A Sudden Wild Magic Read online

  But in the course of his attempts to tag her, he discovered that she had young. This was excellent. None of the young knew very much, but they served to inform him when the female was moving, and if there seemed to be any unusual excitement brewing. They had been most useful in charting the response to Arth’s last big test. The female had indeed been distracted by the small act of war Arth had organized, but when the noxious fumes had started drifting in from the continent—where the response of mageworkers had been surprisingly patchy—the young had told him that their dam had suddenly become alert and raced off to cooperate with the old female. The old one was known to them as “Auntie Gladys.” They seemed to like her. They were disposed to like the High Head too. They thought of him as “Earth Angel,” and they treated him with trust.

  Then their usefulness had ended abruptly. The High Head had moved in on them as usual one day on a routine check. And found himself confronted with a sudden wild magic, passionate and strong. It was partly taught—enough to be conscious of itself—but hardly tamed, and it flung fluctuations all over the Wheel with a force that a full-blooded gualdian could hardly have equaled.

  “How dare you!” it blazed at him. “Get out of these children’s souls this instant!”

  The High Head had been forced to retreat before the power of its anger, vainly protesting that he had always treated these young with kindness, that they liked him, knew him well, named him—

  “I don’t care what you think they think, or even what they think!” the wild magic stormed at him, and around him, and through him. “These are my sister’s children, and I’m not having you nosing around inside them! It’s unclean! And you’re not doing it ever again!”

  True to its word, the wild one had turned and thrown a rock-hard protection around those young. It was like granite. Powered by anger, that shielding formed an impenetrable twist right through every band of the Wheel. Nothing the High Head knew could have broken it. He moved out, chastened. But shortly he realized that the wild one was not wholly aware of what she had done. In her semitutored state, she imagined her warding was inadequate. She was afraid it would break. She kept her attention on it and on those young, prowling anxiously over what she could see of her handiwork, testing its links, watching for him to try to invade it.

  Laughably, she had forgotten to ward herself in the slightest. The High Head soon found that, provided he was very cautious and quiet, he could use the wild one just as he had used the young. She was a good deal more informative too, because she was to some extent in her sister’s confidence. But she was touchy. She tended to become aware of him if he tried to direct her thoughts in any way—though, so far, she had never connected his presence with “Earth Angel”—and he found it best to nudge up to her, make the most tenuous of contacts, and then hope she would think of what he wanted her to. She very often did. The hope of a High Magus of Arth was a powerful thing in itself.

  This time, as he made delicate, delicate contact, she was fortunately musing alone. There was the usual sadness. There had been a very unfortunate love affair. It was to be supposed that her present unhappy musings were about that.

  …the emptiness. That time there was nothing there—horrible—like looking down a long, long well. But there was something at the bottom. He was down there and seemed the way he should be for the first time. Once I’d seen how he should be, what he let me have was almost as horrible as the well. Like a dead thing. But she was down there with him. She did it…

  The High Head had not much idea what this was about. He waited. His subject went on to her mother next. This was an equally unhappy topic and seemed to inspire some of the wild rage he had encountered himself.

  …I could kill her sometimes. If she makes Amanda cry once more, I really might. Nasty thought. Stupid, though, two grown women cringing when the phone rings in case it’s their mother. She never ought to have had children—except she needed something to hate, and besides, we were both accidents anyway. Had Amanda in her teens when she thought life couldn’t do that to her, get her pregnant like common girls—and me late on when she thought she was too old for it to happen. But I’ll kill her if she gets at Amanda once more—for being kind to me, for God’s sake! Poor Amanda—when she’s got enough on her plate keeping this country safe…

  Ah, here it comes! thought the High Head.

  …No, it’s the whole world this time, isn’t it? Or is it the universe? I get muddled. Are there really lots of other ones? Amanda seems to take it as proved there are lots. Or do I mean the cosmos? Cosmoses? Cosmodes? Anyway, lots. It wouldn’t take me long to step over into one just to get away from the bottom of that well—but I don’t think you can do it just like that, and anyway, I don’t want to muck up their greenhouse plans. And I bet I would. Born with two left feet, that’s me—as Mother likes to point out. Anyway, they wouldn’t choose me because of Marcus, bless him! But if I could find out how I’d—

  Unfortunately, at this point she became aware of the High Head.

  —Oh, bugger! There’s that bloody demon sniffing around again! I can feel it. Out, you! Get out! OUT!

  Just as if he were a mongrel after scraps! The High Head retreated hastily. Her strength was such that his face stung with it and a vile vibration shook him from neck to coccyx. He had to sit still for a moment, recovering. But it was worth it! They knew they lived in a multiverse, though they had showed no sign of knowing that before this. As he picked his way through her ramblings, he gathered they were choosing a team—surely of those with the strongest magics—and about to take some action that must somehow involve the whole cosmos. Blowed if he could see what action, but otherworld could be relied on to take some bold, wild way—perhaps something on the lines of manipulating the tides between universes? This could well be it. Anyway, Observer Horn would soon be able to tell him. And meanwhile there were the new servicemen to talk to. Jovially he picked up his wand and his mitre and left for the exercise hall.

  * * *

  3

  « ^ »

  The two sparse rows of young men hastily came to attention as the High Head swept in, smiling, in all the awesomeness of the uniform of his office. Blue and silver glittered on him. The short cloak flared gracefully off one shoulder, jutting over the silver sword-wand, half concealing the great moon-badge on his chest. On his head, the great horned mitre raised him a kingly foot above men of mere mortal stature. Even the centaur felt this, and shifted his hooves, thinking he was looking up into a man’s face for a wonder, instead of the other way around. The High Head of Arth was a legend to all of them. Therefore they all looked carefully, trying to see the man within the legend.

  He was tall and moved with a brisk grace which carried the uniform well. They understood that grace. It came from a lifetime of the exercises they had just been put through. Most of them were still panting. The High Head looked a heavy man, but moved as if he were not. They were impressed by that and by the authority living in his face. It was a round-featured face, but not fleshy or commonplace, and seemed genial. They were impressed that he could smile, and even more impressed by the way that smile died away as he ran his eyes across them. His eyes were remarkable.

  Loving Goddess! the High Head thought. Edward didn’t tell me half of it! His eyes raced over spindly legs, narrow chests, feeble chins, at least one potbelly, a stoop, several thick, brutish faces—one with a broken nose—and a lad with glasses. The only normal one was the short, square-built young man who had to be the Pentarch of Frinjen’s son. That one wore his new blue uniform quite naturally, as if he were used to regalia, and he was the only one not panting. Quite an athlete from his build—though to judge by his shoulder-length cone of carefully styled hair and his jaunty little mustache, he tried to conceal the fact. The young man’s face, as the High Head’s eyes met his, was neutral, not quite casual. He showed nothing of the discontent Edward said he felt. But Edward seldom got men wrong. I think we may have a troublemaker here, the High Head thought. He was speaking his usual w
ords of welcome as these thoughts went through his head, and would have been very much surprised to know that the Pentarch’s son was thinking much the same about him.

  Ay, ay, I think we have a sticky one here! Tod thought. (He had a whole string of names and titles, including that of Duke of Haurbath, but he was Tod to himself and his friends.) In fact, his thought continued, our High Head looks a right swine!

  “As you know, you’ll be here for the next year, training with the cadets and the regular Brotherhood, eating with us and sharing our duties. This, of course, means sharing our rules,” said the High Head. “I know the rules have already been read to you, so I won’t bore you with them again. I would just like to impress on you that these rules are here to be kept.”

  His eyes passed on to the gualdian lad, standing gawkily beside the centaur. The boy looked like the runt of his race, fragile, white, uncertain. His new uniform stood around him like drainpipe he had got into by mistake, and chin-high though it was, it somehow revealed that this lad had none of the usual thick body hair. The High Head’s eyes moved involuntarily to the boy’s feet. Had he two left ones? Something was odd there. The boots were huge. So were the great white hands. And gualdians usually ran to thick red or chestnut hair, but this one’s hair was mousy blond, and thin with it. Perhaps the only true gualdian feature about the boy was the eyes. Here their eyes met, and the gualdian boy’s great shining eyes widened and lit with amazement as he saw that the High Head had gualdian blood too.

  The High Head hastily switched to the centaur instead. Maybe spavined was too strong a term. But the youngster was swaybacked, with the horse ribs showing. And the front legs were knock-kneed, each knee with a large callus showing where they knocked. The equine coat was a mealy gray as mousy as the gualdian’s hair, and the boy-body as skinny as the rest. A charcoal dapple, which ought to have been on the equine barrel, was splattered across the boy’s face and pale hair instead. The king may have thought this some kind of joke on Arth, the High Head thought, but I don’t find it funny. Not funny at all.

  “We don’t go so far as to ask you to take the Oath we of the Brotherhood all swear,” he was saying meanwhile, “but we do require you, while you are in Arth, to keep to the terms of the Oath as if you had sworn it.” Before the uneasy movements of the lads could amount to a real protest, he went on swiftly, “We honor the Goddess by our Oath. We take Her seriously here in Arth, and we worship Her regularly. She rewards us by giving us greater powers than we would have in the Pentarchy, by which we control the rhythms that hold this very citadel in place. So you see that the Oath—”

  Here the centaur boy, rendered thoroughly uneasy by finding the High Head staring straight at him, was unable to control his bowel. His droppings fell with a most audible splat. There was smothered mirth. The young centaur shifted from hoof to hoof in hideous embarrassment, and his dappled face was scarlet. He clearly had no idea whether the rules required him to clear the mess up, as he would have done instantly at home, or to go on standing to attention and pretend nothing had happened.

  This was a frequent problem with centaurs. The High Head solved it by briskly conjuring the long-handled covered pan and broom from the side of the room into the centaur’s hands. “There you are, Galpetto. Clear it up.”

  The mirth rose to a glad roar, much of it rather jeering, and the centaur hastened to turn himself around and set to work, looking as if he wished the floor would open. No bad thing, the High Head thought. There needed to be some kind of joke after the solemn talk of Oath, though this was not quite the joke he would have chosen.

  He spoke for a short while longer, outlining the tutoring they would have, the recreations and the duties. And it was typical of this substandard group that none of them were attending. The joke had been too much for them. He could feel their minds wandering, cloacal quips building up, and, in some of them, a resolve to make a butt of Galpetto. Usually the High Head ended his speech with a genial wish to them to enjoy their year of service. You may have come here because you were obliged by law to come, the usual ending went, but there is no reason why doing your duty should not be fun as well. Now he found he had not the slightest desire to say this.

  “One last thing,” he said. “I spoke of Oath and I spoke of rules. When I said you must observe both, I meant it. May I remind you that you are under Brotherhood law while you are on Arth, and the Brotherhood’s punishments for lawbreakers are severe. If you break our laws, you will be punished, by us, in our way, and you will not enjoy it.”

  He swept out, hoping he left them considering this.

  * * *

  III

  Earth

  * * *

  1

  « ^ »

  The capsule’s nearly ready,” Amanda said, looking up from the student essay she was marking. “Do you want to come and see it?”

  “Who else is going to be there?” Zillah asked. She managed to keep her manner entirely neutral. I’m getting good at that, she thought.

  “Nobody, I hope,” said Amanda. Zillah relaxed, unhappily, and dabbled one hand in the large bowl of crumble mix on the table beside her to show both herself and Amanda she was truly relaxed. If Mark had been going to be there, she dared not go—and yet the hope, the horrible hope, attacked her that he might be going and she might have a chance of seeing him again. Even after two and a half years, she could not trust herself.

  “Nobody?” she said.

  The sisters were sitting in Amanda’s kitchen, a comfortable, light, spacious room, in which every detail was planned for convenience and beauty together, and in which every detail was also slightly battered from having been used by children. To Zillah’s mind, this added to the comfort. Without the battering, she was sure the place would have been as soulless as a magazine advertisement for a kitchen.

  Amanda reached for the cup of tea beside her and took off her glasses. “Most of the people making the thing can only get there at weekends,” she said, “but the ones who live nearest work on it in the evenings when they get out of their jobs. I usually drop in by bus on my way to the university—to make sure it’s going right and to check the wards on the warehouse and so forth. But I make sure to keep my visits as random as possible. Today I’m at home. So I thought I’d go there by car at a totally different time.”

  Zillah reached a floury hand for her own cup of tea. “Security really is that tight then?”

  “Lord, yes!” said her sister. “All the people working on the capsule think we’re taking it up into space to meet UFOs. They think we’re a bit mad, but they trust us. Some quite skeptical ones are seriously rethinking their position on aliens. And I’m the only one of the Ring who ever goes near the capsule. We don’t want the pirates noticing we’re all interested in a certain warehouse.”

  Zillah relaxed further. Mark was never likely to have been there. She let the devastating misery of that discovery ebb away and laughed a little. “Isn’t the Ring taking a bit of a risk, leaving it to you? You know what you’re like with machinery. Jerry swears the dishwasher blew up last time just because you looked at it.”

  Amanda’s eyebrows peaked in that stare of hers. It must terrify her students! Zillah thought. “I was being deliberately negative then, Zillah. When I monitor the capsule, I’m entirely positive. If things blow up when I look at it, it’s because our designer got them wrong. I know what I’m doing. I’ve studied the plans until I know them backwards.”

  And really! Amanda thought as she stared at Zillah, Zillah could be unspeakably irritating at times. They were very alike, she and Zillah. This was probably the reason why they got on so well most of the time and clashed so furiously for the rest of it. Zillah had the same clear features as Amanda, but hers were softer and tawny. Where Amanda’s hair was straight and raven black, Zillah’s sprang into a cloud of wiry tendrils, with red lights. Both had the same strangely luminous eyes, though Zillah’s eyes were blue. And Zillah had, Amanda was positive, at least as strong a talent for magic as her own, but—Am
anda sighed, and drank tea to cover the sigh. One of the irritating things was that she was always having to look after Zillah and always failing. Over and over again. Knowing, from her own bitter experience, what Zillah’s life was like, Amanda had rescued her from their mother as a teenager and made sure she went to college. Result: Zillah dropped out, saying apologetically that university was not her scene, and disappeared. A year later Amanda had found her making baskets for a living somewhere in Yorkshire and fixed her up with what she herself considered a proper job in London. Result: Zillah disappeared and turned up working in a record shop a few months later, saying she felt that suited her more. By this time, Amanda had resigned herself to the fact that Zillah had an extremely low opinion of her own worth. Mother’s fault. Amanda let her get on with the record shop and tried instead to induce her to train that magic talent of hers.

  “It gave me tremendous self-respect,” she told Zillah over and over. “I know you’ll find the same. And what you’ve got is strong. But as it is, it’s wild. You really could do damage, to yourself and other people, unless you learn how to use it.”

  Zillah, as always, meekly agreed to Amanda’s plans. For a while she did study, almost diligently, with a circle of witches in outer London. Amanda encountered her at one or two ceremonies and felt proud whenever they met, because a number of people—Mark and Gladys among them—told her that her little sister had at least the potential of Maureen Tenehan. Amanda harbored fond notions of seeing Zillah selected for the Ring. Result: Zillah vanished again, saying she was not sure she had any talent at all. When Amanda next traced her, she was eight months pregnant. She said, in her usual apologetic way, that she had decided she needed to be a single parent.