"Take one of the right-hand seats," Aunt Annie said. "You'll get a better view of the water as we go in."
Nita did. The train pulled out, and Nita looked out at the north beach as they passed it; more sun- bathers, someone riding a horse at the gallop.
"Aunt Annie," she said, "you know something. Why didn't I see your name when I went through the manual and looked in the wizards' directory?"
"Confidentiality," her aunt said. "I wasn't "out" to you yet. The manual senses such things." She looked at Nita thoughtfully. "I suppose I really should have anticipated it," she said. "My kids came out nonwizardly, after all. But anyway, I was looking at the manual this morning. You've been busy."
"You gotthat in one," Nita said.
Aunt Annie smiled. "Not unusual. Things quieten down, though, after you get to be my age. I remember when I got mine: I had about three years when I hardly had a moment to myself. Then things got calm when I went off to college." "Did you have a partner?"
The train went abruptly darkish, lit only by the feeble ceiling lights, as it passed into the tunnel bored through Bray Head. "I did for a while," she said. "But she and I parted company eventually. It happens," she said, at Nita's shocked look. "You grow apart. or one partner finds something more important than the magic. or you start disagreeing about how to work." Nita shook her head, upset. She couldn't imagine not agreeing with Kit on a plan or course of action within a matter of seconds; and indeed, there had been times when if they hadn't been able to agree that fast, they would have been dead. "Do you still talk?" she said. "Oh, yes, pretty often. We're friendly enough."
The train burst out into the light again, revealing the beach on the other side of Bray Head, and the iron-railed promenade with its hotels and arcade, and the new half-built aquarium. "Don't worry," said Aunt Annie. "I think maybe you and your partner have been through enough trouble together that you'll be working together for a long while."
They pulled into Bray station and changed to the sleek little bright-green Dublin Area Rapid Transit train waiting at the next platform over. About half an hour later, the train slid into Tara Street station. Nita and her aunt got out and made their way through the orange-tiled exterior, beneath the skylights and down the escalator, and went out into the streets of Dublin. It was a fascinating combination of old and new, and Nita was rather bewildered by it all at first. There were tiny cobbled alleys that seemed not to have been repaved in a hundred years, or maybe two, right next to broad streets roaring with traffic and alive with lights and people shopping; old, old churches caught in the middle of shiny new shopping centres; shouting, cheerfully messy street markets in the shadow of big department stores.
"It takes a little while to get used to," her aunt said, as they crossed the street south of O'Connell Bridge and headed down past the stately fronts of Trinity College and the Bank of Ireland, on the way to the pedestrian precinct at Grafton Street. "If you come from one of the big cities in the States, Dublin can seem very small at first, sort of caught in a time warp; slower, more casual about things. Later. " She chuckled. "You wonder how you ever put up with a place where people are in such a hurry all the time. And you find that life can go along very well without all the "conveniences" you were used to once." She smiled. "It's the people here: they make the difference."
They turned left at the corner of Grafton Street, heading for the National Museum. It was by the Dail, the Irish houses of parliament, and Aunt Annie clearly knew her way around it. As soon as they had paid their admission fees, she led Nita down a flight of stairs, past a sign that said TREASURY. "There are a lot of gorgeous things here," she said, "but this is probably the most famous of them."
They stopped in front of a glass case that was thicker than any of the others scattered around the big room. No-one else was nearby. Nita moved close to look at it. The cup inside it sat on a big lucite pedestal; a bright spotlight was trained on it from above. Nita thought this might have been unnecessary. since she suspected it might be able to glow by itself.
"The Ardagh Chalice," her aunt said softly. Nita looked at it; not just with the eyes, but with a wizard's senses, and looked as hard as she could. The Chalice was more than half a meter high and a third of a meter wide, mostly gold, with elaborate and beautiful spiral patterns worked on its sides in silver, and ornamented with rubies and topazes. The jewels were lovely enough, but Nita had more of an eye for the ornamentation on the sides. They were spell diagrams in a very antique style, and though they looked simple, that was merely an illusion created by the extreme skill of whoever had designed them. They were subtle, and potentially of huge power; but they were quiescent, emptied of their virtue. "It's not really very old," Nita said.
"The physical aspects of it, no." Her aunt looked at it. "This chalice was made in the second century."
"Not the Holy Grail, then," Nita said.
Her aunt smiled slightly. "No. And yes. The Treasures might have been made by gods, but they were made of mortal matter. and matter passes. The problem is, of course, that the power put in them — the soul of the Treasures, more or less — is as immortal as the powers that made them. The soul passes on when the envelope wears out — "reincarnates", finds another "body" that's suitable. This cup was a vessel, for a while. But not any more, I think. Do you feel anything different?" Nita looked at the Cup again, longer this time. Finally she said,"'I don't know. It's as if. if you knew how to shake this awake, this "soul", you might do it. But you'd have to know how." Her aunt nodded. "We may have to work out how. Come and see the Sword." They went up a flight of stairs, through another room or two. The room they finally stopped in was full of ancient gold work: tores and stickpins and necklaces and bracelets of gold, beads and bangles, carved plates of gold linked together. "It used to be mined in Wicklow," her aunt said, "not too far from us. But by the fourth century most of it was gone. Anyway, this is worth more than any of them, if you ask me."
The central case held the Sword. It lay there very plain against red velvet; long and lean, shaped like a willow leaf, with no gold or jewel anywhere about it — a plain bronze blade, notched, scraped, somewhat withered-looking. Nita bent close to it, feeling with all of her. "Now thisis old," she said. "Older than the Cup," said Aunt Annie. "Bronze Age, at least."
Nita nodded. There was a faint feeling of purpose still in the old bronze, like a memory impressed on matter by a mind now gone: like the ghosts in Aunt Annie's back garden, a tape still replaying and very faintly to be heard. But there was no vigour in it, only recollection: wistful, mournful, feeble. "It might have been the real Sword once," Nita said. "But it's almost forgotten. It's not nearly as much there as the Cup. I don't think you could wake this one up." Her aunt nodded. "That's what I think too."
Nita shook her head. "And there's nothing else in the building that's even this much awake." She sighed. "So we have the Stone, and the Cup, and something thatmight work for the Sword, but probably won't. and no Spear."
"That about sums it up, yes. The wizards around the country will be looking for other swords that might work better. But the spirit of the Spear Luin seems to have passed completely. Either no "body" was strong enough to contain it. or it was just too powerful to be contained any more in a universe that had no suitable envelope for it, and it passed out entirely."
Nita rather thought that it had passed. Spears were symbols of the element of Fire, and fire was the most uncontainable of the five, next to plasma. Nita began to worry. Three of the Treasures would not be enough, to judge from what the Sidhe had hinted. But she had no ideas about what to do. She looked at her aunt. "Are we done here?" "I think so. Want to go over to Grafton Street?" "Sounds good."