A Wizard Abroad yw[n&k-4 Read online

  Nita made her way down to the address she was looking for, on a street called Novara Court. All the houses here were very much the same. There was not much in the way of trees, as if people didn't want to block the view of Sugarloaf to the west, or Bray Head immediately to the east. And it was a handsome view.

  Nita found the house and had an attack of shyness practically on the doorstep.How can I just go up and knock on the door and ask if there are wizards there? But that was exactly what she needed to do, and there was no way out of it. Nita went up and rang the bell.

  There was a long, long wait.Oh good, Nita was just thinking,no-one's in.. when the door was abruptly pulled open. It was Ronan, from the chicken place. He looked at her in astonishment.

  She looked at him in much the same mood. Once again she was on the end of one of those coincidences of which wizards' lives are made, and which normal people (incorrectly) never take too seriously. A wizard, though, knows that thereare no coincidences. And shehad said to her aunt that she was coming to see him.I've got to watch what I say around here! And there was something else. An odd tremor — anticipation, a shiver down her back at the sight of him scowling at her, tall and dark, that she didn't quite know what to make of. .

  "R. Nolan?" she said. "Junior?"

  "Yeah," he said, perplexed. "You're from. ."

  "I'm on errantry," Nita said, "and I greet you."

  He looked at her with his mouth open. He suddenly looked like one of the terminally shocked fish that Nita had seen in the Bray fish market the other morning. "You?" he said.

  "Me."

  "You meanyou're one of US?"

  "Um." Nita made a wry face at him, and lowered her voice. "I've been places where the people had tentacles, and more eyes than you have hairs," she said, "and they didn't makethis much fuss about it. Can we talk? I require an advice."

  It was the formal phrasing for a wizard on assignment who needed technical information from another one. Ronan stared at her and said, "Just a minute. I'll get my jacket." The door shut in her face, and Nita stood there on the doorstep, feeling like an idiot. After a moment Ronan came out again, and they walked. "Let's get out of here," he said. "I don't want to be seen."

  Nita had to laugh at that, though she got an odd twinge of pain when he said it.Not seen with me? Or what? "What, am I contagious or something?" she said as they made their way down to the Boghall Road.

  "No, it's just. ." He didn't say what it was just. "Never mind. You meanyou're a. ."

  "Can we stop having this part of the conversation?" Nita said, both irritated and amused. "There's more stuff to talk about. Listen. This going "sideways" thing. ."

  "What?"

  "Going "sideways"," Nita said, getting a little more irritable. "I assume you know about it. Well, it's happened to me three times in the past two days, and I don't mind telling you that I don't like it very much. ."

  "You wentsideways?" Ronan said. "We're notallowed to go sideways. ."

  "Listen," Nita said, "maybe you're not allowed to go sideways, fine, but I did it, and not on purpose, let me tell you. Now I need to talk to someone and find out what's going on here, because last night I was almost eaten by wolves and nearly stepped on by an Irish elk!"

  "Jeez," said Ronan, almost in awe.

  Nita smiled slightly. "My feelings exactly," she said. Carefully she told him how things had been going for her since she arrived.

  "You could have been killed!" Ronan said.

  "Tell me something I don't know," Nita said. "And I would like to avoid being killed in the future! Is this kind of thingnormal?"

  "Not really," Ronan said. "At least, not for us. We're not supposed to be doing that kind of thing. This whole area is badly overlaid."

  "I saw that," Nita said. "But look. this kind of thing isn't safe. If a nonwizard falls into this. ." "You got that in one," Ronan said, looking grim. "Jeez, Kilquade. Kilquade was supposed to be comparatively quiet. Not like Bray. ."

  "Things have become very unquiet up that way," Nita said. "Do you have a Senior around here that we can go and talk to? This is not good at all." "Sure. She's up in Enniskerry."

  "Then let's get up there. I'm on active, and I don't know what for, and if I can't do wizardry for fear of overlays, I am going to have a nasty problem on my hands. Have you got your manual?" He looked at her. "Manual?"

  "You know. Your wizard's manual, where you get the spells and the ancillary data." "You get them out of abook?"

  Nita was confused. "Where else would you get them?"

  Ronan looked at her as if she was very dim indeed. "The way we always have — the way the druids and bards did it for two, three thousand years, maybe more. We do it by memory!" Now Nita's mouth fell open. "You learn the whole manualby heart? The whole body of spells?" "Well, the basic stuff. You have to learn the basic incantations that make more detailed information available. But mostly, mostly you learn it by heart — the area restrictions, the address list — if a change happens, you usually just wake up knowing about it one morning — and you make sure you remember it." He shook his head. "Why? You mean you get it written down?" Nita pulled out her manual and showed it to him. Ronan paged through it with a mixture of fascination and disgust. "I can't believe this. This makes it too easy!"

  "Are you kidding? Do you have any idea how thick this thing can get sometimes? I think we have a little more information to deal with than you do over here."

  "Don't be so sure," Ronan said, handing the manual back to her in some irritation. 'We may be a smaller place than you Yanks have to deal with, but it's a lot more complicated."

  They walked down the street, each in a state of mild annoyance with the other. "Look," Nita said, "let's not fight over details. Are there a lot of you working around here?"

  Ronan shook his head. "We don't seem able to keep a lot of our wizards after eighteen or so."

  "Why?"

  "Emigration," Ronan said. "England and the States. There's not much work here. You may be a wizard, but you've got to have a job too. You can't make something out of nothing. the Universe doesn't allow it." "No," Nita said.

  Ronan looked at her with more annoyance. "But there are still a fair number of locals. I can't understand why they should putyou on active all of a sudden." "Mmmh," Nita said. "Possibly past experience."

  She didn't feel like going into much more detail. "Never mind that. Let's go and see your Senior." "We'll have to take the bus," Ronan said.

  So they did. Enniskerry was about four miles away. You had to cross the dual carriageway, and then go up a twisty-turny road which the locals called 'the thirteen-bend road'. It paralleled the course of the Glencree River as it poured down through beautiful woodland. Occasional old houses were scattered along the way, but mostly the road was bounded by hedges on one side and walls on the other, and the river chattering on the far side of the hedge.

  They sat in the top of the bus. "I can't believe it," Ronan kept saying. "I mean, a Yank. .!" "Some of us have to be wizards," Nita said, rolling her eyes. "You know that. We can't function entirely with immigrants from Ireland." She grinned at him wickedly. "Well, I suppose. Butbooks."

  "You should see my sister," Nita said. "She gets hers out of a computer." "Jeez!" Ronan said in wonder and disgust.

  They came to Enniskerry village. It was a pretty place; there was a smart little red-and-white hotel with peaked roofs, a pub, some small antique shops, a food shop and a florist. In the middle of the town's triangular 'square' was a wonderful blocky Victorian clock tower with a domed top and a weather vane. "Do we get out here?" Nita said.

  "Not unless you want to spend ten minutes climbing the steepest hill you've ever seen," Ronan said. "Noooo.I'll pass."

  The bus paused in the square for a few minutes, then continued up the winding road that led westward. Where the road topped out, near another housing estate and a little shop, they got off.

  Ronan turned and began to walk back down the hill. "It's over here," he said.

  They walked
down the hill and crossed the road to a pair of wooden gates between two pillars, one of which had the words KILGARRON HOUSE painted on it. "Wow," Nita said.

  There was a little side gate; Ronan opened it for her, and they stepped through. Inside it was a curving driveway leading to a large two-storey house, square and blocky, maybe a farmhouse once.

  It had a beautiful view of the Dargle valley, leading downward towards Bray, and also of the church and water meadow just down the hill.

  They went up to the door and knocked. There was a long pause, and then a little old lady came to the door. She was very fresh-faced and smooth-skinned, and only the fact that her hair was quite silver really gave away much about her age. She was a little stocky, with very sharp, intelligent eyes. "Morning, Mrs Smyth," said Ronan.

  "And good morning to you," she said in a faintly Scots accent. "Are you on business or pleasure?" "Business," Ronan said, nodding at Nita. "She's on errantry."

  "I greet you, ma'am," Nita said, as she would have said to an American Senior she was being introduced to. The lady blinked at her. "Are you on active status?" "Yes'm. At least the manual says so."

  "Then you'd better come in and have a cup of tea, and tell me what it's all about."

  Nita rolled her eyes slightly at the prospect of yet another cup of tea, and resigned herself to the inevitable.

  They were made comfortable in the sitting-room, the tea was brought out, and Mrs Smyth poured it out formally for them, and gave them biscuits and sandwiches, and cakes, and encouraged them to eat more of them before she would let them tell her anything about what was going on. Then Nita began to explain again, as she had to Ronan. When she mentioned Tualha, Mrs Smyth's eyes widened a bit. When Nita mentioned going sideways, Mrs Smyth's jaw almost dropped. "My dear," she said. "I hope you understand that you must not do that again."

  "Ma'am, I didn't do it on purpose the first time. Or the third. The only time I did it on purpose was when I looked at Sugarloaf. I won't do it again."

  "I wonder. " Mrs Smyth said. "Well. Something is certainly in the wind. We're coming up to Lughnasad; I'd be surprised if it didn't have something to do with that."

  Ronan bit his lip. Nita looked from one of them to the other. "I hope you'll forgive me if I don't know what's going on here," she said, "but if I'm going to be on active status."

  "No, indeed. Lughnasad is one of the four great holidays — Beltain, Samhain, and Imbolc. It used to be the harvest festival, a long time ago — people would celebrate the first crops coming in. And it also celebrated the turning of the heat of the summer towards the cooler weather."

  "The heat of the summer?" Nita said, mildly sceptical. So far it had only got up into the mid-seventies.

  Mrs Smyth blinked at her. "Oh, you're used to it warmer where you live? We're not, though. I think the drought is just about official now, isn't it, Ronan?" 'They said they were going to start water rationing," Ronan said.

  "So," said Mrs Smyth. "I suppose that's another indication as well. Anyway, Nita's quite right; if this is allowed to continue, even the nonwizardly will start to notice it. and be endangered by it. This is, mmm, an undesirable outcome."

  Nita couldn't help but laugh at that. "But what are you going to do about it?" "Well, I think we're going to have to get together and discuss the matter." "But if you don'tdo something. ."

  "My dear," Mrs Smyth said, "you come from a very. energetic. school of wizardry. I appreciate that. But we do things a little more slowly here. No, we need to call the local wizards and the Area Supervisors together, and discuss what needs to be done. It'll take a few days at least." Nita chafed at that. It seemed to her that a few days might be too long. But she was a stranger here, and theoretically these people knew best. "What do you think they'll decide?" Ronan said. Mrs Smyth shook her head. "It's hard to say. If we have here a rising of the old sort — a reassertion of the events associated with this holiday — then normally one would also have to reassert the events that stopped whatever thing it was that happened." "But what was it that happened?" Nita said.

  "The second battle of Moytura," Ronan said. "I suppose you won't have heard about it. ." "I've heard about it," Nita said. "A little cat told me. In considerable detail."

  "A cat told you?"

  "Yeah. She said she was a bard, and. ."

  Mrs Smyth looked at Nita in surprise. "You mentioned this before, but we didn't pursue it. How old was this cat?"

  "She's a kitten. Not very old. maybe ten weeks."

  Nita told them, as well as she could remember, everything that Tualha had said to her.

  "That is interesting," Mrs Smyth said. "Normally cat-bards aren't born unless there's about to be some change in the 'ruled' world, the animal world — as well as the human one. And she mentioned the Carrion-Crow, did she?"

  Nita nodded. "I get a feeling that's not good?"

  Ronan made a face. 'The Morrigan is trouble," he said. "She turns up in the old stories, sometimes, as a war goddess. Or sometimes as three of them."

  "It's the usual problem," Mrs Smyth said, "of the language not being adequate to describe the reality. The Morrigan is one of the Powers, a much diminished one. though even the lesser Powers were often mistaken for gods, in the ancient times. She has become, or made herself, the expression of change, and violence. A lot of that around here in the old days," she said, and sighed. "And now. But she's also the peace afterwards. if people will just let it be. "Carrion-Crow" she might be, but the crows are the aftermath of the battle, nature's attempt to clean it up. not the cause of it." Mrs Smyth turned her teacup around. "It's dangerous to see her. but not always bad. She shows herself as a tall dark woman, a fierce one. But she always smiles. She is Ireland, some ways: one of its personifications. Or its hauntings."

  She looked up at Ronan again. "So, the Morrigan. and the Hunt. Some very old memories are being resurrected. The foxhunt's running must have reminded the world of an older hunt over the same ground."

  'What were those?" Nita said. "They looked like dire-wolves, but they had some kind of werelight around them."

  "They were faery dire-wolves," Mrs Smyth said, "from one of the companion worlds." "Who was that following them?" Nita said.

  Mrs Smyth looked at her. "I see by the Knowledge," she said,"that you've had a certain amount of dealing with the Other. The head of the Fomori — the Lone Power. I should say, a dangerous amount of dealings with It."

  "I don't dealwith It," Nita said. "Against It, possibly." She began to feel annoyed. "I don't think you need to doubt which side I'm on. Are you saying that you think I'm attracting this trouble?" Wizards do not tell white lies to make people feel better. Mrs Smyth said nothing. "Well, if I'm here for that purpose," Nita said, "I'm here because the Powers that Be sent me. If I'm a trigger, it's Their finger that's on it, not the Lone One's. The Lone One can't move wizards. you know that."

  "No, I do know that," Mrs Smyth said. "There have been changes in the Lone One recently, and you had something to do with those." "Something," Nita said.

  Ronan looked at her, and then back at Mrs Smyth. "Her?"

  "She was involved just now in the Song of the Twelve," Mrs Smyth said. Ronan looked wide-eyed. "She was also involved in. .Well, never mind. It's a distinguished start: if you and your partner survive, of course. Wizardly talent is usually tested to destruction. Your sister," Mrs Smyth said, "where is she now? Did she come with you?" "No, she's back in New York."

  "Pity," Mrs Smyth said. "At any rate, I advise you to keep your use of wizardry to the minimum needed. Ronan, you'll want to speak to your friends among the locals, especially the young ones. If anyone finds themselves going sideways, tell them not to meddle." "What kind of re-enactment were you thinking of doing?" Nita said.

  "Well, my dear," Mrs Smyth said. "We have a problem. If there's a re-enactment of Moytura to be done, we don't have anything to do it with, even though one or two of the Treasures still exist." "Then how do you mean you don't have anything to do it with?"

  "Nita,
" Mrs Smyth said, "it took one of the Powers that Be a very long time to invest those four objects with strength enough to function against the Lone Power in the form It took. The legend says that anything that the Lone One in Balor's form beheld with his eye open, burst straightway into fire and fell as ash, and poisoned the ground for leagues around, so that nothing would grow there, and men who walked that ground died." "Sounds like something nuclear," Nita said.

  "So it might have been," Mrs Smyth said. "The Lone One has never minded using natural phenomena for Its own ends. But Its power was so terrible that only an army of all the wizards in Ireland — for that's what the druids were — could even think about going up against him; and without the Treasures to protect them, they all would have been destroyed. The Cup, known as the Cauldron of Rebirth, raised up their fallen, and the Sword, Fragarach the Answerer, held off Balor's creatures, and the Stone of Destiny kept the ground of Ireland whole and rooted when Balor would have dragged it off its foundations and overturned the whole island into the deep. All their power together, and all the wizards', was just enough to buy the time for the Spear of Lugh to pierce Balor's fire and quench it at last."

  She took a sip of her tea. "Now, three of the four Treasures we still have — at least one of them is in the National Museum in Dublin. But they have no virtue any more. No-one believes that the gold and silver cup they have here, the Ardagh Chalice, is the Well of Transformations, the Bottomless Cauldron. No-one reallybelieves that the notched bronze thing in the glass case is Fragarach, even though the legends say so. Its virtue has long since ebbed away as a result: the 'soul' in it, if you like, has departed. And the Stone of Destiny, the Lia Fail, is now just a cracked stone half buried in the ground somewhere up North, with an iron picket fence around it, and tourists come and take its picture because it's supposed to be Saint Patrick's gravestone or some such. Not because of what it really is, or was." Her smile was very rueful. "The thousands of years and the loss of trueknowledge of the nature of the Protectors have taken them and made them just a cup, just a sword, and a rock."