The top of the dry wall was just visible. Nita and Kit paused by it and looked down to the forge; there was no-one there. Out in the field, Nita said. That way. .
They turned and made their way through the dew-wet grass, quietly, towards the shadow that lay beneath a nearby oak tree. Ahead of them they heard voices, speaking in unison in the Speech. There was no light, there was no diagram drawn; just four people standing there at the cardinal points of a circle. Struck down into the centre of the circle, on a long shaft, was the Spear. The shaft was very plain: some pale wood — ashwood, maybe. The blade of the Spear, almost a meter long, had been socketed into it and bound with more of the starsteel. Very plain, it was; there it stood, pale shaft, paler blade, with wizards around it, setting up the spell. Nita's aunt stood at one quarter of the circle, Doris Smyth at the second, Johnny at the third. The fourth was wrapped in shadow — tall, thin, wearing a long, dark cloak. Only above the thrown-back hood did anything show: a faint gleam of silver hair, cropped short. Nita swallowed at the sight of it, kept quiet, watching. The spell was about half-built, to judge by the feeling of anticipation in the air. More than anticipation — it was a sort of insistent calling. Nita's nerves were jangling at the edges with it, even though she knew perfectly well that it wasn't meant for her. Something very powerful was being called, something that lived in her in some small way, and that fragment or fraction was responding.
The long chorus in the Speech went on, the sound of the wizards' voices twining together, building, insistent, demanding that something, some great power should come here, come bind itself, come be in the world, be physical, real as this world counts reality.
Nita listened to them and heard the wizardry begin to fold in on itself: the knot being tied, the insistence growing that something from outside the world, outside time, should wake up, heed the call, come here now! All four voices ended on that tone of command, and the silence fell; and they waited.
Everything waited.
The Spear stood there in the cool light, still as a tree. Nita stood there watching it, holding her breath, not knowing what to expect.
Then it moved. Leaned, ever so slightly, eastward; leaned like a branch of a tree being blown that way in a wind. Leaned further. And it was beginning to make a sound as well. No, Nita thought then. Not making it itself. But the sound was happening around it, a low vibration that sounded like the noise that there ought to be just before an earthquake; a low rumble in the bones and the blood. It wasn't audible. The mind heard it — the fabric of things, the structure of spacetime all around, rumbling, being pushed up from under, or down from above. The feeling of some immense pressure being brought to bear on this spot. .
She looked at Kit, and with him put her back up against the tree.
The sense of pressure got stronger. And benevolence: that was the strange part. What was coming definitely meant well. maybe a little too well for mortals to bear. It wanted all things healed, everything made well, no matter what pains it cost: everything being put right, straightened, filled. .Nita held on to the tree as she felt that down-pressing force trying to tamper with her, with the cells of her body, her mind. They resisted, in their dumb way, and so did she, thinking, Leave me the way I am! Leave me alone! I know you want. .I know. .
And that was exactly it. It wasn't a pressure, it was a being; not a thing, but a person; not just a person, but a Power. Coming down, here, now, swift to answer the call, fiercer than even Nita had thought, unstoppable now that it had heard the summons — and with a frightful violent strength, because it wasn't bodied, not chained by entropy and the other forces that worked on matter, not yet.
Get in there, she thought, clinging to the tree as if she might be swept away; get in there! The Spear trembled, the blade of it shook on its shaft, a faint creaking sound of the wood betraying the strain as the metal binding tried to break, as the power they had called tried to pour itself into this thing of wood and metal. The metal began to glow, the same cherry-red that Nita had seen in the furnace, getting hotter and realer-looking — more solid and concrete and real than anything in this world should look, as that power pressed down into it.
Expressions were visible now in this light, but the only one Nita could look at, though she could hardly bear to, was Biddy's. Biddy's eyes were fixed desperately on the Spear, as if it were some truth she wanted to see denied; an awful look of anticipation, potentially of horror, was on her face. But there was something else there as well. Plain determination. .
The metal was golden now, a hot bright gold that didn't bear looking at, and scaling up past it towards white, almost the colour of the star it had come from. White now, that blinding colour of plasma new-plucked from the core. But not just metal any more. Awake, alive, alert and looking; looking at Nita. .
That light fell on her. She hid her eyes and buried her face against the tree. It was useless. The light struck through everything. No escaping it — it would pierce through you, shake you apart. . And then it stopped.
She rubbed her eyes. They were useless for a few moments. Afterimages danced in them. Nita smelled burning. Wincing, squinting, she glanced around her.
The first light of the sun was coming between two hills to the east. It fell on grass that was scorched in a great circle. She could see the little flakes of ash going up from where leaves of the tree had been burned. And in the middle of the circle, where the four wizards stood, something stood and looked back at them. It was shaped like a spear, but this fooled no-one. They knew they were watched, and considered, cheerfully, gravely, by something that would kill any one, or all of them, to do its job — to find the darkness, pierce it, and be its end. The socket and binding of the Spear had held.
Only the wood of the shaft was scorched black, but it was otherwise sound. Above it, the spearhead stood plain and cool and silvery — but there was something moving in the blade. Those lines of layered metal that Biddy had hammered in, black once, now wavered and twisted: needle-thin lines of fire, white and yellow-white, swirling and writhing in the metal. The air above the Spear wrinkled and wavered the way air does above a hot pavement in the summer, and the ozone smell was thick.
"It's awake," Kit said, softly, as if afraid of being overheard. "It worked.!" And he looked over at Biddy just in time to see her collapse.
They hurried over to her. Nita looked helplessly at Johnny as he came over, hoisted Biddy up. Her eyes were closed: her breathing was so shallow it was hardly to be seen. He shook his head. "What's wrong with her?" Nita said.
"I'm not sure. We'll take her inside and find out. Meanwhile. ." He glanced over at the Spear, gleaming crimson where the early sun was catching it. "We're ready," he said. "It's Lughnasad. This evening we move."
She nodded, and looked across the field. Dark in his denims, Ronan was standing there. He had no eyes for anything but the Spear. He was wearing an expression like that of someone who finds something that's lost, something he has been wanting for a long time; something without which he's not complete. It was a frightened look, and a frightening one.
What unnerved Nita even more was the way she could feel the Spear looking back at him. It considered Ronan to be just such a lost object, recovered after a long time, that which completes. She turned away and did her best to keep her thoughts to herself.
11. ag na Machairi Teithra / The Plains of Tethra
All that day, cars came and went at Matrix: people being dropped off, coming to stay, other people heading out to pick up more people from the train station. The house got full. All the wizards that Nita had seen in the Long Hall were there, and many that she had never seen before. The gravel parking lot in front got full, and people started parking in among the sheep. Everyone had tea. Nita made it several times (as did everyone else). People went out to town for fast food and brought it back, and a lot of baking and cooking went on back in the kitchen; Doris made soda bread seven or eight times, smiling more and more as the compliments got louder. But Nita had noticed that there was a certain desperate quality to a lot of the conversations. the kind of talk meant to keep people from noticing that they themselves were nervous.