A Wizard Abroad, New Millennium Edition (14 page)

Nita pulled out her manual and showed it to him. Ronan paged through it with a mixture of fascination and disgust. “I can’t believe this. This makes it too easy!”

All Nita could do was laugh at him. “Are you kidding? Do you have any idea how thick this thing can
get
sometimes? I think we have a little more information to deal with than you do over here.”

“Don’t be so sure,” Ronan said, handing the manual back to her in some irritation. “We may be a smaller place than you Yanks have to deal with, but it’s a lot more complicated.”

They walked down the street, each in a state of mild annoyance with the other. “Look,” Nita said, “let’s not fight over details. Are there a lot of you working around here? How many of you are there?”

Ronan shook his head. “Not a lot, at the moment. For a while we were doing okay, when the job market was decent. But things have already started going south: it’s getting to be like the old days again, when everybody who wanted to work had to emigrate. More people are leaving every month. Stands to reason some of them are going to be wizards…”

“Leaving. You mean just leaving the country?”

“What else are we supposed to do? People are getting over to the States and England and Australia as fast as they can, before their savings vanish completely. Companies are closing everywhere; people are getting fired and there are no new jobs opening up. You may be a wizard, but you’ve got to have a job, too. You know the universe doesn’t let you just make food or money out of nothing.”

“Yeah,” Nita said. “I know…”

Ronan looked at her with more annoyance. “But there are still enough locals to do the work that needs done around here. Can’t understand why
you’ve
been put on active all of a sudden.”

“Mmmh,” Nita said. “Possibly past experience.” She didn’t feel like going into much more detail. “Never mind that. Let’s go see your Senior.”

“We’ll have to take the bus,” Ronan said.

***

So they did. Enniskerry was about four miles away, across the motorway and up a a twisty turny road which the locals called “the thirteen-bend road”, which paralleled the course of the Glencree river as it poured down through beautiful woodland. Occasional old houses were scattered along the way, but mostly the road was bounded by hedges on one side and walls on the other, and the river chattered by on the far side of the hedge.

Nita and Ronan sat in the top of the bus, which was fortunately empty again. “I can’t believe it,” Ronan kept saying. “I mean, a
Yank—!”

“Look,
some
of us have to be wizards, don’t we?” Nita said, rolling her eyes. “We can’t function entirely with emigrants from Ireland.” She grinned at him wickedly.

“Well, I suppose. But
books!”

“You should see my sister,” Nita said. “She gets hers out of a laptop.”

“Janey mack,”
Ronan said in wonder and disgust.

At last they came to Enniskerry village. It was a pretty place, surrounded by some small housing estates, but with an even more village-y center than Greystones. At the heart of it was a handsome little red-and-white hotel with peaked roofs, a pub, a couple of small restaurants, some small antique stores and a food shop and florist. In the middle of the town’s triangular “square” was a wonderful blocky Victorian clock tower with a domed top and a weathervane. “Do we get off here?” Nita said.

“Not unless you want to spend ten minutes climbing the steepest hill you’ve ever seen.”

“Pass,” Nita said.

The bus paused in the square for a couple of minutes, then continued up the winding road that led westward. Where the road topped out, near another housing estate and a little store, they got off. Ronan turned and began to walk back down the hill. “It’s over here,” he said.

They walked down the hill and crossed the road to a pair of wooden gates between two pillars, one of which had the words KILGARRON HOUSE painted on it. “Impressive,” Nita said.

“Wait till you see inside.”

There was a little side gate; Ronan opened it for her, and they stepped through. Inside it was a curving driveway leading to a large two-storey house, square and blocky, maybe a farmhouse once. It had a beautiful view of the Dargle Valley, leading downward toward Bray, and also of the church and water meadow just down the hill.

They went up to the door and knocked. There was a long pause, and then a little old lady came to the door. She was very fresh-faced and smooth-skinned, and only the fact that her hair was quite silver really gave away much about her age. She was a little stocky, with very sharp, intelligent eyes. “Morning, Mrs. Smyth,” said Ronan.

“And good morning to you,” she said in a faintly Scots accent. “Are you on business or pleasure?”

“Business,” Ronan said, nodding at Nita. “She’s on errantry.”

“I greet you, ma’am,” Nita said, as she would have said to an American Senior she was meeting for the first time.

The lady blinked at her. “Are you on active status?”

“Yes, I am. At least the manual says so.”

“Then you’d better come in and have a cup of tea, and tell me what it’s all about.”

Nita rolled her eyes slightly at the prospect of yet another cup of tea, and resigned herself to the inevitable.

***

They were made comfortable in the sitting room, and tea was brought out, and Mrs. Smyth poured it out formally for them, and gave them cookies and sandwiches, and cakes, and encouraged them to eat more of them before she would let them tell her anything about what was going on. Then Nita began to explain again, as she had to Ronan. When she mentioned Tualha, Mrs. Smyth’s eyes widened. When Nita mentioned going sideways, Mrs. Smyth’s jaw almost dropped. “My dear,” she said. “I hope you understand that you must not do that again.”

“Ma’am, I didn’t do it on purpose the first time. Or the third. The only time I did it on purpose was when I looked at Sugarloaf. I won’t do it again.”

“I wonder...” Mrs. Smyth said. “Well. Something’s certainly in the wind. We’re coming up on Lughnasád; I’d be surprised if it didn’t have something to do with that.”

Ronan bit his lip. Nita looked from one of them to the other. “I hope you’ll forgive me if I don’t know what’s going on here,” she said, “but if I’m going to be on active status...”

“No, indeed. Lughnasád is one of the four great seasonal holidays—with Beltain, Samhain, and Imbolc. It used to be the harvest festival, a long time ago: people would celebrate the first crops coming in. And it also celebrated the turning of the heat of the summer toward the cooler weather.”

“The heat of the summer?” Nita said, mildly skeptical. So far it had only gotten up into the high seventies, though the sun had been warm enough.

Mrs. Smyth blinked at her. “Oh, you’re used to it warmer where you lived? We’re not, though. I think the drought is just about official now, isn’t it, Ronan?”

“They said they were going to start water rationing,” Ronan said.

“So,” said Mrs. Smyth. “I suppose that’s another indication as well. Anyway, Nita’s quite right; if this is allowed to continue, even the non-wizardly will start to notice it...and be endangered by it. This is, mmm, an undesirable outcome.”

Nita couldn’t help but laugh at that. “But what are you going to do about it?”

“Well, I think we’re going to have to get together and discuss the matter.”

“But if you don’t do something real fast—”

“My dear,” Mrs. Smyth said, “you come from a very...energetic...school of wizardry. I appreciate that. But we do things a little more slowly here. No, we need to call the local wizards and the Area supervisors together, and discuss what needs to be done. It’ll take a few days at least.”

Nita chafed at that. It seemed to her that a few days might be too long. But she was a stranger here, and theoretically these people knew best. “What do you think they’ll decide?” Ronan said.

Mrs. Smyth shook her head. “It’s hard to say. If we have here a rising of the old sort—a reassertion of the events associated with this holiday—then normally one would also have to reassert the events that
stopped
whatever thing it was that happened.”

“I’m sorry, but what was it that happened?” Nita said.

“The second battle of Moytura,” Ronan said. “I suppose you won’t have heard about it—”

“Actually I have,” Nita said. “A little cat told me. In considerable detail.”

“A cat told you?”

“Yeah. She said she was a bard, and—”

Mrs. Smyth looked at Nita in surprise. “I’m sorry. You mentioned this briefly, but we didn’t pursue it. How old was this cat?”

“She’s a kitten. Not very old...maybe ten weeks.” Nita told them, as well as she could remember, everything Tualha had told her.

“That is interesting,” Mrs. Smyth said. “Normally cat-bards aren’t born unless there’s about to be some change in the so-called ‘ruled’ world, the animal world—as well as the human one. —And she mentioned the Carrion-Crow, did she.”

Nita nodded. “I get a feeling that’s not good?”

Ronan made a face. “The Morrigan’s always trouble,” he said. “She turns up in the old stories, sometimes, as a war goddess. Or sometimes as three of them.”

“It’s the usual problem,” Mrs. Smyth said, “of the language not being adequate to describe the reality. The Morrigan is one of the Powers, a much diminished one… though even the lesser Powers were often mistaken for gods, in the ancient times. She has become, or made herself, the expression of change, and violence. A lot of that around here in the old days,” she said, and sighed. “And now. But she’s also the peace afterwards...if people will just let it be. ‘Carrion-crow’ she might be, but the crows are the aftermath of the battle, nature’s attempt to clean it up...not the cause of it.” Mrs. Smyth turned her teacup around. “It’s dangerous to see her...but not always bad. She shows herself as a tall dark woman, a fierce one. But she almost always smiles. She
is
Ireland, some ways: one of its personifications. Or its hauntings.”

She looked up at Ronan again. “So, the Morrigan...and the Hunt. Some very old memories are being resurrected. The foxhunt’s running must have reminded the world of an older hunt over the same ground.”

“What were those?” Nita said. “They looked like dire wolves, but they had some kind of werelight around them.”

“They were faery direwolves,” Mrs. Smyth said, “from one of the companion worlds.”

“Who was that following them?” Nita said.

Mrs. Smyth looked at her. “I see by the Knowledge,” she said, “that you’ve had a certain amount of dealing with the Other. The head of the Fomori—the Lone Power. I should say, a dangerous amount of dealings with It.”

“I don’t deal
with
It,” Nita said. “Never have.” She began to go a bit hot. “I don’t think you need to doubt which side
I’m
on. Are you saying that you think I’m attracting this trouble?”

Wizards do not tell white lies to make people feel better. Mrs. Smyth said nothing.

“Well, if I’m here for that purpose,” Nita said, “I’m here because the Powers that Be sent me. If I’m a trigger, it’s Their finger that’s on it, not the Lone One’s. It has no direct power over wizards.”

“I realize that,” Mrs. Smyth said. “Yet there have been changes in the Lone One recently, and you had something to do with those.”

“Something,” Nita said, “yes.”

Ronan looked at her, and then back at Mrs. Smyth.
“Her?”

“She was involved just now in the Song of the Twelve,” Mrs. Smyth said. Ronan looked wide-eyed. “She was also involved in—Well, never mind. It’s a distinguished start: if you and your partner survive, of course. Wizardly talent is usually tested to destruction. Your sister,” Mrs. Smyth said; “where is she now? Did she come with you?”

“No, she’s back in New York.”

“Pity,” Mrs. Smyth said. “At any rate, I advise you to keep your use of wizardry to the minimum needed. Ronan, you’ll want to speak to your friends among the locals, especially the young ones. If anyone finds themselves going sideways, tell them not to meddle.”

“What kind of reenactment were you thinking of doing?” Nita said.

“Well, my dear,” Mrs. Smyth said. “We have a problem. If there’s a reenactment of Moytura to be done, we don’t have anything to do it with, even though one or two of the Treasures still exist.”

“Then how do you mean you don’t have anything to do it with?”

“Nita,” Mrs. Smyth said, “it took one of the Powers that Be a very long time to invest those four objects with strength enough to function against the Lone Power in the form It took. The legend says that anything that the Lone One in Balor’s form beheld with his eye open, burst straightway into fire and fell as ash, and poisoned the ground for leagues around, so that nothing would grow there, and men who walked that ground died.”

“Sounds nuclear,” Nita said.

“So it might have been,” Mrs. Smyth said. “The Lone One has never minded using natural phenomena for Its own ends. But Its power was so terrible that only an army of all the wizards in Ireland—for that’s what the druids were—could even think about going up against him; and without the Treasures to protect them, they all would have been destroyed. The Cup, known as the Cauldron of Rebirth, raised up their fallen. The Sword, Fragarach the Answerer, held off Balor’s creatures. And the Stone of Destiny kept the ground of Ireland whole and rooted when Balor would have dragged it off its foundations and overturned the whole island into the deep. All their power together, and all the wizards’, was
just
enough to buy the time for the Spear of Lugh to pierce Balor’s fire and quench it at last.”