They did not go through the gates. The Fool led them instead a short distance around the high shining walls, to where an open pavilion of white silk was pitched in the meadow. Inside it was a simple chair, and several young women standing around it; in the chair sat another woman, who watched them come.
The Fool led them just inside the pavilion, before the lady in the chair. Afterwards Nita had some trouble remembering her face; what chiefly struck her was the woman's hair, masses of it, a beautiful mellow gold like the wheat ripening in Aunt Annie's third field over. The thick plaits of it that hung down reached almost to the ground; the rest was coiled up, braided and wound around her head, the only crown she wore. She was dressed all in a white silk much finer than that of the pavilion, and she held something wrapped in more silk in her lap. "The greeting of gods and man to you, wizards," she said.
They all bowed. "And to you, madam," Ronan said, "our greeting and the One's."
She bowed her head in return. "I may not keep you long here," she said; "you are on errantry, and we respect that. But word has come to us of what the wizards are doing. We know a little of draoiceacht ourselves, and we have something here that may be of use to you." She turned her attention to the bundle in her lap.
'Madam," Kit said, 'may I ask a question?"
She looked up, and her eyes glinted a little with merriment. 'Could I stop you?" 'Who are you, please?"
She sat back in the chair at that. 'Bold one," she said. 'But the stranger in the gate has a right to ask. I am one who 'died into the hills'." Ronan turned his face away. "Feel no shame," she said. "The name is long given to us by humans, and we are used to it. The first of us who lived here after the Making, and could not bear to leave, slipped sideways here, by what art you know; it is part of wizardry. We took ourselves to live outside of the world's time, and exiled ourselves as a result; we cannot go back except for a little while, every now and then. A night of moon to dance in; a morning, or an afternoon, on each of the four great turning-days of the year, when the hills stand open, and there is some commerce between this world and yours. We are near one of them now, which is why you can be here at all."
She turned back a bit of the silk of the wrapped thing in her lap, toying with it. "Now and then, the desire for the physical world becomes too much for us, and one or another of us crosses back into it — to live the lives of human beings, in a world where things are definite and deadly, and what one does matters for ever. We age swiftly when we do that, and our passions rule us; we do terrible deeds sometimes, forgetting the calm of the slower-running time outside the world. I have been back several times, and returned here after each visit, which makes me unusual. for many of us have gone over to try death, and have not come back from it. Your world would know me by several names. I was called Aoife, and Fand, and Macha, and other names besides: but most important at the moment, I was called Emer, the wife of Cuchullain mac Sualtim, who was Hero of Ulster. And that is how I come by this."
She looked down at the bundle in her lap, and slowly unfolded the wrappings around it. "After Cuchullain died," she said, "I gave it to Conall of the Hundred Battles. It passed from him, eventually; he could not bear the spirit that was in the thing. It was in pain, because there was no hand mighty enough to wield it any more, and no mind that understood its power. Our wise folk thought at last that it ought to be brought out of the world, and "into the hills", to spare its pain. And so it was. See. ."
She slipped the silk aside, and held up what had been in it. It was a sword. There were no jewels on it; the hilt was plain gold, riveted with silver, and the blade was a long graceful willow-leaf curve of mirror-polished steel, nearly a meter long, coming to a 'waist' about a third of a meter above the hilt, and then flaring slightly outward again. There was a wavy pattern in its steel, but more than that, the blade itself seemed to waver slightly in the vision, as if seen through a heat-haze. Even in this golden light, with the summer of the Otherworld all around them, the Queen looked pale and plain as she held it up; the sword made whatever one looked at with it seem less than real, as the Sidhe had done in Bray.
"Cruaidin Cailidcheann, he called it; the Hard, Hard-Headed. But it had another name, first.
Cuchullain's father was Lugh of the Long Reach; and this is Fragarach, the Answerer, the Sword of Air, which Lugh sent to him. Take it."
Nita put her hand out to it, and felt a cold fire burning, and a pressure of wind forcing her hand away. "It doesn't want me," she said.
"No. It has its own desires, and I can only hold it because I am one of the Undying. One of you," she said to Kit and Ronan.
Ronan put a hand out, and then snatched it back, and scowled. "It doesn't want me either." "You then," she said to Kit. "Take it, young wizard: and give it to the Senior, with my blessing. He will be the one to wield it, I think. Say also to him," she said, turning to Ronan,"that I ask him again the question I have asked him before; and ask whether he has any new answer for me." "I will," Ronan said, but his eyes slid sideways to Fragarach.
Kit bowed slightly. "And I'll deliver this." He took the sword, and apparently had no trouble with it.
"Go, then. The Amadaun will see you home. And have a care; for the One-Eyed is very strong. He is not as strong as he was once. but neither are the Treasures." The Queen's green eyes were troubled. "Nonetheless, they may serve. They must serve." They nodded. "Go now."
The horses were brought for them, and they rode back to Nita's aunt's. The dual carriageway wasn't there, but they could recognize the Glen of the Downs as the Good People's horses left it swiftly behind them. The sea glinted before them with colours they had never seen before, under the Otherworld's sun, as they rode down the hill towards Kilquade; then the new colours faded, and there was nothing shining on the sea but mundane sunlight. The road faded into visibility around them at the end of Aunt Annie's drive.
"Go well," said the Amadaun as they dismounted, and their three horses faded away. "We can do no more for you. One Treasure from the land itself; one from the hand of the People; one from humankind. The fourth must come from elsewhere: from one of the Powers, or not at all." "You say you're a Fool," Nita said. "Are you making a joke?"
"Always. But the jokes are always true. Beware," he said. "And the One go with you."
He faded away as well. They turned and headed down the drive, Kit carrying the sword across his hands and looking extremely nervous.
"You said things around here are getting weird?" he said to Nita.
She sighed. "Don't ask me for hints that they might get less weird," she said. "My money says things get worse yet."
8. Chearta na Chill Pheadair / Kilpedder Forge
There it lay in the middle of the kitchen table, along with old Lotto tickets and a tea-stained copy of the Bray People, on top of the placemats, next to a plastic biscuit tray with nothing but crumbs left in it, and the milk jar and sugar bowl; Fragarach the Answerer, shining under the light that hung down from the ceiling. They sat around it, nursing their tea, and looking at it. It was hard to look at anything else. The cats sat up on the kitchen worktop, the way they did when waiting to be fed, and stared at it too, big-eyed.
"And that was it," Kit said to Nita's aunt. "They said we would have to come up with the fourth one ourselves, somehow."
"Did they give you any hints?" Aunt Annie said.