«Not till I know more. Haven’t you noticed I’ve been getting an over-charge — first that stroke of lightning and then the wine fountain? There’s something in this continuum that seems to reverse my kind of magic.»
She laughed a little. «If that’s the law, why there’s an end. You have but to summon Pete and make a magic that would call for us to stay here, then hey, presto!we are returned.»
«I don’t dare take the chance, darling. It might work and it might not — and even if it did, you’d be apt to wind up inOhio with that geas still on you, and we really would be in trouble. We do take our characteristics along with us when we make the jump. And anyway, I don’t know how to get back toOhio yet.»
«What’s to be done, then?» the girl said. «For surely you have a plan, as always.»
«I think the only thing we can do is take up Cathbadh’s scheme and go see this Ollgaeth. At least, he ought to be able to get rid of that geas.»
All the same, Shea had to sleep on the floor.
V
Harold Shea, Belphoebe, and Pete Brodsky rode steadily at a walk across the central plain of Ireland, the Sheas on horses, Brodsky on a mule which he sat with some discomfort, leading a second mule carrying the provisions and equipment that Cuchulainn had pressed on them. Their accouterments included serviceable broadswords at the hips of Shea and Brodsky and a neat dagger at Belphebe’s belt. Her request for a bow had brought forth only miserable sticks that pulled no farther than the breast and were quite useless beyond a range of fifty yards, and these she had refused.
All the first day they climbed slowly into the uplands of Monaghan. They followed the winding course of the Erne for some miles and splashed across it at a ford, then struck the boglands of western Cavan. Sometimes there was a road ofsorts, sometimes they plodded across grassy moors, following the vague and verbose directions of peasants.
As they skirted patches of forest, deer started and ran before them, and once a tongue-lolling wolf trotted paralled to their track for a while before abandoning the game.