'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.
After what seemed a very long while, the wind died down, leaving the riders standing there, and the wizards looking at them, among the dead bodies of Fomori, and the twitching, witless ones, driven mad by the sight of the onslaught. Johnny went from where he had been talking to Nita's aunt, who held a Fragarach much darnped-down and diminished-looking, and stood by the tallest of the riders, taking the bridle of her horse. 'Madam,' he said, 'we hadn't looked to see you here.' 'We were called by our own element,' the Queen said, looking down at Nita's aunt, and Fragarach. 'Besides, it has been too long since I went foraying; and since our world seems like enough to die here, this is a good time to ride out again. We have not done badly. But I think we may not be able to do much more. All magics are diminishing in the face of our enemy's draoiceacht, and I feel the weariness in my bones. Do not you?' Johnny nodded. 'Nevertheless we will press on,' he said.
'We will go with you and look on this ending,' said the Amadaun; and paused. 'If an ending is indeed what we are coming to.' 'One way or another,' Johnny said.
12. Tir na nOg
Johnny waved the wizards forward, and they started down the winding way that paralleled the river, and led towards Bray. 'Did you hear that?' Kit said.
Nita shook her head; she was very tired. 'Hear what?' 'What the Queen said. 'The weariness.' '
She had to laugh at that. 'After what we've been through today, you'd be nuts not to be tired.' 'Yeah, but that's not it. Don't you feel tireder than you were when we were up at the top of the hill?'
Nita blinked. 'You're right.'
Kit nodded down at the darkness in front of them. 'That,' he said. 'There's some kind of energy- sapping spell tied up with it. Don't exert yourself if you can avoid it — you may need that energy for later.'
She looked at him with very mild annoyance; sometimes Kit's practical streak came close to getting him hit. 'What I really need right now in terms of energy is a chocolate bar,' she said, 'but the only thing I've got left in my pack is a cat. And I can't eat that.' She made an amused face. 'Too many bones.'
Tualha hissed in her ear, not amused. Kit grinned, and produced a chocolate bar from one pocket. Nita took it, squinted at it in the dimness. 'It's got peanuts in it!' she said. 'I hate peanuts!' 'Oh, OK,' Kit said, grabbed it back, and started to unwrap it.
Nita grabbed it away from him, scowled at him, and began eating. Tualha snickered at her. They kept walk- ing, along the course of the river: it would have been the route of the thirteen-bend road, in the real world. Trees arched close overhead in the gloom, and the sound of the river down in its stony watercourse was muted. If something should hit us here, we'd have nowhere to go, Nita thought, as she took another bite out of the choco-late bar. And then the screaming began again, very close. It's not fair! she thought, as she saw the drows and other monsters come crashing in among them from down the steep slope to their right. At that point she also dis-covered something else: that a wizard with a mouthful of caramel and peanuts is not much good for saying spells, even the last word of one that's already set up. She pushed backwards out of the way while fighting to swallow, managed it, and shouted the one word she needed just in time to blow away the drow that was heading for Kit on his blind side while he did the same for a pooka.
Something grabbed her from behind by her throat and chest, choking her. Nita fought to turn, for you can't blast what you can't see, but the stony hands held her hard, and she couldn't get her breath; her vision started to go.
Then there was a roaring noise behind her, the pressure released suddenly, and Nita fell sprawling and gasping. She levered herself up, looking around her. 'Kit. .' she said,'did you. .?' And she ran out of words. All around them, the path through the forest was awash in blue-green light that rolled and flowed like water; and off to one side, the river was climbing up out of its banks in response, and running up on to the path. Both flows, of light and water together, were rushing with increasing speed eastward, leaving the wizards untouched, but washing the
