'You say you're a Fool,' Nita said. 'Are you making a joke?'
'Always. But the jokes are always true. Beware,' he said. 'And the One go with you.'
He faded away as well. They turned and headed down the drive, Kit carrying the sword across his hands and looking extremely nervous.
'You said things around here are getting weird?' he said to Nita.
She sighed. 'Don't ask me for hints that they might get less weird,' she said. 'My money says things get worse yet.'
8. Chearta na Chill Pheadair / Kilpedder Forge
There it lay in the middle of the kitchen table, along with old Lotto tickets and a tea-stained copy of the Bray People, on top of the placemats, next to a plastic biscuit tray with nothing but crumbs left in it, and the milk jar and sugar bowl; Fragarach the Answerer, shining under the light that hung down from the ceiling. They sat around it, nursing their tea, and looking at it. It was hard to look at anything else. The cats sat up on the kitchen worktop, the way they did when waiting to be fed, and stared at it too, big-eyed.
'And that was it,' Kit said to Nita's aunt. 'They said we would have to come up with the fourth one ourselves, somehow.'
'Did they give you any hints?' Aunt Annie said.
Nita shook her head. 'Unless you caught something that I didn't, Ronan. I can't always understand the way people talk around here.'
Ronan shook his head. 'I heard what you heard, more's the pity. I was hoping they might come up with the Spear, too.'
'You and me both,' said Aunt Annie. She stretched, and slumped in her chair. Nita noticed how tired she looked, and felt sorry for her.
'Did you do the warding you were going to do?' she said.
Her aunt nodded. 'The back office is ready for the Cup,' she said. 'Johnny went to help Doris with it; apparently it's more alive than they had expected, and it was causing them trouble. They should be here in a while. Anyway, when you're in the back of the house, be careful of the office door. I had to draw the spell pattern partway up the inside of it to miss the rug in there, and if you open the door, it'll break the circuit. Just reach in through the door if you need something.' They nodded. 'Aunt Annie,' Nita said, 'I was going to ask you. Where does Biddy the farrier live?'
She tried to make it sound nonchalant, and had no idea whether she had succeeded. Her aunt looked at her a little curiously. 'Just up the road in Kilpedder,' she said. 'Next to the shop across the dual carriageway. She has her ordinary forge there. Why?'
Nita tried not to squirm. 'I had a couple of questions I wanted to ask her,' she said.
'About her forge,' Kit said. 'It's really great. I hadn't seen a portable one like that before.'
'Oh. Well, it's getting close to teatime: you should be able to find her up there in a while — her work rarely keeps her out much later than this.'
Nita became aware of a low buzzing, and looked around her. 'Is that the oven-timer?' she said. Aunt Annie looked bemused. 'No, the oven's not on.'
They looked at each other as the buzzing got louder. Some of the spoons on the table began to vibrate gently, moving along the table a little. 'Look at the Sword!' Kit said. 'It's vibrating.'
It was. The low humming sound that Nita had mistaken for the oven-timer was coming from it, and it was getting louder. 'It sounds a little like feedback,' she said.
A faint beep-beep sound came from outside. The Sword's hum got louder, and (Nita thought) more threatening. 'Ohmigosh,' her aunt said, 'it's Doris and Johnny, and they've got the Cup!' 'Neat!' Kit said, and got up. 'Let's go and see!'
'Wait a minute!' Aunt Annie said, sounding panic-stricken. 'We don't have the place prepared to have two of the Treasures here at once! Put two of these things together without adequate preparation, and you're going to get something that makes atomic critical mass look like a wet firework!' She looked around hurriedly. 'Crikey, I can't leave now! Kit, quick, take it and get out of here!'
He picked it up, rather nervously. It jumped and jittered in his hands, and the hum started to scale up into a
