'What happens if he's right?'
'Just hope he saves everybody in the meantime,' Kit said.
They went back to being with the many new arrivals. By three o'clock, there were some three hundred wizards there; by eight there were perhaps another two hundred, from all over. 'What are all those things they're carrying?' Kit said to Aunt Annie, during one quiet moment outside. 'Johnny told everybody to come armed,' Nita's aunt said. They had, though they made a most peculiar-looking army. There were a lot of rakes and shovels. Some people actually had swords, and there were many wands and rods in evidence, of rowan and other woods; there were staves of oak and willow and beech. One wizard, for reasons Nita couldn't begin to guess, was carrying an eggbeater. Another one, a dark-haired sprightly lady that Nita had seen in the Long Hall, had a Viking axe of great beauty and age, and was stalking around looking most intent to use it on something.
' 'It is a great glory of weapons that is in it,' ' said a voice down by Nita's foot, ' 'borne by the fair- haired and the beautiful; all mannerly they are as young girls, but with the hearts of boon- comrades and the courage of lions; whoever has been with them and parts from them, he is nine days fretting for their company. .' '
'Tualha,' Nita said, bending down to pick her up, 'you're really getting off on this, aren't you.' 'A bard's place is in battle,' Tualha said, perching on Nita's shoulder uncertainly, and digging her claws in. 'And a cat-bard's doubly so, for we have an example of fortitude and of boldness and of good heart to set for the rest of you.'
Kit looked at her with bemusement. 'What would you do in a battle?' he said. 'I would make poems and satires on the enemy,' Tualha said,'the way they would curl up and die of shame; and welts would rise up all over them if they did not die straightaway, so that they would wish they were dead from that out. And those that that did not work on. .' She flexed her claws. '. .you'd give them cat-scratch fever,' Kit said, and laughed. 'Remind me to stay on your good side.'
Tualha started scrambling into Nita's rucksack again. 'Anne, what about this one?' someone shouted from the castle. Nita's aunt sighed and said, 'I'll see you two later.'
'Aunt Annie,' Nita said, 'have you seen Biddy since this morning?'
'Huh? Yes.' Her aunt's face looked suddenly pinched.
'She's not any better,' Nita said, her heart sinking.
'One of us who's a doctor had a look at her.' Aunt Annie shook her head. 'The body — well, it's comatose. No surprise. What lived in it has gone elsewhere.' She sighed. 'It'll wind up in the hospital in Newcastle, I would guess, and hang on a little while before giving up and dying. Bodies tend to do that.'
She shook her head and went off towards the wizard who was calling her.
'Listen,' Kit said, 'I was supposed to tell you. Johnny wants people to start coming into the big hall,' he said, 'as many of us as can fit, anyway.'
Not everyone could, though they spent a while trying. Many wizards lined the gallery above, or stood and listened in the outer halls and corridors.
Others hung about outside in the parking lot, eavesdropping with their wizardry. Not that the ones closest to the door couldn't hear Johnny anyway. The acoustics in the great hall were very bright, and his sharp voice echoed there as he stood in the centre of the floor, his arms folded. 'We're about ready to go,' Johnny said, when the assembled wizards got quiet. 'I take it you're all as ready as you can be.' The crowd shifted slightly. 'I can't tell you a great deal about what to expect, except that we're going into what is, for us, the country of myth. so expect to see even more of the old stories coming true, the legends that have been invading our world over the past few weeks. They'll be real. Just don't forget,' and he smiled now,'that we are the myths to them. In the plains of Tethra, we are what they tell stories about, around the fire at night. So don't be afraid to use your wizardry; there aren't any overlays where we're going, or none that matter to what we're doing. At some point we'll be faced by an army. I don't know what it's going to look like. We've seen all kinds of Fomori over here in the last couple of weeks. I don't know how they'll appear on their own ground, but the important thing is not to be fooled by appearances. Anything can look like anything. so feel for essence, and act accordingly. Don't forget that the People of the Hills, and the other nonphysicals who live over on that side, are as much oppressed by the Fomori and Balor as we have been in our world. maybe more so, and whether they actively come to our assistance or not, they're on our side. Be careful not to mistake them for Fomori and take them out. The One is watching. If we go down in this battle, let's do it correctly. Don't get carried away in the excitement of things; remember your Oaths. No destruction that's not necessary.' He paused. 'One last thing. Most of us will never have been in an intervention this crucial, or this dangerous. The odds against us are extremely high. Some of us,' and his glance swept across the group with great unease, 'will not come back. It's a certainty. Please, please, please. be careful with your choice. One thing a wizard cannot patch, as you know, is any situation in which his or her own death occurs. so any of you with dependants, or responsibilities which you think may supersede this one, please think about whether you want to cross over. We'll need guardians on this side too, to keep an eye on the worldgate in case the Fomori try to stage a breakthrough behind the main group. Bravery is valuable, but irresponsibility will doom us. Later, if not now. So think.' There was a great silence at this. Nita looked at Kit, and saw him swallow. 'Those of you who need to excuse yourselves, just remain here when we pass through,' Johnny said. He turned to Nita's aunt. 'Let's open the gate. Anne? This was always one of your specialties. You want to do the honors?' He reached over to the table and handed Nita's aunt the Sword Fragarach.
She took it. A breath of wind went through the hall; the hangings whispered and rustled among themselves. Then Aunt Annie laid it over her shoulder and headed up the narrow spiral stairway to the top of the castle.
The wizards in the hall began to empty out into the graveled parking lot at the front. Nita and Kit went along. Nita was curious to see what would happen. Gatings were an air sorcery; the business of parting the fabric of spacetime was attached to the element of Air, with all those other subtle forces that a wizard could feel but not see. She paused out there in the parking lot and craned her neck.
Against the low golden sunset light, her aunt's silhouette appeared at the top of the tower, between two of the battlements. It was incongruous; a slightly portly lady with her hair tied back, in jeans and trainers and a baggy sweatshirt, lifting up the Sword Fragarach in her two hands. She said, just loud enough to be heard down below, 'Let the way be opened.' That was all it took; no complex spelling, not tonight. The barriers between things were worn too thin already. A wind sprang up behind them; light at first, so that the trees merely rustled. Then harder, and leaves began to blow away, and the cypresses down by the water moaned and bent in the wind. Hats blew off; people's clothing tried to jump off them. Nita hugged herself; the wind was cold. Beside her, Kit zipped up his jacket, which was flapping around him like a flag. He stared back into the teeth of the wind. 'Here it comes,' he said.
Nita turned to look over her shoulder. It looked like a rainstorm coming, the way she had seen them slide along the hills here; the darker kind of light, wispy, trailing from sky to earth, sweeping down on them. Behind it, the landscape darkened, silvered, muted, as if someone had turned the brightness control down on a TV. Everything went vague and soft. The effect swept towards them rapidly, swallowing the edges of the horizon, and then passed over, roiling like a thundercloud. The wind dropped off as it passed.
Everything had gone subdued, quieted; that warm light of sunset now a dull, livid sort of light. The only bright thing to be seen was Fragarach, which had its own ideas about light and shining, and scorned to take the local conditions into account.
Aunt Annie lowered her arms, looked around her, and disappeared from the battlements. Nita glanced around and saw that everything in sight was muted down to this pallid, threatening twilight. The sunset was a shadow, fading away. Overhead was only low cloud and mist; no stars, no Moon.
'That's it,' Johnny said. 'Someone get the Spear. Doris, the Cup. .' 'Which way do we go?' said one of the wizards.
'East, towards the sea, and the dawn. Always towards the East. Don't let yourselves get turned around.'
Kit looked around. 'There are a lot more trees here than there were before.' 'Yeah.' The only thing that was about the same was Matrix, which surprised her. She had thought it would take some other shape here, as Sugarloaf had. But it looked like itself; no change. The cars in the parking lot were gone, though, and so was the parking lot itself. There was nothing but longish grass, stretching away to a ride between the trees of the forest and out into a clearing on the far side. It was still a beautiful-looking place, but there was now a grimness about it. The wizards began moving out. 'It was a lot brighter the last time we were here,' Nita said to Kit, thinking of Sugarloaf.
He nodded. 'They're under attack.' So will we be, she heard him think, but not say out loud for fear of
