A Wizard Abroad

6. Baile atha Cliath / Dublin

The next morning, when Nita came into the kitchen, Aunt Annie was sitting at the kitchen table with a cordless phone and a cup of tea, going through the Yellow Pages. She looked up and said, "Want to go into town?"

"Bray?"

"No, Dublin. ."

The phone rang again. It had been doing that all morning: Nita had been able to hear it even out in the caravan. Aunt Annie sighed and picked it up. Nita went off to get herself a cup of tea. After a while Aunt Annie hung up and looked over at Nita. "We'll be meeting at a pub in town tonight," she said, starting to dial another number. "This should be fun for you; you haven't been in a pub yet."

Nita blinked at that. "Am I allowed?"

"Oh, yes, it's not like bars in the States." She started dialing another number. "You can't drink, of course, but you can bein a pub all right, as long as you're over a certain age and it's earlyish." Aunt Annie chuckled, then, and said to the phone, "Doris? Anne. Johnny says tonight at nine, in the Long Hall. Will you call Shaun and Mairead? Right. Yes, we are. Right. Bye." "How are we going in?" Nita said. "Driving?" "No, we'll take the train in," Aunt Annie said.

"Doris will give us a ride back, we're more or less on her way. Have your breakfast and we'll go. We can slouch around and do tourist things." Aunt Annie smiled at her. "I think I owe you that much, after the other night."

Nita grinned back and went to get her jacket.

It turned out that she didn't need it. It was another hot day, up in the eighties now. They drove into Greystones to catch the shuttle train to Bray the line was only electrified that far out, as yetand stood on the platform, looking out towards Greystones' south beach. Dogs ran and barked, and there were even a few people in the water — which astonished Nita, since it was some of the coldest water she had ever tried to swim in and bounced out of with her teeth chattering. Most of the people were out in the sun on the sand, turning very pink.

Nita looked towards the big orange-and-black diesel train that was pulling in.

"Take one of the right-hand seats," Aunt Annie said. "You'll get a better view of the water as we go in."

Nita did. The train pulled out, and Nita looked out at the north beach as they passed it; more sun- bathers, someone riding a horse at the gallop.

"Aunt Annie," she said, "you know something. Why didn't I see your name when I went through the manual and looked in the wizards' directory?"

"Confidentiality," her aunt said. "I wasn't "out" to you yet. The manual senses such things." She looked at Nita thoughtfully. "I suppose I really should have anticipated it," she said. "My kids came out nonwizardly, after all. But anyway, I was looking at the manual this morning. You've been busy."

"You gotthat in one," Nita said.

Aunt Annie smiled. "Not unusual. Things quieten down, though, after you get to be my age. I remember when I got mine: I had about three years when I hardly had a moment to myself. Then things got calm when I went off to college." "Did you have a partner?"

The train went abruptly darkish, lit only by the feeble ceiling lights, as it passed into the tunnel bored through Bray Head. "I did for a while," she said. "But she and I parted company eventually. It happens," she said, at Nita's shocked look. "You grow apart. or one partner finds something more important than the magic. or you start disagreeing about how to work." Nita shook her head, upset. She couldn't imagine not agreeing with Kit on a plan or course of action within a matter of seconds; and indeed, there had been times when if they hadn't been able to agree that fast, they would have been dead. "Do you still talk?" she said. "Oh, yes, pretty often. We're friendly enough."

The train burst out into the light again, revealing the beach on the other side of Bray Head, and the iron-railed promenade with its hotels and arcade, and the new half-built aquarium. "Don't worry," said Aunt Annie. "I think maybe you and your partner have been through enough trouble together that you'll be working together for a long while."

They pulled into Bray station and changed to the sleek little bright-green Dublin Area Rapid Transit train waiting at the next platform over. About half an hour later, the train slid into Tara Street station. Nita and her aunt got out and made their way through the orange-tiled exterior, beneath the skylights and down the escalator, and went out into the streets of Dublin. It was a fascinating combination of old and new, and Nita was rather bewildered by it all at first. There were tiny cobbled alleys that seemed not to have been repaved in a hundred years, or maybe two, right next to broad streets roaring with traffic and alive with lights and people shopping; old, old churches caught in the middle of shiny new shopping centres; shouting, cheerfully messy street markets in the shadow of big department stores.

"It takes a little while to get used to," her aunt said, as they crossed the street south of O'Connell Bridge and headed down past the stately fronts of Trinity College and the Bank of Ireland, on the way to the pedestrian precinct at Grafton Street. "If you come from one of the big cities in the States, Dublin can seem very small at first, sort of caught in a time warp; slower, more casual about things. Later. " She chuckled. "You wonder how you ever put up with a place where people are in such a hurry all the time. And you find that life can go along very well without all the "conveniences" you were used to once." She smiled. "It's the people here: they make the difference."

They turned left at the corner of Grafton Street, heading for the National Museum. It was by the Dail, the Irish houses of parliament, and Aunt Annie clearly knew her way around it. As soon as they had paid their admission fees, she led Nita down a flight of stairs, past a sign that said TREASURY. "There are a lot of gorgeous things here," she said, "but this is probably the most famous of them."

They stopped in front of a glass case that was thicker than any of the others scattered around the big room. No-one else was nearby. Nita moved close to look at it. The cup inside it sat on a big lucite pedestal; a bright spotlight was trained on it from above. Nita thought this might have been unnecessary. since she suspected it might be able to glow by itself.

"The Ardagh Chalice," her aunt said softly. Nita looked at it; not just with the eyes, but with a wizard's senses, and looked as hard as she could. The Chalice was more than half a meter high and a third of a meter wide, mostly gold, with elaborate and beautiful spiral patterns worked on its sides in silver, and ornamented with rubies and topazes. The jewels were lovely enough, but Nita had more of an eye for the ornamentation on the sides. They were spell diagrams in a very antique style, and though they looked simple, that was merely an illusion created by the extreme skill of whoever had designed them. They were subtle, and potentially of huge power; but they were quiescent, emptied of their virtue. "It's not really very old," Nita said.

"The physical aspects of it, no." Her aunt looked at it. "This chalice was made in the second century."

"Not the Holy Grail, then," Nita said.

Her aunt smiled slightly. "No. And yes. The Treasures might have been made by gods, but they were made of mortal matter. and matter passes. The problem is, of course, that the power put in them — the soul of the Treasures, more or less — is as immortal as the powers that made them. The soul passes on when the envelope wears out — "reincarnates", finds another "body" that's suitable. This cup was a vessel, for a while. But not any more, I think. Do you feel anything different?" Nita looked at the Cup again, longer this time. Finally she said,"'I don't know. It's as if. if you knew how to shake this awake, this "soul", you might do it. But you'd have to know how." Her aunt nodded. "We may have to work out how. Come and see the Sword." They went up a flight of stairs, through another room or two. The room they finally stopped in was full of ancient gold work: tores and stickpins and necklaces and bracelets of gold, beads and bangles, carved plates of gold linked together. "It used to be mined in Wicklow," her aunt said, "not too far from us. But by the fourth century most of it was gone. Anyway, this is worth more than any of them, if you ask me."

The central case held the Sword. It lay there very plain against red velvet; long and lean, shaped like a willow leaf, with no gold or jewel anywhere about it — a plain bronze blade, notched, scraped, somewhat withered-looking. Nita bent close to it, feeling with all of her. "Now thisis old," she said. "Older than the Cup," said Aunt Annie. "Bronze Age, at least."

Nita nodded. There was a faint feeling of purpose still in the old bronze, like a memory impressed on matter by a mind now gone: like the ghosts in Aunt Annie's back garden, a tape still replaying and very faintly to be heard. But there was no vigour in it, only recollection: wistful, mournful, feeble. "It might have been the real Sword once," Nita said. "But it's almost forgotten. It's not nearly as much there as the Cup. I don't think you could wake this one up." Her aunt nodded. "That's what I think too."

Nita shook her head. "And there's nothing else in the building that's even this much awake." She sighed. "So we have the Stone, and the Cup, and something thatmight work for the Sword, but probably won't. and no Spear."

"That about sums it up, yes. The wizards around the country will be looking for other swords that might work better. But the spirit of the Spear Luin seems to have passed completely. Either no "body" was strong enough to contain it. or it was just too powerful to be contained any more in a universe that had no suitable envelope for it, and it passed out entirely."

Nita rather thought that it had passed. Spears were symbols of the element of Fire, and fire was the most uncontainable of the five, next to plasma. Nita began to worry. Three of the Treasures would not be enough, to judge from what the Sidhe had hinted. But she had no ideas about what to do. She looked at her aunt. "Are we done here?" "I think so. Want to go over to Grafton Street?" "Sounds good."

They spent the afternoon doing, as her aunt had promised, touristy things; touring the shopping centre at St Stephen's Green, having tea in the Shelbourne Hotel, listening to the street performers playing on pipes and banjos and occasionally spoons. They walked over O'Connell bridge to look up the Liffey at the Halfpenny Bridge's graceful curve, one of the trademarks of Dublin; and browsed through the shops on the south side of the Halfpenny Bridge, Dublin's so-called 'Left Bank'. They sat in O'Connell Street by the statue of the goddess of the River Liffey, relaxing in her stone bath, and were grateful for the spray, for it was hotter that afternoon than it had been all summer. Mothers put their little children in the fountain, and they splashed happily, and the patrolling Gardai smiled and looked the other way.

About seven o'clock, Aunt Annie said, "Dinner?" Nita agreed happily, and they went off to have a pizza in a little restaurant in South Anne Street. Then they went off westward in the city, to the pub where that night's meeting would take place. The Long Hall was a handsome place, fronted in beveled glass and stained glass, all arranged so that people standing inside, in front of the windows, couldn't quite be seen from outside. Above, the glass was clear, showing the beautiful carved and painted plaster ceiling, and the gas fixtures still hanging from it. Some of them had been converted for electricity, some hadn't. They walked in, and Nita gazed admiringly at the huge polished hardwood bar, and the antique mirrors, reaching three meters up from the back of the bar to the ceiling, on the wall behind it. Carved wood and beveled glass and brass railings were everywhere. So were many cheerful people, drinking, but talking more. The place was filled with the subdued roar of a hundred conversations.

"We're in the back room. Hi, Jack," said Aunt Annie to one of the men behind the bar. He was busy filling a glass with the creamy-dark Guinness from one of the arched taps at the bar: he nodded to Aunt Annie, but didn't say anything.

"Jack Mourne," Aunt Annie said to Nita, as they made their way through a low carved archway into the 'back room'. "He owns the place." "Does he know what's going on?"

"I should think he does: he's one of the Area Advisory-Specialists. What would you like to drink, hon?"

"Can I have a Coke?" "No problem. Be right back."

Nita found herself a seat at a small round wooden table with ornate iron legs, and waited, fidgeting a little self-consciously. She had never been in a bar by herself, though Aunt Annie seemed to think that this wasn't quite the same.She might have a point, though, Nita thought. Here, the drinking looked almost incidental. People were shouting at each other across the back room, chatting, arguing, laughing, pointing, shouting.

"Here you go," Aunt Annie said, sitting down next to Nita with a relieved look. She handed Nita her drink and sipped briefly at her pint. "Perfect," she said. "Jack pulls the best pint in this part of town."

"Aunt Annie," Nita said, "if this is a wizards' meeting — how are you going to keep the ordinary people out of here?"

"Spell on the back-room archway," Aunt Annie said. "Look closely at the carving when you go to the rear Ladies. Non wizards hit it and decide they don't feel like going back there after all — on normal nights, Jack just takes the spell finial off: that little carved flower in the lower right-hand corner. And no-one can hear us through all this din anyway; but there are voice-scramblers on. Jack makes anything wizardly come out sounding like an argument about football. Nice scrambler — took him a while to write. But he's one of our best writers. If you need a custom spell in this part of the world, it's Jack you come to, or Marie Shaughnessy down in Arklow, or Charles and Alison Redpath up north in Aghalee."

'Thenall these people back here are wizards?" Nita said, looking around her in astonishment. She had never been in such a large gathering of her own before.

"Oh yes. All that could come at short notice, of course. Relax for a while; we can't do anything until Doris and Johnny get here."

So Nita drank her Coke and listened to the accents around her, and chatted every now and then with the people who came up to her aunt to say hello. If she had been mired in Irish accents before, the situation got much worse now: she heard about twenty more from as many different people, no two of them the same, and some very odd indeed. In addition, there were a lot of people from Northern Ireland down for this meeting, and their accents astounded her; they sounded more like New Yorkers than anything else, though more nasal. They all seemed very open, friendly people, which to Nita seemed a little strange at first: seeing what most Americans saw of Northern Ireland from the news, she half-expected them to be furtive and depressed, as if afraid a bomb might suddenly go off under them. But none of them were. One man in his thirties, a jocund young man in a leather jacket covered with patches, told Nita he had never seen a bomb or been within fifty miles of one, nor had anyone he knew. The peaceful small-town life he described seemed hard to reconcile with all the newsfilm Nita had seen of taped-off, shattered buildings, and the people with ski masks and rifles.

There was a slight commotion at the door as Mrs Smyth came in under the archway. "Hey Doris, how they cuttin'?" someone shouted. Doris Smyth looked at the speaker and said something clear and carrying in Irish that provokeda roar of approval from the listeners, and caused the person who had asked the question to be genially pummelled.

Behind Mrs Smyth, someone else came in; a short man in a long overcoat and tartan scarf. At the sight of him, many of the wizards in the room called, "Johnny!" or "Shaun!", and there was a general stir of approval through the back room. Nita bent over to her Aunt Annie and said, "Who's that?"

"Shaun O'Driscoll," said Aunt Annie. "Or Johnny, some people call him. He's the Area Senior for Western Europe." 'Wow," Nita said, never having seen so high-ranked a wizard before. Area Seniors answered only to Regional Seniors, and Regionals to the three Seniors for Earth. When she thought of the Senior in charge of all wizards from Shannon to Moscow and Oslo to Gibraltar, she had imagined someone more imposing — not a little man with thinning hair and (as he took his coat off) a tracksuit. He didn't look very old. He had a fierce-looking moustache, and his eyes were very cool; he looked around the room and returned all the greetings without ever quite smiling. It was the kind of effect, Nita thought, that made you want totry to get him to smile. It would be worth seeing when it happened, for his face was otherwise a nest of laugh-lines.

Doris and Johnny were got pints by another of the gathered wizards, and people started settling down, leaning against the walls when they ran out of seats. Johnny didn't sit, but stood in the middle of the room, waiting for them to settle, like a teacher with a big unruly class. "Thanks for coming," he said. "I know this was short notice, but we've had some serious problems crop up in the past few days, and there was no way to hope to manage them except by requiring an intervention meeting."

There were some heads turned at this, and some murmuring under breath among the assembled wizards. "I know that wasn't the way it was announced," Johnny said, "but we turn out to have less time for this discussion than was originally thought when we organized this meeting via the phone tree last night and this morning. We have had serious transitional leakages all over the island, with some sympathetic transitionals on mainland Europe; and this condition has to be contained as quickly as possible. There have been echoes and ripples as far away as China and Peru."

More stirring at this. "Anyway," Johnny said, "I want to thank those of you who were in the middle of other assignments and found them changed, or who were off active and were suddenly reactivated. The Powers that Be may not thank you until later, but I like to do it early. I also want to welcome those of you who have come unusual distances, including Nita Callahan. Stand up, Nita."

Nita flushed fiercely, and hoped it didn't show too much in the pub's dimmish light. She stood up. "Nita has been reassigned here temporarily courtesy of North American Regional. She has blood affinities with this area, and was recently involved in the New York incursion and the Hudson Canyon intervention in June, and more recently, with the Reconfiguration; Dairine Callahan is her sister."

There was a stir at this. Nita nodded, smiled a little uncertainly at Johnny; he gestured her to sit down. "We're glad to have you," he said. "Bear with us: we do things a little differently here than you're used to, and if you think of anything that seems useful during this discussion, don't hesitate to sing out."

Huh, Nita thought, sitting down. And, Reassigned courtesy of North American Regional? Who's that? Not Tom and Carl. Someone — or something — further in, or higher up? But she put the thought aside for the moment.

"Over the past four nights we've had "sideways" leakages in twenty-three out of twenty-six counties," Johnny said, "and how Monaghan, Wexford and Westmeath were missed is a mystery to us, especially since Westmeath contains the Hill of Tara. In the twenty-three counties, about ninety wizards have experienced timeslides, live remembrances of the so-called "mythological" period, "solid" remembrances that returned interactions, viewings of extradimensional objects without doing the wizardries required for such viewings, and even physical intervention by nonphysical entities or creatures not native to this reality, including physical attacks on occasion. Some of these incursions have required timeline patching to keep innocent bystanders from thinking they'd lost their minds — or actually losing them. One of us met Cuchullain hi warp spasm, which is enough to turn anyone's hair: that it happened in the middle of the big shopping centre in Tallaght didn't help, either. The Brown Bull of Cooley was seen crossing the dual carriageway north of Shannon; it wandered down on to the larnrod Eireann tracks and caused a derailment, though fortunately neither the train drivers nor any of the other people on the train saw it, and by great good luck no- one was hurt. Possibly most to the point, there was an earthquake in the fields north of Naas, at the old site of the Battle of Moytura."

More stirring over this, and some anxious looks. Johnny made quiet-down gestures. "It was only about three point one on the Richter scale, and nothing came of it but some broken china. The Lia Fail is still managing to hold this island in one place and one piece, no matter what the politicians say. But how long it can hold matters so stable is a good question. Much of its old virtue is gone, as you all know. Another such attack will certainly be more effective, on both natural and supernatural levels."

"Johnny," said one of the wizards sitting back by the wall, a handsome little dark-haired woman, "these transitional leakages — are we sure that something else isn't causing them? Something European?"

Johnny shook his head. "I'd prefer to blame Local Europe myself, Morgan, but we're out of luck on this one. All indications point back at us." "Then what are we going to do?"

Johnny looked grim. "We're going to have to recreate Moytura, I think. Unless someone else can think of something better."

Half the room started muttering to the other half. Johnny waited for it to settle down. "Recreate Moytura withwhat?" said the young wizard Nita had been talking to, the young guy in the leather jacket.

"Good question," Johnny said. 'Two of the Four Treasures are still with us. The Stone is awake again, re-ensouled. The "souls" of the other three Treasures are still in the world, or the Worlds, somewhere. We are going to have to recall them to suitable physical envelopes, and then take them out into battle against the Lone Power. We know that with them, we have a chance. Without them… " He shrugged.

Relative silence fell for a few moments. "Who does the "going into battle" bit?" said another voice from somewhere against the back wall.

"Lacking one of the Powers that Be, probably Doris and I to lead," Johnny said. "And all of you we can get together in one place."

"Where are you going to get "suitable envelopes", then?" said another voice.

"In most cases, we'll try to use the old ones," Doris said. "They've worked before: with a little coercion, they may work again. The Lia Fail is awake; the Ardagh Chalice, we think we can reawaken."

"Don't you think the museum will miss it?" said the young wizard in the leather jacket. Doris smiled slightly. "Not if a wizardry that looks and weighs exactly the same is sitting in the museum case," she said. "If the Taoiseach can borrow the Chalice to show it off at a politicians' dinner party, I think we might take the loan of it for a night or so and not feel too guilty afterwards. But it all depends on the circumstances, and the power of the ritual used to call the Cup's soul back. Which is what we're going to have to work on. It's not just warriors we're going to need to make this work, but poets. Where are Charles and Alison?" "Stuck in traffic," said someone from the bar side of the room.

Johnny grinned. "Ah, the real world. But at least Liam and Mairead and Nigel are here. I'll be wanting to talk to you three afterwards. The rest of you: I want you all to talk to your Area Supervisors about your schedules for the next two weeks. Any one of you may have to drop everything at a moment's notice and lend a hand. Also, given the seriousness of the situation, travel restrictions on teleportation are off for the duration. Just use your judgement and be very careful about the overlays!"

More chatter erupted. In the middle of it, someone said, "But Johnny, wait a tick! Isn't this going to make things worse?"

Johnny waved for relative quiet. The room settled a little. "How do you mean?" he said. "If you're going to call back the souls of the Treasures — if you can," said the speaker, a tall dignified-looking wizard with a mighty moustache, "isn't the land going to get even more awake and aware than it already is? I mean, the Treasuresare the land, in some ways. At least that's what we were always told: four of the five Elements, in their most personified forms. Air and Water and Earth and Fire are going to wake up more than ever, until the situation is resolved and everything is laid to rest again."

Johnny nodded slowly. The room went quiet as people looked at his expression. "Yes," he said after a while. "It's going to getmuch worse. Which makes it to our advantage to get the situation resolved, as you say, as quickly as possible. Otherwise first Ireland, then the rest of Europe, and eventually all the other continents, are going to be overrun with the past happening again, and the dead walking, and all kinds of other inconveniences. If we can't stop this, then the barriers between present and past will break down everywhere, and the physical world will be progressively overrun by the nonphysical: all the myths, and truths that became myth, all the dreams and nightmares, all the more central and more peripheral realities, will superimpose themselves on this one. inextricably."

"For how long?" said a small voice out of the hush.

"If that level of imposition ever takes hold fully," Johnny said, "I don't see how the process could ever be reversed."

Silence, broken only by the noise of cheerful conversation in the frontmost, nonwizardly part of the pub. "Right," said the man with the moustache again. "But in the meantime, while you Seniors are intervening, Ireland's dreams and nightmares are going to keep coming true — even more than they have been — and the past will keep happening, and the dead and the undead and the immortal will walk. And 'other inconveniences'." "That's exactly right, Scott," Johnny said.

There was another long silence. Then a voice said, "I need another pint."

A chorus of other voices went up in agreement. Nita noticed that her Coke was long gone, and she was very thirsty.

"I'll get you another," Aunt Annie said, and got up. "Anybody else? Katherine? Nuala? Orla? Hi, Jim. ." She moved off.

Nita sat there feeling somewhat shaky. "Hey, you look like a sheet," said a voice by her. She looked up: it was Ronan.

She smiled faintly at him as he sat down, and did her best to control herself. He looked, if possible, even more attractive than he had previously. Black leather suited him, and so did this subdued lighting. "I feel like one," she said. "How about you?"

"Sounds pretty bad," Ronan said. But he looked and sounded remarkably unconcerned. "Don't worry about auld Shaun there, he just likes to sound like doom and destruction all the time. Comes of being Area Senior; they all sound like the world's ending half the time."

Probably because it is, Nita thought. It was only the sheer number of wizards in the world, and the sacrifices they kept making from week to week, that kept civilization on an even keel; or so it seemed to her. "Look, can I ask you something?" "Sure."

"I'm just curious. Was your Ordeal bad?"

He looked peculiarly at her. "Almost got me killed, if that's what you mean." "So will crossing O'Connell Street," Nita said. "Never mind. I don't know what I mean. I mean, it seemed to me that my Ordeal was pretty awful. I was just curious whether I was an exception, or whether everyone had that bad a time. My sister did, but she's not exactly a normal case. And I haven't had that many chances to discuss it with other wizards."

Ronan looked thoughtful and took a sip of his orange-and-lemon drink. "I got timeslid," he said. Nita shrugged slightly. "We bought a timeslide from our local Seniors for ours," she said. "I didn't buy mine," Ronan said. "Igot it." He took another drink. "One day I took the Oath — the next I was walking up Vevay Road. You know, at the top of Bray by the Quinnsworth? Well, it stopped being Vevay Road. It was just a dirt track with some thatched huts down near the school, at the bottom of the hill, and it was raining cats and dogs. Thunder and lightning." Nita shivered: she disliked being caught out in the rain. "What did you do?" "I went up Bray Head," Ronan said, bursting out in a laugh that sounded as if, in retrospect, he didn't believe his own craziness. "I wanted to see where everything was, you know? It was a mess. You know how the sea gets during a storm. Well, maybe you don't…"

"I live on Long Island," Nita said. "We get high-force gales on the Great South Bay, when the hurricanes come through."

"Well, this storm was driving inland," Ronan said, "between the rain and the spray, there was almost no difference between being in the water and on the land. Well, I saw the boat come in, straight for the rocks. Little thing." He saw Nita's blank look and said, "The Romans." That made her raise her eyebrows. She had seen the Roman coins that had been found at the base of Bray Head: she had seen a reconstruction of the archaeological site, with their bones. "They were going to try to set up a colony, weren't they?" she said.

Ronan nodded. Nita watched him. She remembered that afternoon in the chicken place in Bray, and the vehemence of Ronan's feelings about colonizers of any kind. But at the moment, Ronan just sat, and flushed a little, and looked away from Nita as he said, "Well, they were going to get killed, weren't they? Them and their little boat and all, in that sea. One of the lifeboats couldn't have stood it, let alone that little smack. So I 'took the sea in'."

Nita stared at him. What Ronan was describing was temporary but complete control of a pure element: using the wizardly Speech to describe every molecule of an object or area so completely and accurately that for a short period youbecame it. Control was barely the word for it. It became as much part of you as your body. for a while. Then came the backlash: for human beings are not really meant to have more than one physical body at a time. You might find the association impossible to break — and have to spend the rest of your life coexisting with what you had described: which would surely drive you insane. Or the strain of the wizardry itself might kill you. An adult wizard, full of experience, might have done such a wizardry once. and no other wizardry, ever again. A young wizard, on Ordeal, or soon after, would have done it and lived. maybe. It was a good question whether his head would ever be entirely right again. But here sat Ronan, still blushing slightly, and said, "It wasn't much of it I had to take, just the sea around Bray Head. They jumped ship and made it ashore. I couldn't save the boat, it went all to pieces when I lost control. I must have passed out up there — the slide came undone after a while, and some tourists doing the cliff walk from the Greystones side found me slipping down the rocks on the seaward side, and they called the Guards. I spent a few days in the hospital." He shrugged.

"Hypothermia," he added, and laughed. "Too true — but they never knew from what." "Wow," Nita said under her breath, almost lost in admiration of him. She was starting to blush, but she ignored it as she looked at him again. "But you knew," she said. "That there was just the one boat. The Romans never made it here except for those people. Britain was giving them too much trouble. You could have let them go under."

If there was a little challenge in her voice, Ronan didn't rise to it. "Could I?" he said. "I knew it was a timeslide. Would I have been changing history? Did I have any choice?" "Too right you did," Nita said, again under her breath.

Ronan heard it. He looked up from under his brows at her, that familiar scowl. "That's as may be. What could I do? Seeing them waving their arms and trying to get off, and knowing they would drown if they tried it, in that water." He looked away again, as if slightly embarrassed. "Sure nothing came of it anyway. They were marooned there; no one ever came after them. They settled down there, and married the people there, some of them. I'm related to them, for all I know." Nita smiled slightly. "You didn't know that no-one would come after them, though. Suppose you had changed history? Suppose you had just saved the lives of the people who were going to report back to Rome and bring in the conquerors?" Ronan drank his drink and looked away.

Nita reached out and patted his arm — a casual enough gesture, she did it with Kit all the time, but as she did it to Ronan, the shock of it, the closeness of actually touching him, ran up the arm like fire and half wilted her. "Never mind," she said, trying to get some control back. The point of each wizard's Ordeal was always a private thing: that Ronan should share this much of it with her was more than he had to do. "You want another of those?" she said. "What did you call it?" "A St Clements. 'Oranges and lemons, say the bells of St Clements. .' " He burst out laughing at Nita's uncomprehending look. "Don't know that one, I take it. Not in the Top Forty." Nita knew when she was being made fun of, and knew when not to take it seriously: her heart warmed that he liked her enough to do it at all. "Eat turf and die, Paddy," she said, and got up, feeling in her pocket for change.

She got Ronan's drink, and when she got back, found her own waiting for her, and rather to her surprise, Johnny sitting in her seat and chatting with Ronan. "Here," Johnny said, and got up; "I was holding it for you. Listen, dear, I have a message for you. Tom and Carl send their best." "You know them? How are they?" Nita said, sitting right up. 'Are they OK? It was them, then!" "They're fine. I consult with them fairly often, especially Tom: he's an Advisory to the North American Regional for compositional spelling. But "Them"?" "I mean, it was them who sent me on assignment. Wasn't it?"

Johnny smiled very slightly, and all his wrinkles deepened. "Ahh. no. Not even a Regional Senior, or one of the Planetaries, can actually put a wizard on active assignment. No matter how certain we are that the world's ending." He shot a humorous look at Ronan, and Ronan looked like he was tempted to try to pull his head down inside his black turtle-neck. "No, those decisions are made higher up. I might have mentioned North American Regional, but there are more than humans involved in that. Never mind for now. I take it Doris had a little talk with you about our local problems."

Nita opened her mouth to answer, and was startled by a sudden shout from up front. "LAST ORDERS NOW! TEN MINUTES, GENTLEMEN. LAST ORDERS, PLEASE. .!" Johnny laughed at the look her face must have been wearing. "All the pubs have to close at eleven- thirty this time of year," he said. "Anyway, Doris says she told you the ropes." "If you mean she told me not even to sneeze in the Speech," Nita said, "yes."

Johnny laughed under his breath. "It must seem hard. Believe me, it's for the best. and there'll be enough magic around here for anybody, come the end of the month, if things keep going the way they've been going. We'll be in touch with you, of course." "Johnny," Ronan said suddenly,"this may be out of turn. .' "Knowing you, my lad," Johnny said, "probably."

"Johnny. .Look, it's nothing personal," Ronan said, glancing at Nita and blushing furiously again. "But why can't this be handled locally? Why do we need blow-ins?"

Nita went red too, with annoyance. She thought of about six different cutting things to say, and kept her mouth shut on them all.

But Johnny simply looked mildly surprised. "Self-sufficiency, is it?" he said. "Have you fallen for that one? It's an illusion, Ro. Why do we "need" the help of the Tuatha? Why do we need the Powers that Be? Or even the Lone Power? — forthat One has a function in the universe, too. You know that. The whole lot of us are interconnected, and there's no way we can get away from it, or any one group of us solve even the littlest problementirely by ourselves. This matteris being handled locally. It's being handled onEarth. Next thing, you're going to ask me what the Northern Irish wizards are doing here." His eyebrows went up and down. "You've been listening to too many politicians. Better apologize to her before she turns you into a soggy beermat," Johnny said, patted Nita on the shoulder, and moved on.

"TIME NOW, GENTLEMEN, TIME NOW. TAKE THOSE GLASSES AWAY, CHARLIE!" Jack was shouting from the front of the pub. Nita did her best to keep her face still. She had gone quite hot and tight inside, and was holding on to herself hard; controlling her emotions had never been her strongest suit, and she had no desire to say something stupid here, where she was a guest and would make her aunt look bad.Besides, I'm a wizard among wizards. It should take more than some provincial punk with a chip on his shoulder to get me annoyed.. / "Look, Nita," Ronan said. He sounded slightly desperate. "I didn't. ."

"Of course you didn't," she said. And shut herself up: and then lost it again. "Look," she said, her voice low but fierce,"do you think this wasmy idea? Do you think I wouldn't rather be back home with my partner taking care of business, than messing around in this stupid little place where you can't even twitch without permission? Do you think I don't have better things to do? "Blow-ins"," she said bitterly, and picked up her drink and began to drink the whole thing at once, to shut herself up: at least she couldn't say what she was thinking while she was drinking something. It was the wrong drink. In the middle of the second swallow she spluttered in shock at the alcoholic black-bread taste of it, and from beside her Aunt Annie said, "You're going to get us thrown out of here, you know that? Here, have a tissue."

Nita gasped and choked and took the tissue gratefully, and began mopping Guinness off herself and the table. Ronan was leaning against the wall and laughing, soundlessly, but so hard that he was turning twice as red as he had been. Furious, Nita felt around in her head for the small simple spell that would dump his own drink in his lap: then remembered where she was, and in rapid succession first shoved the sodden tissue down the neck of his turtleneck, and while Ronan was fumbling for it, knocked his glass sideways with her elbow. "Oops," she said in utter innocence, as it went all over him.

"COME ON NOW, GENTS, TIME NOW, TIME. HAVE YOU NO HOMES TO GO TO? YOU TOO, LADIES, NO OFFENSE MEANT," Jack shouted from the front of the pub. The conversations were getting louder, if anything. Ronan sat and stared at his lap, and just as he lifted his eyes to Nita's, Johnny went by and patted him on the shoulder, and said, "Itold you she was going to turn you into a soggy beermat. No-one ever listens to me. "Night, Annie, give me a call in the morning. " And he was away.

"I guess we'd better go," Aunt Annie said, as the lights began flashing on and off. "Doris is waiting. Ronan, do you need a lift home?"

"No thank you, Mrs Callahan," he said, "I came in with Barry." "Right, then. Come on, Nita, let's call it a night." Nita got up, and looked down at Ronan. He was gazing back at her with an expression she couldn't interpret. Not anger, not amusement — what was it? She refused to waste her time trying to work it out. "Keep your pants dry," she said to him, trying desperately to keep her face straight, and losing it again. Gratefully she followed Mrs Smyth and Aunt Annie out, grinning to herself. Blow-ins. Huh.

She grinned all the way home. and wasn't quite sure why.