of say about what's going on.' Kit looked over at her. 'Don't know if I like it.' Nita knew what he meant. 'Maybe this is more what it's like for grownups,' she said. 'I guess this is what it'll be like when we're older. If we survive it.' 'You think we might not?' said Kit.
'I don't know. We've been in a lot of situations we thought might kill us. Or that looked bad for part of a continent, part of an ocean.' 'Sometimes part of a universe.'
'I know. But this time it just seems more. it seems bigger this time, even though it's smaller. You know what I mean?'
'It means you're away from home.' Kit said. 'I feel it too, a little.'
Nita yawned. 'But among other things,' Kit added, 'it means that if we get killed, it's not our fault.'
'Oh, great,' said Nita. 'You find the strangest ways to be positive.'
'The only thing I don't understand,' Kit said, and then stopped. A moment later he said, 'I think we're missing somebody.' 'Like who?'
'I don't know. But there's something we're missing.'
'Well, I hope you figure out who it is pretty quick,' Nita said. 'Tomorrow.'
'Today,' Kit said.
Nita yawned at him again.
'Neets,' Kit said. 'What happens if we do die?'
'We get yelled at,' Nita said, and then burst out laughing at herself. 'I don't know.' 'Timeheart?'
'I suppose.' She shook her head. 'I mean, you know it's going to happen some day. but I don't think I've ever thought it would happen today.' She thought a moment, then said, 'Well, maybe once or twice. Why? You got a bad feeling?'
'No. That's sort of what worries me. All the times we've been in real big trouble and come through, I've had awful bad feelings. But this time, nothing.' He leaned back in the big fat chair and stared at the ceiling. 'I keep wondering if that means something.'
Nita looked at him. 'Would it be so bad?' she said. 'I mean, if you know you're going to die anyway. Might as well go down fighting as die in a bed somewhere, or a car crash or something. It's more useful.'
'You sound like Dairine,' Kit mumbled.
'Insults,' Nita said. 'Not very mature of you. I do not.'
He fell asleep as she watched him. He had always had a gift for that, except on the night before a wizardry. He was feeling as wiped out as she was, though: or else he considered himself off-duty at the moment. Nita sighed, and leaned back herself.
When she woke up again, it was very suddenly indeed, and with that feeling of having pins stuck into her all over. She swung herself off the bed. Kit was sitting in the chair with his mouth open; she nudged him with her foot. His eyes flew open, and she said, 'Kit. .'
He felt it. He spared himself just time for one long stretch, then bounced up and headed out of the room. 'They're doing it. .'
She followed him around the upper gallery and down a tightly-spiralling staircase in a corner tower of the castle. They came out on the bottom level, peered into the great hall, and saw nothing. They're out in the forge, Kit said in her head. The pre-dawn stillness was too much for even him to break. Come on. .
They slipped out the front door: the squeak of it opening seemed as loud as a scream in that great quiet. Nothing spoke; outside, no bird sang; there was only that pale hint of light, high all around in the sky, omnidirectional, bemusing — morning twilight, with thin cloud all over everything, mist clinging low, running along the ground, hanging in wisps and tatters from bushes, hovering over trees.
The top of the dry wall was just visible. Nita and Kit paused by it and looked down to the forge; there was no-one there. Out in the field, Nita said. That way. .
They turned and made their way through the dew-wet grass, quietly, towards the shadow that lay beneath a nearby oak tree. Ahead of them they heard voices, speaking in unison in the Speech. There was no light, there was no diagram drawn; just four people standing there at the cardinal points of a circle. Struck down into the centre of the circle, on a long shaft, was the Spear. The shaft was very plain: some pale wood — ashwood, maybe. The blade of the Spear, almost a meter long, had been socketed into it and bound with more of the starsteel. Very plain, it was; there it stood, pale shaft, paler blade, with wizards around it, setting up the spell. Nita's aunt stood at one quarter of the circle, Doris Smyth at the second, Johnny at the third. The fourth was wrapped in shadow — tall, thin, wearing a long, dark cloak. Only above the thrown-back hood did anything show: a faint gleam of silver hair, cropped short. Nita swallowed at the sight of it, kept quiet, watching. The spell was about half-built, to judge by the feeling of anticipation in the air. More than anticipation — it was a sort of insistent calling. Nita's nerves were jangling at the edges with it, even though she knew perfectly well that it wasn't meant for her. Something very powerful was being called, something that lived in her in some small way, and that fragment or fraction was responding.
The long chorus in the Speech went on, the sound of the wizards' voices twining together, building, insistent, demanding that something, some great power should come here, come bind itself, come be in the world, be physical, real as this world counts reality.
Nita listened to them and heard the wizardry begin to fold in on itself: the knot being tied, the insistence growing that something from outside the world, outside time, should wake up, heed the call, come here now! All four voices ended on that tone of command, and the silence fell; and they waited.
Everything waited.
The Spear stood there in the cool light, still as a tree. Nita stood there watching it, holding her breath, not knowing what to expect.
Then it moved. Leaned, ever so slightly, eastward; leaned like a branch of a tree being blown that way in a wind. Leaned further. And it was beginning to make a sound as well. No, Nita thought then. Not making it itself. But the sound was happening around it, a low vibration that sounded like the noise that there ought to be just before an earthquake; a low rumble in the bones and the blood. It wasn't audible. The mind heard it — the fabric of things, the structure of spacetime all around, rumbling, being pushed up from under, or down from above. The feeling of some immense pressure being brought to bear on this spot. .
She looked at Kit, and with him put her back up against the tree.
The sense of pressure got stronger. And benevolence: that was the strange part. What was coming definitely meant well. maybe a little too well for mortals to bear. It wanted all things healed, everything made well, no matter what pains it cost: everything being put right, straightened, filled. .Nita held on to the tree as she felt that down- pressing force trying to tamper with her, with the cells of her body, her mind. They resisted, in their dumb way, and so did she, thinking, Leave me the way I am! Leave me alone! I know you want. .I know. .
And that was exactly it. It wasn't a pressure, it was a being; not a thing, but a person; not just a person, but a Power. Coming down, here, now, swift to answer the call, fiercer than even Nita had thought, unstoppable now that it had heard the summons — and with a frightful violent strength, because it wasn't bodied, not chained by entropy and the other forces that worked on matter, not yet.
Get in there, she thought, clinging to the tree as if she might be swept away; get in there! The Spear trembled, the blade of it shook on its shaft, a faint creaking sound of the wood betraying the strain as the metal binding tried to break, as the power they had called tried to pour itself into this thing of wood and metal. The metal began to glow, the same cherry-red that Nita had seen in the furnace, getting hotter and realer-looking — more solid and concrete and real than anything in this world should look, as that power pressed down into it.
Expressions were visible now in this light, but the only one Nita could look at, though she could hardly bear to, was Biddy's. Biddy's eyes were fixed desperately on the Spear, as if it were some truth she wanted to see denied; an awful look of anticipation, potentially of horror, was on her face. But there was something else there as well. Plain determination. .
The metal was golden now, a hot bright gold that didn't bear looking at, and scaling up past it towards white, almost the colour of the star it had come from. White now, that blinding colour of plasma new-plucked from the core. But not just metal any more. Awake, alive, alert and looking; looking at Nita. .
That light fell on her. She hid her eyes and buried her face against the tree. It was useless. The light struck through everything. No escaping it — it would pierce through you, shake you apart. . And then it stopped.
She rubbed her eyes. They were useless for a few moments. Afterimages danced in them. Nita smelled burning. Wincing, squinting, she glanced around her.
