Biddy folded her arms and leaned back against the stone wall of the forge. "I gave up making," she said after a while. "At least, the kind of making that I used to do once. Can you have any idea. .?" She shook her head, smiling a little: a hopeless look. "What it's like to ensoul your consciousness in a mountain range while it's still molten, and spend a century watching every crystal form? And planning the long slides of strata, the way erosion wears at your work, even the scrape of glaciers. To be what you make. " Biddy sighed. "And to know what it'll become. You can't do that in one of these bodies. And I said I would do so no more, and that I would give myself back to the One sooner. ."
Nita threw a glance at Kit. She had been there: she knew the sound of the kind of promise that means one thing when you make it. and then later you find that the meaning has changed, but you are going to be held to the promise nonetheless. Or you hold to it.
"And now," Nita said, " you're making that way again. And you will have to do what you said. Become part of the making, as the Powers do. " But the Powers existed partly outside of time. One living in time, in a human body, might not find that body working too well after it came back from such an act of making. Nita shivered. "I may not," Biddy said. But her voice was still full of doubts.
This tone of mind Nita knew as well. Her heart turned over inside her with pity and discomfort. Any advice would sound hollow to someone in Biddy's position, poised between sacrifice and refusal. But Nita thought of how it must have felt to the wizards who had advised her, at one point or another: and they never shirked reminding her of what she needed to do, though their hearts bled from it. It was the basic courtesy one wizard owed another — not to lie. How much more did a wizard owe that courtesy to one of the Powers?
"You can't very well get out of it at this point," Nita said. "Your name in the Speech is bound into the spelling we did yesterday. The name says who and what you are. and for how long." She swallowed. "Change the truth of that now, and the whole spell is ruined. You know that. No Spear. no chance of ensouling it. No chance of saving Ireland." Not to mention the rest of the world, Nita thought.
But that would hardly seem germane to Biddy at the moment. "Refuse this making," Nita said, "and you'll be part of the destruction of your first one. You of all people should know what to do to keep this island healing, I would have thought." Biddy looked at her and said nothing.
Nita was immediately mortified. She had completely messed it up. "Sorry," she said,"sorry, never mind, forget I said anything. ." She went out of the forge hurriedly, feeling completely hopeless and ineffective. Kit came along after her.
He said nothing to her until they were about halfway up to the house. "Sounding a little rattled back there, Neets," Kit said then. "Is there anything. .?"
"No," she said, and regretted it instantly. "Yes, but you can't do anything. Oh, Kit. .!" So how do I tell him about last night? About what I saw inside Ronan? And the sight of that cool, sharp metal on the anvil had given her something else to think about. Its image resounded against the image of Ronan in her mind, leaving her with a feeling bizarrely compounded of disaster and triumph. But the resonance was incomplete. It must be finished, something, the Knowledge perhaps, said to her. It has to be fully forged. Otherwise. .
Nita breathed out. "I can't," she said: and she wasn't even sure who she was saying it to, or about what, any more.
Kit punched her lightly in the arm a couple of times and said nothing. They went back up to the quiet room together. Dawn wasn't that far away. "It's not like the last time," Kit said, "or the time before."
The room had big overstuffed chairs in it, and a big glass case full of books. "Look at this," Kit said, reaching up for one. "How to Build Your Own Staircase. " He started leafing through it. "How do you mean, not like the last time?" Nita said, getting up on the bed and leaning back against the big headboard.
"We've always been doing our stuff pretty much by ourselves," he said. "This is different. We don't have a lot of say about what's going on." Kit looked over at her. "Don't know if I like it." Nita knew what he meant. "Maybe this is more what it's like for grownups," she said. "I guess this is what it'll be like when we're older. If we survive it." "You think we might not?" said Kit.
"I don't know. We've been in a lot of situations we thought might kill us. Or that looked bad for part of a continent, part of an ocean." "Sometimes part of a universe."
"I know. But this time it just seems more. it seems bigger this time, even though it's smaller. You know what I mean?"
"It means you're away from home." Kit said. "I feel it too, a little."
Nita yawned. "But among other things," Kit added, "it means that if we get killed, it's not our fault."
"Oh, great," said Nita. "You find the strangest ways to be positive."
"The only thing I don't understand," Kit said, and then stopped. A moment later he said, "I think we're missing somebody." "Like who?"
"I don't know. But there's something we're missing."
"Well, I hope you figure out who it is pretty quick," Nita said. "Tomorrow."
"Today," Kit said.
Nita yawned at him again.
"Neets," Kit said. "What happens if we do die?"
"We get yelled at," Nita said, and then burst out laughing at herself. "I don't know." "Timeheart?"
"I suppose." She shook her head. "I mean, you know it's going to happen some day. but I don't think I've ever thought it would happen today." She thought a moment, then said, "Well, maybe once or twice. Why? You got a bad feeling?"
"No. That's sort of what worries me. All the times we've been in real big trouble and come through, I've had awful bad feelings. But this time, nothing." He leaned back in the big fat chair and stared at the ceiling. "I keep wondering if that means something."
Nita looked at him. "Would it be so bad?" she said. "I mean, if you know you're going to die anyway. Might as well go down fighting as die in a bed somewhere, or a car crash or something. It's more useful."
"You sound like Dairine," Kit mumbled.
"Insults," Nita said. "Not very mature of you. I do not."
He fell asleep as she watched him. He had always had a gift for that, except on the night before a wizardry. He was feeling as wiped out as she was, though: or else he considered himself off-duty at the moment. Nita sighed, and leaned back herself.
When she woke up again, it was very suddenly indeed, and with that feeling of having pins stuck into her all over. She swung herself off the bed. Kit was sitting in the chair with his mouth open; she nudged him with her foot. His eyes flew open, and she said, "Kit. ."
He felt it. He spared himself just time for one long stretch, then bounced up and headed out of the room. "They're doing it. ."
She followed him around the upper gallery and down a tightly-spiralling staircase in a corner tower of the castle. They came out on the bottom level, peered into the great hall, and saw nothing. They're out in the forge, Kit said in her head. The pre-dawn stillness was too much for even him to break. Come on. .
They slipped out the front door: the squeak of it opening seemed as loud as a scream in that great quiet. Nothing spoke; outside, no bird sang; there was only that pale hint of light, high all around in the sky, omnidirectional, bemusing — morning twilight, with thin cloud all over everything, mist clinging low, running along the ground, hanging in wisps and tatters from bushes, hovering over trees.