A Sudden Wild Magic

1

The High Head of All Horns and King’s Vicar on Arth performed the final motions that transferred his visitors from Arth to their homes in the Fiveir of Leathe. Instead of doing it with his mind, which was the usual practice, he drew the symbols of the weave in the air with his hands and took vicious satisfaction in the way they burned green across his sanctum. Ozone crackled from wall to wall. Those ladies were in for a rough ride. Having done this, he sank into a seat, slung his heavy mitre onto its stand, and loosened his uniform with savage relief.

Nag, nag, nag! He could see them now, all the pretty faces gathered about his conference table, all the expensive and no doubt fashionable clothes, each one assaulting his nose with her own particular thick perfume — not to speak of assaulting his psyche with their dozen individual soft accusations. All claiming he had hurt them, for the Goddess’s sake! Didn’t they think he could see into their souls at least as well as they could see into his? Hurt, indeed! He knew them all to be as hard as nails, each one softly and inexorably set on having her own way. Well, they commanded in Leathe maybe, but not here in the separate small universe of Arth.

When he learned that this year’s high-tide transfers would be bringing the entire Inner Convent of Leathe to see him, he rightly interpreted it as another attempt by Lady Marceny to get his soul under her domination. Report had it that she, and her mother before her, had possessed his predecessor in soul and mind too. The High Head had no doubt that the report was true. Marceny was the hardest and most inexorable of all the women of Leathe. She possessed most of the power in Leathe, but she was not satisfied with that, nor with having made a vicious puppet out of that son of hers. Not she. She wanted Arth as well.

The High Head had taken precautions, swiftly. Not only did he evoke the strongest possible wards for his own soul, but he made sure that every soul under his command was equally well protected. Arth’s citadel had hummed with the application of powers — he could feel the wards pulsing away into the etheric spokes of the Wheel at this moment, withdrawing now the need for them was over. Unfortunately, the nature of the tides between universes meant that the ladies would have to stay overnight. The High Head made sure that they only came into contact with the strongest minds Arth could muster. Only those with a truly armored integrity were allowed to wait on them. This went for personnel from Maintenance Horn to clerks, cooks, and those who waited at table — everyone. He had even had to debar his friend and deputy, the Horn Head of Healing, from any dealings with the ladies and give his duties of attendance to junior mages. Poor Edward had deep uncertainties where females were concerned.

“You have surrounded us with woman-haters, Magus dear,” was almost the first thing Lady Marceny said, opening her blue eyes wide and injured in his face. “Why?”

It was the first salvo of the hostilities. He bowed, smiling. “Oh, I don’t think so, my lady. Just an average cross section of the men. You’re simply sensing the pride we here in Arth take in keeping to our Oath.”

“Really? You have made such changes since dear Peter’s time, Magus,” she replied, all honey and perfume and wide, wide eyes.

Thereafter it was assault and battery. Assault of the soul and battery of the mind, the High Head thought, running his hands through his hair. His hair was thinning and caught in strands between his fingers. He rather feared it grew thinner every time he had any dealings with Lady Marceny. There was something peculiarly avid and hungry in her that seemed to draw and suck the life out of you. Though the conditions of Arth tended to prolong a man’s life far beyond the usual, he was sure Lady Marceny would have him old well before even home time. He sighed.

The first complaint on the ladies’ agenda was that there had been so few results from other world. The High Head was naturally ready with figures. He pointed out that a steady stream of innovations was now flowing between otherworld and the Pentarchy, things both technological and magical. Particularly magical, he stressed. Since his predecessor, Magus Peter (under prompting from Lady Marceny’s mother), had so cunningly reseeded the otherworld with the principles of magery, it had responded with a burst of fertility.

The ladies did not deny this. But the Lady Istoly, who was spokeswoman for home affairs, said reproachfully that the dear Magus seemed a little out of touch with the needs of the real world. “While you live peacefully here on Arth, the Pentarchy is in ever greater trouble,” she told him. “I won’t bore you with accounts of the other continents, but you do know — do you? — that at home the Sea of Trenjen has now joined up with Corriarden Bay in the north, making us into an island continent. Unless we can find some way to stop the oceans rising, the Pentarchy as we know it may vanish over the next century or so.”

To which Lady Katny added, in dire, deep tones, “Leathe is beginning to erode.” And Lady Moury spread papers on the table, saying, “I have here an outline of your plan to perform parallel mageworks on the otherworld, to cause waters to rise there by affecting its climate, and thereby elicit a solution to our own flooding. What became of this plan, Magus? Surely we should be getting some results by now?”

In vain did the High Head point out that this was a very large magework indeed; that although the work had been most satisfactorily performed, it took time for something that size to take effect; that they were even now getting preliminary results—

How much time? the ladies wanted to know.

“At least a decade,” the High Head said firmly. “A fact which you will find stated in the plan, Lady Moury.”

“But Magus dear,” Lady Marceny said, all wide blue eyes again, “from our point of view, a decade is what you have now had. Aren’t you getting any real results at all?”

He had defended himself by explaining such results as there were in detail. True, there was as yet no relevant mageworking, but on the technological front, moves were being charted. He went on to remind them that, just as time passed at different rates on Arth and in the Pentarchy, so it passed at another rate again in otherworld. “And,” he said, “of course, you ladies all know that the relationship between our time and that of otherworld is notoriously capricious — possibly even chaotic. Sometimes five of their minutes pass to five of my months and nearly three of your years. Sometimes they seem to have had decades in half an Arth day. So for all we know, not enough time has passed yet in otherworld for those in charge of mageworks to have come up with any answers.”

“I would have thought that all those observers you employ ought to have established some kind of ratio between our time and theirs by now,” Lady Marceny retaliated. “Are you sure these men are quite competent?”

He bit back his anger and assured her they were. Only the fact that they both served the same Goddess kept him civil. The ladies were under no such restraint. They left him in no doubt that they wanted results and they wanted them now.

And it went on like this. They wanted him to do this, or that. He tried to make it plain that although his function was to serve the Pentarchy, this did not make him their servant (thank the Goddess!), and that he was only answerable to the king. But they were used to having menservants and blandly ignored the king. And Lady Marceny set continual traps for him. Over and over again she wondered aloud whether Observer Horn was quite efficient. Was it worth trying another system? Was any system that had to straddle two universes likely to be foolproof?

Each time he restrained his anger and assured her that Arth’s method had stood the test of centuries now. If he opened himself to rage, he knew she would have him. He felt her all the time nudging at his wards, greedily waiting for him to lose control. So he did not lose his temper, much as he felt like screaming — and he could cheerfully have flung her several universes off, or even down to hellband, when, during the best dinner that Arth could provide, she went back to the subject of observers yet again.

“I only ask,” she said, leaning sweetly toward him across the table, “because I’ve been trying a new method of observation for quite a while now, and I seem to have met with a hitch. This makes me sure that you must have your troubles too. In my case, it’s maddening. Just as I was sure there was something firm to observe, the connection seems to have been lost. I must confess that I came to Arth hoping I could reestablish it, but I’m still getting nothing.”

The High Head knew she had her own observatories, but it was unlike her to be so frank about it. Why, I believe she really is in earnest! he thought. “This happens,” he said. “I confess to hitches in my time too.”

“I hoped,” she said, “that you might be able to advise me of some method that did not have so many problems.”

“Willingly, my lady,” he said. “Suppose you tell me something about your new method and how the hitch develops, and I will see what Arth can provide that might help you.”

But of course, she would not tell him. She talked for the next half hour without saying one thing to the purpose, and he realized that this was just another attempt to get him off his guard.

Really, he thought, stretching in his chair, he had let her bother him badly, if he found himself reliving the ladies’ visit like this! Arth discipline enjoined you to banish this kind of obsessive stuff with a short meditation followed by a short specific weave. But he was simply not in the mood. The most he could do was to utter his devout thanks to the workings of the Cosmic Wheel, which had placed him in Arth rather than left him on the estate of Lady Istoly, where he had been born. If you were born a man in Leathe, you joined the Company of Arth and hoped passionately that you would eventually be received into the Brotherhood. Otherwise your life was miserable. And he had been lucky, one of the fortunate tenth who passed all the tests, and luckier still to rise to High Head of the citadel.

Which reminds me, he thought. I have responsibilities. Better get on with the work those harridans interrupted.

He swung around and gestured at his wall. It responded by becoming a rank of mirrors, most of them apparently reflecting blue-clothed mages peacefully at work, though about a third had this reflection covered by a pulsing sigil. The High Head smiled as he collected these pulsing ones into the main reflector before his desk and gestured at them to elucidate themselves. This was a very useful adaptation of an idea from otherworld. Research Horn was still working to discover what otherworlders actually used it for.

The sigils spread to rows of print, most of them routine reports. Defense Horn was still having problems with those otherworld rockets. Housekeeping Horn was inundated, because a year’s supply of goods had come over on the last of the tide. They requested help from either the cadets or the servicemen to unload capsules and stow provender. It would have to be the cadets who did that, because the newest recruits had been over for two days now and presumably knew their way around — enough to haul goods anyway. The servicemen had only come over in the carrier that brought the Ladies of Leathe, and thanks to those ladies, he had not even seen them yet. They should be about through with the rest of their induction by now. But here was Healing Horn — for which read Edward — wanting to see him about those same servicemen. Not yet, Edward, for Observer Horn was reporting some considerable etheric troubling centered on that spot in otherworld which they had learned to connect with the most useful mageworkings. And Maintenance had another leak in the atmosphere.

Maintenance Horn came first. That was a cardinal rule. The High Head indicated that they had his attention.

“It’s due to the tides, sir,” said the Duty Mage, briskly materializing in the mirror. “Tides always cause trouble, and this one’s bigger than usual, and there seem to be eddies. We’ve thrown up some patching wards, and they’ll hold till tonight, but I’m afraid it’s going to take a full-scale mage work to get it properly sealed.”

“Get Augury and Calculus to give you their best times for the ritual then,” the High head ordered. “I’ll have fifty mages stand by.”

Back to routine, he thought comfortably as the image of the Duty Mage dissolved. He called up Ritual Horn and gave them his instructions. Then he summoned to his reflector the otherworld site Observer Horn was so excited about. There was very little going on now. Hellband! It was high time something happened there. The Ladies of Leathe were not the only ones who were getting impatient. But the corner of his eye was catching the winged sigil flashing repeatedly in its mirror — Edward’s sigil — which meant that his friend wanted him urgently. He let Edward know he was free.

“Coming now,” said the mirror.

There was a delay while Edward traversed the corridors and ramps. As a healer, Edward claimed not to be very adept at projecting to a mirror. Oh, he could do it right enough, he always said when challenged, but walking was good exercise, and besides, having walked to where a person was made him feel as if he was truly meeting him. The other ways, he said, smacked of illusion.

Equally typically, when Edward actually arrived, he slid apologetically among the door-veils, ducking his head under the lintel. He always did duck, despite the High Head having several times stood him in the doorway and proved to him it was plenty high enough. And he advanced equally apologetically to put two steaming mugs on the worktop.

“I thought you could do with some coffee,” he said, “after Leathe first thing in the morning.”

“Rather than brandy?” said the High Head.

“Not straight after breakfast,” Edward said, “though I did consider beer — Oh, blast you, Lawrence! Why do I never see your jokes?”

“You usually do in the end,” said the High Head. “So what did you want to see me about? To make sure I hadn’t become a Leathe puppet overnight?”

Edward laughed. The High Head was gratified to see that the possibility had never occurred to him. “Great gods, no! No, it’s about this year’s servicemen — I imagine you haven’t had a chance to see them yet. I’m afraid you’re in for a shock when you do.”

“You mean the numbers are down? I saw that from the list. What happened? My guess is that the Ladies of Leathe quietly slung two-thirds of them off so that the Inner Convent — whom the Goddess bless! — could have plenty of space in the transfer carriage.”

Edward shook his head. “No, it’s not that. I talked to some of them, and they all say that this is all of them there ever were. I’m afraid it’s worse than that, Lawrence. It looks as if every single district that owes us service, in every single Fiveir, has sent the absolute legal minimum, and on top of that, almost every lad is wrong in some way. I’d say the Corriarden district turned out their youth prisons for us. There’s a lad from one of the north Trenjen places who can barely write his name — though he seems to have the rudiments of magecraft, so he’s within the letter of the law, just. And as for the rest, I’ve seldom seen a set of sorrier physical specimens. About the only normal one is the son of the Pentarch of Frinjen, and he’s only come because he had to — he’d be too old for next year’s batch — and he’s sulking like an infant over it. The rest are frankly demon fodder.”

“What?” said the High Head. “Even from the Orthe? What have they sent?”

“A spavined centaur,” said Edward, “and a gualdian with two left feet.”

The two of them looked at each other. The Other Peoples of the Orthe were under the king’s direct rule. Normally they took pride in sending the best of their youngsters for the year’s service on Arth, and it was not unusual for them to send several members of all five Peoples. If they, too, had dispatched only the very least they were obliged to send, then things were bad indeed.

“I’m not saying the king’s been got at by Leathe,” Edward said anxiously. “Though he could have been.”

“I doubt it.” The High Head got irritably to his feet and strode from wall to window to wall. “The king may be as scared of Leathe as the rest of us, but he can hold his own or he wouldn’t be king. I suppose we can be grateful to His Majesty for not coming here and giving us a piece of his mind like the Ladies of Leathe. Instead, he’s simply made it plain that the entire Pentarchy has lost confidence in Arth. Edward, it’s not my fault. I’ve worked like a demon to pull us out of the mess Magus Peter left us with. I’ve got everything running smoothly again — now this! What am I supposed to do?”

“Try to get some results on the latest experiment before the flooding at home gets much worse,” Edward said. “And drink that coffee since I troubled to bring it.” As the High Head stared at the mug as if it were an object from otherworld, he added, “I’ve got the assorted jailbirds, morons, and cripples lined up in the exercise hall. Want to come and give them your induction talk?”

“Give me five minutes,” said the High Head. He picked up the mug and drank absentmindedly. “I know I’ve been telling you all along that I’ve got a bad feeling about this flooding project, and I suppose this may be why. But I have a horrible sense that there’s worse to come. Do you?”

Edward shrugged. “Foreknowledge is not a thing I get much. Except about death, of course. I do feel a certain amount of death coming, I’m sorry to say. But,” he added, sidling his apologetic length toward the doorway, “that’s not unusual for a community the size of Arth. I’ll have a Duty Mage put those servicemen through some exercises while they wait. It’s always possible half of them will die of that.”

2

Bad feeling or not, the High Head got swiftly to work to push his project onward. Using the correct imagery, he bent his mind to the necessary spoke of the Great Wheel. There, he deftly and expertly hooked up the threads of thought belonging to his otherworld agents and led the whole bundle to the specially crafted spindles on his worktop. The spindles spared him trouble by translating to matter again and giving him the result in his main reflector.

There were a good many agents out there. They were necessary, not only for information, but to balance the continuous stream of ideas that had lately been flowing from otherworld to Arth and the Pentarchy. The High Head, being in a hurry, took most of them into his mirror in clusters, each twist of thread representing a center of intelligent activity in that world. Most reported, as they had been doing all this past month, that the effects of Arth’s project had been noticed. Otherworld seemed aware that its climate might be getting hotter and its seas rising. But not much yet was being done about it. Otherworld ran about wringing its hands and talked of planting appropriate vegetation or banning certain technology it believed harmful.

“For the Goddess’s sake!” the High Head exclaimed. “What in hellband’s use is that?” And he sent messages along the threads. Get them moving. Tell them the effect is going to double in their next decade.

Then he teased out the threads from the Islands. The magecraft of this site was usually among the strongest. Arth had run various tests recently and proved it currently to be in excellent working order. This was why Observer Horn regularly focused there. The High Head had great hopes of results here soon. First he focused again on the spot where observers had reported activity, but fine-tune it as he might, he found he could receive precisely nothing. Interesting. Every place in otherworld normally put out a certain amount of meaningless activity. The spokes of the Wheel were full of it, and junior mages had to learn to tune it out. But this area was not even putting out that. Most interesting. They must be using wards at least of the strength Arth had used against Leathe. Sadly, every single one of his Island agents was outside this area of silence, but this did not unduly perturb the High Head. This was the Islands pattern. When big mageworkings were afoot, they always closed down. Something was really happening at last!

In strong excitement, he flicked his two most important agents aside from the cluster. The first was serving as lover to a female known to be at or near the center of any magework performed. His image materialized in the reflector much as the High Head had seen him last on Arth — though this probably had little to do with the way the agent looked now, and was almost certainly simply the man’s image of himself. Strange transmogrifications befell those who made the transition and became one with otherworld. This agent was — in his own mind at least — somewhat unshaven, bored, and a little drunk.

“Gods of the Wheel!” this agent said. “All I needed was you! What do you want?”

The High Head indicated he needed anything that might cast light on the area of silence slightly to westward of his agent. Was magework afoot?

“Do you indeed?” said his agent. “Then you’re as wise as I am. It’s obvious something’s up. Bloody Maureen’s pretending to have something wrong with her shoulder so that she can keep going off to that hag’s place in Herefordshire, but that’s all I know. You’d think someone who talks as much as that girl does would give something away, but not she! She’s also collecting money. Cash is pouring in from all over the country — I’d no idea witches were good for so much. But she says it’s for her new Green World Campaign — products made in conditions that don’t hurt the ecology — you know the sort of thing. They’re supposed to be buying a derelict factory somewhere up in the Midlands. Then they make green soap. The gods know if that’s true or not. I’ve not been allowed near the factory — or the money, worse luck!”

He was, the High Head indicated, to investigate the factory.

“All right, all right! I know I should, and I’ve been trying. The bitch keeps putting me off. If I get you stuff on the factory, can I get shot of Maureen and come home? I really hate this world!”

The High Head of Arth forbore to indicate, even by so much as a flicker in the most distant spoke of the Wheel, that this agent was not coming home, ever. When a man underwent the ritual to make him one with otherworld, a change happened that seemed to be irreversible — but one could not let an agent know this, naturally. Instead, the High Head reminded his agent that he was serving as observer in the field as the result of misdemeanors as yet unexpiated and — because agents must be humored — inquired what exactly was so hateful in his position.

“I have to work in this music shop. I hate their music!” was the reply. “Let me tell you—”

The High Head cut into the stream of complaints he knew was about to follow by promising that, once the agent had firm information on the Maureen-female’s purposes, the waves of the correct spokes would adjust themselves so that all would be well. He was careful not to promise that the agent could then come home, although he was well aware that he left the agent with that impression. Such prevarications were a regrettable necessity. He cut the agent off, still grumbling, and turned to the second one, the one set to monitor the most important male mageworker.

He had far less hope of anything concrete from this one. The inescapable fact that the Brotherhood of Arth was an all-male company made it impossible to place this agent as a lover. This male mageworker was decidedly heterosexual. So the agent had been attached to the mageworker’s female partner instead, which was easy to do, because on Arth the agent had been blond, smooth, and handsome. As the image formed on the reflector was as handsome as ever, the assumption was that, whatever this agent had become, it still counted as good-looking in other world terms.

“I’m awfully afraid I can’t give you very much to go on yet, sir, more’s the pity,” this second agent said. He was always very polite. He was one of those who hoped to ingratiate himself in order to get forgiven and recalled to Arth. Poor misguided Brother. “The woman I watch complains her husband is always away and too tired to talk when he comes home.

She thinks he’s got a new lover.”

The High Head requested his agent to play on the female’s fears to make her find out where the male really went.

“Oh, I did, sir,” the agent said eagerly. “It doesn’t take much doing, actually — she wants to know as much as we do. Last time he went, she took rather a risk, to my mind, and tried tracing him by witchcraft. But all it told her was that he seemed to go to that old woman’s house in Herefordshire, and she didn’t believe that for a moment. It looks as if he’s being too clever for us, sir.”

This house in Herefordshire, mentioned by both agents, unquestionably was the site where Observer Horn had pinpointed the recent activity, and, the High Head mused, the elderly female equally unquestionably was the center of it all. He had many times attempted to tag her, but she gave him no hold, no excuse to plant an agent, nothing. She was wily. She slipped away from contact. She was powerful. There had been one occasion, when he was a good deal younger and less experienced, when he had made a rash attempt to broach her consciousness. She had risen up in anger, through every band and spoke of the Wheel, majestic and horrible, and threatened to kill him if he tried that again. Since then he had treated her with great caution. So if they chose her house for their activity, what they were doing was very important.

He was recalled from these thoughts by the agent saying piteously, “Sir? Sir, I would welcome it very much if I could be removed from this assignment. I’m not at all happy in it.”

The High Head asked considerately wherein his unhappiness lay.

“It’s not just that I have the feeling Mark Lister suspects me, sir. I think I can handle him. But I really hate that woman. His wife, sir. I really do!”

What was wrong with her? the High Head inquired.

“She’s hard and mean — and stupid with it, sir. I think she’s probably the most selfish creature I’ve ever known. I’ll take any assignment you care to give me, sir, if only I needn’t put up with her anymore. She makes me ill, sir!”

The High Head suggested that this seemed to describe all females. But since the agent was truly distressed, to the extent that his smooth face in the reflector was distorting in surges, the High Head made haste to assure him that he would be replaced as soon as another agent could be activated.

“Oh, thank you, sir!” said the agent. “You don’t know how much this means to me!”

Know your men and keep them happy, the High Head thought, in considerable distaste at himself, as he cut the connection. That agent would now obtain him real information, quickly and in quantity. But since it did not do to play too many games with an agent’s feelings, the man would have to be replaced — just as he was likely to be most use. Pity. The High Head sighed as he detached all the threads of thought from the spindles and left the agents to themselves again. He stayed in the Wheel himself, however, for he still had his contact to make with the third important female. She was almost as hard to tag as the old one. He had discovered she had a life-partner, but, to his chagrin, the two seemed perfectly faithful to each another. All attempts to plant a lover had been wasted. He had no success in tagging her mind, either. It was not so much that she resisted his efforts as that she seemed totally unaware of them. He just slid off the surface of her mind.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ah, here it comes! thought the High Head.

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

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

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

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

3

The two sparse rows of young men hastily came to attention as the High Head swept in, smiling, in all the awesomeness of the uniform of his office. Blue and silver glittered on him. The short cloak flared gracefully off one shoulder, jutting over the silver sword-wand, half concealing the great moon-badge on his chest. On his head, the great horned mitre raised him a kingly foot above men of mere mortal stature.

Even the centaur felt this, and shifted his hooves, thinking he was looking up into a man’s face for a wonder, instead of the other way around. The High Head of Arth was a legend to all of them. Therefore they all looked carefully, trying to see the man within the legend.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He swept out, hoping he left them considering this.