A Sudden Wild Magic

Banishment’s not legal for servicemen. They shouldn’t ever have sent you!”

X Arth, Earth, Pentarchy

1

The High Head was gloomily aware that he had made almost every soul on Arth extremely unhappy. But, he told himself, he had to do something about the wild disorder in the vibrations, and the only way, with the culprits seemingly still at large in the bowels of the citadel, was to order a massive clampdown. This was now in force. Servicemen and cadets groaned under double parades and compulsory rituals. The lower- order Brothers were required to attend mass meditations and cleansing rituals four times a day, while their seniors, when they were not on duty for these, were under orders to meditate alone in their cells. The buttery was closed, so that even the dubious consolation of passet beer was denied.As a further precaution, the High Head went in person to inspect each Horn. This, he was not unaware, caused considerable panic. He had uncovered a stupefying number of hastily concealed irregularities. In Observer Horn, for instance, he was forced to order them to reperform all viewings made in the last six weeks.

“Regardless of the fact that we can’t!” a junior Brother told Helen in Kitchen. For some reason, everyone came and told Helen things. Her cool, accepting manner had come to be regarded as wisdom. No one knew Judy very well, and Roz was wisely keeping out of sight. So was Sandra, after the High Head inspected Calculus.

There the High Head found such chaos that he concluded High Brother Gamon was insane and demoted him to the ranks. To do him justice, the High Head did not at that stage connect any of the disorder with the women — apart from Zillah, that is. He went on to censure Maintenance for allowing Rax and seven other servicemen to sit in a storeroom breathing glue and oxygen. “And we didn’t even know they were there!” a Duty Mage told Helen. Rax and his friends had been stealing a number of foodstuffs to sell too, which caused Housekeeping to be hauled over the coals as well. Ritual Horn was then found to be skimping, cutting corners and gabbling formulae. “But if we didn’t do that, we’d never get through all the stuff he’s piling onto us!” Alexander complained to Helen. Flan was mysteriously not to be found, so her handsome young mage came to Helen like everyone else.

And while Alexander uttered these complaints, the High Head was proceeding through Records, to demote two senior mages; and to Defense, where he arraigned almost everyone for overzealousness and rigidity. Even Healing Horn did not escape, for Edward had unaccountably failed to make proper records of his healing of Judy.

Finally, having dealt out penances to nine-tenths of the population of Arth, the High Head advanced on Kitchen. Unfortunately, he arrived to find Helen surrounded by an indignant crowd from all over the citadel. He sent every man of them about his business, with further penances, and then laid a geas on Helen, banning her from entering Kitchen again. After that, he did what he had really come to do and ordered a diet of passet henceforth for every meal. No fried food, he decreed, no spices, no sauces, no roast. Meat stewed in water only, with passet, was to be eaten from now on, and bread must be kept for two days before it was eaten.

Someone told Helen that Brother Milo wept. All the other High Brothers were equally upset, for the ordering of discipline in their own Horns was traditionally theirs. This had been the custom for four hundred years, regardless of the fact that the law was on the side of the High Head. Brother Nathan declared that the High Head had been unpardonably high-handed. Brother Gamon added that the man was a soulless traditionalist without a spark of human feeling. “And without a stomach either,” snarled Brother Dewi.

“He has been, at the very least, unpardonably impolite,” stated the Horn Head of Alchemy, who was so relieved to have escaped reprimand that he could afford to be angry on behalf of the others. “We have been slighted. We are annoyed.”