drows and pookas and other monsters away like so much flotsam. Nita struggled to get to her feet again, against the flow. To Kit she said, 'Looks like Doris is using the Cup.'
Kit nodded. 'Come on, we should be breaking out into the open pretty soon. This path comes out in that flat ground by the main road, doesn't it?' 'The dual carriageway, yeah.'
Several more bends of the watercourse brought them out into the open ground. There was a great scattering of drows there, half-buried in the earth as if about a year's worth of mud had buried them; many others, dealt with by the wizardry of individuals, lay broken or helpless. The last traces of the blue-green light of the Cup's wiz-ardry were sinking into the ground like water, along with the real water, which was running down into the water-course of the Dargle, which the Glencree stream had just met. Kit and Nita splashed across the ford and up the other side, looking around them.
Nita sagged against Kit as she looked northward along the flood-plain of the Dargle, towards Bray. The dark-ness was getting solider and solider, and she felt about ready to collapse. You and me both, he said. She could feel the fatigue in the thought, and Nita looked around at the other wizards with them and saw that they were suf- fering too; some of them were having to be helped along by others, and not because of injuries. And far down the flood plain, there was a long line of darkness hugging the ground, coming slowly towards them. It was bigger than all three of the previous forces that had attacked them, all put together.Oh, no, she thought. I can't. And neither can a lot of the rest of us.
'There never was any counting them, even in the old days,' Tualha said. 'It seems that nothing has changed.'
There was an awful silence. Many of the wizards looked at each other helplessly, hefted their weapons and watched the Fomori come. Nita looked over at Johnny, who was off to the side of one small crowd, frowning, with his arms folded. The ground began to shake.
The Stone, Kit said silently, immediately doing the smartest thing: he looked up and around to make sure no tree or rock was likely to fall on him, and then sat down. Nita followed suit. All around them, the earth groaned alarmingly as it was held still where they were, but encouraged to move, and violently, half a mile away. Down by that advancing line of darkness, trees toppled over and huge boulders of Wicklow granite rolled down the hill-sides towards the ranks of the Fomori. They broke, screaming and running in all directions. It did them little good. One of the hillsides shrugged itself up and up until it fell over on the Fomori vanguard. Behind them the rest milled about in confusion between the two ridges that paralleled the open ground where it sloped gently away down towards Bray.
The thunder of the quaking ground suddenly became a roar. Nita clutched at the ground as a single awful shock went through it — not one of the rippling waves they had been feeling, but a concussion like two huge rocks being struck together.
Down towards Bray, the horde of dark forms were abruptly missing from the ground. Nothing could be seen but smoke and dust rising upward in the gloom. 'Let's go,' Johnny said quietly, and started forward.
No-one had much to say as they passed the great smoking chasm that had been a green meadow, half a mile long between two hills. One of the hills was flat now, the other had great cracks in it, and from far down among the rock-tumble in the chasm, as the wizards passed slowly by it, faint cries could be heard. Nita shuddered as she followed Kit; they had to squeeze their way along the side of the meadow, or what was left of it. The ground tilted dangerously downward towards the chasm. The riders of the Sidhe paced casually along the air above the huge smoking hole, but it occurred to Nita that the wizards might have a slightly harder time of it if they had to leave the area suddenly. The gloom grew about them, and the tiredness got worse and worse, so that it was al-most as much as she could do just to drag herself along. Only the sight of Kit in front of her, doggedly putting foot in front of foot, kept her doing the same. At least they're leaving us alone now, she thought. Or maybe there are none of them left.
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
