The nerves were not just among the less senior wizards, and there were other worries as well. Nita had watched Johnny that morning as he carried the Spear in from the field. He was wincing as he carried it. "Are you all right?" she said to him.
"Yes," he said, and put the Spear down to lean it against the doorpost — hurriedly, Nita thought, and rather gratefully. Johnny rubbed his hands together. "Well, no. It really is hard to hold for even a little while. it burns." He laughed. "It can hardly help it — we went to enough trouble to make it do that! But there's someone else it wants." "We could all take turns carrying it."
"No, I think it has made its choice. He just has to stop fighting it. " Johnny shook his head. "I think he will."
Nita was confused. "Is there something the matter with it, that it hurts to carry it?"
"The matter? Nothing! The matter's with us, I'm afraid. We called the Spirit of Fire, and we got it — the essence of purification, and triumph. " He trailed off, then said, "It sees the dross in us. and wants to see it burned away, and us made perfect, now. Not possible, of course. It's not easy, meeting one of the cardinal virtues face to face."
He picked up the Spear again and went off in a hurry.
She could feel it looking at her, though, and she understood now what Johhny had said about some weapons being able to speak. She knew what this one wanted.
She looked over her shoulder and was not even slightly surprised to find Ronan there, looking after Johnny. "Hey, Paddy," she said softly.
"Hey, Miss Yank." But there was none of the good old abrasiveness in his voice now: nothing but soft fear. He was quiet for a moment, and then said, "I hear it calling all the time now. Not just calling me, either. Him."
For a moment Nita wasn't sure what Ronan meant — until the flash of scarlet, of wings or a sword that burned, flickered in her mind's eye. "Oh," she said, and laughed slightly. "Sorry. I usually think of Him as a Her — that's how we saw. ."
"Her?" Ronan sounded outraged, as if this were one shock too many.
Nita burst out laughing: for the moment, at least, Ronan sounded normal. "Give me a break! As if the Powers care about something like gender. They change names and shapes and sexes and bodies the way we change T-shirts." She rubbed one ear. The One's Champion, in the last shape She commonly wore, had bitten Nita there several times. "Doesn't make Them any less effective on the job."
They wandered off into the field a little way, absently. Nita looked at the scorched place on the ground and veered aside from it.
"He's in there, all right," Ronan said. He sounded like a man admitting he had cancer. "I hear this other voice — not my own. .He wants the Spear. It's his, from a long way back. Lugh." He coughed slightly: Nita realized then, blushing with embarrassment for him, that he was trying to control the thickening in the throat, the tears. "Why me?" he said softly. "You're related," Nita said. He stared at her.
It was true, though: the Knowledge made at least that much plain. "You've got some of His blood," she said, 'from a ways back. You remember what the Queen said, about the Powers dipping in from outside of time, and getting into relationships with people here for one reason or another. So He loved somebody when He was here physically, once. Maybe even as Lugh himself. Does it matter? When He finished the other job he was on, the One gave Him — or Her; whatever — another one. Busy guy. But as soon as He could, He came hunting- a suitable vessel. Like the Spear did." And Nita smiled at him slightly. "Would you rather a blow-in got the job?"
Ronan smiled, but it was a weak smile. After a moment he said, "You knew Him. What's He like?" She shook her head, not sure how to describe anything to Ronan that that flicker of scarlet across a dark mind didn't convey in itself. "Tough," she said. "Cranky, sometimes. But kind too. Funny, sometimes. Always — very fierce, very. ." She fumbled for words for a moment. "Very strong, very certain. Very right. ."
Ronan shook his head. "It's not right for me," he said. "Why don't I get any say in this?" "But you do," Nita said.
He didn't hear her. "I don't want certainty!" Ronan said softly. "I don't want answers! I don't even know what the questions are yet! Don't I get any time to find things out for myself, before bloody Saint Michael the Archangel or whatever else He's been lately moves in upstairs in my head and starts rearranging the furniture?"
Nita shook her head. "You can throw Him out, all right," she said. "You know what it says. Power will not live long in the unwilling heart. Goes for the Powers, too, I think. But you'd better see what you've got to replace Him with that will be able to use the Spear to cope with Balor, 'cause I can't think of anything offhand."
"If I once let Him run me," Ronan said, bitter in this certainty at least, "He's in to stay." Nita shook her head. She could think of nothing useful to say.
"Miss tough mouth," Ronan said softly. "Ran out of lines at last. Had to happen eventually." "If the advice was any good before it ran out," Nita said, halfway between annoyance and affection, "better make the most of it."
Ronan looked away from her, towards the castle. After a moment he headed off that way.
Nita stood and watched him go. A few moments later, Kit said from behind her, "He's a hard case."
Nita nodded. "It's a real pain," she said softly.
"What happens if he's right?"
"Just hope he saves everybody in the meantime," Kit said.
They went back to being with the many new arrivals. By three o'clock, there were some three hundred wizards there; by eight there were perhaps another two hundred, from all over. "What are all those things they're carrying?" Kit said to Aunt Annie, during one quiet moment outside. "Johnny told everybody to come armed," Nita's aunt said. They had, though they made a most peculiar-looking army. There were a lot of rakes and shovels. Some people actually had swords, and there were many wands and rods in evidence, of rowan and other woods; there were staves of oak and willow and beech. One wizard, for reasons Nita couldn't begin to guess, was carrying an eggbeater. Another one, a dark-haired sprightly lady that Nita had seen in the Long Hall, had a Viking axe of great beauty and age, and was stalking around looking most intent to use it on something.
" 'It is a great glory of weapons that is in it,' " said a voice down by Nita's foot, " 'borne by the fair- haired and the beautiful; all mannerly they are as young girls, but with the hearts of boon- comrades and the courage of lions; whoever has been with them and parts from them, he is nine days fretting for their company. .' "
"Tualha," Nita said, bending down to pick her up, "you're really getting off on this, aren't you." "A bard's place is in battle," Tualha said, perching on Nita's shoulder uncertainly, and digging her claws in. "And a cat-bard's doubly so, for we have an example of fortitude and of boldness and of good heart to set for the rest of you."
Kit looked at her with bemusement. "What would you do in a battle?" he said. "I would make poems and satires on the enemy," Tualha said,"the way they would curl up and die of shame; and welts would rise up all over them if they did not die straightaway, so that they would wish they were dead from that out. And those that that did not work on. ." She flexed her claws. '. .you'd give them cat-scratch fever," Kit said, and laughed. "Remind me to stay on your good side."