A Sudden Wild Magic

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.