"We will go with you and look on this ending," said the Amadaun; and paused. "If an ending is indeed what we are coming to." "One way or another," Johnny said.
12. Tir na nOg
Johnny waved the wizards forward, and they started down the winding way that paralleled the river, and led towards Bray. "Did you hear that?" Kit said.
Nita shook her head; she was very tired. "Hear what?" "What the Queen said. 'The weariness.' "
She had to laugh at that. "After what we've been through today, you'd be nuts not to be tired." "Yeah, but that's not it. Don't you feel tireder than you were when we were up at the top of the hill?"
Nita blinked. "You're right."
Kit nodded down at the darkness in front of them. "That," he said. "There's some kind of energy- sapping spell tied up with it. Don't exert yourself if you can avoid it — you may need that energy for later."
She looked at him with very mild annoyance; sometimes Kit's practical streak came close to getting him hit. "What I really need right now in terms of energy is a chocolate bar," she said, "but the only thing I've got left in my pack is a cat. And I can't eat that." She made an amused face. "Too many bones."
Tualha hissed in her ear, not amused. Kit grinned, and produced a chocolate bar from one pocket. Nita took it, squinted at it in the dimness. "It's got peanuts in it!" she said. "I hate peanuts!" "Oh, OK," Kit said, grabbed it back, and started to unwrap it.
Nita grabbed it away from him, scowled at him, and began eating. Tualha snickered at her. They kept walk-ing, along the course of the river: it would have been the route of the thirteen-bend road, in the real world. Trees arched close overhead in the gloom, and the sound of the river down in its stony watercourse was muted. If something should hit us here, we'd have nowhere to go, Nita thought, as she took another bite out of the choco-late bar. And then the screaming began again, very close. It's not fair! she thought, as she saw the drows and other monsters come crashing in among them from down the steep slope to their right. At that point she also dis-covered something else: that a wizard with a mouthful of caramel and peanuts is not much good for saying spells, even the last word of one that's already set up. She pushed backwards out of the way while fighting to swallow, managed it, and shouted the one word she needed just in time to blow away the drow that was heading for Kit on his blind side while he did the same for a pooka.
Something grabbed her from behind by her throat and chest, choking her. Nita fought to turn, for you can't blast what you can't see, but the stony hands held her hard, and she couldn't get her breath; her vision started to go.
Then there was a roaring noise behind her, the pressure released suddenly, and Nita fell sprawling and gasping. She levered herself up, looking around her. "Kit. ." she said,"did you. .?" And she ran out of words. All around them, the path through the forest was awash in blue-green light that rolled and flowed like water; and off to one side, the river was climbing up out of its banks in response, and running up on to the path. Both flows, of light and water together, were rushing with increasing speed eastward, leaving the wizards untouched, but washing the drows and pookas and other monsters away like so much flotsam. Nita struggled to get to her feet again, against the flow. To Kit she said, "Looks like Doris is using the Cup."
Kit nodded. "Come on, we should be breaking out into the open pretty soon. This path comes out in that flat ground by the main road, doesn't it?" 'The dual carriageway, yeah."
Several more bends of the watercourse brought them out into the open ground. There was a great scattering of drows there, half-buried in the earth as if about a year's worth of mud had buried them; many others, dealt with by the wizardry of individuals, lay broken or helpless. The last traces of the blue-green light of the Cup's wiz-ardry were sinking into the ground like water, along with the real water, which was running down into the water-course of the Dargle, which the Glencree stream had just met. Kit and Nita splashed across the ford and up the other side, looking around them.
Nita sagged against Kit as she looked northward along the flood-plain of the Dargle, towards Bray. The dark-ness was getting solider and solider, and she felt about ready to collapse. You and me both, he said. She could feel the fatigue in the thought, and Nita looked around at the other wizards with them and saw that they were suf-fering too; some of them were having to be helped along by others, and not because of injuries. And far down the flood plain, there was a long line of darkness hugging the ground, coming slowly towards them. It was bigger than all three of the previous forces that had attacked them, all put together.Oh, no, she thought. I can't. And neither can a lot of the rest of us.
"There never was any counting them, even in the old days," Tualha said. "It seems that nothing has changed."
There was an awful silence. Many of the wizards looked at each other helplessly, hefted their weapons and watched the Fomori come. Nita looked over at Johnny, who was off to the side of one small crowd, frowning, with his arms folded. The ground began to shake.
The Stone, Kit said silently, immediately doing the smartest thing: he looked up and around to make sure no tree or rock was likely to fall on him, and then sat down. Nita followed suit. All around them, the earth groaned alarmingly as it was held still where they were, but encouraged to move, and violently, half a mile away. Down by that advancing line of darkness, trees toppled over and huge boulders of Wicklow granite rolled down the hill-sides towards the ranks of the Fomori. They broke, screaming and running in all directions. It did them little good. One of the hillsides shrugged itself up and up until it fell over on the Fomori vanguard. Behind them the rest milled about in confusion between the two ridges that paralleled the open ground where it sloped gently away down towards Bray.
The thunder of the quaking ground suddenly became a roar. Nita clutched at the ground as a single awful shock went through it — not one of the rippling waves they had been feeling, but a concussion like two huge rocks being struck together.
Down towards Bray, the horde of dark forms were abruptly missing from the ground. Nothing could be seen but smoke and dust rising upward in the gloom. "Let's go," Johnny said quietly, and started forward.
No-one had much to say as they passed the great smoking chasm that had been a green meadow, half a mile long between two hills. One of the hills was flat now, the other had great cracks in it, and from far down among the rock-tumble in the chasm, as the wizards passed slowly by it, faint cries could be heard. Nita shuddered as she followed Kit; they had to squeeze their way along the side of the meadow, or what was left of it. The ground tilted dangerously downward towards the chasm. The riders of the Sidhe paced casually along the air above the huge smoking hole, but it occurred to Nita that the wizards might have a slightly harder time of it if they had to leave the area suddenly. The gloom grew about them, and the tiredness got worse and worse, so that it was al-most as much as she could do just to drag herself along. Only the sight of Kit in front of her, doggedly putting foot in front of foot, kept her doing the same. At least they're leaving us alone now, she thought. Or maybe there are none of them left.