There was silence around the table at that, and some hopeless looks. "You couldn't find anything that would work?" Nita said, as Ronan came in and sat down again.
"My dear," said Doris, "we have the original Stone and the original Sword awake again. The Cup is not the original, but has ensouled very emphatically indeed. We dare not try to conjoin an inferior or weak Spear to them. They would blast it out of existence. The resouled Spear must be at least as strong as they — preferably much stronger. But we have no proper envelope. It is not strictly a change that a physicist would understand, but matter is not quite the robust stuff it was at the beginning of the world, when Creation as an art was young, and the energies of it dwelt new and hot in the nucleus of every atom. As gravity and other forces have declined over many millions of years, so has the basic — "selfness" — of matter. You see how the resouled Treasures make everything around them look somewhat shabby and poor. The souls in them are reminding the matter they embody how matter was then. It was much closer to being alive." "But then the Spear's soul will remind the matter it's in. Won't it?"
"Not if the matter is simply unable to hold the soul long enough in one place for the change to take," Johnny said. "It'd be like trying to hold a burning coal in a Kleenex. The Spear's soul is the fiercest of them all. I had hoped I was wrong about this, but the research I've been doing over the past couple of days indicates that no spear on Earth would be strong enough now to contain the soul for long enough to do the trick: whether it had contained it before or not." "Off the Earth, then," Nita said.
Johnny cocked his head. "It's a thought that occurred to me. But the changes in matter that have happened here have happened everywhere else, too. And we keep coming back to the problem," and he smoothed his hair back again,"that we don't have much time." Ronan sighed and sat back. "It's a pity we can't just make a new one," he said.
Aunt Annie sighed too. "Even if we had uncontaminated matter from the beginning of time," she said, "we wouldn't have the expertise to do anything with it. I think we're just going to have to keep looking for some other kind of answer." She glanced over at Johnny and Doris. They nodded. Nita got up. "I'll go and get Kit," she said. "Fifteen or twenty minutes be long enough?" "Fine."
She looked at her aunt. She nodded. "The overlay buffer is still in place. Go ahead." Nita said the transport spell quickly in her head, considering how much air she would need, doubling it as usual, and arranging the spell intake so that it would take the air from outside the house rather than inside — the memory of the last time she had done such a spell in her own house, without stopping to consider that her father's desk was covered with paperwork, was still much with her. She vanished.
She found Kit sitting on his favorite rock — a pumice boulder on which he had been using a sharp piece of granite to whittle the boulder into the crude likeness of a human face, for the bemusement of future lunar photographic surveys. The Sword was laid across his lap.
She climbed up beside him. "Johnny said he should be ready for you to come back in a little while." "I don't want to go right back there," Kit said, turning the Sword over in his lap and looking at it. "Someone I want to have a talk with first." "Biddy," Nita said.
Kit nodded. "Remember what the fox said to you," he said.
"Listen," Nita said. "You remember how you told me that you felt her forge was alive?" He nodded. Nita started to tell him what Doris had said about the relative 'liveness' of matter at the beginning of time.
He stopped her. "It's OK, I heard it. I used your ears."
She punched him. "Illegal brain-tapping! You didn't even ask me! What if you had overheard something I was thinking?" "What, about Ronan?"
She blushed hot and punched him again, much harder, so that in the low gravity he fell sideways off the boulder and bounced a couple of times in the moondust. "Great," he said, as he got up and dusted himself off. "This stuff is all down my shirt. Now I'm going to itch all night." "Serves you right. Eavesdropper!"
"Still," he said, and looked thoughtful. "He's sharp, your boyfriend Ronan. Why shouldn't they make another one?"
"Because they don't know how. Whaddaya mean, 'my boyfriend'?" She started heading around the rock to punch him again, far gone in embarrassment.
"Hmm," Kit said. "Neets, forget it, I'll lay off."
"Promises, promises."
"Look, let's go and see Biddy."
"What are we going to say to her?!"
He shook his head. " "Come out with your hands up"? I don't know. But if one of Them is here, They need to be giving us a hand. Do you know where we're going?" "Yeah. I'll pass you the coordinates."
Nita pictured the place in her head — she had seen it often enough when riding past it on the farm's bike — and translated the image quickly into coordinates that could be plugged into a transport spell. "Got it," Kit said. "Just change that bit there. Got it? Go."
They made the jump. Air slid out and away from them, and they were standing not far from the far side of the dual carriageway, near the pub that stood there. It was getting dark.
"Over here," Nita said, and led the way over to the right, where a small group of whitewashed buildings stood near the Kilpedder shop. There was a low iron gate at the entrance to them, covered with ornate and graceful wrought-iron work; and a hanging sign on a nearby wall said B. o DALAIGH, I.F.A. Carefully and quietly Nita unlatched the gate and swung it inward. There were no lights showing in any of the buildings, though Biddy's truck was parked in front of one of them. "Maybe she's gone out," Nita said.
Kit shook his head and went slowly to the truck, and put one hand up against the forge-box at the back. "Feel this," he said.
Nita laid her hand against it, and snatched it back with the shock. Life, for a wizard, is something that can be felt like the warmth from a radiator. This was not just a warmth, but a burning — and totally unlike the kind of low-level awareness that 'inanimate' objects normally manifested. "I can't believe you didn't feel it the first tune," Kit said.
"Different specialties, different sensitivities," said Nita. "Besides, I never touched it. But look at that."
She nodded at Fragarach. The dusk was falling all around them, but it had no power over the Sword; Fragarach shone as if it lay out in full sunlight, though the waning Moon was high and the bats were out.
"It knows," Kit said. " "Uncontaminated matter from the time of Creation", did they say?" He chuckled. "Let's see if we can find her."
He went off around one of the outbuildings. Nita leaned against the forge, and breathed out. "Looking for somebody?" Biddy said from the shadows.
Nita jumped, then laughed a little nervously. Get a grip on yourself, she thought. Now what was the wording? She didn't move; just watched Biddy head over towards her. "Elder sister," Nita said, "in the One's name, honour and greeting."
"Now what do you mean by. ." She stopped, as Kit came around the corner, with the Sword in his hand. It had been bright enough. Now, in her immediate presence, it blazed.
Biddy looked at it, and her face altered. Recognition, and affection, and surprise, all appeared in it.
"Now I thought that had been put away somewhere safe," she said in her soft drawl.
"It was," Nita said. "But nothing much is going to be safe any more, unless it gets used."
"It knows you," Kit said. "I can feel that. It just about shouts that it knows you." There was an odd exultation in his face; Nita felt inclined to keep her distance for the moment. "And it knows your forge, there. I think maybe you made this." He hefted the Sword, but there was something in the gesture that also looked as if the Sword had moved itself, a small leap of excitement. "Or someone using the metal that's been built into that forge made this. Probably both."