A Sudden Wild Magic

1

The High Head felt put upon. Breakfast had been too rich. Maybe it was the nagging of an overtaxed stomach, or maybe genuine anxiety, but he knew today that things were not right in the citadel.

Those quickening vibrations bothered him. If they had been caused by the onset of the tides, they should have stopped when the tides began, late in the watches of the night. But the tides now ran full, message channels were open to all parts of the Pentarchy, and the rhythms still continued to quicken.

He was inclined to blame it all on their six unwanted guests. The sooner they could all be sent back wherever it was they came from, the better it would be for everyone. But Observer and Calculus Horns, though professing to be hard at work, were producing only increasingly obscure and contradictory results. As for the women, he began to suspect that Flan and Helen at least had unexpectedly expertly shielded minds. All they gave him was the same inane story. Zillah now seemed a dangerous mystery. Her child — well, he had long ago given up there.

To add to his troubles, Edward, on whom he was accustomed to rely for sane and self-effacing advice, seemed thoroughly out of sympathy with any of his worries. Take breakfast that morning. The two of them had as usual arrived in the spare blue room to find it reeking of coffee. Edward had sniffed the stuff as if it were nectar, poured himself a great mugful, and announced, “It’s even better than yesterday! Goddess, it’s years since I tasted good coffee!” After this he had eagerly snatched the silver cover off the heated dish on the table to reveal a great mound of buttered mushrooms, nine-tenths of which he had eaten as if he actually enjoyed the things. Then he had set about the hot bread, wrapped in a crisp blue napkin. “Reprimand Brother Milo?” he said, with evident astonishment, when the High Head suggested it. “Why? He’s working miracles! Try some of this ginger conserve.”

Nor did Edward seem to feel any urgency about the women. “They’re doing no harm,” he said, and then, leaning forward eagerly, with his face slightly flushed, “Besides — did I tell you? — the live ones have rather interesting physiology. I haven’t by any means got all my results yet, but it’s beginning to look as if all of them have what we’d call gualdian blood. The pretty one — Zillah — would probably count as eighty percent gualdian in our terms. That’s quite unusual, you know — or it would be in the Pentarchy. Gualdians make a great thing about the purity of their race, but the fact is that they’ve been interbreeding with humans for centuries. You hardly get one who’s as purebred as he likes to claim. In fact, the nearest thing to a purebred gualdian I’ve ever come across is that latest serviceman — what’s his name? — Philo, and I think he may be some kind of throwback. He doesn’t look like modern gualdians at all.”

And to the High Head’s suggestion that half a dozen well-shielded alien gualdians might be more than enough to disturb the vibrations of Arth, Edward simply laughed and advised his friend to center himself.

The High Head had no leisure to do that. Once in his office, he found his daily routine constantly interrupted by urgent calls from the Pentarchy. Everything poured in with the tide. Trenjen reported that the passet crop had failed and required an instant review of expected climate changes for next season’s planting. The King in Council sent majestic formalities and, embedded in them, a disturbing request to Arth to match the observation made by the Orthe surveyors which suggested that the energy flows of the Pentarchy were becoming seriously deranged. And of course, there was Leathe. Leathe Council came on the ether several times in the persons of various High Ladies wishing to know if there was any progress yet in the experiment with otherworld.

The High Head answered the ladies politely and wished he knew too. It nagged at him increasingly that he must plant another agent there, and soon; and, since otherworld seemed to have located at least two of his best, this agent would have to be both exceptional and cunningly planted. But naturally he did not betray this anxiety either to the ladies or to Lady Marceny. Lady Marceny wanted to know as badly as the rest — probably more so, because her aim was transparently to get him to tell her ahead of the rest of the Pentarchy. She gave strong hints that she might impart the secret of her private experiment with otherworld in exchange. But since she left the talking to that wretched son of hers, the High Head doubted if she had any such intention. What Lady Marceny knew, she always kept to herself. This was just as well, because the High Head knew he would have been sorely tempted by now. He looked with disfavor at the vitiated face of her son in his mirror and promised him results soon. Rumor had it that the young man was half-gualdian, but if so, his mother had put him beyond sympathy.

To meet the various demands of the Pentarchy, he was forced to draft more mages to Observer Horn, rearrange schedules, interrupt and curtail routine rituals — He worked through lunch, dourly ordering himself a plate of the parched passet he so sorely missed. It came with honey on the side, which he ignored, with contempt. His temper was already very badly frayed when the news came from Brother Wilfrid.

He stared at the simulacrum of Tod embracing Zillah. Behind them a small, lazy shoal of fishes swam, fluttering gauzy fins, opening foolish mouths, and for a moment the fish seemed to have all his attention.

He pulled himself together and gave the required orders. “Bring the serviceman here at once, and use the strongest mages for the guard. Remember the man has Pentarch birthright and could be dangerous. Keep the young woman apart. I’ll see her when I’ve dealt with the serviceman.”

That Zillah could stoop to make love to Tod really hurt. The High Head was not aware of hating Tod particularly, but he saw — with passionate relief — that here was his chance to get rid of him in a way most profitable to Arth.

The real stumbling block was the inevitable reaction from the Pentarch of Frinjen. The High Head was careful to keep abreast of affairs at home. He was well aware that Tod’s father, August Gordano, despite being a fool, had, if he chose to use it, enormous clout in the Pentarchy. Even Lady Marceny referred to August as “that bluff old sweetie” and seemed — surprisingly — to value his opinion. Furthermore, Roderick Gordano was Frinjen’s only son. Even Arth was not free to deprive a Fiveir of its sole heir. That would bring the king in, heavily, on Frinjen’s side.

With thoughtful eagerness, the High Head contacted Records Horn and had them send the Gordano family tree through to his main mirror. It was headed by August wed Amy Adonath and followed by no less than six daughters preceding young Roderick into the world.

The High Head shuddered a little at such crude persistence. The good Amy must be nothing more than a brood mare. He moved the display with a gesture, searching for males to whom the birthright could also descend. Five of the daughters had sons, any of which were likely — but Pentarchs never did favor the female line. The High Head was in sympathy with that, though he could at a pinch argue — Ah! This was better. Going back a generation, August’s father had married twice. One son survived from this second marriage (though with the symbol alongside his name that suggested dubious personal morals). The younger son of this marriage was long dead, having wed a gualdian woman. Interesting. His son, however, survived: Michael Gordano, born within a month of Roderick.

That settled it. Tod had a cousin supremely well qualified to hold the birthright. August Gordano could shout all he liked, but no one could say Arth had left Frinjen without an heir. Arth had its laws. Gordano had been caught breaking them. No one could bully Arth into false leniency.

He banished the display as Brother Wilfrid entered, breathless but very ready with his version of the matter.

“And that’s about the size of it, High One. I’ve known all along the fellow was subversive. He’s been brought up to think himself entirely above the law — and for that we should pity him, of course — but his total levity is all his own. He regards Arth as a joke, High One. As for that unclean woman—!”

The High Head looked into Brother Wilfrid’s pale face and saw it quivering with prurient hate. “Center yourself, Brother Instructor!”

Brother Wilfrid did so — or at least contrived to control himself a little — with obvious effort. “The centaur and the gualdian servicemen are down there, too, somewhere, sir. We don’t know their exact role in the affair, but they certainly connived at it. They missed parade without excuse and are now hiding. We’re looking for them now.”

“Scared, I suppose,” said the High Head. In the normal way, a centaur and a gualdian would form a powerful combination. But — he thought of the pallid horse-man, birthmarked and knock-kneed, and skinny Philo with those enormous hands and feet — not those two. “Send them to me as soon as you find them. I’ll see Gordano now.”

Before Tod was marched in, the High Head made efforts at least as strenuous as Brother Wilfrid’s to center himself. He thought he had. Therefore, it was quite a surprise to him that the mere sight of Tod’s jaunty figure and cool gaze brought him ablaze with anger — though why the anger should be accompanied by deep hurt puzzled him more than a little.

“Well, serviceman,” he asked, “what have you to say for yourself?”

“Nothing,” Tod said frankly. “I was doing what I was doing, and Brother Wilfrid came along and saw me, and that’s all there is to it really.” There seemed very little else he could say. But he did not deceive himself that his frankness pleased the High Head. He could feel anger beating off the man, like the heat when you open an oven. He saw that the result of this anger would be an even heavier penance than he had been expecting: fasting, compulsory prayer, maybe a very stiff term of solitary confinement — or perhaps worse. There were whispers, he remembered, of extremely horrible punishments of a secret nature — but here Tod found he had lost all desire to speculate and simply composed himself to receive whatever it was.

The High Head thought, You think your birth makes it impossible for me to touch you, don’t you? “In short, you admit to being taken in oathbreaking.”

The angry grind in his voice caused Tod to jump slightly and find he was not as composed as he thought. “Only after a fashion, sir. With respect, I’d like to point out that as a serviceman, I haven’t taken any Oath to break.”

“But you were made aware that you are legally required to follow the laws of Arth during your year of service, and that the Oath is an important part of those laws,” the High Head stated. “You must also be aware that your sensual dallying has seriously disturbed the rhythms by which Arth survives.”

Damn it to hellspoke, I only kissed her! Tod thought. For a base moment he thought he would tell the High Head some of the rumors that were going around about the woman in boots — and she could be disturbing the vibes, even if only half of it was true — but the next moment he rightly concluded that the angry High Head would only see that as a whining attempt to incriminate others. “No,” he said. “At least, I suppose the rhythms must be wrong if you say so.”

“I have,” said the High Head, still in the flat, grinding voice of anger, “heard enough. And since you come before me without the slightest sign of contrition, your punishment will be the utmost reserved for those who trouble Arth’s fabric in this way. You will be banished to otherworld—”

Tod looked up, astounded. “But—”

“Silence,” said the High Head. “I’m well aware that you are heir to a Fiveir and consider yourself immune to punishment, but I have acquainted myself with your family tree, and I know you are not the only heir. You have a cousin and four nephews who can easily take your place. Am I not right?”

“Yes, but,” Tod said feebly, “I was only going to say this will kill my old father, sir.”

“You should have thought of that before,” the High Head told him, with considerable triumph. “It is now too late. Your banishment begins as soon as the necessary ritual transposes you. And, since you are so amorously inclined, I am going to place you in otherworld as the lover of a certain female. You will use your relationship with her to obtain information which you will then pass on to me. The weave of the ritual will leave your mind linked to mine so that you may do this. Have you understood?”

Tod nodded, although in fact his mind seemed barely able to grasp more than the sounds the High Head was uttering. He could scarcely think. Feeble little phrases rotated in his head: It’s not fair — I only kissed her — He can’t do this — It’s not fair — Around and around. His mind seemed to have given up. Dimly he wondered if the swine in front of him had put some kind of clamp on his intellect.

“Right,” said the High Head. “High Brother Nathan will instruct you further in your mission, and if you have any questions when you get to otherworld, the present agent can answer them.” He turned aside and summoned High Brother Nathan by sigil. When the Horn Head of Ritual duly appeared, somewhat flushed and disheveled, the High Head said, “Take this man away and prepare him for immediate transposition to replace agent Antorin. I’ll be along in ten minutes precisely to officiate.”

He turned back to Tod and gestured. It gave him strong satisfaction to watch Tod’s trim figure be snatched away backward out of his presence, with the most uncharacteristic expression of stunned dismay on his face. So satisfied was he that he did not realize until Tod was gone that he had not, as he always did with his agents, privately told him the lie that he could come back if he behaved himself flawlessly. He found he did not care. He could dangle that bait when Gordano reached otherworld. “And he can’t come back!” he said aloud. “That broke through his self-possession a bit, I’m glad to see!”

He turned again and summoned Zillah.

She was ushered in, looking distressed and puzzled. “Look,” she said. “I don’t quite understand—”

“Silence!” he snapped at her, and it pleased him that she stopped speaking and quivered as if he had hit her. “While you are here in Arth, you are subject to Arth’s laws, and you have just seriously transgressed these laws.”

Zillah was as incredulous as Tod. She could not bring herself to take this seriously. “Oh, come!” she said, tremulously half smiling, “Tod was only—”

“I told you to be quiet!” the High Head more or less roared at her.

Zillah quivered again and pressed her lips together. She could see he was in a rage, and she hated people to rage at her. She drew into herself, shrinking into a corner of her mind and pulling strong walls around the corner, as she used to do when Mother screamed at her, while she tried to understand why he was so angry. When she thought of the boasts Roz and the others had made, she could not believe it was simply because Tod had kissed her. She was hurt, because she had thought until now that High Horns, though frightening, was a fair man.

The High Head glared at her, breathing heavily, and promised himself he would break down the wards he saw her building, just as he had broken Tod’s composure. “You—”

The room filled with call-chimes, and the master mirror lit with the sigil of the double rose, the call sigil of Leathe. Leathe had yet more to say. It caught the High Head off balance. He was still trying to turn his mind from Zillah, and sign the call to the outer office on Hold, when the double rose vanished and the face of Lady Marceny’s nasty son filled the glass instead. “Good morning, High Head of Arth.”

The High Head whirled on the mirror. “Oh, what is it now?”

The young man was not in the least perturbed. He smiled malicously. “Caught you at a bad moment, have I? Well, this won’t take long. It’s only an ultimatum.”

“Ultimatum?” repeated the High Head. “What are you talking about?”

Behind his back, Zillah leaned forward, staring, frozen into a stiff bend, with the word “Mark!” on her lips, frozen too. She knew it was not Mark. It had to be another analogue like Tod’s image of Amanda. But God! He was like him, whoever he was! This man seemed younger than Mark, in spite of bagging under his eyes and seams on his cheeks, and where Mark was cleanshaven, this one sported a little curl of mustache and a small, pointed beard. Rather like a goat, Zillah thought dispassionately. Unlike Mark again, this one’s face was full of malicious glee, with a suggestion of much greater viciousness hidden behind the satyr’s smile. But the voice was identical — and somehow the very differences in him served only to show how like Mark he was. Zillah’s frozen heart banged until her chest ached with it. And the misery of her loss poured through her again like a flood through a lock-gate. It had only been in abeyance after all.

“Ultimatum is the word,” the face in the mirror agreed. His hand, long and elegant and white, and very like Mark’s, appeared and gave the little beard a mischievous tug. “There’s been a great deal going on here in the three days since I last spoke to you, Magus. The upshot is that we in the Pentarchy are going to give you six weeks — six of our weeks, Magus — to get some results. If you don’t have something to stop this flooding by then, Arth is going to be discredited and disbanded.”

“Nonsense,” said the High Head, pulling his mind around to the point. “Leathe has no right in law to threaten Arth. Go and tell your mother that she’s making a fool of herself.”

“Ah, but it isn’t just Leathe.” The young man chuckled — no, giggled, Zillah thought, like a particularly vicious schoolboy. “This is the whole Pentarchy, High Head. The Ladies have consulted with all the other Fiveirs. Frinjen and Corriarden joined us at once — they’re both getting swamped, Magus, while you sit in your fortress doing nothing — and Trenjen came in when the Orthe did. The king agrees with us, Magus. If you don’t make a move, he’ll use his powers.”

“Oh indeed?” said the High Head. This had to be a bluff. “Then why haven’t I heard from the king direct?”

“I’m sure you will,” answered Lady Marceny’s son. “But you know how slowly Royal Office moves. Red tape. Protocol. Leathe decided to give you advance warning so that you can get a move on now.”

“My humble thanks,” the High Head retorted. “Now, do you mind leaving me in peace? I happen to be very busy.”

“But certainly,” said the young man and vanished from the glass.

His insolence, the High Head thought, was beyond even Tod’s. Goddess! How he hated the ruling class! He turned back to Zillah, fueled with additional anger and prepared to break her. To his further annoyance, she was staring at the master mirror with eyes that had become wide and large. Around them the rest of her face seemed pinched in and bluish white, as if she were suddenly near death from exposure.

“Who was that?” she said. “On the screen.”

“Only the chief Lady of Leathe’s despicable son,” he said. “I’m told it’s not really his fault he’s like he is. His mother has steadily perverted him from the cradle up.”

“What’s his name?” Zillah asked, in a strange, breathless, unhappy way.

“Herrel — Herrel Listanian, I suppose — he’d take his mother’s name since the gods alone know who his father was, though it’s rumored the poor wretch was a gualdian—” The High Head stopped himself, exasperated. What was it about Zillah’s peculiar powers that always caused him to be sidetracked into patiently answering her questions? No more. “Let us now return to yourself and the way you broke the law,” he said coldly. “Arth’s laws were not made lightly, you know. By your amorous seduction of young Gordano, you have seriously imperilled the stability of the citadel. I explained this when we first took your people in — and yet you still behave like a whore! What are you — a rutting bitch?”

Zillah had gone back to her first meeting with Mark, the night when he dropped in to speak with someone in the witchcraft circle in Hendon. She had been so bored with them by then. Then she had looked up and there was Mark, speaking in his serious, confidential way with — what was his name? Never mind. It was as if the sun had come out. In the same dispassionate way she had noted Herrel’s beard just now, she had noted then that Mark seemed very repressed, probably rather a prig, and realized that it made no difference at all to what she wanted. She remembered the artless, almost greedy way she had made sure she was included in the party that went to the pub afterward. The first opportunity she got, she asked Mark back to her bed-sit with her…

“Yes, I think you’re right,” she said, and looked up at the High Head almost judiciously. “There are times when I seem to behave like that — as if I can’t help it. If I could hate myself for it, I would, but I can’t. You’re quite right to call me names.”

He gaped at her. Once more she had contrived to send this interview down the wrong track. It was typical of her. Ridiculously, he had an urge to leap to her defense and assure her she was not a whore at all. Nor a bitch. Oh—women! “Well,” he said, after a pause, “as you seem to have a proper sense of contrition, you had better go away and — er — think about it. But remember: if you do anything like this again, you will be in very great trouble indeed.”

What got into me? he wondered as Zillah passed through the veils of the doorway like a sleepwalker. He shook himself and stalked off to Ritual Horn to supervise Tod’s departure.

2

“I must go,” said High Brother Nathan, mopping his flushed face. “So must you. There’s going to be a ritual.”

Flan watched him attempt to push the streaks of gray hair back over the bald center of his head. “One I can’t see?” she asked, composedly zipping herself back into her trousers. On the whole, she was rather sorry about the interruption. True, Brother Nathan had shamelessly blackmailed her. He had found her near as dammit undressed with Alexander in this very same gallery and swiftly made his bargain. He had not needed to say much. The sight of Alexander’s face when Brother Nathan said the word “punishment” had been enough for Flan. She would have agreed to anything. And she had gone to the assignation with clenched teeth, only to discover that Nathan could be quite sweet after all. And the poor old soul was in a real dither now. I’m getting quite soppy! Flan thought.

“No, you can’t see — you mustn’t be seen!” he said. “Goddess, girl! It was only the merest luck the High Head didn’t have most of you naked in his mirror!”

“All right then,” Flan said equably.

But High Brother Nathan had had second thoughts, evidently not unconnected with the unfinished business between them. “On the other hand,” he said, firmly smoothing gray strands of hair to his scalp, “I don’t see that it would do any harm for you to watch, provided you keep well out of sight behind the wall of the gallery. It wouldn’t do at all for the High Head to see you were here.” He shook his uniform straight and picked up his headdress. “I’ll see you,” he said, hurrying toward the doorway at the side of the gallery. There he paused, artistically. Flan, who knew a studied movement when she saw one, wondered, What’s the old villain up to now? Brother Nathan turned around. “This ritual,” he said, “is to punish a serviceman, as it happens. It’s the same punishment I mentioned to you in connection with Brother Alexander. Though, of course, we both know Brother Alexander to be blameless, don’t we?”

You old bastard! Flan thought. More blackmail! She had no desire at all to see anyone punished, least of all in the way that had brought that look to Alexander’s face. As soon as Nathan’s stout figure had faded through the veiling, Flan dived after him, only to find herself brought up short with such force that she was bounced back into the gallery. “Bastard!” she shouted. “Blackmailer! I’ll give you female harassment!”

She would have shouted a great deal more, but by then, feet were hurriedly and hollowly shuffling in the great rituals room below.

Evidently when the High Head ordered a sudden ritual, people jumped to it. Not knowing whether or not the High Head was there in person, Flan decided not to draw attention to herself. But she was still damned if she was going to watch this ritual. After plunging twice more at the veiling without the slightest effect, she sat down on the raked steps of the gallery with her face obstinately between her fists. Out of sight below her, objects clanged, feet continued to shuffle, two voices called off lists in a low murmur, and she could sense the room filling up. This ritual was big.

Incense or something abruptly clouded the air, thick and sharp as woodsmoke — pine smoke, Flan thought. By this time she was feeling more than a slight tug of curiosity. She had spent the last two days professionally trying to improve the way these mages moved, and yet she had still no idea what the movements were needed for. When music struck up, the wavery, jangly sort favored by Arth, she yielded to her curiosity. Just one look, she told herself. She bounced to her feet and ran downward to crouch by the balustrade at the edge of the gallery.

She got there just as the High Head swept into the room through the archway opposite. Flan dared not move. His eyes were moving all over, now high, now low, checking up on everything, and the look on his face scared Flan. She stayed in a crouch, with her chin on the plain cold stone of the coping, and cursed Brother Nathan all over again. At the same time, she was frankly fascinated.

She was looking down into blueness, a hundred or more blue-uniformed mages in a blue stone room clouded with rising blue smoke. The nacreous metal of the incense holders ranged in a double star around a space in the center was the only thing that was not blue, apart from hands and faces. Around the central space, the Brothers were standing in a complex zigzag pattern, some facing the center, some lined up sideways to it. As the High Head raised his sword-wand, they sang, long bass notes that vibrated through Flan’s knees on the floor and her chin on the coping, while the musical instruments, still out of sight underneath, jangled a bewildering shrillness around the song. The effect was to make Flan decidedly dizzy, and for the first time, she found she was ready to credit all this talk of vibrations in Arth.

She did not at first notice the young man being hustled through a narrow corridor between the standing mages. She saw him only when the blue-clad men leading him thrust him out into the star-space in the middle and hurriedly retired. Even then she had trouble recognizing him. He seemed dazed and his face was slack. As he staggered into the very center of the space, Flan saw that he was the young fellow who had been so cheerful and kind when they first arrived. Zillah’s friend. She forgot the name. She wondered what he had done — no, that was silly. It was just a question of who with. Zillah?

The mages began to move. Again Flan became fascinated. Each line of men took its own path of difficult curves and strange zigzags, wheeling smartly at the corners, emerging from the complex of movement at the edges to gesture, bend, and sidestep, then plunging back into what seemed a living, walking maze. They were making, Flan was astonished to see, actual, living sigils of power on the floor of the room. Signs she knew well and signs she had never before seen formed before her eyes, were marked by the deep notes of the song, ratified by the gestures of those mages at the edge, and then re-formed to a new sign. No doubt to the mages down there it was just a muddled sort of dance they had to learn, but from up here she could see lines and patterns of pure power. She could also see, quite as clearly, the mages who slipped up and muddled a gesture or muffed a turn, as many did. They were so slack. Tomorrow she would—

The young guy in the center fell heavily to the floor. Flan looked at him almost irritably, for distracting her from the faults of the dance. But what she saw stretched her eyes wide and kept them that way, strained open and staring as if they would never shut again. Blood ran from a knuckle she did not know she was biting. He was melting. No, changing. Under her stretched eyes, he rose into gray, jellylike hummocks, heaving and mounding and shifting, trickling pulpily, until he was a big, slug-colored shape like a frog or a toad, except that, like a slug, the surface of him ran with some kind of slime, glistening stickily in the blueness.

The creature lay humped and pulsing faintly while the dance went on around it, quicker now, with fewer pauses between the deep, sung notes. Smoke gusted upward and stung Flan’s staring eyes. Her hair moved and crackled, and she smelled ozone mixed with the smoke. Through the blue wreathing haze, she saw the reptile shape writhe. The slime on it was oozing to big, frothy bubbles, which burst and re-formed and burst again. It flung one desperate paw-thing out as it writhed, clutching for a hold on the smooth flagstones. God, he was in agony! It was like pouring salt on a slug. He was twisting all over.

He was gone.

Just like that, there was an empty, stained space on the floor. Oh my God! What a way to kill someone! Flan’s legs jumped straight, ready to carry her away, quick. She knew she was going to throw up. But the ritual was by no means over. Like the rituals she had taken part in at home, it had to be wound down. She was forced to wait there, retching, gulping against her bloodied knuckle, while the lines of power were drawn in reverse, and the music stopped and each mage relaxed and turned to his neighbors, chatting, laughing a little, as if this were all in a normal day’s work. Normal! By Flan’s watch, the entire ritual had taken a bare twenty minutes, but it felt like a lifetime. She scrambled up and ran. When the veil still did not let her through, she was sick on the veil, uncaring, and it parted with a shiver as if it were disgusted. Flan bolted forth and ran again.

3

Zillah went like a sleepwalker through bare blue halls and down impossible ramps. Marcus, she could feel, was a long way below and quite safe. She would go there presently. For now her mind was straining to contain that dissolute image in the High Head’s mirror. When she tried to put Mark as she had known him beside this other, this Herrel, it seemed almost more than she could do. Mark’s image, like a pale moon, would keep sliding behind Herrel’s bearded face, and only appearing dimly through. She supposed it must be that they were both only half the person they should be. Mark was all solemnity, seriousness, and responsibility, and the face in the mirror had nothing but humor, wickedness, and sly malice. Both half the person — both halves of a person. Well, there was no knowing about analogues, of course, but if you thought of them as identical twins — Analogues were like twins in a way — twins brought up apart from each other — the same person put in a different environment, so that different aspects of his personality were enhanced. No, because it was known that identical twins turned out quite alike all the same. With these two, Zillah thought that each must have repressed at least half of himself. Mark certainly had. Zillah bitterly recalled her vain search for humor in Mark — the sheer fun that instinct told her was really part of Mark’s character — and her frustration when he seemed to be constantly withholding it from her. With Herrel, she suspected she would search equally vainly for any kind of seriousness — but it must be there! Yet now Zillah could not rid herself of a feeling that there had never been any humor in Mark to find. She was sure of it, having seen this Herrel — as if she had stumbled on the missing half of Mark.

At this, it came to her like a bolt of electricity, Why not?

The question jolted her out of her sleepwalking state. She looked up and around the curved blue corridor where she found herself, to find it ringing faintly, as though the bolt of electric thought had somehow struck it physically. She could smell ozone.

And here, around the corner, just as if the striking bolt had called her up, Flan Burke came hastening. Or maybe a better word was fleeing, or scuttling. Flan’s face was pale, and her manner uncharacteristically dithery. “Oh, thank God!” she said. “Zillah! I thought I felt you around. Zillah, something awful’s happened to your friend — I’ve just seen the nastiest little ritual — he was your friend — I mean that dapper little fellow with the slightly smart-ass air — you know—”

“Tod,” said Zillah. “You mean Tod?”

“Yes, I think I mean him — the other one you go round with apart from the centaur boy and the kid with big feet—”

“Yes. Tod,” said Zillah. Flan’s eyes had dark bags under them and she reeked of sweat. What was the matter with her?

“Yes, well, High Horns and my Ritual boys have just disappeared him,” Flan said. She gulped back a retch and leaned against the wall, shaking. Her teeth chattered. “It was — awful. They dragged him to the middle — he was looking absolutely stunned — I don’t know what they did to him — not before, I mean. The ritual was all living lines of power — I saw that — and it was quite short really — it just felt like several lifetimes. But, Zillah, first he — sort of changed — he kind of melted into something gray and lumpy and slimy — and they boiled him — I knew it hurt — and then he went. He wasn’t there anymore, Zillah. Then they all packed up as if it was all just one more job in the day and left. After that I didn’t care if High Horns saw me. I ran. But, Zillah, what did they do?”

“I don’t know.” Anger scoured Zillah — a different form of electricity. So High Horns had punished Tod. He has punished Tod and turned me loose with just a caution! The injustice of it filled her with rage, and the clean blast of that rage seemed to make a whole lot of things clear to her. She had wondered that this place did not seem evil. Now she knew that evil was here. How stupid — how innocent—of her not to have remembered that evil seldom appeared to be evil! “I’m sorry, Flan,” she said. “I’ve got to go. I must find Marcus.”

“Go?” Flan wailed. She did not want to be left alone. “Can I come with you?”

“No, you stay here and go on spoiling the vibrations,” Zillah said. “From what High Horns said, the place is practically rocking on its moorings. Push it right over. Have fun. Now I have to go.” She sprinted away down the nearest ramp with a speed that surprised Flan.

“Damn!” Flan said, sinking to a crouch against the wall. “Have fun, she says! I could cry. I want to go home. I think I hate magic.”

Zillah ran. She fastened her mind on that place where she had always been conscious that Marcus was and continued downward towards it, ramp after ramp. She was aware, as she ran, that this did seem like her usual habit of ducking out as soon as things got nasty. But it was not, not this time. Perhaps all the other times she had ducked out were simply a preparation for this time. She could do nothing about Tod, not here, not now, but she could help his friends, and after that she could go on to fight her own battle.

Down she went, where the lights got dimmer. Among the pat-pat of her own feet, she heard the beat of others. Brothers in search parties seemed to be everywhere. Blue uniforms hurried past below the next ramp. There were more in the distance at the end of a corridor. A further ramp down, blue uniforms milled in a storeroom beside her. They bothered Zillah not in the slightest. She was somehow aware that there was a path, twisting and intricate, between all these searchers, and timed to miss every single one, and she took that path. It led her, a breathless ten minutes later, to a corner behind a deep fish reservoir where Philo and Josh lurked with Marcus.

She heard Philo’s whisper before she saw them. “No, it’s only Zillah, Josh.” She rounded a corner and found them. Josh was backed right into the corner, more or less wedged into a space only just big enough to contain him, with Marcus crouched between his front legs and Philo behind, right underneath. They all relaxed as they saw her.

“Dare Dillah dum!” Marcus proclaimed. The tone of his voice was I told you so!

“What’s happened?” Philo whispered, peering out above Marcus. “The place is full of Brothers hunting for us. Are we in big trouble?”

“I think you may be,” Zillah said, and she told them what Flan had told her.

Their faces twisted into almost identical worried horror. They were quite at a loss. Philo crawled out from under Josh and mechanically planted Marcus on Josh’s back. “Goddess!” he kept whispering. “We are in trouble!”

Josh protested, “But I’ve never heard — no one ever said anything about that kind of ritual!”

“But it’s what they meant,” said Philo, “when they talked about punishments.”

“Then what shall we do?” said Josh.

“What I’m going to do,” said Zillah, “is to leave Arth. There’s someone I’ve got to see, over in your main world. Why don’t we all go there?”

Josh and Philo looked at each other and then back at Zillah. “Zillah, I don’t think you understand,” Josh told her kindly. “There’s no way to get to the Pentarchy except by personnel carrier when the big tides are running — and the next tides aren’t going to be for months.”

“Not to speak of the fact that Josh and I would be breaking the law if we go back before we’ve served our year out,” Philo added.

“But if you stay—” Zillah began. There was no point in going on. Along with the mere words, Flan had put into Zillah’s mind a strong image of what she herself had seen — Tod melting into something alien and obscene. It was as if Flan had not been able to help conveying it. Zillah knew that both Josh and Philo had received that image in turn, from her. What Zillah found almost impossible to convey to them was the fact that the twisting, intricate path she had seen leading to Marcus was still with her. It led on from Marcus to Herrel. But it was such a strange and delicate thing that there was no image of it that she could convey. It would be like asking them to look at an invisible thread. She simply knew it could be traveled. And she could only try to explain. “Have you been right under this citadel? I mean, when your carrier brought you here, did it orbit the place the way our capsule did?”

“No. It came straight to the entry port,” said Philo. “What do you mean?”

“We went up the walls on one side, and over the middle and down the other side,” Zillah explained. “And you know how wide the citadel looks — as if it ought to have a flat base miles wide underneath? Well, it hasn’t. We went right underneath twice, and each time there was just a blink — only an instant — before we were rushing up the other side again. I think the fortress narrows to a point there. High Horns — I mean your High Head — told us that the place was made out of a piece of ground that belonged to the Goddess. And I think that just there, just at the narrow point, it could still be joined to your world — anyway, I know it ought to be.”

Philo and Josh looked at each other again, with a slow, stunned sort of hope growing through their anxiety. “Josh,” said Philo, “how do you stand with the Goddess? I’ve never dared ask, but I hope I haven’t offended. It may depend on that, whether we—”

He was interrupted by the echoing shuffles of a search party descending the nearest ramp. Josh started into motion with a curvetting leap that threw Marcus forward against his torso. Zillah saw his arms come back to steady Marcus as he vanished into the dimness ahead. Philo seized her hand, wrapping it completely around with his own hand, and they sprinted after Josh together. Behind them, there was silence. The search party had stopped moving to listen, in order to locate the sounds of their feet. Zillah and Philo both ran on tiptoe to cut down the noise, but they both knew they were being heard. They dared not stop. Josh was moving so fast, ahead in the dimness, that they had to keep running or lose him.

They ran, guided by the soft beat of Josh’s hooves and the occasional faint glimpse of his white whisking tail. Behind them they could hear the pursuit closing in a multiple rubbery hammer of feet. Philo was gasping before long. Zillah guessed that fear was making him hyperventilate. She grew increasingly anxious. Josh was not on the path she could see so clearly, and they were deviating more from it with every second. She wanted to shout to him about that, and about Philo, but she dared not let the pursuit guess they were in trouble.

Then, to her immense relief, Josh accidentally cut back into the right path by swinging down a ramp, and they caught him up at last. It was so dark down this ramp that Zillah could only see Josh because of the pallor of his coat. He seemed to have his knock knees braced while his hind legs nervously trampled, and he had been forced to spare a hand from Marcus to hold himself up with against the wall. This ramp was unusually steep. Zillah put a hand out to brace herself, too, and found, to her surprise, that the barely seen wall was rough and dewed with water.

“Philo,” Josh said, sliding awkwardly downward, “put a whole heap more protection round us — quick. They’re doing some kind of strong location magework on us.”

Philo’s hoarse breathing slowed down and he whimpered slightly with some kind of effort that Zillah could not detect. But she detected the result almost at once. In the same soft, yearning way that Philo liked to wrap his arms around her, something seemed to wrap all four of them in. The dark and narrow ramp went suddenly safe. They crept downward in a calm stronghold, pillowed by something intangible and rather sweet.

Marcus felt it and immediately became very jolly. “Dart,” he remarked loudly. “Diting. Ort go dlidder-dlidder.”

“Hush, love,” Zillah said.

“Doesn’t matter,” Josh panted. “Philo’s good at this — in short bursts. They’ve lost us completely again.”

Zillah wondered how Josh knew. The result, for her, of whatever Philo was doing was that she lost even the faintest sounds from the pursuers. It was like having her head wrapped in a bolster. They slid slowly downward into what seemed a wormhole that grew darker with every step, and warm and wet. All she could hear was Philo’s breathing and the somewhat frantic scraping and backpedaling of Josh’s hooves.

They rounded yet another corner, and Josh did not go on.

“Dop!” Marcus announced.

“What’s the matter?” Philo asked.

“I don’t know,” said Josh from below. “There doesn’t seem to be anywhere to go to.”

Zillah found this hard to believe. No one would carve a ramp out of stone that led nowhere. The path she could see in her mind lay clearly onward down there, below Josh’s braced hooves. Perhaps it was too narrow for a centaur. Then they were stuck. She unwound Philo’s hand from hers, put her back against the rough and curving wall, and pushed past Josh. Dark as it was, she could feel that the passage continued to spiral down beyond him, and it was no narrower than before.

“See?” said Josh. She could feel the panic behind his voice. He would have to back himself upward, and he was not sure he could. “We’re stuck!”

“Nonsense!” said Zillah. In a surge of irritation at Josh’s pointless panic, she snatched the hand he had braced against the wall and hauled him forward. He came with a startled trampling.

“Hey!” Philo called from above, panicking too. In his distress, he lost his hold on whatever was wrapping them in, and the dark wormhole instantly became a noisy, sinister little trap, filled with echoes, scufflings, the trickle of water, and the roaring of an unfelt wind.

Zillah found herself suddenly terrified, and furious with the pair of them. They were being such wimps! “Hang on to his tail, you fool!” she screamed at Philo, and “Come on!” at Josh. She heaved angrily on his hand. Power rose at her need, and wrapped her round.

In another trampling rush, during which the unfelt wind rose to become the roaring of a gale, the three of them staggered on down and were then, abruptly and briefly, weightless in a vortex, which caught them, whirled them, and then, with shocking suddenness, shot them forth into blazing light.