A Sudden Wild Magic

1

“You what?” said Edward.

“Come from otherworld,” Judy repeated, speaking very muffled, with her head down to twiddle the tapes of her medical gown. “We all do — the whole capsule did.”

Edward, as always, did not react in any way she expected. Instead of demanding to know more, exclaiming, repudiating her, or racing off to inform the High Head, he simply turned away to the blue embrasure of the window, where he stood gazing out at the blank blueness and tapping the fingers of his large, agile right hand on the sill. Judy waited, long, long minutes. Before the wait was over, she was fighting herself not to say — in what she knew would be a girlish whine — Don’t you love me anymore now? Edward had this ability to make her behave — and feel — like an insecure schoolgirl. Perhaps, she thought, this was because it was what she was deep down and naturally. Before she knew Edward, she had never, not once, felt natural with any man.

She managed not to speak and was glad she hadn’t when Edward turned back to her with a look of mild exasperation. “This just shows,” he said, “how important it is to keep questioning our reasons for believing things. It’s particularly important with traditional doctrines. Here were we in Arth all assuming, without question, that otherworld is a debased copy of ours, and the inhabitants of it some form of reptile — and why? Because some High Brother or Head Magus made inadequate observations centuries ago and decided it was so. And we acted on this assumption, and did our experiments, and never once thought to examine otherworld as we examine other universes. And now you tell me that you’re as human as I am. Judy, I’m ashamed — for Arth and for the Pentarchy — I truly am.”

Judy stared at him, feeling that radiance was breaking out all over her. She had hardly dared to believe that even Edward would take the news this way. “Edward, you’re amazing.”

Edward put a hand on each of her shoulders and gripped with the gentle grip that Judy, from the start, would have walked through fire for. “Why have you only told me this now, though?”

She hung her head again. This was the question she could not answer honestly. How could she tell him that this was the result of agitated planning in the women’s quarters? Roz demanded action. Flan and Helen wanted firm news about Zillah. Knowing Edward, Judy could not believe there were any hidden horrors in Arth and said so, whereupon Flan, to everyone’s surprise, burst into tears, and Roz loudly expressed her contempt of both of them. And Sandra surprised Judy, and Roz too, by telling Roz to shut her mouth until she knew what she was talking about. “See here, Judy,” Sandra said, “something’s wrong. No one’s seen Zillah or Marcus since yesterday, and no one will talk about them. Everyone’s suddenly busy with rituals all the time, and they’re beginning to look funny at me in Calculus. Suppose they found out about us? We need to know. Edward is High Horns’s friend. You go and ask him about Zillah and see what else you can pick up while you’re at it. You have to. It’s urgent.” The rest had agreed — though Judy felt that there was no need for Roz to add, “If you can conquer your passion enough to remember your mission, that is.”

Because of what Roz said, Judy resolved — in this newly discovered schoolgirl way of hers — that she would only ask Edward if she gave him important information herself first. That made it fair. And it did seem, from what the others said, that it was only a matter of time before someone in Arth guessed where the women were from. But not being able to tell Edward any of this, she hung her head and told him somethingelse that happened to be true.

“Because I love you. I didn’t want to be under false pretenses anymore.”

Edward kissed her. It was reverent and wondering. He had told her that if he had even suspected what it was like to love a woman, he would never have thought of joining the Brotherhood.

Eventually, still not feeling honest, Judy said, not sounding as casual as she would have liked, “By the way, have you any idea where Zillah and her little boy have got to? Nobody seems to know.”

The slightly austere look Judy had dreaded seeing came over Edward’s face. Much of it was guilt. He had once quite lustfully thought of Zillah before he came to know Judy. That felt like retroactive infidelity now. “I’m afraid I can’t tell you anything about that,” he said. As far as he knew, Zillah, Josh, and Philo were still wandering about in the depths of Arth, somehow parrying all the magework used to find them. The only other explanation for their disappearance was, he had agreed with the High Head, plain impossible. So search parties were still looking. And for fear of the alarm and despondency it might spread, he could not tell Judy what havoc the truants seemed to be working upon the fundamental rhythms of Arth. But being reminded by this of his friend and his duty, Edward added reflectively, “I suppose I must tell the High Head that you all come from otherworld.”

“Oh, need you?” Judy said. She must, after all, have been relying on Edward not to react like any other High Brother, she saw. Roz was not going to forgive her for this.

“I do need to,” he said. “Arth has been laboring under false assumptions for centuries. The Magus will be glad to put that right.”

Glad, Judy thought, was not a word anyone but Edward would have chosen. In a dither of panic, she said, “When — when are you going to tell him?”

“Oh, when I next see him, I suppose,” Edward said vaguely. It had occurred to him, too, that glad might not properly describe his friend’s reaction. He might find Judy snatched away from him. Perhaps it would be better to wait until the vibrations settled down and Lawrence was in a better humor. “I shan’t see him until this evening anyway,” he said, consoling himself and Judy.

2

To Zillah, it felt as if they all spilled out feet-first as though Arth were a giant helter-skelter. So strong was this impression that, when the light ceased to dazzle her, she looked upward, expecting to see Arth hanging above like an enormous blue tornado, or at least the twisted tail of it joining them to wherever they were now.

Blue was certainly what she saw, but it was the clouded blue of sky appearing through dark, shiny leaves. Among the leaves were small white flowers and round golden fruit. They were in a grove of fruit trees, and the light was, in fact, only bright after the darkness in the base of the citadel.

“What did you do?” Josh asked. He was collapsed on the grass with all four legs folded. Deep dents in the soft turf showed where he had landed and staggered before folding. Even so, he was keeping a firm arm around Marcus, who was struggling to get himself and his bag of toys off Josh’s back.

“Daddle,” Marcus announced.

“I didn’t do anything,” Zillah said.

“Yes you did,” said Philo, who was clinging to the nearest fruiting tree. He looked as if he might fold like Josh without it. “I never felt power like it!”

“Daddle!” insisted Marcus.

There was a small lake, or large pool, of an extraordinary fresh blue-green in the center of the grove. A play of mounded water and white bubbles near the middle showed where the pool was being fed constantly by a spring. Zillah could not blame Marcus for wanting to paddle. It was hot in this grove. But the whole of it had a look that was somehow — special.

“Better not, Marcus,” said Philo. “This all belongs to the Goddess.”

Over the days of their acquaintance, Marcus had decided Philo was the wise man of the party. He did not protest. He nodded gravely at Philo. “Dow?”

Zillah helped Marcus slide down off Josh. “Have either of you any idea where we are?”

“It feels like the Pentarchy,” Philo said decidedly. “But how far south or north we are depends — this hot, it could be summer in central Trenjen or winter in south Leathe. These orange trees don’t give much away. If only we knew what season—”

“Spring,” said Josh. He pointed to where, between two orange trees, some small blue-gray irises were flowering.

Philo stared at these in some perplexity. “Do those only come up in spring? It was spring when I left for Arth. It ought to be summer if—”

“Or we’ve been away a whole year,” Josh suggested. “I think we’d better go and ask someone — in a roundabout way, of course, or they’ll realize we’ve broken the law.”

With Zillah and Philo each hauling on an arm, Josh struggled to his legs and they went cautiously out of the grove. At the far end of the pool, the water ran out in a stream over a carefully built small wooden lock, and a path led beside the stream, out of the grove and into sunlight strong enough to dazzle them all again. They halted nervously, shading their eyes.

There was a woman a few yards downstream. She was coming toward them on the path, halting from time to time to test the carefully turfed banks of the stream with a long tool. She was an idyllic sight. Long coal black hair blew in the breeze around her shoulders, and her faded blue-gray gown was blown to outline her figure. She was a beautiful woman, disturbingly familiar and strange at the same time. She looked around, seeing them, and Zillah could have sworn for a moment that it was Amanda staring at them.

Marcus had no doubt. With a loud shout of “Badder!” he set off down the path toward her as fast as his legs could take him. “Badder! Badder! Badder!”

Zillah set off after him, and Philo with her. Analogue of Amanda or not, the woman was a total stranger and might not care for a small boy hurling himself upon her. A dirty small boy. The pyjama suit Marcus had been wearing all their time in Arth was gray at the knees and rear and splotched down the front. The real Amanda would have found it bad enough, let alone this unknown image of her.

The woman, however, darted to meet Marcus even faster than Zillah ran after him. She reached him fractionally first and swept him gladly up in one arm. The bag of toys thumped to the ground and came open, spilling everything over the path. Zillah and Philo stopped, for fear of treading on Marcus’s treasures.

“Doy! Doy!” Marcus draped himself desperately over the woman’s arm.

“I’m so sorry,” Zillah said as she stooped to gather the toys up.

“Leave those,” said the woman. It was an absolute command. Her voice was high and chilly, and nothing like Amanda’s.

Zillah slowly stood up, staring at her, wondering how she could ever have taken her for Amanda. Her hair was not even very dark, and arranged in careful gleaming tresses which the wind had scarcely power to move. Her dress was indeed blue-gray, but it was of satin as stiff as her tresses, in a high-fashion mode that Zillah thought as displeasing as it was strange — a matter of two huge puffed panniers descending from the woman’s armpits around a tight whaleboned bodice that spread into a hooped divided skirt. Against it, Marcus looked even filthier. The kicking cloth feet of his pyjama suit were black and shiny as leather, except where one toe was coming through.

With a fleeting wonder as to however this woman managed to pee in such a dress, Zillah looked into her face. It was nothing like Amanda’s, being pretty and heart-shaped, with faint, hard lines of age to it. It dismayed Zillah utterly. It was the woman’s eyes, which were dark. They were eyes that greedily, urgently, and softly sought out what was valuable and vulnerable in Zillah and drank it in, without giving anything back. Mother’s eyes, Zillah thought. You could easily mistake such eyes for those of a kindly student of humanity, unless you knew Mother.

“Perhaps you’d better give me my son,” Zillah said. Marcus was still reaching and crying after his toys, and Philo, after one startled look at the woman, was doggedly picking them up.

“I will not,” said the woman. “Gualdian, I said to leave those.” The thing in her right hand, which Zillah had taken for a tool, was actually a long rod rather like a scepter, with a strange, ugly little head grinning from the end she held. When Philo took no notice of what she said, she reached out and tapped him with the rod. Philo cried out and dropped the toys. For a moment he seemed unable to move. When he did move, it was to clap one hand to the shoulder she had tapped and turn his face up to the woman in horror. He was whiter than Zillah had ever seen him. His eyes had gone enormous.

Marcus saw it and was shocked into silence. Great tears rolled down his face. Seeing them and seeing Philo, Zillah stepped forward in an access of anger and wrenched Marcus away. “You’ve no right to do that!”

Marcus’s tears had splotched the woman’s gown. She let him go with a shudder. “I have every right,” she said. “I am Marceny Listanian, and you are trespassing on my estate. You used unwarranted power to come here, too. I warn you that we do not treat such things lightly in Leathe. You are all under arrest. Tell that centaur to come out of the grove at once.”

Zillah whirled around to find a number of men and several women, who all wore versions of the hooped and panniered costume, hurrying toward them. They must have been concealed behind the trees of the grove. Now they were jumping the irrigation ditches that crisscrossed the flat field in order to spread out and surround Zillah and Philo. Josh was between the last two trees on the path. All his hooves were braced and he was holding on to the trees as if some compulsion were forcing him forward.

“Stay where you are, Josh!” Zillah shouted.

Josh did not reply, but he slowly retreated backward, handing himself from tree to tree, until he was out of sight in the grove. Somehow, Zillah had no doubt that he was safe there. She turned back to find that the rest of the people had arrived around them on both sides of the stream. The women were of all ages, and all, without exception, finely dressed and coiffured. Their perfume blew on the warm wind in muggy waves. The men mostly wore old-looking, rustic breeches and shirts, but there were one or two among them dressed in bright garments almost as fine as the women’s. One in particolored red and yellow, like a jester, caught Zillah’s eye as he leaped easily across a little ditch and came to stand on the other side of the stream.

She knew him at once. It was like a shock — whether of horror or joy, she did not know — to see him real and warm and moving, and in that silly jester’s suit, so like Mark and so utterly unlike. He knew her too. He stopped dead and they stared at each other over the stream. His shock and concern, his unbelieving glance at Marcus, made him for an instant look almost like Mark. Then his jauntily bearded face moved back into the cynical laughing shape which, she saw sadly, was habitual to it.

“Well now, Mother,” he said. “What do you want done with these people?”

“Bring them to me in the small audience hall,” the woman in blue-gray replied. “And the centaur too, if you can get him out.” Saying which, she turned and walked away along the stream. After she had gone a few yards, her figure appeared to ripple. She became transparent and, quite quickly, melted out of sight entirely.

The rest seemed to relax a little as soon as she was gone. Two of the men got Philo to his feet, and — Zillah could not help noticing — they handled him carefully and tenderly, as if they had more than a notion of how he was feeling. Philo was still very pale, and he did not seem to be able to use his right arm.

“You may as well pick those up,” Herrel said to one of the girls, pointing to the toys strewn in the path.

“Why?” she said irritably, glancing at Marcus. “It’s only a boy child.” But she and another woman got down among their billowing satins and started collecting toys.

Two other women, both older, took Zillah’s elbows and urged her along the path. Zillah resisted. Marcus was leaning over her shoulder reaching for his toys. “Doy!” he said urgently.

“And someone had better go and see if they can tempt that centaur out from under the Goddess’s skirts,” Herrel said. “You — Ladny and Sigry — you’d be best at it.”

Zillah felt both the women holding her stiffen. One said acidly, “Don’t you speak to me like that. I don’t take my orders from you.”

“Don’t you indeed?” said Herrel. “How shocking of me to suggest you might! All right. Sigry, take Andred and our sweet Aliky and see what you can do about my mother’s orders.”

One of the girls who had been collecting toys nodded and handed the bag into Marcus’s eager fists. She even gave him a pleasant smile as she did so. She and the other older woman, together with one of the better-dressed men, set off toward the grove, calling out, “What if he won’t come out?”

“Besiege him,” said Herrel and leaped across the stream.

The woman called Ligny immediately flounced around and marched away along the path. From the way Herrel leered derisively at her stiff satin back, Zillah suspected that Herrel had got rid of her on purpose.

She became sure if it when they all moved off downstream and Herrel contrived to walk beside her, so near that she could catch the faint characteristic smell of him — Mark’s smell. It made her shake all over. She could scarcely carry Marcus, who was anyway writhing violently about in her arms to embrace his rescued toys.

“I’ll carry him if you like,” Herrel said. “Will he come to me?”

Feeling as if she could barely move, so conscious was she of Herrel beside her, Zillah twisted her head to look at Marcus. Some of his writhings, she found, had been in order to get himself into a position from which he could perform a grave inspection of Herrel. “Ike bad,” he remarked to her. “Airy bay.”

“Yes, I think so,” she said, and was surprised that her voice came out cool and normal.

“Here, then, fellow.” Herrel took Marcus out of her arms, making a somewhat clumsy job of the transfer. She could feel him shaking too. Under cover of their maneuverings, he whispered, “What in hellspoke’s name made you come here? You were safe. You’d left me — him.”

It was in a way incredible, that this man she had never met should whisper to her in Mark’s voice of things that had happened in another world. But even while she was feeling this amazement, Zillah was whispering back, “Because I couldn’t help it, as soon as I knew. I had to. Fetch Mark back. You need him.”

Herrel all but lost the bag of toys, but rescued it with a raised yellow satin knee, while he whispered, “I don’t know how to! For the gods’ sake, don’t say a word to my mother! She’d kill!” After which he contrived to gather up both Marcus and the bag and hoist them to his shoulder, remarking in a normal speaking voice, “So you think I’m a nice man, do you fellow, hairy face and all?”

“He must be the only person in the Pentarchy who thinks that then,” observed one of the women coming behind.

It showed Zillah that they could easily have been overheard. Herrel had taken a great risk. She blazed with joy that it was this important to him — still, after she had walked out on Mark that way, without even a word — and this joy mixed and warred confusingly with fear and dismay, and her guilt at bringing Josh and Philo into this. It was her fault. She was sure of that. In some way, getting them all out of Arth, she had been homing on Herrel, instinctively. She had only to think of the woman Marceny to see that this had been a disastrous thing to do. Yet for a short while this was less to her than the mere fact of being here, walking beside Herrel under the blue sky on the path beside the stream.

Nobody said anything much as they walked. From time to time the path crossed irrigation — or drainage — ditches leading from locks in the stream. Then they walked over carefully made plank bridges where everyone’s feet thundered, and, it seemed to Zillah, any amount of whispering could have been hidden in the noise. But Herrel did not say another word to her. The confusion of Zillah’s feelings began to sort itself out — as she told herself wryly, the confusion at least was familiar, since it was the way her mother worked, both on her and on Amanda — and she began to have suspicions.

She looked at Herrel frequently, pretending to be anxious about Marcus, who was placidly fingering Herrel’s beard as he rode in Herrel’s arms. The few words Herrel said were all to Marcus. “Don’t pull it out, fellow — it’s not grass, it’s hair.” He smiled as he said it with a sort of inane, contemptuous hilarity, as if life were to him nothing but a continuing silly joke. It was not a reassuring smile. It was possibly not quite sane. Zillah saw that Herrel’s face around the smile was even paler than Mark’s, and full of habitual creases of strain that had nothing to do with the smile. He looked deeply diseased. It began to be borne in upon Zillah that this fag-end left of Mark was not a man you could trust. Perhaps he had even intended someone to overhear him whispering to her — or at any rate, he had not cared.

But Marcus liked him. Zillah clung to that. Just as Marcus had taken to Tam Fairbrother and then Tod, he had taken one of his calm fancies to Herrel. Perhaps all was not lost.

They approached a stand of tall evergreen oaks. The path led around the trees to a shallow flight of steps, really a set of terraces climbing to a lawn. At the back of the lawn, bowered in the trees, was a mansion. It was built in a style so foreign to Zillah that the most she could have said of it was that it was gracious, and probably a good deal bigger than it looked. Palladian was the word that came to her, but she knew that was quite wrong. It was elegant, reposeful, and breathed out a menace so total that she gasped. Something crouched inside there that was implacably hungry and full of hatred. Marcus felt it too. He turned and looked at the building with his lower lip stuck out. But to everybody else it was obviously just the house. Their pace quickened and they crossed the lawn in a businesslike huddle, sweeping Zillah, Marcus, and Philo with them. Philo was carrying his arm and looking as scared as Zillah felt.

Up more shallow steps, among pillars and along a cloisterlike passage, they were swept, and finally into a small, lofty room paneled in some strange greenish wood. There was a dais at one end where Marceny was sitting, strumming at a small, painted harpsichord. As the double doors opened to let the party through, she smiled, nodded, and swung around on her stool to face them.

“Oh, good,” she said. “I’ll talk to the gualdian first.”

While Philo was being pushed toward her, Herrel quietly dumped Marcus on the floor beside Zillah and moved away to sit on the edge of the dais at his mother’s feet. Just the position, Zillah thought, that went with his jester’s clothing. Marcus leant against Zillah’s legs, thoroughly and unusually subdued.

“What’s your name, my boy?” Marceny asked Philo in a clear, kindly voice.

“Amphetron,” Philo said. Zillah tried not to let her surprise show. Philo knew this world and its dangers, and she did not. She realized she had better watch Philo’s responses closely and take her lead from him.

“And how did you come to be trespassing in my Goddess grove, Amphetron?” Marceny asked.

“I’ve no idea,” Philo answered. “We simply all found ourselves there.”

“You should call me ‘my lady’ or ‘Lady Marceny’ when you speak to me, you know,” Marceny pointed out, still in the kind and reasonable manner one might use to a small child. “And I really don’t think you should tell me naughty stories either, Amphetron. We all felt you coming for hours and hours before you arrived. One of you was using quite terrific power in order to get here.”

“And I suppose that gave you time to set up magework to disguise yourself — that, if you don’t mind my saying so, was a low trick,” Philo said. Zillah had not realized he could be so bold.

Marceny smiled. “Oh, I don’t mind your saying so if you feel the need. It was thoroughly simple mental magecraft, purely designed to fetch you all out of the grove, and it took me no time at all — nothing like the power you people were squandering. I notice you haven’t somehow confessed about that yet.”

“There’s nothing to confess. I don’t know what the power was,” Philo said. He seemed totally frank about it. “It must have come from outside us. We were in one grove and we suddenly found ourselves in yours. I apologize for alarming you.”

“One grove where, Amphetron?” Marceny asked.

“The king’s grove in the Orthe,” Philo said.

Zillah thought, from Marceny’s reaction, and Herrel’s, and the slight murmur from those around her, that Philo had played a bold stroke here and named a very important place. Marceny said, with distinct caution — though her eyebrows were raised ready to disbelieve—“The king is a friend of yours, is he?”

“No, of my father’s,” Philo said, and his voice rang with truth. Philo, be careful! Zillah thought. She’s bound to check!

“Dear me,” Lady Marceny responded, with delicate incredulity. “Then the king and your no doubt eminent papa are going to want you back, aren’t they? Which of them would you prefer me to get in touch with?”

“The king,” Philo said. “If you would be so good.”

“Very well,” the lady said sweetly. “Meanwhile we shall, of course, keep you safely here. The king wouldn’t want to lose you. And of course, we’re always terribly glad to see gualdians here in Leathe. We suffer from such a dearth of gualdian blood. It’s such a hardship for us. Gualdians are so much better at magework than mere humans. But luckily, half-gualdians are quite as good. It’s a pity you’re such a funny little specimen. We’ll just have to hope that your offspring turn out a little more normal.”

Philo, for all his bold talk, must have known she was playing with him. As he realized the extent of it, his face flushed deep red. Herrel looked up and leered at him. Lady Marceny laughed outright.

“Or with such big feet,” she said. “It’s going to be quite hard to tempt any of my girls with you. But we can always use artificial insemination. It won’t hurt you a bit as long as you’re good and do what you’re told.”

Philo, with his face so dark with blood that he looked ill, started to say, “I — won’t—”

Lady Marceny held her hand up gracefully and stopped him. “Won’t? Is your arm still worrying you? You got off very lightly, you know. It could be a lot, lot worse. Please remember that you are a trespasser on my estate. Now I’m going to let you go away to a nice quiet room where you can think about this. I’m sure that by this evening you’ll have decided to be sensible, and if you are, I might get in touch with the king about you.”

Philo’s face drained to white as he was led away through another door. There was a decorous little spurt of murmuring and laughter from all the women present.

It was entirely derisive. “That a friend of the king’s!” someone behind Zillah said, and the satin-clothed lady beside her said, “Lord of Forests! She’d better not pick me for a mother — not with that!” As she said it, the woman gripped Zillah by the elbow and propelled her toward the dais. Zillah hastily took hold of Marcus’s hand, or he would have been left behind, staring after Philo.

“Bilo god?” he asked in doleful bewilderment.

“Hush, love.” Zillah had known she would be unable to deal with Lady Marceny from the moment she saw those eyes of hers. Now Lady Marceny leaned forward, and those same eyes urgently, deeply, and precisely stared into Zillah’s, exploring for the wincing innermost tender parts of her with a power that was almost like tenderness, but was not.

“Now you, dear,” Lady Marceny said. “Perhaps you can explain a bit more clearly than the little gualdian. I’m very puzzled about you all. How did you arrive in my grove?”

Follow Philo’s lead, Zillah thought. Talking about the king seemed to have done no good. But Philo, for some reason, had shown her that he did not want the woman to know they had been on Arth. And she was so bad at lying — and always worse with eyes like that searching into her. Mother could always screw the truth out of her. She had a moment of ridiculous homesickness, wishing she were back in Arth being questioned by the High Head. He had powerful eyes too, but never seemed to use them this way.

“I really haven’t too much idea,” she said. “We were all in the king’s grove one minute, and next minute we were in yours. I really do apologize—”

“Bilo god?” Marcus asked again.

“Quiet, love — I’ll explain later.” Zillah was glad of the interruption. It enabled her to free her eyes from Lady Marceny’s and turn them down to Marcus clinging to her leg. It gave her a respite in which her mind might work. Would she tell the story she’d repeated to the High Head in Arth, or—? No. But what, then? Something nearer the truth, perhaps. It was said that the best lies were near the truth. “It all seems to be some mistake — er — my lady.”

“Really?” Lady Marceny said, with sweet touches of disbelief. “Well, naturally any young woman is more than welcome in Leathe. What is your name, dear?”

“Zillah Green.”

The lady’s beautifully arched eyebrows rose higher. “Indeed? What a strange name for a gualdian! You are gualdian, aren’t you, dear?”

“Oh no, my lady.” Being unable to look at those eyes, Zillah looked past Lady Marceny’s carefully arranged hair, with what she hoped was perfect frankness. “I come from another country.”

“Azandi?” said Lady Marceny. “Surely not? Everyone there is black, dear.”

“I know — but there are other countries,” Zillah said, hoping this was true, hoping some warning might come from Herrel if she went too far astray. He was sitting a yard away — too close for comfort — staring vaguely into space, and she had him in the corner of her eye the whole time. “My country’s quite a small island in the southern hemisphere.” She looked past Lady Marceny’s face and thought limpidly of New Zealand.

“Oh — Pridain or one of those places!” The way the lady said this suggested that such an island counted as Third World — or Fourth World, if that was possible. Marceny turned abruptly to Herrel. “Isn’t she gualdian?”

Zillah very much did not like the way Herrel’s face turned mechanically to Lady Marceny’s, allowing his mother to stare into his eyes. Like that, the lady seemed to drink him in, quaff him, in great drafts. He shriveled slightly with it. Zillah did not like that at all. “No,” he said. “Not gualdian — a slightly similar strain, but without the power, and no training at all.”

Marcus picked up Zillah’s uneasiness. “Bilo god?” he demanded again. The treatment of Philo was really worrying him — as well it might, Zillah thought.

“It’s all right, love!” she whispered protectively, and swore to herself — probably, she thought, in her usual far too belated way — that, whatever happened, Marcus was not going to come out of this damaged in any manner whatsoever. That was top priority now, even above Herrel.

Herrel turned away, swung his legs to the dais, and crouched there. He fetched out a handful of smooth pebbles with which he began to play a game somewhat like jacks, throwing from his palm, catching with the back of his hand — his left hand, Zillah noticed: Mark was right-handed. Herrel was very good at the game, no doubt from long practice. It was as if his mother’s quaffing reduced him to childhood. I have just seen, Zillah thought in a sort of weak, angry horror, a kind of vampire at work. She faced Lady Marceny again, eyes and all, feeling implacable.

“So if you come from that far away,” Lady Marceny said, “I don’t understand what you were doing in my grove—either of the groves — with a gualdian and a centaur.”

Go on with the nearly-lie. No help for it. The eyes tried to quaff from her too. “I came to this country,” Zillah said, “to look for Marcus’s father.” She felt Herrel flinch, although he did not drop a single pebble. “I knew he came from this — the Pentarchy, but I didn’t know any more. The king was very kind to me and said of course I must look for him, and he gave me — Amphetron and Josh for guides and let me use the grove.” She kept a corner of her eye on Herrel, in case this was an unlikely thing for the king to have done — and it probably was, she thought. He’d have to be a king like King Arthur to do that. But Herrel never paused in his smooth throwing and catching. Maybe it was all right.

To her relief, Lady Marceny seemed to accept this story, although with a certain irony. “Far be it from me to go against the king,” she said dryly, “but the dear man ought to know better than to interfere in Leathe. But then perhaps our beloved king didn’t know he was. I take it the Goddess obliged, dear, by sending you here. Have you seen the little boy’s papa at all?”

I have not seen Mark, Zillah told herself, looking into those searching, searching eyes. “No. I told you. I think there must have been a mistake.”

Again her uneasiness communicated to Marcus. He shook her leg and raised a booming shout. “BILO GOD, Dillah?”

Lady Marceny frowned, a gracious crimping of pearly maquillage. “What does that little beast keep shouting about?”

Marcus might have been a dog. There was no doubt Herrel led a dog’s life. Anger fired up in Zillah. “He’s reminding me that the god of my country is here with us, my lady.”

Lady Marceny turned her eyes to Marcus, who glared up at her resentfully. “Oddy dady bake Bilo god,” he told her frankly.

“Dear, dear!” said the lady. “Whatever that means, child, you’ll have to learn to put those powers of yours respectfully to the service of ladies, or you’ll find yourself being punished. I really can’t be bothered with your god. Leathe can always speak to the dark side of him if necessary.” Her eyes returned to search Zillah again. “My dear, I can see you’re full of wonderfully strong feelings for this man of yours. I’m so sorry he seems to have let you down and run away. He must have quite a strong antipathy for you, if he went against the Goddess and got you sent to the wrong grove. But I understand why the dear king took up your cause. He’s a sentimental man, of course, but he must have seen as plainly as I can that your child has the most interesting potential. How very sad. Naturally we’ll make every effort to find your man now you’re here — I’ll lead the search myself.”

Zillah thought that this was the least reassuring assurance anyone had ever made her.

3

Gladys plodded forward through the wood muttering to herself, or to Jimbo — it was not clear to either of them which. At first the trees were wet and spilled gouts of water on her finery, but soon they became dry and tightly packed and thorny. The light was the louring storm light she had left behind in her own garden. It was light enough for her to see the thorns and, with mutter or gesture, set them aside, but it was not enough to see the way altogether clearly. Here Jimbo, as she had suspected, proved invaluable. With a scrabble here at her leg, or a pull at her dress that set all its beads clacking there, he directed her always to the easiest path, where the undergrowth was thinnest and the thorns fewest. The marvel was to Gladys that there was a path at all. Among the fierce thorns and formidable defenses it was always there, as if someone or something kept it there for a purpose.

Before long she thought she could detect hints of brighter day ahead. “Jimbo’s worth his weight in gold,” she muttered. “But don’t pull so — I’ve got to save my feathers.”

Here, quite suddenly, Jimbo ceased pulling or even moving.

“And with good reason, I’ll be bound,” Gladys muttered, and kept still too.

Somebody else, a little over to the left, was fighting through the woods as well. She could hear the crackle of feet stamping brushwood, the slashing of branches, and the dragging rasp of thorns across cloth. The sounds had considerable violence, and that was increased by a certain amount of swearing. Gladys listened. The voice was unquestionably male. She was not sure she wished to have anything to do with its owner. He sounded angry and exasperated as well as violent. The mere fact of his being here bespoke powers rather uncomfortably equivalent to her own. On the other hand—

“Missed the path, hasn’t he?” she muttered to Jimbo. Jimbo, in his own peculiar way, agreed that this was so. Gladys sighed. At her long-ago initiation she had been made to understand that power was hers only so long as she never passed by anyone in need. This was need. Her fellow traveler, though he might not yet know it, was in deep trouble.

“Over here!” she shouted. “Work your way over to your right!”

The threshing and crunching ceased. “Who are you?” the voice bellowed back. A young male voice. It reassured Gladys a little. These young fellows might surpass her in sheer strength, but she could make up for that, every time, in experience.

“Doesn’t matter!” she bawled. “Just come on over — the path’s here!”

He was desperate enough — or trusting enough — to obey her at once. His trampling and threshing changed direction. She kept him going right with a shout or so whenever she felt him veering, and it was not long before he burst out of the thorn brake beside her. He proved to be quite small. The light was not good enough for her to see more than that he was only an inch or so taller than she was, though she could tell he was chunky. But he was not as trusting as he seemed.

“If you’re some kind of interworld Lorelei mark-stepper,” he told her airily, if breathlessly, “you can just dispel. But I can accept it if you’re—” And, quite casually, he spoke a word, called her a name that made Gladys positively jump for its potency and accuracy.

She approved of that. She chuckled. “Well spoken, young man. And I am, in my way. We can take it we’re no harm to one another. I’m Gladys. Who are you, and what are you doing in this neck of the woods?”

“Trying to get home, of course,” the young man answered. His manner was still airy, but a strong quiver of indignation now underlay it. “People have been pushing me about lately, all over the place, and I got sick of it. And what are you doing here?”

Gladys replied without hesitation, “I’m on my way to look for the sister of a friend of mine.” Her sense was that it was important for her to be open with this young man — although she noticed he was not quite so open with her: he had cautiously avoided giving her his name. “A young woman called Zillah and her—”

“Zillah!” he exclaimed eagerly. “Zillah Green?”

It had been important, she thought. “Yes, Zillah and her Marcus. Her Marcus and I took a fancy to one another when his auntie brought him over to tea. He calls me Ardy Baddish. So you’re a friend of Zillah’s, are you?”

He laughed a little. “Probably — I think I still am, even though I got shoved into otherworld just for kissing her.”

“Thereby hangs a tale, I guess,” Gladys said, moving forward along the way Jimbo was indicating. “Suppose you tell Auntie Gladys.”

He had, as she could see, a lot to get off his chest, and he proved, too, to have a naturally chatty disposition. He talked, merrily and freely, as he pushed through the wood beside her. As he talked, he fended aside, almost absentmindedly, thorns, boughs, and creepers, and went forging through the resistance that although it did not come from trees or undergrowth, was part of the very nature of this place — all almost as if he did not notice it at all.

“Remind me,” Gladys murmured to Jimbo, “never to get on the wrong side of this one.” His name was Tod, as she soon gathered.

“My misfortune,” he told her, “is to be heir to a Fiveir, you see. It’s not my fault I was born with this great lump of raw magery. Everyone in my family is, more or less, or we wouldn’t hold the position we do. And my old father may be a fool in many ways, but he did make sure I was trained to use my birthright properly — which made it all the more annoying when I got to Arth. I should perhaps explain that Arth is a tiny universe attached to the Pentarchy, full of mages who are supposed to protect the Fiveirs—”

“So Laputa-Blish is really called Arth,” Gladys remarked to Jimbo.

He said a great deal about Arth, and a certain Brother Wilfrid. He also talked of various Horn Heads and the High Head who seemed to be set above them. His account was not loving. Gladys sopped up all of it, and extrapolated more, while they edged through the next bank of prickles. So the girls were trying to carry on, bless them! It didn’t sound as if those mages of Arth were quite as clever as they thought they were. Centaurs, eh? What were gualdians? And what the flaming hell was Zillah doing, letting this boy make love to her when she was breaking her heart over Mark Lister?

“It was only because I gave her a shock, showing her a seeming of my favorite aunt,” he explained, just as if she had asked. Perhaps, in this place, she had. “It seems she’s the spitting image of her sister — and they’re both called Amanda, oddly enough. Analogues, I think. Zillah was shaken to hellband, and I tried to comfort her, that was all, but Brother Wilfrid walked in on it, and I got marched away and put through this ritual that sent me to otherworld. I should explain here that everyone on Arth is positive that otherworld is a kind of degenerate copy of ours, full of subhumans. With respect to you, madam. I was totally paralyzed with horror that they’d turned me into some kind of reptile to send me there, and I didn’t start to think of using my birthright until after I got confronted with a terrible creature called Paulie. I was supposed to be her lover, and spy on her. But there was this strong feeling of Leathe that I couldn’t place—”

So Paulie is our leak, Gladys thought. Not surprised.

But Tod paused, hand out to waft aside a long trail of vicious thorns, and the briar paused too, held in the shock he was evidently feeling.

“Great gods!” he said. “The Wheel down in hellband! I know why I kept thinking of Leathe now! That woman’s husband — whatsis, Mark! He was the very image of a perfectly horrible creature I met in Leathe — if you take the horrible man’s horrible beard off. Man called Herrel. He’s the son of the Coven Head of Leathe, and he’s a sort of evil extra hand to the woman. Something so wrong with him, it makes your flesh creep. This Mark man was the same. I suppose it was another pair of analogues.”

“I’m not sure,” Gladys said somberly. “Given what I know of Mark Lister, I don’t think so. I’m more inclined to think someone has been very wicked indeed — not that Mark ever quite makes my flesh creep. But I know what you mean. So what did you do? Run?”

She chuckled heartily when he told her how he had changed cars. “Well, it was a lovely car,” he said defensively. “And I miss my Delmo-Mendacci. As soon as I got it on the road, I realized I hadn’t been properly happy for months. And your world turns out to have decent countryside after all. I sang for miles. Then I ran out of fuel, and I even had plenty of money to get more. There was so much money that I decided to spend the rest on food. I thought Arth owed me a decent meal. The roadhouse there did steaks almost as good as you get in Frinjen — but about the time I was thinking of choosing a liqueur, I realized that they were following me. And there was a big sending coming up from somewhere—”

“There was, wasn’t there?” Gladys agreed. “I’m afraid I left that for Amanda to deal with.”

They were nearly out of the wood. Daylight streamed around them, making gold-green slantings through the leaves of what were now mighty forest trees.

“Young man,” said Gladys, “is everyone in your world like you?”

“No,” he said. “Most of them are taller.”

“I meant,” said Gladys, “are they all so immoral — or do I mean amoral?”

“Well,” Tod said, “my father’s like me, and my uncle’s viler. But my cousin and at least two of my brothers-in-law are quite saintly really. Why?”

“Because,” she said, “I expect to fit in quite well.”

The next moment they were out, truly into Tod’s world, into a wide, moist meadow, where, by the light, it seemed to be midmorning. Gladys looked with interest at the small, chunky young man beside her, with his dapper little mustache and his neat cone of hair. He was looking at her with — well — politeness, and plainly wondering if she could possibly fit in anywhere. Indeed, as his eyes fell on the yeti boots, she could see it cross his mind that these were actually her own furry feet and that she might indeed be some kind of subhuman species. Gladys drew herself up. Every bead of her finery rattled. “Young man—”

“You’ve got an ether monkey!” he exclaimed. “I’ve never heard of anyone taming one of those!”

Gladys forgot her reproof and looked down at Jimbo. Jimbo, realizing he was in the presence of another person who could see him as she did, stopped his defensive scratching and sat up in the long grass with all his hands held out and his bright black eyes ruefully on hers. Not my fault, Gladys. “Is that what they’re called?” she said. “But he’s not tame, you know. He just decided to live with me soon after I was widowed. He never eats. It worries me.”

“They live on low-band energies,” Tod explained. “He’s had plenty. He looks to be thriving.” While he was speaking, Jimbo took his revenge on Tod for recognizing him by reciting to his extraordinary bead-hung and feathered companion Tod’s full name and titles. “But I’m Tod to my friends,” Tod told Gladys hastily. And he told Jimbo, “Come off it, ether monkey. You knew I was bound to suss you. You heard me say I’d been properly educated. You come from a spoke of the Wheel that—”

Jimbo did not want Tod to say where he came from. It was somewhere quite near hell, Gladys had always believed. “Yes, and he wasn’t any happier there than you were in this place you call Arth,” she said. “He had an enemy. That’s why he left. Now, if you don’t mind, I have a bit of work to do before we go on.”

From the moment she stepped into this meadow, Gladys had been feeling a brightness and exhilaration beyond anything she knew from Earth. There was a cleanness. Some of it was, no doubt, simply the air, which smelled infinitely less polluted than Earth’s. Tod, as he stepped back respectfully to let her work, was taking deep, long breaths of the air and smiling. But there was more to it than that. The lines of force, as Gladys tentatively reached for them, were far stronger and easily twice as clear as those of home. It was going to be a pleasure working with them. So why did she feel, at the back of all this glowing strength, that something was badly wrong?

“Hm — more than high time I came here,” she remarked. “Let’s ask a few questions.”

She took firm hold of the forces. They almost fell into her hands, so plain were they and so ready for use. What a world! She envied Tod. He must have been able to do this in his cradle! Selecting the correct line, and holding the others she might need ready and wrapped around the little finger of each hand, she softly exerted her power — gently, not to offend here where she did not belong. There was instant response. Oh, what a world! Politely and deferentially, she requested, “The Being who has care of the physical level here — I apologize for not knowing your name — may we speak?”

There was a slight troubling of the air in front of her, a whitening and ruffling of the meadow grass, and the Being was there, sliding into visible existence as if from a great distance that was at the same time only an arm’s length away. He hung before her as a narrow, vibrant man-shape in a robe of kingfisher blue and orange. His wings, like a stained-glass butterfly’s, were of blue and vermilion lozenges, outlined in jetty black.

“You are welcome!” he said. His eager voice fell into the brain and rang there, oscillating.

Gladys narrowed her eyes against the vibrancy of his form. It was febrile, it seemed to her. “Are you well, Great One?”

“Not quite,” the oscillant voice answered her. “But I am not sure what is the matter. The sea rises and the earth heats, and not according to the usual pattern. There seems no way to stop it.”

“Ah,” said Gladys. “I’ve met that problem too. When did it start, here with you?”

This was a mistake. The Being did not measure time in a way it could communicate to Gladys, and vibrated anxiously.

“Put it another way,” Gladys said quickly. “Why did it start?”

“Your pardon, powerful visitor,” the Being belled. “I came to you for the answer to that. Have you no answer?”

“Hm,” said Gladys. “Overtaxed in some way, aren’t you, My Lovely? Yes, of course you shall have your answer as soon as I can get it. But first, I need to speak to the One who rules the level beyond yours. Bear with me for a while. And, if you would be so good, put in a word for me with that One.”

“Willingly,” the Being oscillated.

Gladys gently released the lines from her little fingers, and with them, another respectful request. The second Being appeared instantly and eagerly. He was apparently in the air, several yards above the glowing first one. This Being, Gladys was intrigued to see, had the form of a white centaur, and he greeted her as gladly as his beautiful companion. But he was not beautiful himself — though she rather thought he ought to have been. There was a bloated look both to his torso and to his barrel, and the legs looked thick and stiff.

“Something wrong here too, I see,” said Gladys. “And I greet you also, Great One. Tell me what is wrong and how I can help.”

Tod looked and listened to all this with increasing awe. Never had he seen glowing, butterfly Asphorael appear so clearly. Even Tod’s tutor — a better mage than any he had met in Arth — had never conjured Asphorael as more than a colored cloudy shape. But this old woman with the mad jingling robe and the big, hairy feet had done it just like that! And now she had summoned Cithaeron as easily and equally clearly. He wished he knew what the Great Centaur was saying to her — but even Asphorael’s voice had seemed to be at some frequency almost beyond him. Raise his birthright as he would, Tod could not reach the Centaur’s voice, and he was beginning not to hear Gladys either. He could only watch the Centaur’s eager, anxious face, its features curiously small and delicate compared with its bloated body. The face reminded him strongly of another face, a mundane one. Josh? No. Where had he seen those same small, fair features? He had it — that mage who had patched Josh’s eye, the High Brother of Healing Horn — Edward, that was the name. Now, that was very strange.

Gladys’s voice came to him, faint and distant. “So that’s the way of it! How do you suggest we balance it out then?”

Something is wrong with my world! Tod thought. And I never knew! Asphorael was hovering tenderly, almost imploringly, toward Gladys. “It’s all right, My Lovely,” Tod heard her say. “We shan’t let it go on now we know.” And beyond Asphorael, beyond the Great Centaur, in distance that was not the usual distance, or at least not physical distance, Tod was awed to see other shapes. They were faint, mostly manifest as bright, watchful eyes, or great, trembling wings, but he knew them for the Guardians of all the bands of the Wheel, all watching and listening, or maybe adding their words to those of the Centaur.

The Centaur faded. Tod seemed to notice the fact at the moment of his disappearance, when he was simply a white trace against the white clouds of the sky.

Asphorael had retreated, but he was still there, dissolved into the meadow around them, a tremulous presence. But it was not over yet. Gladys looked a trifle disconcerted at what she had started. She turned and bowed as a tall figure with a high head crowned with antlers stalked from the wood toward her. Hurl! Tod thought. And seems damned angry! Another, within an indigo cloud, was rolling in from across the meadow like mist from the sea. Ye gods! thought Tod. Now the gods come! And here was yet another, blazing down the path of the sun. Tod dropped hastily to one knee, and in so doing, lost count of how many gathered around the glittering blue figure beside him. But there was one more that he did notice, because She noticed him and came to Tod after greeting Gladys. Tod was aware of this one mostly as pearl or azure and a light blazing from the forehead. She was very angry too, though She was not angry with Tod, and She had good cause to be. She gave him instructions, without using words. What the Goddess said to him, Tod could not have expressed. He only knew that, after She was gone, and the rest with Her, he stood up again in the bright, empty meadow with certain things in his head that had not been there before.

He and Gladys stared at each other. “Phew!” she said. “What about that!”

Tod said, feeling unusually humbled and ignorant, “How did you do it? Everything so solid and clear.”

“Do it?” she said. “I only did it the way I usually do. Your world is a pleasure to work with, that’s all. When I think of mine — well — it’s all muzzy and twisted beside yours. You must have some marvelous magic users here.”

“None as good as you,” Tod said frankly. And looked up in alarm. Someone else was coming, and he was not sure he could stand any more manifestations.

4

It was only a centaur, real and solid and mundane, cantering toward them over the meadow. He was grizzled and largely black and not in the best of tempers. Tod thought they were probably on this centaur’s land and he was coming to order them off it. Tod braced himself, ready for polite speeches. But the centaur stopped short with an angry skid to his haunches and glared down his nose at Gladys.

“You must be the woman,” he said. “Damn it to hellspoke! I’ve lived ninety years and never troubled the gods, and they never troubled me. Now I get a whole spatch of them. I’m supposed to make sure you get to Ludlin to the king.”

“I know. Gods are like that,” Gladys said. “I’ve got to see the king and someone else on the way.”

“I don’t know about the someone else,” snapped the centaur. “The king was all I was told.”

“The other one’s bound to turn up,” said Gladys. “It won’t take us out of our way.”

“Women!” the centaur grumbled. “Can you get yourself on my back? I was told it was urgent, and it’s bloody miles to Ludlin.”

Tod, with a good deal of difficulty, managed to boost Gladys onto the centaur — who stood quietly enough but made not the slightest effort to help, which Tod thought was decidedly ill mannered of him. But then, this was a surly centaur. When Tod lifted the chittering Jimbo, too, and tried to put him in Gladys’s arms, the centaur shied irritably. “I’m not carrying that thing!”

“Yes you are,” said Gladys, “or you’re not carrying me. And we know what the gods would think about that, don’t we?”

The centaur shook both fists in the air, possibly at the gods, but he said nothing and allowed Tod to dump the ether monkey onto Gladys’s beaded knees.

“Good-bye, then, Tod,” she said. “I think I’ll see you again, but they gave me the idea you’ve got things to do now. It was nice meeting you, dear.”

“You too,” he said. He waved as the centaur leaped into a racking canter and bore her away across the field. It felt very lonely without her, odd as she was. Tod walked slowly in the opposite direction, wondering how on earth he was going to carry out what seemed to be his part in the gods’ plans. There was no centaur for him, evidently, and he did not even know whereabouts this was in the Pentarchy. It looked as if he was meant to steal another car — preferably one with a map in the glove compartment.

The meadow, though huge, did eventually end in a hedge, in which was a gate leading out into a deep country road. Tod let himself out into the road and stood between its hedges, wishing there were some means of telling where he was. The place was wholly devoid of landmarks — although, in looking for those, he did notice for the first time that it was spring here. Spring again, or spring still? Tod wondered gloomily. Have I been away a year? A week? Two years? When the gods leave you, they seem to leave everything low and flat. He was glad to be back in the Pentarchy, but this did not prevent him feeling as lonely and ill-used as he had felt in otherworld.

There seemed nothing for it but to start walking and hope to get a lift with a car or a cart.

Tod determined from the sun that turning right probably took him more southerly than turning left did, and he turned that way because it seemed to be correct. He had not gone more than a few steps when — joy! — he heard a car coming up behind. He spun around. It was a big old car, beautifully maintained, idling along with its top down. It looked to be a Delmo-Mendacci too, of all things, like Tod’s own cherished, beloved, beautiful vehicle. It was even the same shade of subtle green. The gods provide after all! Tod thought, as he stepped to the center of the road and waved.

Between hedges bright with new leaf and cow parsley in lacy drifts along them, the car rolled to a gentle halt a few yards from Tod. And behold! it was not any old Delmo-Mendacci! It was Tod’s very own car! Tod’s cherished Delmo that he had left under wraps in the garage of his father’s castle, with strict instructions that it was not to be touched — not by anyone—until he returned from service on Arth. Driving it was Tod’s mechanic, Simic.

The gods provide indeed! Tod thought. He found himself with both hands on the Delmo’s glistening square hood, leaning over the shining eagle on the end, staring grimly at Simic. Simic stared back. Tod saw it cross the man’s mind that he could simply drive on, let in the clutch and plow on over Tod — So sorry, Your Grace — devastated — terrible accident — wasn’t expecting — didn’t recognize the young master — thought him on Arth — squashed him into the road — meat jelly—

“Don’t even think it!” Tod said.

Simic had regretfully abandoned the idea anyway. He opened the door, jumped out, and became voluble, in one smooth movement. “Well, this is a surprise, sir! You may wonder what I’m doing, sir, but it is a fact — you know and I know, sir — that machinery deteriorates something dreadful if it lies unused, and so I took the liberty, sir, of giving this car of yours regular exercise, in the manner of a dog, sir, to preserve it, entirely with your own good in mind, sir—”

“Poppycock,” said Tod. “Fish feathers. Most of all about my own good.” And as Simic then became seized of another perfect excuse and opened his mouth to begin on it, “I don’t want,” Tod said, “to know whatever lie that was going to be. I know you’re bent as a centaur’s back leg, and you know I only employ you because you’re a genius. The fact is, you’ve been using my car to go cockfighting or girl chasing, or whatever it was — and last I knew, you had two perfectly good cars of your own—”

“Sold them, sir,” Simic said sadly.

“Bad luck,” said Tod. “I hope you lost on the deal, but I bet you didn’t. How far are we from Archrest Castle?”

“About twenty miles,” Simic admitted cautiously.

Any figure Simic ever admitted to, you automatically adjusted. Make that fifteen at the most, Tod thought. In which case, this featureless but comely road was one he had raced down countless times in this very Delmo. Good. They were in central Frinjen. “How much money do you have on you?”

“Hardly any, sir,” Simic said pathetically.

“Show,” said Tod. He held out an implacable hand, and Simic, with a look of real pain, slowly produced and laid in that hand an extremely fat wallet. “Won on the cocks, did you?” Tod said pleasantly. He counted himself off a hundred in ten-shield notes, which was about a fifth of what was there, and held out his hand again. “Pen and paper, and you get the wallet back. Come on, a betting slip will do.” When Simic produced one, and a ballpoint pen, Tod handed back the wallet, laid the slip on the Delmo’s hood and wrote:

August would recognize this as unquestionably from his son and heir. Tod handed the note, but not the pen, back to Simic. Given the means, Simic would infallibly tamper with the sum owed him, in an upward direction. “There. If you want your money back, all you have to do is walk to Archrest and give this to my father. Are the keys in the Delmo?”

“Yes — Walk?” said Simic. “I’m wearing my driving boots!”

“Bad luck,” said Tod. “Maybe you’ll flag a lift.”

“But it’s occurred to me, sir, that you could be rusty at driving after a whole year, sir, and if I were to take the wheel and drive until you became accustomed—”

“Nice try,” said Tod, “but you’re out of luck again. It’s only been three months over in Arth, and I’m not in the least rusty — just proved it, actually. So either get walking or get the sack. The choice is yours.”

Leaving Simic standing resentfully among the cow parsley — his boots were pointed and shiny and probably pinched every toe he had, and serve him right! Tod thought — Tod swung himself into the warm polished leather bliss of the driving seat of his own car and drove away, fast. Simic would certainly get to Archrest somehow in order to reclaim his money. Mother would worry — but then she always did. And August would be warned that Tod had broken his service. He might be furious, but he would get his lawyers onto it at once. So. Tod gave himself up to the full, throaty purring of the best car in his world.

He hurtled down to a crossroads, which proved to be one he knew well, and turned south. Shortly he turned again, into the main southbound highway, and cut in the overdrive. The unlucky Simic had provided both tanks full of fuel. The gods were good. Tod sang — rather badly — as he drove. He bore Simic no real malice. In fact, he had often thought that he and Simic were rather alike, with the slight difference that Tod had been born with gigantic birthmagic, and Simic with an equally large affinity for machines. Simic usually seemed to see it like that too, though no doubt at the moment he was calling curses down on Tod’s head.

For all his bliss, Tod was aware that this was the merest interlude. Something was urgent, there in the south. He drove faster, bypassing town after town, some of which, he had to admit, were as ugly in their way as towns in otherworld; but there were also a few places where he would have liked to stop for lunch, peaceful, picturesque places. But he did not stop. Consequently, by the time he reached the coastal marshes between Frinjen and Leathe and turned off toward Michael’s manor of Riverwell, he was feeling unreal and time-lagged and as if today had gone on for twice as long as it should. And so it had, he realized. He had been ejected from Arth in the late afternoon, arrived in otherworld in the early afternoon, where he had spent most of an evening too, and now he had had most of a day in the Pentarchy.

The marshes were crossed by a myriad drainage cuts, each of them with its several humpback bridges. Tod took the bridges at speed, so that the big car almost jumped, while he tried to calculate just how many hours he had lived through since he got out of bed in Arth. And it was still only late afternoon here. The sun hung quite high behind him in the west. The car seemed to tread on its own shadow at every bridge. But he was nearly there. There was the stand of mighty old willows in the distance, all a vivid new green, and among them the great peeling yellow manor Michael had inherited. The large new sheds stood out to one side among younger willows. These were where Michael designed and built boats — most of them out of a new and wondrous fabric called fiberglass, the formula for which had been sent down from Arth.

Tod had an uneasy thought here. If some of the things he had half caught from what the Great Centaur was telling Gladys were true, then Arth could be destroying the Pentarchy by milking otherworld for things like fiberglass. It could be that he was speeding toward Riverwell to put an end to his cousin’s livelihood. The barony was not rich. He could see the sea now, flat beyond the flat marshes, and a distant golden hump that was the seacoast of Leathe. As always, he wondered how anyone could live somewhere so flat and damp and so infested with Leathe and mosquitoes, and as always, as he whomped over the last bridge and swept in under the willows through Michael’s ever-open gates, his heart lifted. Amanda lived here.

Around the corner of the drive, he had to brake hard. The place was full of centaurs. There were crowds of them, milling across the drive and the lawns and seemingly surrounding the house. Tod had not known there were so many centaurs in Riverwell. None of them looked happy. It was clear that something was going on that made fiberglass, at least for Tod, a side issue. It was quite a relief. He turned off the engine and shouted to know what was happening.

The centaurs seemed altogether too anxious to notice him, but the nearest somehow crowded aside to let a worried black-haired woman fight her way to the car.

To Tod she looked more glorious than Asphorael. She was — though he could not know the irony of it — wearing blue-gray like Lady Marceny, but her dress was linen and loose, with the merest sketch of the fashionable panniers in the form of flying panels which streamed behind her as she ran toward the car.

Tod gave a great shout of “Amanda!” and sprang down to hug her.

She was taller than him — many women were. “Oh, Tod!” she said. “I’m so glad you’ve got here! I knew you would.”

She was, Tod discovered with a quite irrational touch of jealousy, pregnant. After all, it was a year since she remarried. He found tears in his eyes. He was always ashamed of how easily he cried. “What’s going on here? Why all the centaurs?”

“They’re all terribly worried,” she said. “There’s been a ghost centaur haunting our grove all day, and it’s obviously in trouble, but none of us know it, so we can’t hear it speak. Our centaurs keep sending for more and more distant cousins, hoping that one of them will know who it is, and none of them do. But I knew you were coming, and I thought that with your birthright—”

She was interrupted by Tod’s cousin Michael trudging through the centaurs in big rubber boots, grinning all over his white, freckled face. Michael was tall and rodlike and had shaggy red curls. From head to toe he took after his mother’s gualdian family, with none of the Gordano chunkiness. Seeing him now, Tod was struck by how like Philo he was. He might have been Philo with red hair. “Tod!” Michael yelled, and beat Tod affectionately on the shoulder. Again Tod nearly cried. He had missed this. “Mother told you about our ghost?” Michael said.

“Yes, but I don’t understand,” Tod said. “My birthright doesn’t make me a medium—”

“It may not be a ghost—” Michael started to say, and was interrupted in turn by Paul, Amanda’s new husband, as tall nearly as the centaurs who moved to let him pass. Tod had a moment of jealous dislike, which dissipated as Paul’s big, warm hand grasped his and Paul smiled down into his face, slow and kind. Paul was a good man — a good sailor and boatbuilder too, by all accounts.

“They’ve told you?” Paul asked. “I don’t think it’s a ghost. It looks more to me like a sending from someone in really bad trouble, but it can’t seem to talk.”

“Oh, I see!” said Tod. “In that case—”

“I’ll take you,” Michael said. “Come on.” He seized Tod’s arm and dragged him among the great, hairy centaur bodies, shouting above the deep clamor of centaur voices, “Let us through, please. My cousin’s here. He’ll take care of it.”

The centaurs seemed to know at once which cousin Michael meant — the one with the birthright. They fell back respectfully, and most of them stopped talking. In near-silence, Michael dragged Tod around to the other side of the house, where there was a narrower lawn — if possible, even more crowded with centaurs — which gave onto the marshes. The grove was a small hill crowned with silver birches, reached by a narrow causeway, about a hundred yards out into the marsh. Pushing among all these silent, staring centaurs, the cousins were embarrassed at saying anything private. Neither spoke until they had passed the last few centaurs stamping and wheeling at the end of the path and had hurried out onto the causeway. Then Michael said, “Ye gods, I’m glad to see you! I simply didn’t credit my mother when she said you’d be coming. After all these years! And I still don’t really believe she has Sight! Silly, isn’t it?”

“No,” said Tod. “I find it hard to believe too. When did this ghost-thing appear?”

“Midmorning. One of my centaur boat hands saw it and raised an outcry. And you know the way centaurs look after their own — there are centaurs here from the Neck of Orthe now — but I don’t blame them. It is worrying. You’ll see. And by the way, where did you get that peculiar hairy garment you’re wearing?”

Tod plucked at Brother Tony’s large sweater. He had forgotten all about it. “This — otherworld.”

“You’re joking!” said Michael.

“I assure you,” Tod said, “I am not. I was in otherworld this morning, or last night, or something. Appalling cold, wet place full of beastly buildings. This thing’s called a jumper. If you can lend me some proper clothes, you can have it as a souvenir.”

“Thank you,” Michael said. “It looks perfect for sailing in.”

They reached the sandy hill of the grove and scrambled up it. From the time he was halfway up, Tod could see the white transparent figure of a centaur within, among the white boles of the birches. It was weaving and trampling this way and that, distressed, mindless, neurotic — something was wrong, that was plain. Tod hurried. The bodiless state of the apparition made the mad effect worse as he got nearer. The weavings and duckings took the centaur-shape straight through trees and even through the small altar by the pool, although the soundless hooves never once touched the bubbling waters of the spring itself. Mad or not, the specter was reverent. It was, Tod thought as he trod cautiously between the peeling white tree trunks, the shape of a centaur naturally white or gray. There was no dark on it anywhere, except perhaps — The apparition wove around toward him, and he saw that half its face was dappled.

“Josh!” he exclaimed. “Josh, what’s wrong? Are you dead?”

To his great relief, the transparent eyes focused on him. The face broke into a worried smile, and the misty torso sagged. Josh’s voice came to him, faint and far away. “Tod! Thank the Goddess! Can you hear me?”

“Clearly but small,” Tod said. “Where are you?”

“Just a moment,” said Josh. The apparition stood still, closed its eyes, and frowned. As it did so, it became milk-thick, then thick as whitewash, almost solid. Josh’s eyes opened again. “That’s better,” his voice said, and he sounded much nearer and stronger. “I’ve been sending myself to all the groves I could reach,” he said apologetically. “And trying to face in all directions while I did it. I’m nearly worn-out. No one seems to hear me. Tod, I’m in trouble. I’m in a grove in Leathe, on the estate of a woman called Marceny—”

“Marceny!” Tod exclaimed. “Josh, she’s the very worst! What in hellspoke are you doing there?”

“Zillah got us out of Arth — the Goddess alone knows how she did it,” Josh told him. “She used some kind of wild magic, and it was so strong that they all knew and were waiting for us. They’re besieging me in the grove now. They keep trying new ways to get me out, and they’re damned strong—”

“And Zillah?” Tod interrupted. “With you?”

“No,” said Josh, at which Tod’s stomach behaved as if he were crossing a hump bridge. “No, they got her, and the baby, and Philo — and you know what they do with gualdians—”

“I’ve heard — ye gods!” Tod was afraid he might be sick. But that would do Josh no good. “Hang on,” he said. “Don’t waste any more strength with sendings. Just stick in that grove like a leech, Josh, and we’ll find some way to get you out. There’s half a thousand centaurs here who can’t wait to help. We’ll do something. Just hang on.”

“I will,” said Josh. “I’d be all right if I wasn’t having to send. I was praying that they’d recall you. I’m so glad they did.”

“Recall me?” said Tod. “They didn’t. I came back by myself. I’m thoroughly illegal, and my father’s going to have to bail me out, but it won’t stop me getting to you.”

“You’re not illegal,” Josh said eagerly. “At least, I’m fairly sure you’re not. I’ve been thinking through Arth Service Laws to stop the people outside getting to my mind — and I started wishing I could tell you. Banishment’s not legal for servicemen. They shouldn’t ever have sent you!”