A Sudden Wild Magic

1

There was a way, Maureen thought. Her eyes were closing, and pricking from the smoke with which Joe was filling the flat. She could turn her own tiredness to her advantage—use it, in fact — if only she could get Joe off guard. Then she could sleep as long as she liked. She promised herself sleep, held it out as a reward to herself for doing just this last extra piece of hard work. The trouble was, it was mental work. Even wide-awake, that was the kind Maureen was least adjusted to.

She rubbed her eyes to stop the pricking. Held out the reward. Sleep. Carrot to donkey. “I can’t think why you do this dirty work,” she told Joe.

He stopped in the act of stubbing his latest cigarette into the loaded ashtray. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, I can’t think how they induced you to come here and spy. You’ve told me how you hate it. And I know nothing would induce me to go to your place and pretend to be something I’m not.”

He looked at her suspiciously, but she had put just the right amount of contempt and boredom into her voice. He laughed. “You’d do it, all right, if you had no choice. They made sure I had no choice, didn’t they?”

“How could they?” Maureen wondered. Her manner suggested he had to be lying. “You’re at least as powerful a magician as I am — and you know I’m not one to be caught easily. You had your work cut out to set this up, and I wouldn’t be here if I hadn’t been tired to death.” She pretended to think. “You mean they caught you when you were tired too?”

“Of course not,” said Joe. “They caught me with a woman.”

She laughed, lightly and incredulously, and admired herself for how well she did it. “Cloak and dagger! Incriminating photos! I don’t believe it!” God, this was hard work!

“That’s not how they do things on Arth,” Joe said, with equal contempt. “Mind you, it was a put-up job, I’m sure of that now. There were these two girls who came over with the embassy from Leathe. Antorin and I were both fresh from Oath — you won’t know what that means, but you can take it from me you feel — well, caught — boxed up before you’ve had a chance to look around — and we were the two who were told off to guide the party. And I still don’t know how they worked it, but it wasn’t long before there was only these two and us two. Fresh young things. Both swore they were scared to hellspoke of all the mageworkings going on in Leathe and said they hardly knew any magecraft themselves. We believed them. We were fools, but Oath takes you that way. You realise it’s too late and you wish you’d stayed quietly at home in the Pentarchy.”

He was distracted. Behind him, on the arm of the sofa, the half-extinguished stub end smoked in the ashtray, a thin, irritating wisp.

Maureen kept her eyes on it. Concentrated on it as an annoyance. I wish he’d put it out properly! It kept her awake. It also kept a trivial idea at the front of her mind in case he started to notice what she was doing. Very slowly, she started to edge her mind forward to his. “Oath? What Oath?”

“You swear celibacy. It makes sex illegal,” he said irritably. His eyes were fixed on misery a universe away. “I see now I was never cut out for it. I fell for that girl — I was like a rutting bull — well, you know how I get — and I swear to the Goddess I’ll never forget until I die the way they all came bursting in, her Lady, my High Brother — loads of people — and the High Head walking through the lot of them. You feel a right fool. You want to be sick. And of course my sweet little girl who doesn’t know any magecraft obliges them all by holding me helpless just as I am. If I ever get back, I’ll find her and I think I’ll kill her.”

Maureen’s mind continued to stalk forward, softly as a cat. “And what happened?” she said, still with her eyes irritably on that rising trickle of smoke.

“Trial,” he said. “Dragged in and both told we’d earned the death penalty. That was true. Then the High Head visits me in the death cell — I never heard what happened to Antorin, maybe they killed him — and he tells me I could commute my death sentence to exile, by coming here and serving the Brotherhood another way — the way I seemed to be good at, he points out — if I wanted.” He laughed, staring into the distance. Maureen crept on. Sleep soon. Soon now. “You know, I was disgusted! I refused. I said I’d broken Oath and I’d rather die. Would you believe that! So he went away. Then he came back and said if I behaved well and got him the information he wanted, Arth wanted, then I’d be allowed to come back — he’d reinstate me in the Brotherhood.”

“So you agreed?” Maureen said, inching on.

“Life is sweet,” Joe said. Maureen, as she crept, spared an exasperated little thought for the way Joe always had to speak in cliches, even when he was sincere. Go on, go on talking, she thought. Nearly there. Then sleep. “Yes,” he said. “I agreed. They put me through the transmutation ritual and I arrived here. And I did my best to be obedient. It was better than being executed, even working in that music shop. But if you ask me — Hey! What are you doing?”

But Maureen was there. Her mind sprang and leaped on his and twined with his and dragged him down with hers like a nixie, wrapped tight together. Sleep, sleep, sleep. On the sofa, both their bodies lapsed slightly and remained utterly still, barely breathing. After a while, the burning cigarette end smothered in the rest of the ash and went out.

2

Gladys had sensed that things had gone wrong. Next day, when she attempted to trace Zillah, she realized how badly.

She withdrew her mind from Arth and considered. The deaths of some of the party, she and Maureen had agreed, were probably inevitable. It had seemed likely that there would be analogues of one or two of the strike force in the pirate universe, and most theories held that two versions of the same person could not exist in the same space.

“Though I did hope it would turn out to be like twins,” Gladys remarked to Jimbo, as usual, crouched by her feet. “No reason why not, on the face of it.”

What shook her was the evident number of the dead. She had simply not been prepared for two-thirds of them to die. The virus-magic — well, she had no hopes for that really. It stood to reason that those wizards up in Laputa-Blish had ways of protecting themselves from outside magics. She had made them as a psychological device mostly, so that the strike team would not think it was being sent without a weapon. And now, not only were they without a weapon, but both boys and eleven girls were dead. Thirteen analogues.

“I never bargained for that number,” she told Jimbo.

“It means that the place must be more like here than we’d realized. But thirteen, Jimbo. I feel so responsible.”

Most dreadfully did she wish that there had been some way of telling who had an analogue in the pirate world and who had not. But when they were selecting the team, neither she nor Maureen could think of any way of finding out. And now what could six girls do in a worldlet full of mages? Except there were not six. When she looked for Zillah, Zillah was — gone. Not dead. Just not there — though there were traces enough to show Gladys that Amanda had been right. Zillah had gone with the strike force, even if she was not with them now.

“It’s too bad!” she said to Jimbo. “She took that child, and that child’s not safe at all. Silly, irresponsible girl. What do I do about that, Jimbo?”

There was no response from Jimbo. She got the impression he was rather carefully keeping quiet. She considered some more.

“It’s like this,” she said. “Am I, or am I not, making allowance for it being what I want to do? Come on, Jimbo. You know me. Shall we take a hand ourselves?” She found she was grinning as she spoke. The same grin was resonating off Jimbo too, purring and fibrilating through her. Jimbo liked a joke and a bit of excitement as much as she did. “And why not, Jimbo? Someone has to take a bit of thought for that poor child — but the truth is, I’ve been so envying those girls. What did you say? Yes. Well. If there turns out to be another Auntie Gladys over there, it’s just too bad, isn’t it?”

She heaved out of her chair and shuffled among the jungle for the phone, where she dialed a number in Scotland.

“Aline?” she said, when it was answered. “It’s me. It’s that emergency at last. I’m going to have to ask you to have the cats for me.”

While she spoke, the cats began gathering in a circle around her, staring accusingly.

“Well, cancel it then,” she said. “I’m not having you go off and leave them. They’ll feel strange. And they know. They’re all here now — except that Jellaby. She knows too, but she’s hiding. Just a moment.” Gladys broke off to make a brief mental search around the house. Ah. Under the spare bed. After a struggling moment, tortoiseshell Jellaby landed in the midst of the other cats, glaring, distended, and angry. “Stupid,” Gladys said to her. “Aline’s nothing like the vet’s.” To the phone she said, “That’s all of them now, and you’ll find they’re no trouble. They all look after themselves, except they can’t open tins. I’ll send the cat food up with them. And you know what to do about the message, don’t you? Thanks. ’Bye.”

This important matter being settled, Gladys shuffled to the strangely empty kitchen to pick up her fat black handbag. “There’s no point in traveling anything but light,” she told Jimbo, who still scuttled at her heels, “but I still don’t trust that place to make a proper cup of tea.” She took up her box of tea bags and emptied two-thirds of them into the bag. “Amanda’s going to need the rest when she comes,” she murmured, snapping the handbag closed. It was one of those that shut by twisting together two knobs the size of marbles. She stood considering what else she needed. “Nothing for Maureen — she’s not coming here at all,” she muttered. Then the grin spread on her face again. “And why not?” she said. “It’ll be far more fun if I dress up in style.”

She shuffled out of the kitchen and upstairs to her dark and cluttered bedroom, where she opened cupboards and chests and proceeded to array herself. She put on first a wondrous cocktail dress dating from the twenties (which had belonged to her great-aunt: Gladys was by no means as old as she liked people to think), an extraordinary creation of limp blue chiffon covered with swags and dangles of glass beads all over. The beads clacked gently with her every movement. To this, after some thought, she added a white feather boa and a flame pink scarf for warmth. To her head, with some puffing and critical grunting, she attached the crownlike headdress that reputedly went with the dress. Apart from further blue beads, its chief feature was a curling blue feather — somewhat crimped with age — which rose from the center of the creation in the middle of her forehead. With this nodding over her face, she bent to consider her feet.

Her normal tennis shoes did not seem to conform with the rest of her. “Got to be comfortable, though,” she observed, “and warm. And look expensive.”

Bearing these criteria in mind, she fetched out and laboriously trod into her most treasured footgear — a pair of large white yeti boots. She had never worn them much because she had always feared that someone had killed and skinned at least four persian cats to make those boots. But there was a time and a place for everything. She looked at herself critically in the mirror.

“Yes, I know, I know,” she said to Jimbo, who appeared to be crouched on her bed, probably surveying her finery with considerable astonishment, “but I don’t want anyone to take me too seriously, do I? You should know all about that. Besides, you may be all right, but I need to take my mind off that other Auntie Gladys over there.”

It only remained to consider what was the best way to take. Gladys half closed her eyes, cocked her feathered head on one side, and contemplated the defenses surrounding the pirate universe. The window Mark had found was no longer available to her. But there was one spot in the defenses she had had her eye on from the beginning. A careful person could use that spot, provided she had Jimbo to help. The plainest way to use it was to summon her faithful taxi and have it take her to the nearest place of power.

“No, no,” she said irritably. “Too much hassle, too obvious, too easily traced, and it’s not fair to mix Jim Driver up in this anyway. I’ll have a go at getting in from the garden, Jimbo. All we need is a wood of some sort.”

She gathered Jimbo in her arms and went downstairs, where twilight had arrived at midday with low, bruised clouds and a storm building. “Hm,” Gladys said as she hid the key in the usual place. “Something is brewing, isn’t it? This looks like a disturbed storm to me. But it can wait. Amanda can probably see to it when she gets here.”

3

Tod came to himself. He was sick, disorientated, and rather cold.

Some of the chill seemed to be due to the garments his uniform had been transmuted into, which left his arms largely bare and struck him as decidedly tight in the crotch, as well as inadequate for the climate of wherever this was. He seemed to be lying face downward on cold, varnished boards listening to the chilly patter of rain. There was a pair of shoes hazily within his line of vision, and he wondered querulously why. As he turned his face to focus on them, the shoes moved — an impatient sideways shuffle. A man’s voice from above them said, “Are you with me yet?”

Tod groaned. “Oh, probably,” he said. He sat up, considerably increasing his wretchedness.

He was in a cheerless alien room. Everything in it was like the contents of rooms he was used to, in that he could recognize a sofa, a table, a cooking stove (Why? Did aliens cook in their living rooms, the way all the shops in Leathe sold lipstick?), a yellow mat on the varnished floor, and a chest of drawers; but each item was subtly and distressingly different in its proportions, its color, and the substance of which it was made. It all added up to something that seemed to belong to another dimension entirely — which, he realized miserably, was exactly what it did. He thought he might be going to be sick.

To take his mind off it, he raised his eyes from the impatiently shuffling shoes to the man who was wearing them. He was fair-haired and a total stranger. He was wearing what Tod recognized as an alien version of a sober formal suit, and his blond hair was cropped in a manner that even Brother Wilfrid would have found excessive, since it left the man only with an interesting golden wave drooping across his forehead. Despite this, he was undeniably good-looking. Behind him was the window against which the rain pattered.

“Who are you?” Tod said. At the sight of that cold, wet window, his teeth began to chatter.

“I was Brother Antorin — I’m called Tony here,” the other answered. “Drink this.”

Tod bent dubiously over the mug that was thrust into his chilly fingers. To his surprise, it contained coffee — coffee thin and unfragrant and no doubt subtly shifted from the drink he knew, but drinkable all the same. He drank, and his teeth clattered on the rim. “Where is this?”

“Pengford, Surrey — in what you call otherworld,” Brother Tony replied. “These are my lodgings, but they’ll be yours from now on. The High Head tells me you’ll be taking over from me. I’ve been posted to Hong Kong instead, thank the Goddess! It looks as if all my obedience has paid off at last. What’s your name? You’re new since my time in Arth.”

“Tod,” said Tod. Shaken though he was, he did not want to antagonize this Brother by confessing he was heir to a Fiveir.

“Lucky,” said Brother Tony. “I’m fairly sure that’s a name here too, so you won’t need to get used to a new one. Now, what else do you need to know?”

Probably everything, Tod thought. At the moment all he could think of was how wretched and how cold he was. Anxious inspection showed him that his feet were in light, laced shoes, but at least they were still feet. The crotch-clutching lower garments were heavy blue cotton, inside which his legs were icy, but still legs; and above those he proved to be wearing a short-sleeved yellow thing of much thinner cotton. Below the little sleeves every hair on his arms stood up with chill, but he still recognized his own arms when he saw them. Funny. On Arth they had given him a distinct impression that he was about to be changed into something quite other. “Have you,” he said, “anything warm I can wear?”

“I expect so.” Brother Tony went and rummaged in a lower part of the chest of drawers, saying over his shoulder, “You’ll find the climate in this sector averages a good ten degrees below what you’re used to — unless you’re from North Trenjen, of course. That’s one of the many reasons why I’m so glad to be going to Hong Kong. Here. This should do.”

He tossed Tod a heavy woollen floppy thing made of gray-brown knitting. The maker of it had industriously twisted the stitches into an ornate plaited pattern. It looked ethnic. After turning it around several times, Tod discovered it had sleeves. Possibly it was a wool-work smockfrock. When Tod put it on, it came nearly to his knees, but at least it was warm — although he had a shamed moment when he was glad his parents could not see him in it.

“It’s called a jumper,” Brother Tony told him. “The people here have queer names for things, but they’re actually much more like real people than the experts of Arth seem to think. Are you feeling better now? We’ve not got much time if I’m to show you the ropes before my flight leaves.”

Tod cautiously stood up. The ethnic garment showed no signs of jumping, and to his increasing relief, the messages coming through from his body seemed to be all the usual ones. His left big toe cracked when he put his weight on it, the way it always did, and the ragged edge of his top back tooth caught his tongue in the usual way. His hands putting the empty mug back on the alien table were his own square hands — though they trembled a bit — and his height in relation to Brother Tony was what he expected: quite a bit shorter.

Brother Tony looked at him critically. “You look rather foreign at the moment,” he said. “We’d better get your hair cut and perhaps shave off that mustache too.”

Tod located a mirror over a white sink-thing. Despite the rainy dimness of the light, it was himself looking back out of it. He had seldom been so glad to see anyone. “Oh no,” he said. “My hair stays as it is — all of it. I want to recognize myself when I see me.”

Brother Tony did not argue. “Well, I’ve only got a couple of hours,” he said, stooping and picking up a bundle of booklets and papers that had been on the floor beside Tod, “but you’ll find you’ll want to rethink that hairstyle after you’ve been here a day or so. These are yours. They came through with you. Arth’s getting quite good these days. They’re all here — credit cards, bankbook, insurance, checkbook, and they even remembered a driving license. You’re better off than I was. I had to get most of this stuff for myself. What do they mean by putting you down as Roderick Gordano?”

“Because that’s my name,” Tod said. He took the bundle from Brother Tony and sorted through it bemusedly. Otherworld script was balder than that of the Pentarchy, but much the same. Someone had scrawled his name on the various cards and documents without even attempting to imitate his signature. He was going to have to learn to forge his own name. And on such a lot of things. Tod had often complained about the number of documents he was required to carry about at home, but they were not a tenth of these. “My friends call me Tod,” he explained to Brother Tony.

“Great. Well, I don’t have time to be friends, Roderick,” Brother Tony said briskly. “My job is just to make sure you’ve got it straight in your head what you’re here for before I leave for Hong Kong. How much were you told?”

What had that sod — the High Head — said? “I’m supposed to be the lover of some female and report back what she says.”

“That’s right as far as it goes,” Brother Tony said. “Actually, Paulie’s the wife of the equivalent of the High Head here in this country, and you’re supposed to report about him. Paulie’s very communicative — you’ll see — but Mark’s a complete clam. Doesn’t let his own wife know what he’s up to most of the time, and quite possibly misleads her when he does tell her. Paulie and I both know he’s been up to something lately, but that’s all we know, and that’s all I’ve been able to tell the Head. Did he — our Magus — explain that the ritual gives him a thread to your spoke in the Wheel, so that he comes through direct to your mind?”

Tod shook his head, or nodded. He could not remember. All he knew was growing rage. How had Arth the right to do this to him?

“Well, he does,” said Brother Tony. “It can be damned awkward if he comes on at the wrong moment. What else did he tell you? Did he explain that if you behaved yourself and reported faithfully, they’ll bring you back to Arth when you’ve worked out your sentence?”

Tod shook his head.

“No? I suppose they left that up to me to explain. He’s told me that often enough — and I assure you, Brother, it pays to be as obedient as you damned well can. Look at me. I asked to be relieved here, and they sent you almost at once. My sense is that I’ll be fetched home after this stint in Hong Kong. I’ve behaved myself, see.”

Tod nodded glumly, wondering why Brother Tony seemed so joyous at this idea.

“So if you’re ready,” Brother Tony said, “I’ll take you out and make sure you know where everything is.”

“Out?” Tod looked at the window, where raindrops were now pattering less fiercely, but still pattering. “Won’t we get wet?”

Brother Tony laughed. “Takes getting used to after Arth, doesn’t it? Don’t worry. You can wear this.” He unhooked a limp blue garment from a hook behind the door and flung it to Tod. It seemed to be a waterproof jacket. Tod put it on and wrestled with the unfamiliar zip, while Brother Tony took up a smart gabardine raincoat from a nearby chair and put that on over his suit. He picked up a shiny leather grip. “Ready?”

Tod gave the zip up as hopeless. The garment was too big anyway. He gathered it around him and followed Brother Tony through the door and down some dingy stairs. “I’d introduce you to the landlady, but she’s out at the moment,” Brother Tony said over his shoulder, “but you can take it she’ll accept you as the new lodger without question. Arth’s quite good at that kind of thing.” Outside the front door of the house, he ceremoniously handed Tod a small, flat key. “There you are. It’s all yours now.”

While Tod worked the key into the tight pocket of the cotton trousers, Brother Tony led him briskly down a street lined on both sides with striped brick houses, small, stingy, and ugly. The fact that the rain was now passing into weak, watery sunlight only seemed to make the dwellings look more dismal.

“This is the shabby area,” Brother Tony told him blithely. “You’ll find it’s all you can afford. Costs are high here.”

They rounded a corner into a larger road. Here the buildings were larger and flat-faced and full of windows and constructed either of raw red brick or raw gray concrete. The place was full of people and traffic, but Tod found he could only concentrate on the buildings. Seldom had he seen anything more ungracious. He thought of the small Residence he had inherited in Haurbath, and of the town beyond it, all of it quiet, old, and beautiful, and was stabbed through and through with the homesickness he had somehow managed to avoid on Arth.

“Is otherworld all like this?” he said miserably.

“Most of the towns. It’s a crowded world,” Brother Tony said. “Some of the coutryside is almost worth looking at, but of course, they build on more of it every year. No idea of space.”

“Oh,” said Tod. Almost he could have believed he was simply in a bad dream, except that the rain had left the sidewalk full of puddles, and his canvas shoes were now soaked until his toes squelched. They reminded him at every step that this was no dream. And if he was tempted to imagine still that it was a dream, there was Brother Tony’s trim and cheerful figure beside him, dressed like the smartest of the passersby, to make sure he knew it was true. Tod himself looked like the shabbiest of the males who passed. As for the females, Tod found he was too depressed even to be astonished at the short skirts the young ones wore. Bad. Female legs usually interested him rather a lot.

“Hope you don’t mind my asking,” Brother Tony said confidentially, “but what exactly were you sent over for?”

“Eh?” said Tod. “Oh, I kissed a woman.”

“Really?” said Brother Tony. “They’re punishing just for that now, are they? Where was she from? Leathe?”

“No, she was from here, I think,” Tod said. Looking at the style of the females they passed had made him quite certain of this.

“Here? Otherworld? Come off it! She couldn’t have been! They don’t know about Arth here, let alone how to cross over!”

Tod had transferred his attention from the pedestrians to the traffic and was watching cars rushing through sprays of water from the wet road. The cars, he thought, were probably the only things worth looking at in this place. Although none of them were as handsome as his own wonderful old beloved Delmo-Mendacci, some of them were almost comely. He wondered if the controls for driving them were anything like the same. But Brother Tony’s incredulous outcry recalled him to what he had just said. He had spoken without thinking, and yet, now he considered, he knew it was true. He had all along picked up from Zillah pictures of a world he knew was this one. Hm, he thought. And a great deal fell together in his head — most of what the women might have been doing in Arth, in fact, although he found he was still a little puzzled about what Zillah herself was doing there.

“I was joking,” he said, and hastily laughed. “She was Leathe, of course.” One of the things that fell together in his head was that Zillah’s safety depended on his not letting Arth know where she came from. This was going to be a little difficult if the ritual had indeed given the High Head a thread through into his mind.

To his relief, Brother Tony laughed too. “Leathe from whence all our troubles come!” he said. “Are you quite sure you don’t want a haircut?”

They were level with a large window behind which several young men were having things done to their heads by other young men. The aim seemed to be to get their hair to stand upright. “Yes, I am sure, thanks,” Tod said firmly.

“Then we’d better get to the bank before it shuts,” Brother Tony said. He led Tod to an establishment a few doors on, where he showed him how to obtain money and pay it in. Tod looked at the small wad of blue papers he received. Money? Astonishing to think Arth was able to do this. It didn’t do to underestimate the power of Arth. “And this is how you use a cash-point,” Brother Tony instructed. Tod watched and nodded. His head felt far too full of new things.

But there was more. Brother Tony marched him into a side street lined with more of the windowed buildings and showed him a glass door leading into a concrete place called Star House. “This is where you’ll be working.”

“Working?” said Tod.

“Yes, you have to earn the money to live, you know. It’s not difficult. It’s only a firm of accountants. Get there just before nine on Monday — today being Friday, of course — and go up to the fourth floor to Garter and Sixsmith and just walk in. You’ll find they’ll accept you as my replacement as soon as you give your name. Have you got all that?”

“Fourth floor at nine on Monday, Gutter and Sick-smith,” Tod repeated like one hypnotized. He had never, ever in his life, worked for wages. Perhaps the gods had decided it would be good for his soul. He knew numbers of people, back in the Pentarchy, who did work. His cousin Michael did. But Tod had never, ever had the slightest curiosity to know how it felt.

“Right. Then we’ll go and get the car,” Brother Tony said.

“Car?” Tod felt a certain brightening. There was a car went with this? His eye fell on a vehicle standing by Star House, large and sleek and gray, clearly a thing of power and beauty, and otherworld at once seemed a slightly better place.

“Yes, I’ll be leaving it with you,” Brother Tony joyed Tod’s heart by saying. “It belongs to Arth and I can’t take it to Hong Kong anyway. This way.”

They went briskly around a few more corners, and Tod’s step was nearly as jaunty as Brother Tony’s, until they came into the other end of the road from which they had started. It was lined with cars, parked closely on either side. Halfway down the line, Brother Tony stopped and felt for keys. Though none of the cars near was as beautiful as the gray one, there was a red one and a white one which were trim and passable. Tod’s spirits were quite high until he saw the car which Brother Tony was actually unlocking. Up to then, his eye had passed over it because he had not thought it was a car.

It was small. It had a domed top, like the head of an amiable but stupid dog, and a curious posture, down at the front and up at the back, as if the stupid dog were engaged in sniffing the gutter; and to make it more remarkable, it was not one colour but several random ones. The domed top was orange. One flimsy-looking door was green. The down-bending bonnet was sky-blue. The rest was a rusty sort of cream. It was like a jester — or someone’s idea of a joke.

“This,” Tod said, “is a car?”

“Yes,” Brother Tony answered, flinging wide the green door of the motley monster. He threw his leather bag in upon a smart pile of luggage on the rear seat. “It’s a Deux Chevaux. That means two horses, by the way. Get in.”

But it’s not even one horse! Tod thought, dubiously opening the other door, which was pink and appeared to be made of tin. It bent about as he moved it. He climbed in upon a seat made of the cloth they wiped dishes with in the kitchen of his Residence in Haurbath and gingerly sat. “Watch carefully,” Brother Tony was saying. “You’ll have to drive it back here. So watch the way too.”

“Where are we going?” Tod asked.

“To meet Paulie. The ritual will transfer her affections to you as soon as she sees you, don’t worry,” Brother Tony said cheerfully. “I just have to bring you together.”

Arth seemed to have thought of everything. Tod sat in wordless misery watching his companion insert a key into the shaky fascia of the little monster. In response, the monster growled and produced a tinny chugging which caused it to shake all over. Loose metal flapped. Tod shut his eyes. Then forced them open again because he was supposed to watch.

A few seconds were enough to show him that the controls were identical to those of his own superlative Delmo-Mendacci. He wondered if one was not borrowed from the other, and if so, which world had borrowed from which. He was inclined to think otherworld must have stolen the idea of cars from the Pentarchy. This thing Brother Tony was driving was so clearly a debased copy of a dim notion of a car. It went with the same disgraceful chugging with which it had begun, in what was probably a westerly direction, slowly and with obvious effort, toward the outskirts of the town. Tod hoped they were going right beyond the town, but those hopes were dashed when they had chugged into a wider, quieter neighborhood and Brother Tony announced they were nearly there. Fawn-colored houses, these were, or delicately reddish, standing individually at the back of little pieces of grass and driveway, each one a slightly different shape from its neighbors to show that it was the residence of persons who could afford to choose.

With the verve of long habit, Brother Tony swung the wheel of the motley little monster to chug down the sloping driveway of the most fawn-colored house of the lot. The little piece of grass in front of its clean new prim facade was adorned with sparse mauve-flowering bushes. “Here we are,” he said, and before Tod could move, he was hauling his smart luggage out of the rear seat. Having done this, he presented the keys of the subcar to Tod. “She’s all yours.” Leaving his luggage in the driveway, he went with jaunty steps to the front door — which was labeled with a tastefully crooked 42—and pushed a button there. Tod could hear the result inside. Ping-pong it went, dulcetly. Tod stood on the doorstep, resigned, as little tripping footsteps approached the door inside.

The woman who opened the door was plump and about Tod’s own height. Her hair was most carefully done in a sheeny, close-fitting way, with burnished fair highlights evidently applied afterward. Her face was exquisitely made-up, and the same care had been applied to the rest of her. The triangle of skin revealed above her bosom by her long floral robe was soft and white; the hand that held the door was equally soft and white, adorned with oval shiny pink nails and gold rings with diamonds in them; her small feet in high-heeled floral mules were as soft and white as the rest of her visible skin.

“Tony?” she said. Immaculate black eyelashes lay wide around her eyes as she stared at Tod.

Brother Tony leaned over Tod’s shoulder. “Paulie, let me introduce my good friend Roderick,” he said, and clapped Tod on the shoulder he was leaning over. “I just know the two of you will get on like a house on fire. Now I must fly — taxi’s here.” He retreated briskly and picked up his luggage. Tod looked around to see him climbing into a square, high black vehicle which had drawn up beyond the drive.

“Where’s he going?” Paulie said — not unreasonably, Tod thought.

“Hong Kong, I think,” Tod said.

“Oh.” The lash-rimmed eyes turned back to Tod. Paulie’s carefully pink mouth smiled. Behind that, she had an air of being slightly bewildered.

“Well, won’t you come in, Roddy?”

Arth knew its stuff. Tod reluctantly advanced into a small, shiny hallway as Brother Tony’s taxi pulled away, where he stood smelling the several perfumes emanating from Paulie. She had certainly been waiting, all prepared to meet Tony, he thought while she was shutting the front door, but she was accepting a scruffy-looking substitute without a blink. Fear and hatred of Arth grew in him. She led him forward into a sitting room as carefully decorated as she was herself, with not a shiny cushion nor a little brass ornament that was not evidently placed exactly so. She induced him into a soft, clean chair and sat beguilingly on a tuffet at his knees. Tod’s misery increased.

“Do you want a drink, Roddy?”

“No, thanks.” It was not that he did not like plump women, Tod told himself. His taste ran to all sorts. But this Paulie’s plumpness had a solid, sorbo-rubber look to it, and looked hard to dent. As one who had had his arms around Zillah only — yes, it really was only a couple of hours ago! — Tod felt decidedly off plumpness. But there was more to it than that. Paulie was so carefully got up, perfumed and coiffured and jeweled. He found he kept remembering the time, a year or so ago, when he had accompanied his father on a state visit to Leathe. The Ladies who had met them there were all equally carefully dressed and perfumed and lacquered. And they had talked to him in the same soft, high, charming voices that Paulie was using at this moment.

“Tell me all about yourself, Roddy.”

One of the Ladies of Leathe — Lady Marceny it was — had said almost exactly that, in the same sweet, condescending tone, and Tod had been very scared indeed. Afterward August Gordano had opined that he was quite right to be scared. “Always trust your instinct, boy, where those kind of women are concerned. If they notice you, they want something. They eat men for breakfast — and never forget it!” While Tod did not give this Paulie credit for being quite as dangerous as Leathe, the memory of Leathe came to him so strongly with her that it made him thoroughly uneasy. And it was fairly clear to him that she, too, ate men for breakfast. He understood now why Brother Tony was so cheerful about going elsewhere.

“All about myself,” he said. “Well, actually I’m an exile from a pocket universe called Arth where all the residents are mages. Most of them are in the business of spying on you people, as a matter of fact, but not being able to get a really close view, they sent me to be a spy in your midst. My real home—”

He stopped because Paulie was swaying about with laughter, her arms plumply clasped around her knees. “Oh, Roddy! Tony told you to say that, didn’t he? He spun me just the same yarn when I first met him! Tell me what you really do before you make me die laughing!”

And not even original! Tod thought sadly. Paulie’s laughter, he noticed with foreboding, had served to unwrap the floral gown from around her. At the top, a good deal of plump black bra was showing, and below, much of a smooth white leg. Depression seized him, because these sights were not without their effect. His recent brush with Zillah had most strongly reminded him that he was missing women badly.

“The truth is that I work at Sick and Guttersnipe, just like Brother Tony,” he said.

“Oh, is he your brother? You don’t look a bit alike!” Paulie leaned forward, and more plump things showed.

“Now you tell me all about yourself,” Tod said hastily.

“Nothing to tell really,” Paulie said lightly. He could tell her lightness hid deep discontent. “I’m just a housewife married to a computer expert. Mark’s in computers now, though when I first met him, he didn’t seem to be anything. A friend of mine — American — found him wandering around London, and he didn’t seem to know who he was, even, beyond his name. Koppa thought it was drugs, though I still think it was something more interesting than that. Anyway, she took him in — I was sharing a flat with her then, so we both looked after Mark until Koppa moved out. I tell you, I looked after that man like a mother and taught him magi — well, taught him all sorts of things, everything I knew really, and I was even fool enough to pay to get him retrained in computers. You know, Roddy, I’ve done everything for that man, given up luxuries and the best years of my life, and he’s given me nothing in return. Nothing!”

“He married you, didn’t he?” Tod said.

“Only when I asked him!” She leaned toward him.

Tod leaned defensively back. “And this looks to be a nice house.”

“It’s a nice prison!” Paulie declared. She smiled, still leaning forward, with her chin almost on Tod’s knees. “But you won’t want to listen to my troubles, will you?” Her hands came out and clasped Tod on either side of his head, a grip hard to break. “A nice boy like you, Roddy, doesn’t want words. You want action.” She stood up, arched over him, and the floral gown fell apart.

Here we go! Tod thought resignedly.

But it seemed they did not. His hands had barely grasped the proffered plumpness when it was whisked away from between them. Paulie was suddenly standing a decent three yards off, not a hair disarranged, and was swiftly retying her gown. Tod was gaping at her, as much injured as relieved, wondering what kind of teasing this was supposed to be, when he was aware of footsteps in the hallway. His head shot around — he was sure he looked the picture of guilt — and he saw a pale and serious man entering the room. “Maureen’s still not called me back,” the man said as he came. “I’ve called her answer phone six times now. I suppose she’s still asleep.”

“Hallo, Mark love!” Paulie cried out. “You’re back early, aren’t you?”

Mark, in a measured way, laid his broad hat on a table and removed the spruce raincoat he was wearing over his dark suit. Not till then did he look at his wife. Giving her time to get her sash tied, Tod thought, uneasily recognizing the signs. Tod himself got to his feet, but was ignored.

“Yes, I am a little early,” Mark said, “but there’s no need to be so surprised. I did warn you. I hoped you’d be dressed. Do you spend all day in your dressing gown?”

“It’s a housecoat,” Paulie said petulantly. “I’ve told you before. And what do you mean, you warned me? Was that phone call about Amanda fussing supposed to warn me? I thought you meant she was coming to supper.”

“I made myself quite clear,” Mark said, mildly, but with an air of speaking through clenched teeth. “I wish you’d listen. Amanda’s sister has gone missing, and Amanda was in such a panic when she realized that she asked Gladys to find her. Now she knows she shouldn’t have asked, because Gladys is old and tired out, so she’s asked us to go with her and help Gladys. If we all—”

“But you were on about supper and Amanda precogging all sorts of dire stuff,” Paulie interrupted. She was standing very upright and carefully straightening the bow of her retied sash, as if the annoyance in her voice had nothing to do with her body. “How am I supposed to sort all that out?”

“You only hear what you want to hear,” Mark observed, with the same teeth-clenched calmness. To Tod, listening, it was as if neither Mark nor Paulie was able, for some reason, to show the anger they felt. What stopped them, he had no idea, but whatever it was, he had a growing feeling — quite apart from the awkwardness of his own situation — that it was strange and wrong and terrible.

Tod had been in this situation once or twice before. He had also, many times, stood in the margins when his numerous brothers-in-law quarreled with his sisters. But he had not felt so threatened by anything since he spent that time in Leathe. He could not understand it. “I told you,” Mark went on, in the most calm and domestic way, “that I am worn-out too, and I asked you to drive us both to Herefordshire because I’m tired enough to have an accident. I thought you agreed. The idea was that you’d have some food ready to take — because you know how I hate Gladys’s pies — and we’d pick it up and be on our way. I’m ready. I left the car running. And I find you aren’t even dressed.”

“You may have had all that clear in your head,” Paulie retorted, motionless as a statue, “but you didn’t make it clear to me. I don’t read minds, Mark. If you’d made yourself clear, I wouldn’t have invited Roddy round. Mark, this is Roddy.”

Mark turned to Tod and looked at him, truly, Tod thought, as if he had not noticed him until then. Tod’s sense of danger increased tenfold. The feeling of Leathe grew. Mark was, as most men were, considerably taller than Tod, and Mark was, after all, the husband Tod had been about to injure — which was awkward enough and put Tod at a disadvantage enough — but, as Mark’s gray, dispassionate eyes met his, Tod saw that the man was also a powerful mage. It was enough to make Tod, by reflex, call up his birthright. To his slight surprise, the birthright was half-roused already, waiting for his call. Maybe the feeling of Leathe, lurking between these two people, had been enough to trigger it.

“Don’t I know you from somewhere?” Mark said.

“Oh, I doubt it,” Tod replied merrily. “I’m a total stranger in these parts. I—”

“Roddy is Tony’s brother,” Paulie interrupted. “You remember Tony, Mark? I’ve just been telling Roddy how Koppa and I found you wandering around London and took you in.”

That, Tod thought, was unneccessary. It was the remark of a complete bitch. His birthright felt Mark wince at it, though Mark gave no outward sign. The man was probably bleeding inwardly from a thousand such snide, wounding things. A great desire came upon Tod to be away from all this, out of the cloying poison of Leathe, not have anything more to do with these people.

“If you don’t mind,” he said firmly, “I’ll be getting along now. Nice to have met you — Paulie — Mark.”

Neither of them suggested that he stay. Neither even made a polite noise. They were locked in combat with no time to spare for Tod.

“Well. Good-bye,” Tod said. He left them standing there and got out of the house with long strides. His birthright told him that, in order to do so, in order just to make it through the front door, he went bursting through wards and barriers of truly formidable magework. The space in front of the house door was blocked now by a car that was presumably Mark’s. More barriers. Tod burst those too, dodged around the car, and fled to the pavement at the head of the short drive, where he stood breathing deeply and trying to recover what Arth and otherworld between them had left of his poise.

The footpath, and the road with it, was slightly raised above the ground where the houses stood. It was as if Tod were for a moment standing with his legs astride on top of otherworld — his birthright tended to give him this effect when it was roused. Now it served to show him that he had had enough of the place. He hated everything he had seen here, and Paulie most of all. There was no way he was going to do the High Head’s bidding and become Paulie’s lover. He would be sick. He was sick. He had to swallow. The homesickness that had overcome him in the center of town rose up in him and clamored.

“Damn it all to hellspoke!” Tod said. “I’m going home.”

To make this quite clear to himself, he fished the key to Brother Tony’s lodgings from its tight pocket and deliberately dropped it down a grating at his feet. Some kind of drain, he supposed. As the key clattered away, he felt nothing but relief.

“That settles it then,” he said.

Nobody had told him the thing was impossible. Nobody had even told him he was forced to serve out the rest of his service-year here — though the High Head had evidently intended that. But the High Head had clearly forgotten the little matter of Tod’s birthright. Tod had forgotten it himself. Brainwashed by Arth, he thought. Arth preferred not to know about magework outside its own control, and Tod had tried to be a good citizen of Arth. He was a little astonished at himself now. He had tried to be good. They would not let him. So he had better go home and put himself under August Gordano’s powerful protection. August would fight tooth and nail for his heir if necessary.

When he thought about it, Tod was slightly ashamed of running and hiding behind his daddy’s coattails. He always was when he did it, but it never stopped him doing it. And to justify him on this occasion, there was the peculiar business of Zillah and his realization that she came from this place. If that ritual really had given the High Head a line through to Tod’s mind, then the sooner he got where this information was not available to Arth, the better. But let’s see.

Tod let his birthright gather and then reached out and examined this thread. Reaching into the Wheel was curiously difficult to do. Either he was out of practice or otherworld was not a place where magework came easy. But the thread existed, all right.

Tod recoiled as the High Head himself took up the thread and came through to Tod’s mind. Damn. So delicately set up, I jogged the swine’s mind. Your report please, agent. Tod had the sense of another day at least having passed in Arth — time did indeed run strangely between universes — and the High Head well rested but slightly irritable from a rich breakfast, and exceedingly worried behind that in a way he was careful to keep hidden from Tod. Whatever this worry was, it served to distance Tod’s affairs. The High Head was now able to regard him as just another agent in the field.

My report? There was no reason in any world to tell the sod the truth. Tod instantly set about misleading him. Contact has been made, sir, satisfactorily to both parties, and I’ve also become very friendly with the husband. By the way, sir, the man has powers rather in excess of yours. Tod had no idea if this was the case, but he saw no harm in usettling Arth a bit.

I suspected as much, the High Head’s thought came, heavy and irritable. So what’s he up to?

Something very crucial, Tod thought back glibly. There’s a being called Gladys I haven’t met yet, who’s even more powerful, and we’re all just off to do important magework with her. I’ll let you know what when I’ve seen it, sir.

Good work, agent. The old female is of great interest to us. Was there any mention of another called Amanda?

I don’t think so, Tod lied, while his mind made rapid connections. Mark had been talking about her — Zillah’s sister.

When you do come across her, I’d like a report on her too. My usual source on her is temporarily out of action.

Of course, Magus, Tod thought unctuously, while vowing that no one who was an analogue of his favorite aunt was ever going to be given over to Arth.

To his relief, the High Head dropped the thread then. Tod felt him turn to pick up another, belonging to some other poor Brother in the field. He felt unclean. Hateful to have that fellow in your head. But quick. Now, while the swine was complacently turning elsewhere. Tod reached into the Wheel again and carefully, delicately, nipped that thread apart. The effort left him quite unusually drained, but it was worth it. Let the High Head try looking for him now. The next thing was to consider the best way to get home before the High Head started looking.

Tod raised his birthright in a new direction and was more than a little daunted to find how well defended the Pentarchy was — it was as if a great thorny wood filled with booby traps grew between here and there. But the luck of the Fiveirs was with him. His mind’s eye caught what looked like a possible way through, accessible from here. The real problem was the strange difficulty there seemed to be in mageworking. Tod felt exhausted just looking. He began to see that otherworld was in fact much less benevolent to magecraft than his own world. Perhaps that was the main difference between them. In order to get through that wood, he was going to need to be in, or near, a place of power. He ignored the weariness and searched for such a place.

There was none near. The nearest he could feel was miles away, north and west of here. That was all right. He had transport, courtesy of Arth. He jingled the car keys in his pocket and looked down the driveway with disfavor. There stood Brother Tony’s motley little monster, nose-down beside Mark’s sleek gray job. Mark’s was a real car. It might not have been in the same league as the beloved Delmo-Mendacci, but it was a good, classy vehicle all the same. The contrast was pitiful.

Tod walked slowly down the drive, tossing the keys of the subcar in his hand. He was between the two cars when he realized that the engine of Mark’s car was running. So quiet! Marvelous. Of course, Mark had said he’d left it running. And considering the barriers of magework around it, there was probably no fear of someone making off with it. But Mark must, all the same, be incredibly heavily engaged in that family row of theirs, not to have come out to remove the keys, just in case. Tod himself would have done that first thing. Mark would get around to it any second now. In which case—

Tod did not hesitate. There was absolutely no moral struggle. He simply jammed his own keys into the ignition of the motley subcar and slid behind the wheel of Mark’s real one. An exchange, if not a fair one. Wards and barriers fell apart around Tod like so many cobwebs. The car smelled clean and new. Bliss. The seat adjusted to Tod’s shorter build with a sigh of power. It took him a second or so to discover how to get reverse, but he was backing smoothly up the drive by the time Mark arrived at the front door. Seeing the sober, pale figure emerge, and stand aghast, Tod gave him a cheerful wave as he swooped backward into the road. Then he put the lovely car into forward gear and surged away.

4

It could not really be sleep, not if she was to hold Joe for the length of time they might need in Laputa-Blish. Maureen continued to drag downward, into a place she had only heard of and never yet experienced, deep in the ether. Down and down.

Some time later they were hanging, still tightly wrapped together, in a place full of whorls of feeling and shadows of color, where everything seemed a sick sepia to the taste, and motes like sticky dust rained into their hearing. Things wrong and bad lurked in the corners of the senses, or made little scuttling rushes, trailing gelatinous disturbance over the floor of the mind. Some of the things — Maureen had an image of just such a disturbance, with too many legs, nestling in the lap of a fat old woman, which was surely wrong, and bad. Nightmares, she thought. Perhaps this was a mistake.

Joe roused when she did — they were that closely involved. Oddly enough, he finished the sentence he had started when she caught him. “If you ask me, that was a con job too. I don’t think they can bring me back. What did you want to bring us down here for? This is a very bad part of the ether.”

“I know,” she said, or rather communicated, being bodiless here. “But tell me a better way to hold you. I had to get some sleep.”

She could feel panic writhe in him and be controlled. “It’ll be more than sleep you’ll get unless you know the way out. Our bodies could starve to death. Do you know how to get out?”

“No,” she confessed. “I was desperate. I—”

“You never think, do you? You’re worse than I am.” She felt him consider. “I had lessons in this. I should remember. Yes. The first thing to do is we make ourselves bodies here, or we lose what little we’ve got left. Come on, woman, concentrate! Imagine you’ve got your usual body.”

Maureen did so. Joe’s carefully controlled panic assured her it was urgent. She pushed her answering panic away and thought of herself, her body, as she knew it. Long legs, slender, shapely back — particularly nice firm buttocks — thin, strong arms, small breasts, her neck, the sweet line of jaw, her hair, which she loved for its color, her own freckled, wide-eyed face. Toes. Long fingers. Elegant flat belly.

And it came into being, nebulously, as she succeeded in visualizing it. Joe also assumed a form, almost at the same time, but she noticed that he had edited himself so that he no longer had that heavy, coarse look to his face. She could see little else but his face, for they were still entwined, because that was how their minds were, arms around each other, leg wrapped into leg, as closely as lovers.

“You’ve made yourself prettier,” he told her. “Your face usually looks much more like a camel’s.”

“So have you. You usually look like a thug,” she retorted. “What now?”

“Unwrap me.”

“No way! You’ll scoot and leave me here.”

“You’re dead right, you bitch! Unwrap, or neither of us moves.”

“Stuff that!”

It was another deadlock. They hung there in the senseless sepia nowhere, gazing each over the other’s shoulder at scuttling whorls of nightmare. When a disturbance came uncomfortably close, one or the other would push or pull or tug sideways, and their combined bodies would drift away in a new direction. It was timeless. They could already have been there twenty years. Our bodies are probably long dead, Maureen thought.

“Of course they aren’t. You never did have a sense of time!” Joe snapped at her.

My thoughts are not private anymore, Maureen realized.

“That’s your own stupid fault — Hurl’s balls! Look out! Upwards!”

Maureen looked and found a huge and regular disturbance approaching. Overhead, the fabric of everything was dented and pounded inward, as if a company of four-legged giants were marching towards them across a hammock made of thin veiling. The sepia was trodden to sick pink in bulges. And whatever the giants really were, they were striding straight for their two enwrapped nebulous bodies.

Both pushed and pulled frantically to get out of the line of advance, but the striders seemed to sense their presence and altered their course to follow. Closer and closer, until Maureen caught a whiff of their nature — something wild, but harnessed by a malevolence that had its origin in this place. Closer still. The malevolence almost unbearable, right on top of them. As the leading monstrous dent came bulging down upon them, Maureen freed her arms, scarcely knowing what she did, and pushed, hard and desperately. Joe’s arms were free too. He stretched up and heaved at the thing’s underside. Between them, they caught the strider at one side. That seemed to unbalance it. It, and the bulges that followed it, appeared to stumble and tip, and then veer ever so slightly. Maureen tilted her head and watched the whole train of striders pace off into sepia distance at an angle to the two of them.

As the striders went, a vision came to Maureen, not of this place, and not of anything she knew. Things were striding in the vision, too, but these things were metal towers, giant sized, that were marching over grass against a stormy sky. As they strode, the metal things trailed a wild, unharnessed malevolence that seemed akin to the striders, but with that they also trailed arcing, crackling blue violence. Killing violence.

She threw her arms around Joe again, not holding him now, but hugging him for what comfort she could get. “What the hell were those?”

He was scarcely articulate and clung to her as hard as she clung to him. “A sending — bad one — really strong — ye gods! Wild magic — the size of it! — right down through half the Wheel — How have we made someone that angry?”

5

“Your lover,” said Mark, “has just stolen our car.” Paulie, now hurriedly dressed in stretch-nylon trousers and an Arran sweater, paused in filling the thermos. “He is not my lover. I never saw him before today.”

Mark discerned that she was telling the truth. “Then why did you have him in the house?”

“He’s Tony’s brother — I told you.” Before Mark could make any comment about Tony, Paulie swung to counterattack, with the thermos clutched to her sweater as if it were her injured name. “You watched him steal the car, and you didn’t try to stop him! I suppose it didn’t occur to you that you’re the most powerful magician in this country. You could have stopped him in his tracks if you’d thought to use your power.”

“I did think,” said Mark, “and I did try. Whoever he is, he turns out to have more power than I have. By some way. He brushed me off like a fly — along with all the wards on the car.”

“But he’s only small!” Paulie said naively. “Though I suppose he is chunky.”

“Size doesn’t enter into it,” Mark said contemptuously. “Some children have more power than you do.”

“Then I suppose you’d better call the police,” she said.

“I already have,” Mark replied. “They may just catch him — but what’s really worrying me is that I mentioned Gladys in front of him, and I can feel him heading her way. Do you know anything at all about him — what his intentions are, or whether he’s into the black stuff in any way?”

Paulie put the thermos to her mouth in dismay. “No. I told you. I only just met him.”

“Then we’d better follow him,” said Mark. “Quickly. Get that food and come along.”

“How? Do we hire a car? Or walk?”

“As he’s had the extreme generosity to leave us a Deux Chevaux in exchange for the BMW, we might as well use the thing,” said Mark.

“Oh, not that car!” Paulie said as she turned away to the fridge, thus inadvertently admitting to more knowledge of Tony than she had ever admitted before.

Mark pretended not to hear, in order not to have to remind her that she always said of Tony, “I hardly know the man — I don’t even know what car he drives!” He hurried about finding biscuits and apples and adding them to the basket of food on the counter. And he felt cold, and lonely and empty.

Five minutes later, locking the house and making sure the wards of protection were back in place, he wondered why he was bothering. The house was a heartless shiny box. He did not care if someone broke in. He did not care if he never saw it again. But he supposed Paulie would mind, and so he made it safe, meticulously.

Paulie meanwhile inserted herself into the dishrag seat behind the wheel of the motley car, bemoaning her fate. “This is an awful car, Mark, even awful for a Deux Chevaux!” She turned the key and wailed as the thing began to chug and clatter. “Christ! Pieces are falling off, Mark! Next door’s looking at us — I’m ashamed! Where to, if it will move?”

“Make for Herefordshire the usual way. He’s still heading there.”

Paulie slammed the little monster into reverse and went grinding backward up to the road. She made further piteous cries as soon as she got it into forward gear. “God, Mark, we’ll be lucky if this gets us to Gladys by tomorrow! It won’t go above forty! I’m not sure it’s intended to!”

“Just keep going,” he said patiently. “Your acquaintance doesn’t know we’re following him, and he may not hurry. He thought too little of me to notice I got a link to him.”

“I don’t understand how you can be so calm!” Paulie said. “When I think how much that car of ours cost—!”

She repeated these remarks at intervals over the next thirty miles. The little car got caught in the beginnings of rush hour, and it took them an hour to cover that much. Mark sat with his arms folded, and endured. Most of the time he was wondering, and not for the first time, why he had come to marry Paulie when he disliked her so much. He could not remember ever liking her. But she had looked after him in those early days, and it had seemed quite natural, as if she were what he was used to…

And from there to Zillah, who was and always would be the only one he wanted. Up to now he had not dared to let himself consider how easy it would be to find her. He had not even dared to ask if Zillah was indeed the sister Amanda had living with her, though he had suspected it for some time. Somehow he had known it would do no good. For no reason that he could fathom, Zillah had closed him out, dropped the bar on him as if he were a game of pool in a pub, and he knew she was not about to reconsider. But now it was out in the open. Amanda, in her agitation, had said Zillah’s name on the phone. He could let himself think of her and of her habit of ducking out and of Amanda’s precognitive fear that Zillah was in deep trouble. If he could find her and rescue her, then he might for the first time have some hope.

The little car chugged on like an ineffectual terrier running at a rathole. An hour later, luck turned Mark’s way.

“Ah!” he said. “Your friend’s stopped. He’s run out of gas. I was hoping for that.”

Paulie put her foot down. The small monster roared. “Tinker with our car then. Make sure he can’t start it again.”

Mark sat back after five minutes of effort. “No good. He’s got protection on it I can’t break.”

“We’ll never catch up!” Paulie wailed. “Oh, I hate this car!”

Five minutes later, Mark said, “He still hasn’t gone on. We may be in luck.”

“Probably seducing the cash girl,” said Paulie. “I hope she gives him AIDS!”

For whatever reason, Tod remained stationary for the next hour and a half. By this time, Paulie had entered straight roads in the chalk country, which she knew well. And the little car seemed to have warmed to its work. Though its sloping hood showed a tendency to rise and then clang back into place, like a terrier snapping at flies, and its parti-colored wings kept up a continuous rapid flapping, as if it entertained the illusion that flight was a possibility, it attained sixty miles an hour and kept that speed up. Mark watched a stormy yellow sunset gather among big indigo clouds against the wide western horizon and began to think they might actually catch the man. He blocked out a buzzing headache, which was probably due more to the gathering storm than to the noise of the little car, and concentrated on drawing in all the power he could muster. He was going to have to use Paulie’s power, too, in order to defeat Tod. This part of England was a network of old, strong places. Mark could draw on those, but by the same token, so could Tod.

It puzzled Mark that someone of this man’s power had not made himself known before. It was as if a sudden wild magic had come into their midst from somewhere else entirely. And he could not understand his own reaction to it. Why had he, Mark, who was normally secretive and circumspect to a degree that irritated everyone, not only Paulie, even himself at times, felt compelled to babble of Gladys and Amanda in front of this man? When he saw the fellow cheerfully stealing his car, he had felt a jolt of horror that had nothing to do with the theft. He had known his nemesis. He had known that if he could not stop this rogue magician reaching Gladys, he, Mark, was finished. And that was hard to understand too.

Tod was moving again, though not so fast. “We’re closing on him,” Mark told Paulie. She nodded. They roared along a nearly empty road that seemed at the top of the world.

“Do I need lights yet?” she said. “I’ve no idea how they go on.”

The yellow sunset was being sucked away inside the advancing storm clouds, leaving a twilight trying on the eyes, gray road merging into gray-green downs on either side. “I’ll get them on for you,” Mark said.

He was leaning forward, fiddling with a knob that turned out to be the heater, when Tod suddenly and inexplicably swung northward, perhaps mistaking the route. Mark sprang upright.

“He’s turned off! We can cut him off! Take the next right. Here—this one!”

Paulie swung the wheel. The little car dived around and plunged into a narrow road running uphill. It was going too fast. Paulie’s effort to brake sent it into a series of skids, swooping from hedge to hedge, wilder and wider, as Paulie lost her head, swore at Mark, and turned the wheel against the skid. They ended nose-down in a ditch at the top of a hill.

“You stupid wimp!” Paulie said. “This is your fault. What did you have to shout at me to take this road for?”

Mark cursed. He could feel Tod accelerating away into the distance.

They disentangled themselves from the tilted seats and climbed out into a half-dark landscape bare of anything but a line of pylons against the sky. A keen wind moaned through the hedges, flapping hair and plastering trousers to legs.

Paulie shivered. “This beastly little car! The steering’s shot to blazes. Is it badly broken? I’d hope it was, only that’d mean we’d be here all night.”

Mark squelched down into what proved to be a very muddy ditch and took a look. The motley car had both front wheels and its snout plunged into the mud, a terrier digging out a rat, but he could see no obvious damage. Lucky Deau Chevaux were so light. “I think if we both got down here,” he said, “we could lift—”

Paulie said, “Mark!” She sounded calm, but there was a strident note of panic underneath. “Mark, something very odd is happening.”

“What?” he asked, heaving at the buried bumper.

“Those pylons,” she said. “They moved—they’re moving now!”

The wind took her voice. Mark could not believe what he thought he heard her say. He stood up irritably. The line of pylons, dark against the lead-dark sky, stretched away out of sight over the hilltop. They were just pylons — skeleton steel towers with stumpy arms at the top to carry the cables — standing like a row of stiff giants across the fields. But as Mark looked, ready to ask Paulie not to add to their troubles by imagining things, he saw another pylon rise into sight from behind the hilltop. What? he thought. His eyes shot to the nearest, halfway across the field on the other side of the road. And he saw it take a waddling stride nearer, and another. Behind it, the whole line of tall metal towers swayed in unison as they strode, and strode again.

He watched without believing it for a second. Then it got through to him that a line of metal monsters — and they seemed to be bearing God knew how much voltage of live cable — was steadily and unstoppably marching toward him. He leaped around the car’s buried hood, seized Paulie, and dragged her away down the road. He felt the foremost pylon turn slightly to reorientate on him as he ran.

“Down!” he yelled at Paulie.

They dived into the ditch together, treading on each other, wet to the knees, almost waist-deep in mud as they crouched around to watch the nearest metal giant arrive in the road in one clanging, swaying stride. Mark could feel it search for him. Not Paulie, for some reason, just him.

“Protection,” he said. “Put up protection for both of us. I can’t. They’re homing on me.”

Paulie was uttering small, yammering sounds of terror, but she did her best. With his senses heightened by terror, Mark saw the warding grow around them in a gentle blue haze, glowing faintly in the half-dark. In the road the foremost pylon took another crashing stride and then stood, towering, at a loss. With the same heightened senses, Mark felt the strength and nature of the sending that activated it. God in heaven! It was wild magic. Someone hated him enough to harness that which no one should have been able to control at all.

“Turn it — turn it away!” he whispered.

“I can’t — it’s wild — it’s strong!” Paulie whimpered. He could feel her pushing weakly, so weak against the mighty thing, and wished he dared help. But he knew without a shadow of doubt that if he used the slightest power himself, those things would know and home in on it.

Clang. Paulie’s push had been enough to start the thing moving again. Or perhaps it was the pressure of the pylons advancing behind. The line continued stalking forward, curving slightly now from its former course, striding solemnly and mindlessly across the road, through the hedge, and on downhill. The first passed twenty yards away, the second ten. The third tower strode straight upon the motley car with an appalling tinny rending, and swayed, held up only by the cables strung from its stumpy arms. This brought the rest striding so near that Paulie and Mark both lay flat, faces in their arms, feeling the earth vibrate, the crunch of tarmac torn from the road, and the wail of wind in struts and cables. With that was mixed the acid-blast of magic full of violence and hatred, which in turn mingled with heat and thick fumes as what was left of the motley car caught fire and blazed against the hedge.

“They’ve stopped,” said Paulie. “They’ve lost you.”

Mark risked standing up. The blazing car cast orange light along the ditch, showing it steaming, and it was hard to see beyond. He could just pick out the line of giants standing slanted downhill toward the main road. One stood like a sentinel against the fading light of the sky not far away. “They’re waiting,” he said. “Thanks for turning them.”

“I had help,” Paulie said gruffly, “but I don’t know whose. Why is Roddy after you like this?”

“No idea.” It took a mere flick of power to trace Tod, and Tod was, to Mark’s surprise, very far away and quite unconcerned with Mark. Then why—?

The nearest pylon lurched and began to advance on Mark.

“Oh God! They found you again!” Paulie staggered up. Mud sucked and she exclaimed with disgust. “Sorry, Mark, but I’m off. They’re after you, and you can cope on your own.”

Mark caught her arm as she set off downhill. He needed her for protection. It shamed him, but he dared not let her go. Their whole marriage was like this. “Don’t be a fool. No one’s safe from the wild magic. There’s a small stone circle quite near. It’s strong. It might help.”

Her eyes rolled sideways to the metal giant. “Which way?”

He pointed, and they fled that way, leaving the car burning, bursting through rolls of smoke, clumsily jumping the torn-up tarmac and then the broken hedge. They ran, panting and choking, up beside the deep-gouged tracks the advancing pylons had made in the turf. Paulie stumbled trying to look back. Mark jerked her upright, wrenching his arm. The foremost pylon was looming past the flames, towing a crescent of more distant striding giants with it. Paulie’s breath came in shrieks as they reached the top of the hill, and Mark could barely breathe, but neither dared slow down. They careered down the slope beyond, mostly rough grass, and crashed through the narrow end of a black, spiny coppice.

Below them lay a small meadow, hard to see in the near dark, with the white ribbon of a hedged lane, and a gate into the lane beyond that. The small stone circle was a warm emanation in the center of the meadow, faintly seen beside the dark blot of a parked car. They pelted for the ring of stones, invoking — imploring — assistance if any was to be had, and threw themselves within it, each clinging to a separate stone and heaving for breath.

“That car,” Paulie gasped. “Could we?”

Above came crashing as the first pylon marched into the coppice.

Mark looked at the dark, deserted car. A BMW. He looked again, unbelievingly. It was his own car. He could sense it, feel the habitual little protections he always used around it in traffic. Beyond it, the gate was shut. There was no sign or feel of Tod anywhere near. With the warmth of the stone under his hands and its safety suffusing him, he was free to see that the things waddling down the hillside at him had nothing to do with Tod. They were a sending from quite another quarter. The unknown was angry and drawing on an associate who came from somewhere very dark and low indeed.

Mark was sprinting toward the car as soon as he saw this. It was a godsend — too good to be true — there had to be a catch! Christ, I hope he left the keys in it! At the very least, it was bound to be locked. But when he seized the door handle, the door opened. When he grabbed for what he knew would be an empty keyhole, his hand encountered the dangling tab of his own keys. Thank God! He hurled himself into the seat and thrust it back to its usual position, turning the keys as he did so. And — another miracle — the engine purred, and the gas gauge swung around to full. He almost blessed Tod.

“Get that gate open!” he bellowed to Paulie.

Paulie ran again, a weary, rolling trot, as soon as she heard the engine. She dragged the gate wide and left it that way, regardless of cattle. Mark threw the door open for her as he bumped past into the lane. Somehow she scrambled in and somehow she got the door closed as he accelerated back to the main road.

“Don’t ever let me in for anything like that again!” she sobbed.

The pylon halted in front of the stone circle like a cat faced with water. But the line was pressing downhill on either side of it. Slowly it moved again, sideways, giving the circle a wide berth, and seemed to set off striding mechanically. It had reached the lane when it stopped, and stood trailing cables, as the sending left it and moved on after its object.

6

It was an awful journey. They could feel the sending pursuing them, taking on other forms as it came. The storm howled around the car, purposefully, and brought rain increasingly heavy as night fell. Once a tree came down in the road just after they had passed it. Mark had to ask Paulie to keep up constant protection, and she was soon tired out and angry.

“Must we go all the way to Gladys’s?” she demanded.

“Yes,” he said. “Even if I hadn’t promised Amanda, that house is the one place I know that can keep out this sending.”

Paulie could not argue with that. When they finally arrived under Gladys’s storm-torn trees, to find another car parked on the verge and the gate fallen down, she refused to move. “I’m past caring about any of you,” she said. “Leave me be.” Mark had to drag her out of the car. “I just want to lie down and sleep!” she wailed as he hauled her through the pelting rain and up the muddy path. But she cheered up at seeing dim lights coming from the house. “There! She’s perfectly okay in spite of all your fussing!”

When Mark tremulously clattered at the ring on the verandah door, it was opened by Amanda. She was carrying an oil lamp, which she held high to see who they were. She seemed pale by its light, and her eyes very big and dark. “Good Lord!” she said. “You two look as if you’ve been through it!”

“We have,” Mark said. “Let us in and shut the door quickly. There’s a sending after me. And is there any coffee? Paulie’s about had it.”

Amanda stood back to let him guide Paulie through to a seat in the jungle room and then shut the door — both doors — with firm claps. There was a sense of something wrong. Mark realized that the dim light in the room came from a row of candles on the mantelpiece. He could have done without the shifting, clawing shadows they made among the jungle.

“The power’s out again,” Amanda explained, casting more shadows, huge, walking ones, as she came back with the lamp.

“That figures,” Mark said, thinking of the pylons.

“Oh, does that mean there’s nothing hot to drink?” Paulie moaned, putting her draggled head in her muddy hands.

“No. She’s got those gas cylinders,” said Amanda. “The kettle’s just boiled, but there’s only tea bags.”

“That’ll do,” said Paulie.

There was still a sense of something not right — a sort of silence and emptiness that was there in spite of the frustrated storm roaring around the house. “What’s wrong?” Mark asked. “Maureen?”

“Gladys,” said Amanda. “Vanished. And she seems to have taken the cats. Have you noticed there isn’t an animal in the place?”

That was it, of course. Mark had never known this house without the soft prowling of cats — and usually the rhythmic scratching of the beast Jimbo too. If Gladys had removed her animals, she had indeed gone. “Didn’t she leave a message?”

“No. I’ve only been here half an hour, but I’ve looked everywhere I can think of,” said Amanda. “There’s nothing, unless you know any secret place—”

“Oh, damn that! Let’s get warm and dry first!” Paulie cried out.

“Yes, yes, of course.” Mark seized one of the candles and forced himself to hurry about looking for dry clothes, while Amanda lit a fire and made tea.

Half an hour later, they were feeling much better. Mark had discovered various strange garments thrown around the bedroom that seemed to belong to Gladys. He selected a flowered kimono for Paulie and got her into it. For himself he found a gown of scarlet flannel, which Amanda, with great surprise, identified as a Cambridge doctoral gown. Now he and Paulie sat side by side drinking tea and staring into the fire, looking as if they were taking part in some new ritual. The sight amused Amanda. She was sitting on the hearth, being too tense to take a chair.

“What happened to you?” she asked.

Mark started to tell her, but Paulie, as she so often did, interrupted him. “Where’s Maureen? I thought she’d be here too.”

“No idea, and she’s not answering her phone,” Amanda said.

On cue, the telephone rang, hidden somewhere in the jungle.

“That’ll be Maureen, I bet.” Amanda leaped up and made the usual search among the plants. When she located the phone and answered, however, it proved to be yet another puzzle. “It’s for you,” Amanda said, holding the receiver out through the leaves toward Mark. “Sounds Scottish.”

“But no one knows I’m—” Mark began. Then he remembered that there was both a sending and a rogue magician abroad, and simply and grimly took the phone. “Mark Lister here.”

The voice was female and, as Amanda said, slightly Scottish. “Mark Lister, are you? I’m sorry to seem to doubt you, but I’ll have to ask you to identify yourself by your title. I was told to do that, you see.”

“Told? Who told you?”

“My mother. She told me particularly that I—”

“Your mother? I’m sorry. I think you may have the wrong—”

“My mother,” said the woman, “is Mrs. Gladys Naismith.”

“Gladys!”

“That’s right. I’m her daughter, Aline McAllister, and I live in Dundee. I have a message for you from my mother if you can prove you have the title to it. The secret title, mind. She was most particular.”

“If you really need—” Mark gave in and gave her his full titles.

“Thank you,” said Aline McAllister. “She said you would be in her house before midnight, and I see she was right as usual. She sent the message up with her cats, you know. I have them all here. Making fifty-two, along with my own, I may say. Dearly as I love my mother, we do not get on, and this is why. Long ago I told her that only in a real, genuine crisis will I do any other thing for her, and this is what I get. Fifty-two cats. So you may take it the message is urgent. This is it. I am to say that my mother has gone after Zillah, partly because of the child, but mainly because you and all the rest of British Witchcraft are in serious danger. In order to find out the nature of the danger, you would do well to consult the girl she and you visited in hospital. End of message. I hope you have it. It’s clear as mud to me.”

“I—I have it,” Mark said. “Thank you.”

“Don’t thank me, thank my mother’s cats,” said Aline McAllister, and rang off.

“Who on earth was that?” Paulie said as he came out through the jungle.

“Gladys’s daughter,” he said. “With a message from Gladys.”

“What?” exclaimed the other two. Amanda added, “I never knew she’d been married — or — or — Anyway, how extraordinary!”

“The poor girl must have had a terrible childhood,” Paulie said feelingly.

Mark was inclined to agree. “She said they didn’t get on.”

Amanda gave that stern little frown of hers. “Never mind that. What was the message?”

Mark told them and astonished them a second time.

“Gone after Zillah!” said Paulie. “Why should that make a crisis? That girl is always dropping out. She’s probably just joined a squat somewhere.”

Amanda frowned again. “What is this danger? Where is this girl who’ll know? In hospital?”

“No,” said Mark. “She’s dead.”

“Dead!” shrilled Paulie. “Gone after Zillah, and she tells you to consult a dead girl!”

“How long ago?” Amanda asked intently.

“About six weeks now,” said Mark. “Gladys is right. She should be over the shock now.”

“Or she could be dissipated,” said Paulie. “Gone after Zil—!”

“Shut up, Paulie!” Amanda snapped. “Be helpful or be quiet. Mark, we’d better get in touch with her at once, don’t you think? What was her name?”

“We never found out,” Mark explained. “The hospital had no idea, and she didn’t—”

“And you don’t even know her name!” Paulie said disgustedly.

Amanda stood up and advanced on Paulie like an avenging queen. “Paulie—”

“She’s tired and overwrought,” Mark said hastily.

“No she’s not,” said Amanda. “No more than I am. My sister is missing, and I spent the whole sleepless night receiving warnings in every conceivable way, and yet I can still behave reasonably! Paulie is just strutting into the center of the stage in her usual selfish way, and you, Mark, are conniving with her to let her. As you both always do. Paulie, you behave or I’ll make you! This is serious.”

They stared at her like injured children, such was her majesty. At length, Paulie whispered, “Sorry.”

“Good,” said Amanda. “Now, Mark, what made Gladys think you’d be able to contact this girl’s soul?”

“Because she was desperate to tell me something when she died,” he admitted. “I’m sorry — it was so peculiar that I’ve rather avoided thinking about it, but I should have told you. Apart from anything else, she was probably from the pirate universe. Gladys was sure she was. I think that was what made Gladys see I was right.”

“Then,” said Amanda, “let’s get on with it. Are you helping, Paulie? Good — get over there then. Mark, you take the north and do the invocation. How many candles?”

“Just one in the middle,” said Mark.

There were few other questions. They all knew what to do. Shortly, with the solitary candle casting dark leaf-flickers over ceiling and faces, and gusting occasionally from the wind that still roared outside, they stood in three-quarters of a circle, and Mark, standing with his back to the fire so that the glow of it shone red through his gown, spread his arms and began the strange, simple call that summoned a dead soul.

By fire and flete and candlelight, to hearth and house and warmth, he called, and called three times. The sound of the wind dropped away. None of them heard anything but the light breathing of the others and the gentle whickering of the candle flame.

He spread his arms to call her to earth and air and flame, but she was there already. She had been yearning for the call. Her gusty voice filled the room.

Oh, I’m so glad!

They had all expected her to manifest, if she was visible at all, somewhere among the plants where they had left space for her to come, but she manifested instead in the middle, hovering over the candle like a tall, streaming nimbus, causing the skin of them all to prickle with the haunting energy of her. She had not been, perhaps, very beautiful in life, but she was beautiful now. She had, Mark remembered, manifested like a flame at her death. She was all flame now.

I knew you’d call, her voice gusted. I waited. I had to tell you. I knew you didn’t know.

“Which of us are you speaking to?” Amanda asked quietly.

The man I came to this otherworld to find, she said. The one who called me. Herrel Listanian.

“His name is Mark Lister,” Paulie said. “You mean he’s an analogue?”

No, the gusty voice insisted. The man who called is Herrel Listanian.

Paulie drew breath to argue. Amanda’s eyes caught the candlelight and glinted off the substance of the ghost as she stopped Paulie with a look. “Please explain,” she said.

His name. His mother gave him a new name when she broke him in half and sent this half here to otherworld, the dead girl gusted. Forgive me. I helped her. I thought it would save him. But she used both halves as her puppets just as she always did. Mark could feel her presence orientate on him. The candle flame streamed toward him, imploringly, and guttered with the flickering voice. Forgive me. I helped put you here to spy for her, and now I can feel her pursuing you with a sending. You must have disobeyed her. Forgive me. The only good that came of it is that she stopped punishing you like this for a while.

“His mother is who?” Amanda asked.

Marceny, chief Lady of Leathe, the reply came, but the candle flame still streamed toward Mark. She sent you to rule the magework here and tell her what you knew. I helped because I thought it would save you. It was done for pity and love. Forgive me.

“How would it save him?” said Amanda.

To have the best half of yourself free, the voice gusted pleadingly. And you were free, and I saw you didn’t know. So I had to come to tell you, to atone, but I died too soon. Forgive me. Let me go.

Mark could hardly move. His face, and his tongue, were stiff, but he managed to croak, “I — forgive you,” and the words of release.

She gave a small, gusting sigh. The nimbus faded away, and the candle flame burned straight.

“Mark!” squawked Paulie.

Amanda gave her another quelling look. “Who was she, Mark?”

“Colny Ventoran, my mother’s best assistant,” he answered without thinking. “She always was rather an intense little—” He stopped, seeing the way they were both looking at him.

“Then you’re from the pirate universe?” said Amanda.

“I rather fear I must be,” he agreed.