A Sudden Wild Magic

1

“I canceled the milk,” said Joe. Maureen jerked awake, very much amazed that he had attacked her only with this. “But there’s enough milk in the fridge to keep us going,” he said. “Do you want some cocoa?”

“No,” she said, and yawned ostentatiously. She needed to yawn anyway, so the only thing to do seemed to make it look like boredom. She was so tired.

“And of course, I cut off the telephone,” Joe continued, “though not physically. Don’t imagine British Telecom’s going to come here wanting to repair it. No one’s going to find anything wrong with it, but anyone who tries to get in touch with you is going to get wrong numbers — unless they persist, in which case they’ll get your answering machine with your voice saying you’ll be away for a while.”

Maureen blinked at him. He was lounging at the other end of her sofa, creasing the chaste oatmeal cushions with his weight and looking extremely smug. “Very clever,” she said, “to think of taking all the obvious precautions.” She could not understand why he had not attacked her while she dropped off into a doze there for a moment. Or — she met his eyes. They were heavily, almost pruriently surveying her. Could it be that what she had here was a hunter getting a buzz off entering into the feelings of his prey? She thought so. It would be just like Joe. He wanted to play cat and mouse for a while. If so, could she use it? Keep him occupied while she counterattacked or called for help. There were several Names that should answer her call.

“Don’t even think of it,” said Joe. “I’ve got it fixed so that not even your pet entities are going to hear you. Take a look.” He gestured with his can of lager.

Maureen looked. He had brought his wards to visibility: there was no doubt that he was a truly skilled operator. They hung all around the room, tenuous as cobwebs, roiling a little like clouds, and hard as concrete. She reached up to the nearest. Her fingers met a chilly hardness that she knew she had no hope of penetrating while Joe was awake and aware. She trailed her fingers across its rough, icy surface and thought. He had to sleep, too, in the end. She only had to wait it out. She only had to wait until the raiding party released that virus-magic into Laputa-Blish, and then Joe’s precious bosses would all be disabled, and anything Joe learned would be no use to anyone. It would give her great pleasure to tell him that when the time came. So, how long before it came?

Maureen let her hand trail back into her lap, hopelessly. Keeping the look of blank dismay on her face, she felt for her precognitive powers and let them fill her, gently and surreptitiously. What she found chilled her worse than Joe’s clammy wards. It had gone wrong—would go wrong. There was — would be — death. Future or present death, she had no means of knowing because — this was the fact that truly dismayed her — there was a time difference between the two worlds. The difference might be years, or months, or only minutes. It was not regular. Now she saw this, Maureen remembered Gladys muttering something about time not running the same in Laputa-Blish. She had not paid much attention then.

Gladys had muttered in her most senile manner, something about “Long or short, short or long, who knows?” and nobody attended to Gladys when she went like that. Now it occurred to Maureen that this was a mistake. When Gladys was acting fretfully gaga, it could be that she was functioning at a level none of the rest of them could reach.

Death, delay, things gone wrong, but still a blink of hope. Someone was — or would be — still trying, though Maureen could also see opposition and great evil from a quarter no one expected. This could ruin everything: it would certainly cause further delay. Good God! It could be that she would be shut up with Joe, never daring to sleep, for the next year! There was no question of waiting it out. She would have to defeat him, and soon. And how was she to do that when she was so goddamn tired?

2

Gladys paid off her faithful taxi driver and shambled up her path, muttering fretfully in the foggy white of coming dawn. “Tired, Jimbo. I’m too old for this all-night ritual stuff.” Around her were the mushroom scents of wet garden. Things grew. A trill of birdsong swept across the trees. “Thanks,” Gladys muttered. “Pretty. Too tired to appreciate.” Jimbo clinging to her skirt was as draggled as she was. She stumbled over him slightly as she went into the house, which was unusual; but then an unusual effort had been put out by both of them. And the capsule had gone off safely and the Wards of Britain were up, so it had been worth the effort. “Tea,” she mumbled, shuffling among the jungle plants to the kitchen. “Hot. Wet.”

She had it brewed. She had her hands wrapped around the warm belly of the mug. She was sniffing its fragrance and putting it to her mouth to drink when the phone rang.

“Curse. Thought I’d disconnected.” She took the tea with her and shuffled off to hunt through the jangling jungle for the phone and answer it.

It was Amanda’s voice, high with agitation. “Zillah’s gone! She hasn’t slept in her bed. So’s Marcus. Gladys, she’s taken Marcus and gone! I can’t feel where she is. All I get when I try for her is nothing. Gladys, where is she?”

Gladys held the tea mug against her ear, warming it against Amanda’s insistence. “Lovely bell-like voice,” she muttered. “Clear and high. Like a damned carillon or an alarm clock.”

“Oh, sorry,” Amanda said without much contrition. “You must be so tired after last night — but, Gladys, can’t you try for Zillah? Can you get any idea where she is?”

“Just a moment.” Gladys sighed and took a warm, warming gulp of tea. Zillah. Amanda’s younger sister, the one with the little boy — Mark’s child, Gladys had always suspected. “Damn it, Amanda, I only met your sister twice.” Reddish hair. Sense of unrealized abilities about her that could be even stronger than Amanda’s. In fact, Gladys recalled, where Zillah’s abilities were concerned, the sky was the limit, if only the silly girl could bring herself to realize it! At least someone with that kind of strength ought to be fairly easy to trace. She drank more tea and put her mind to it. The trace was there. It led—“Oh, all the powers, Amanda! She went in that capsule and took the child!”

A sharp silence on the other end was followed by an even sharper cry of horror. “Gladys! Are you sure? Are you still in contact with the capsule?”

“No.” Gladys sighed again and tried to explain. “They went out of contact as soon as they crossed over, Amanda. All I know is that the trace leads to the capsule and stops.”

“But she was inside the capsule the other day — and so was Marcus. Mightn’t that be what you’re feeling? I mean, she definitely wasn’t there, or in the warehouse, when I left the team there. I know she was at home with Marcus. I could feel. There was no way for her to get there. The team wouldn’t have let her on board if she did go there.”

Hope, Gladys thought, was a heavy thing and would do no good here. “Amanda, I’m sure. I don’t know how Zillah did it, but that is what she did.”

“Really sure? Gladys, please try and trace her further! I have the strongest precognitions of disaster for the capsule anyway!”

So had Gladys. Some of the foreknowledge was, to her regret, the result of calculations she wished she had not had to make. “I can’t try to trace her now. For one thing, I’m tired to death. For another, I know I was lucky to make contact with the Laputa-Blish thing anyway. I got in on them when they were exchanging messages and people with their home universe, and I’m going to have to wait for them to start doing that again before I can see anything clear about our folk. Don’t worry. I’ll keep trying. I’ll let you know as soon as I find them again.”

“And can we fetch her back? Gladys, I don’t know what Zillah thought she was doing, but if she did go there—! Gladys, she hasn’t a clue — really. She didn’t know it was supposed to be an attack.”

“Well, obviously, or she wouldn’t have taken Marcus. Amanda, do try to get some sleep. There’s nothing you can do until we know more.”

It took a while to persuade Amanda. Gladys put the phone down at last and made her way back to the kitchen, rolling like a badger from foot to foot out of weariness. “Nothing we can do,” she repeated to herself, pouring more tea. It had gone strong and orange and tepid by then. She drank it all the same, full of guilt and sorrow. Cats were appearing, on windowsills, on the draining board, out of cupboards, treading warily with sympathy. “Don’t tell Amanda,” she said to them guiltily. “Nothing we can do.” It was something Maureen had accepted — but then Maureen was like that — but they had both tacitly agreed that there was no point in telling Amanda that the only way for the raiding party to get back was to force the inhabitants of Laputa-Blish to tell them how. Which meant they had to win first. Now, with this feeling of disaster she had, winning did not seem likely. “Did it ever?” she asked Jimbo, crouching beside her aching feet. Never had she felt so weary and old.

“I’ll get onto it first thing tomorrow,” she said. “Not now, not now.”

3

For two days, life on Arth proceeded in its usual pattern, apparently undisturbed by the survivors from the capsule. The capsule itself had been consigned to Housekeeping and Maintenance, who could use the metal, and it was almost as if the women had always been there. When the High Head, as part of his routine duties, sampled the vibrations, they seemed normal and healthy. There was, it was true, the occasional accelerando in the rhythms, in which everything seemed to pulse several degrees faster, but he was able to discount that. A small tide was coming up, when communication would once more be possible between Arth and the Pentarchy, and these sudden quickenings were quite often associated with tides. The High Head was able to discount the phenomenon — in fact, he would readily have forgotten the tide if he could, since the opening would certainly bring renewed demands from Leathe to hurry up the work in otherworld. And here was a mystery. The experiment had succeeded: he was sure of it. Otherworld had done its usual lateral thinking and taken action of some kind, quite recently too. But of his three main sources, only one was reporting, and that in the vaguest terms. The agent watching the young female had cut off completely. And, to his exasperation, so had his wild native contact. He had to conclude, after unprofitable hours spent trying to raise both, that otherworld had become aware of them and taken steps to silence them. It was imperative to get another agent on the scene as soon as possible. But this was going to take time and planning.

Meanwhile, the women seemed to be settling down to wait for Arth to send them home — as if Arth could, when they were all so ignorantly vague about where they had come from! At least they were causing surprisingly little trouble. There had been one complaint, from Brother Instructor Cyril of Ritual Horn, that the woman Flan Burke had attempted to undermine his authority. But when the High Head asked High Brother Nathan to investigate, Nathan reported that Brother Cyril now unreservedly withdrew his complaint, saying that the young woman was sent by the Goddess to perfect Her rituals.

If the High Head was inclined to think Brother Cyril’s retraction was rather suspiciously fulsome, his doubts were set at rest when he interviewed Flan. He questioned the women once a day at first, trying to sift their vague answers for clues to their home universe, though he became increasingly sure that he was going to have to rely on Calculus to find it.

“Brother Cyril and I had what you might call an eyeball-to-eyeball confrontation,” Flan told him. “And,” she added cheerfully, “he came around to my point of view.”

As for the others, Brother Gamon of Calculus Horn soon asked for permission to interview Sandra himself so as not to interrupt the work he was doing with her. He fancied he was close to discovering a new and improved procedure. Observer Horn made a similar request about Roz. She was, they said, giving them some aspects they had found they were missing up to then, and they wished to continue working closely with her.

Very commendable, the High Head thought, although he wished the other one whose name he always forgot — Helen, that was it — had not decided to work closely with Kitchen. Mealtimes were steadily becoming a distinctly sensual experience. The High Head, who preferred to eat in the same way that one stoked an engine, and then forget the matter, found this distracting. It surprised him that so few Brothers agreed with him. Even Brother Milo raised no objection. He said, rather obscurely, that Helen was a challenge to himself and his Oath.

“Don’t you at least.” the High Head asked Edward, as the two of them breakfasted on little fish from the reservoirs, mushrooms, and honey pancakes, “don’t you at least miss passet for breakfast?”

“No, I don’t,” Edward said heartily. “I don’t mind if I never taste the stuff again.”

The High Head sighed and stared at the blue wall of his private dining room. It was becoming clear to him that he must be the only person in the citadel who actually liked passet. “How is the woman you had in the trance?” he asked, to change the subject.

“Coming along very nicely.” Edward poured himself more of the excellent coffee — the best thing, in his opinion, that ever came out of Azandi. “As soon as she came out of shock, I discovered she was a natural-born healer. So of course, I asked her to stay and help us in Healing Horn. But,” he added, with an odd, wistful little smile, “I’d still much rather have had the pretty one.”

“Zillah,” said the High Head. There was somehow no doubt which woman Edward meant. He knew a sudden surge of annoyance, even actual anger, that Edward had presumed to want Zillah, when it ought to be obvious she was — was what? In some discomfort, the High Head realized that he had been, in some odd way, regarding the woman Zillah as his. He seemed — he could not think how — to know her extremely well, in a special way, and he was certainly not going to let any other Horn Head take over the job of interviewing her. No, this was absurd. He should not be thinking this way. He had better let someone else (provided it was not Edward) speak with her in future. But he still thought he should ignore Brother Wilfrid’s complaint that Zillah was harming the vibrations by corrupting the servicemen. Brother Wilfrid was, in his way, a fanatic. Nor was there anything amiss with the vibrations. “I do, of course, lock their quarters with the strongest possible wards every night,” he said, possibly changing the subject again.

“I’m sure,” Edward said rather dubiously, “that is very wise.”

4

The women knew perfectly well they were locked in at night. “I can tell a ward when I see one,” Roz said, “even if I hadn’t tried to get past the veiling and found I couldn’t.” She paced up and down past the rows of sleeping cells. “What I don’t know is if they listen in on us or not.”

“Oh, they don’t,” Judy told her. “I asked Edward, and he was shocked I thought they would.”

“You asked?” Roz said. “You fool!”

“Why not? He’s nice. In fact,” Judy said, with rather tremulous defiance, “he’s so innocent, I feel a beast most of the time, knowing I’m here to undermine him.”

“We’re not here to be nice!” Roz said disgustedly. She marched to stand looming over the others as they sat about on the floor. “Okay. So we’re here trying to do the best we can without the virus-magic. It’s obvious from what we’ve all heard them say that the best way to undermine this place is to spoil the vibrations by getting as many of them as possible to break their Oath. I’ve been working on that principle anyway. I’m up to twelve. Two High Brothers and ten mages. How about the rest of you? Sandra? Flan?”

“Who made you leader?” muttered Flan. She hugged her knees and rocked like a Kelly clown. This gave her repeated little sights of the smug smile playing over Roz’s face. Confronted by that smile, she had not the heart to add Brother Instructor Cyril to Roz’s string of scalps. The look on the man’s face when she kissed him to shut him up — no, it was too much. And then Alexander, the dark young mage, was something very special.

But Roz was impatiently tapping a foot. So what could she say, except that her movement class somehow doubled every time she went near Ritual Horn? And dozens of other brothers crowded hopefully in the veiling of the doors. “Dozens,” she said.

“Yes, but how many?” Roz demanded.

“I’ve lost count,” Flan said airily, “except that they’re queuing up.”

“You can’t have managed more than fifteen in the time,” Roz said suspiciously. “Let’s call it fifteen. Sandra?”

Sandra seized gratefully on Flan’s lead. “They’re queuing up for me too, Roz.” Something surely was going to happen with High Brother Gamon soon; though, windbag as he was, it was going pretty slowly — so slowly that she didn’t kid herself that the other mages in Calculus had not made bets on whether it would happen at all. And Sandra was enjoying it, in a way she had never enjoyed it before. He was so courteous, so considerate. It was courtship, that was what it was, in the old-fashioned sense, and all the while there she was sabotaging his divinations. It was a shame. Sandra was aware that she might be beaming and that her eyes were a trifle misty. “Say fifteen,” she said hurriedly.

“Forty-two,” said Roz. She was looking rather less smug, now it seemed that Flan and Sandra had both exceeded her score by three. “Helen?”

Small, wry brackets grew around Helen’s mouth. She was well aware that Flan and Sandra were — at least — exaggerating, and she thought she understood why. She supposed she ought to shut Roz up by explaining what she was doing with the food, but she was fairly sure that Roz would dismiss it as too slow. Roz’s mind was not adapted to fine-tuning of this kind. And Helen was absolutely certain that Roz would not understand for a moment the way she had chosen to distract Brother Milo from what she was really doing. She had seen at a glance that Brother Milo was incorruptible. So she had told him that she had come to Kitchen to seduce him. Brother Milo had at once, and with great glee, dropped all his complaints about her lavish cooking and dared her to try. As far as he was concerned, Helen could do what she liked to the food as long as he kept his Oath. By now they were locked in this slightly strange contest, in which Brother Milo had to win without suspecting that Helen was letting him win, while Brother Milo tacitly ignored the fact that Helen was now ruling Kitchen. But Roz would certainly think this was just silly.

The brackets deepened round Helen’s mouth as she considered what to say. “You have to remember we’re all quite busy most of the time,” she said, with her mind on the bustle in the long chain of rooms, the heat, the smells, and attacks of hysteria from Brother Feno or Brother Maury, one them chasing a cadet with a ladle, and everyone else in fits of laughter.

Flan looked at her with respect and wished she had thought to say that. “Say six,” Helen said judiciously, and allowed her mouth to spread in a wry smile. Why was it, she wondered, that a great long creature like herself always, unfailingly, fell for small men like Brother Milo?

“Forty-eight,” said Roz. “Judy?”

Judy colored up. “Just the one. And,” she added tremulously, “that’s all there’s going to be.”

While Flan, Sandra, and Helen carefully kept their faces noncommittal, Zillah looked from one to the other and began to feel as desperately innocent as Edward, or even Marcus. Marcus — probably luckily, given the nature of Roz’s interrogation — was fast asleep across Zillah’s legs, clutching his new bag of toys. While Zillah had simply been enjoying herself, it seemed that the rest of them had been making a cynical attack on the virtue of the citadel. Well, it stood to reason. They had come here to make an attack of some kind. But it made Zillah see that she was a complete outsider here. And I bet Roz doesn’t even bother to ask me! she thought.

Sure enough, Roz said, “Grand total of forty-nine! Not bad for two days. If we keep this strike rate up, enough mages will have enough fun to spoil every vibration going. A week ought to bring the fortress down.”

“Oh, but it won’t,” Zillah said. Five faces turned her way, Roz’s irritated, the others surprised, questioning and perhaps even faintly pleased. She tried to explain. “It likes fun — the citadel, I mean. Can’t you feel? People keep repressing it, and it’s just sort of itching for something to enjoy.”

Roz turned away. “Do try not to talk nonsense, Zillah. You just don’t have the training the rest of us have had. Everyone knows this is a serious, evil place.”

Zillah was somewhat consoled for this snub by Flan, who rolled over to whisper, “I like fun too. But don’t tell teacher.”

5

Tod found himself with sudden, immense popularity. Every serviceman and nearly every cadet was overnight his firm friend. Tod was amused. The speed of it amused him. So did the various approaches. Cadets in their second year, who were total strangers, came up to him with the serious, haunted look of those who were having strong second thoughts about being mages at all, and either chatted about Frinjen or offered to help with Tod’s work. Cadets in their first year bought Tod drinks at the buttery — Arth passet beer, as Tod informed Zillah, was far worse than the food — and tried to find out from him what might please Zillah. So did nearly all the servicemen except Rax. Rax, being Rax, simply asked what Tod would take for giving him an hour alone with Zillah.

To everyone except Rax, Tod said that Zillah would like toys for Marcus. He told them this because it displeased him that Zillah had apparently rushed aboard that capsule without even thinking that Marcus might need something to play with. It was one of several faults Tod found in Zillah. But to Rax, he said in a dark whisper, “I don’t advise it. She’s worse than the Ladies of Leathe. Five minutes with her could well blow your mind — it comes close to blowing mine, and I’ve got my birthright to help me!”

This, he thought ruefully, could almost be true. Whatever peculiar magecraft it was that Zillah possessed, he sensed it was very strong indeed. He was glad that she chose to exercise it so seldom. And anyone would defend Zillah from a lad like Rax. But he sometimes wondered why he held the rest off her. It was pure dog in the manger. That first afternoon when Zillah had been so pleased to see him, Tod had had great hopes. Then, the next day, he had come upon her sitting in a blue window embrasure, looking out into Arth’s blue empty sky, and realized that his hopes were just wistful phantoms. One glance at her sad profile, and he had known there was a wall around Zillah and that someone else was inside the wall with her.

“Did you come here to get away from — someone?” he had asked her, almost literally out of the blue.

“Yes,” said Zillah. The sadness of that one word was terrible.

“Then you’ve come to the right place,” Tod answered cheerfully, watching his hopes swirl away down an imaginary plughole. “You’ve got Josh and Philo and me to take your mind off it.”

He did wish she had not given him that particular grateful, friendly smile.

All the same, he and Philo and Josh spent every available spare minute with Zillah. When Marcus was not too restless, she sat in on classes with them, despite Brother Wilfrid’s sour looks, and seemed surprised at how much she learned even when she had to carry Marcus out halfway through most of the time. This was another thing about Zillah that irritated Tod. She was so plumb ignorant of magework. It was almost as if she refused to learn on purpose, and possibly encouraged Marcus to make a noise so that she could leave. He allowed that this was partly due to lack of confidence — someone, way back in Zillah’s history, had evidently sapped her confidence pretty badly — but he also suspected it was due to arrogance. In some secret place in her mind, Zillah felt she had no need to learn.

Josh had detected this too. Centaurs had somewhat the same arrogance. “Come on. Admit it. You’re proud of not knowing,” Josh said to her. And Zillah laughed guiltily, proving Josh right.

Tod knew he was finding faults in Zillah as a defense against falling in love with her. It was not only her looks. She was such good company too. They wandered about the citadel, talking of everything under three suns, and Tod found himself prattling to her as he had not found himself able to prattle since he left home.

“What is passet?” Zillah asked.

All three of them groaned. “A grain, lady,” Philo told her. “I’m told the centaurs used to live on it.”

“Only when desperate,” Josh protested.

“It grows dreadfully easily, particularly in the north of the Pentarchy,” Tod prattled. “It used to be what poor folk had to eat. When there was a passet famine, that was real famine. So the government tried to prevent famines by putting up a reward for growing passet — that was a few hundred years ago, and naturally no one ever remembered to repeal the law. There’s always a huge passet mountain. They make a lethal spirit out of it in Trenjen. But until I got to Arth, I always wondered what they did with the rest of it. Now I know. They just send it all here.”

“There are grain cellars full of it,” Josh said, pointing downward.

“We’ll show you if you like,” Philo offered.

“Oh, would you?” Zillah said. Her delight at the thought of going into the bowels of the citadel was so sincere that Philo wrapped his arms around her. Philo was one of those who was always embracing people he liked. This was what had caused him such trouble with the Brotherhood. But Tod suspected, from the look on Philo’s face, that it was not just friendship where Zillah was concerned; and he had a notion that Philo had discovered, like himself, that Zillah was only open to friendship.

No one else in the citadel believed it was just friendship. Philo and Josh were petitioned as often as Tod was for Zillah’s favors. Arth was filling with rumors and randy stories. Chief among them was one — which Tod thought might be fact — that the woman in boots had slept with every soul in Observer Horn and was open to any other offers. There was known to be some kind of bet on over the black girl in Calculus, and though the stories varied about the small, lively woman, there were jokes about the way Ritual Horn literally danced attendance upon her. Meanwhile Maintenance had opened a book upon the virtue of Brother Milo and the High Head. You could only get 2–1 on the chances of Brother Milo, but they were offering 100-1 that the High Head would not keep his Oath until the end of the week. There was some bitterness about the way the High Head seemed to exploit his position. He kept calling the women to his room. Zillah confirmed that she had been called in twice, and she confessed to Tod that High Horns terrified her.

“You’re not the only one,” Tod said. “I do dislike that man.” And he went off to collect toys for Marcus in a sack that Josh had filched from Healing Horn. Tod called it the Charity Bag. He took it around with them and watched with pleasure as it filled with mascot dolls, cubes and prisms and other hardware from Observer and Research, a wonderful model train made by a lonely Brother, a boat, and wax images from everywhere. It gave him enormous pleasure to watch Marcus tip them all out, crying, “Ooh! Doy!”

Tod turned to Zillah. “There. You see? I’m a truly expert uncle.”

By the third day, all of them except perhaps Marcus were sick of the blaze of attention. Instead of attending a parade in the square where Zillah got so giddy, Tod planted Marcus and his Charity Bag on Josh’s back, Philo took Zillah by the hand, and they all descended the ramps into the lower parts of the citadel to show Zillah the stores. Tod saw afterward that he should have persuaded Josh at least to stay for the parade. A solitary centaur is noticeable, present or absent. But at the time they thought no more about it than to laugh with guilty pleasure.

“Playing hooky,” said Tod. “I used to be an expert at it. Life in this citadel takes me right back to school.”

They went slowly. The blue ribbed surface of the lower ramps was steep for Josh’s hooves, and the light, away from living quarters, was kept dimmer. When they reached the first of the huge grain cellars, there was hardly light enough to see the mountain of passet, heaped up into the distance.

“It looks almost like wheat,” Zillah remarked.

“Bed,” Marcus announced.

“Quite right, infant,” Tod agreed. “It smells vile. Just look at it all! Enough to feed a thousand Brothers for at least a year, even if they ate nothing else — which they almost didn’t until that life-saving Helen person got into Kitchen.”

“They grow mushrooms in it when it goes bad,” Josh said.

“And then it smells even worse,” Tod said, starting to move on.

Philo, however, hung back at the grainy foot of the mountain, sniffing wistfully. “It reminds me of home,” he said.

“I was forgetting you came from the Trenjen Orthe,” Tod said. “Rather you than me!”

“I wish I was back there,” said Philo.

He sounded so yearningly homesick that Zillah asked sympathetically, “What is the Trenjen Orthe?”

“My bit of the Pentarchy,” said Philo. “The Fiveir of Orthe is all over the place.”

“In order to understand our friend,” Tod prattled, leading the way on down the next ramp, “you must realize that the Pentarchy consists of five onetime kingdoms, or Fiveirs, now united into one. These are Frinjen, Trenjen, Corriarden, the Orthe, and Leathe. Apart from Leathe, each Fiveir is governed by its own Pentarch — one of these is the old buffer who happens to be my father. The king governs the whole country, but he is also Pentarch of the Orthe — which is quite a job, because, apart from a lump in the middle of the continent, the Orthe is scattered over everywhere else but Leathe, in lots of little enclaves. I think it’s where the Other Peoples happened to live. Philo’s lot of gualdians — who no doubt had their reasons — chose to take up their abode in the north and put up with the weather and the passet, so that became part of the Orthe, instead of being part of Trenjen.”

“But I’m from central Orthe,” Josh said, following Tod downward with braced hooves and little mincing steps, “which is much more sensible. Most of my people are.”

“Sensible? Or just from the Center?” Tod called back.

“What exactly makes you a gualdian?” Zillah asked as she and Philo followed Josh.

“It’s hard to explain. I’m not typical,” Philo replied. “Most of us have a great deal of body hair — in fact, the usual way to tell a gualdian-human cross is that they look rather furry.”

“Not our beloved High Head, though,” Tod shouted up irrepressibly. “Unless he shaves all over daily, that is. He’s vain enough. He might.”

“No, but you can tell he’s a cross from the eyes,” Philo said. “That’s the main sign usually.” He turned his great wide eyes toward Zillah. She looked at them closely. In the dimness they seemed very penetrating and luminous, as well as large, but they looked like human eyes to her. So, come to think of it, did High Horn’s eyes. “But most of the time,” Philo went on, nuzzling closer to Zillah as his way was, “it’s quite hard to tell, particularly with gualdian women. And look at me. The only hair I have is on my head, and I was born with these enormous hands and feet. My parents took one look at me and consulted the Gualdian. And he said, a bit helplessly, that it was to be hoped that I’d grow into something special — which I didn’t. But I think they kept on hoping. It was the Gualdian who sent me over to Arth. Maybe he thought they could bring something out in me.”

“Did they?” Zillah asked.

“No,” said Philo as they rounded the ramp into the next level.

“As if Arth could bring anything out in anyone!” Tod said. “The Gualdian must be senile to think it could. Here, Zillah, we have the first of Arth’s main reservoirs. Enough water to last the citadel for years. And, since the Brotherhood sometimes amazes the rest of the Pentarchy by being practical from time to time, they use their reservoirs to breed fish in.”

Zillah was already staring at a high glass wall behind which, in nightlike gloom, swam a shoal of small silver fish. Other bigger fish stirred in the dimmer distance. The lighting down here was just bright enough for her to see their five twilit reflections murkily mirrored in front of the fish, Philo all hands and feet and clinging, limber movements; herself and Tod both neat and quick; and Josh’s great silver body, which seemed to draw all the light to itself and focus that light on the small, vigorous figure of Marcus on his back. Marcus liked the glass surface and the fish. He made Josh go close so that he could push the boat from his Charity Bag across it.

“Voom-voom,” he murmured, happily ignoring the fact that his boat had sails.

At intervals along the glass wall were curious faucets, which Tod explained were fish traps. You drew the fish into them by magework. “I’d show you, if I only knew what we’d do with the fish once we got it,” he said. “But no one’s going to notice if we pinch some mushrooms for Josh on the next level.”

“I’d kill for fresh mushrooms!” Josh told Zillah. He moved slowly along beside the glass for Marcus to push his boat. It was warm and secret there, with only the half-seen fish and their own reflections, and it made Josh as confidential as Philo. “It was the same for me,” he said, “as it was for Philo, really. They said a weedy centaur with knock knees has no excuse for existing unless his natural magecraft is something unusual. Mine isn’t — but I’m sure that’s why the king ordered me to Arth. I was lined up with rows of really good specimens, and he chose me. He said he expected great things.”

“Only after your year’s up,” said Tod. “This place is inimical. I wish I was anywhere else most of the time. The only good thing to happen here is Zillah.”

Zillah laughed, but she had never been able to handle compliments, and she had to change the subject. “Is the king the same as the Gualdian?”

“Good gods, no!” the three native Pentarchans cried out together. Philo explained, “The Gualdian is only for gualdians.”

And Tod added, “Clan chief, sort of. The king is for everyone. He’s an odd fellow, our monarch, very modern type. Wears thick glasses and likes to trot out shopping with a string bag. To look at him, you wouldn’t think he had an ounce of birthright.”

“But he must have,” said Josh, “or he wouldn’t be king.”

“At least,” Philo said, with his chin resting on Zillah’s shoulder, “our Gualdian looks the part.”

“And renowned for his silver tongue,” said Tod. “They say he once sweet-talked an archangel — or was it Asphorael? — into fetching his newspaper every day!”

Philo shot straight beside Zillah. “That’s a lie!” She could feel his body almost twanging with anger. And though there was no apparent change to that body, in the glass of the reservoir, Philo’s reflection blurred. It seemed to be flaring and shimmering around the edge. Was this what made him gualdian and different?

“You still haven’t said,” she interrupted hurriedly, “what makes a gualdian a gualdian. How would I tell a gualdian woman, for instance?”

“She’d be stunningly beautiful for a start,” Tod said, and Zillah had no idea if he knew how offended Philo was. “One of my uncles married a gualdian lady, and she’s still stunning, even though my cousin Michael’s the same age as me. Otherwise you’d think she was human. She’s not the kind to go round telling everyone she was born with second sight. She—”

Tod had known, Zillah saw. Philo forgot his anger and inquired with great eagerness, “Which branch of us is she?”

Josh winked at Zillah. “Now, that’s typical gualdian. Family, family.”

“Frinjen,” said Tod. “Town-gualdian from the estate at Haurbath. But you might just know her. Her family has estates in the north too. Hang on a moment. With all this glass to reflect off, I can easily project you a likeness.” He stepped back and drew upon his birthright.

To Zillah, still wondering at the way everyone here took magework so much for granted, it looked as if Tod shook his shoulders a little and then — possibly — thought hard. Josh shifted a hoof, sparing it, quite unconcerned. Even Amanda, Zillah thought, never took witchcraft so calmly, and it had been part of her life for twenty years now.

“Look there,” Tod said, pointing.

An image grew in the glass, brighter than their own reflections and somewhat above them. It was the head and shoulders of a radiant woman with long black hair and the most striking dark eyes — all so dense and real that the shoal of pinkish fish swimming behind the image was all but hidden.

Marcus’s hand became a starfish, pointing. “Badder!” he shouted. Zillah, equally astounded, first looked around to see if Amanda was standing somewhere behind and above, and then, finding nothing but dark blue wall, had to struggle with tears. Oh Lord, I miss Amanda! Why did I leave? That really might be her.

Philo added to her shock by saying, “Oh, Amanda. She’s my second cousin. Is she really your aunt?”

“By marriage,” said Tod. The way he said it made it clear to Zillah’s shocked, heightened senses that this Amanda had somehow conferred an honor on Tod’s family — which surely, unless she had gravely misunderstood, was itself one of the highest in the land — simply by marrying into it.

“She’s been a widow for years,” Philo said, as if this excused the lady. This made Zillah struggle to replace Philo — and perhaps the whole gualdian race with him — in a social bracket above Tod’s.

“Yes, but she just remarried, did you know?” said Tod.

“I did. The second man was not gualdian either,” Philo answered, with unmistakable strong disapproval.

Marcus all this while continued to bawl, “Badder!” at the bright image. Josh swiveled his torso around in the way that was natural to a centaur but which made Zillah’s vertebrae ache every time she saw it, and silenced Marcus with a small shake. “What’s the matter with him?” he asked Zillah.

The tears in her eyes ran off down her cheeks. Her voice cracked as she answered. “That — that lady’s the absolute image of my elder sister. She — she’s called Amanda too, would you believe?”

Something belligerent vanished from Tod, and so did Philo’s stiffness. They both turned to Zillah. “Oh, great Goddess!” said Tod. “Analogues! What a pity my Amanda doesn’t have a sister, or you might get to meet yourself.” Philo, seeing Zillah’s tears, started to put his arms around her. Tod pushed his reaching hands aside. “No, you clinging vine! It’s my turn this time.” He wrapped his own arms around Zillah in a hearty embrace. “It’s quite all right,” he prattled. “You’re the sister of my favorite aunt — or you would be if she had one. Don’t cry. Please. I’ll take you to see her as soon as this horrible year’s over and we can get on a transport.”

Distress, homesickness, the relief of being comforted, caused Zillah to put her head on Tod’s shoulder and cling to him. Her tears leaked into the prickly blue cloth of his uniform. The warmth of him suffused her. She had not felt this warm since Marcus was born — as if she had been perpetually two degrees in arrears.

Tod found her frank leaning on him a decidedly sexual experience. Her body was the most satisfying shape to have his arms around and to have pressed against his. At the edge of his senses, he noticed Josh moving away with Marcus, probably so that Marcus should not be upset by his mother’s misery. Philo followed him, shrugging, rather annoyed. Tod waited until both his friends were out of sight on the next downward ramp and then fell to comforting Zillah like anything. Though he was quite aware that comforting was all Zillah would let him do, this did not stop him kissing her ear and her cheek, and then moving her around, gently but forcibly, so that he could at last kiss her mouth.

He had reached this stage, and the image of Amanda that had caused the kiss had faded away — Tod having forgotten entirely by then how he came to start — when Brother Wilfrid advanced down the ribbed passageway, accompanied by his own righteously triumphant reflection in the glass of the reservoir and, with a flick of sanctimonious fingers, froze Zillah and Tod in place while an image of them was transmitted to the mirrors in the office of the High Head.

“I knew this was what I would find!” said Brother Wilfrid, and his voice trembled with what Zillah and Tod both detected to be a variety of unhealthy emotions.