A Sudden Wild Magic

Gladys had discovered the centaur’s name was Hugon, but their relationship was still far from cordial. Nor was he comfortable to ride. She reckoned that if he had been a real horse, he would have been dogmeat years ago. They were jolting across apparently interminable wide fields. Every time she spoke to him, she bit her tongue, but politeness kept her trying.

“How far — ouch—is it to the king?”

“Four days,” he said. “I don’t intend to go on through the nights.”

“Four days!” The time scheme the various Great Ones had laid on her had not allowed for that.

“What did you expect?” Hugon asked jeeringly. “Even the train takes nearly a day.”

What I am, Gladys mused, is insular. I keep thinking this country’s only about the size of Britain, even though I can feel it around me, much bigger than that.

The size of Europe with half Asia attached, Jimbo informed her.

So big? “Train?” Gladys asked aloud. “You did say train?”

“Sure. Things that go chuff-chuff,” said Hugon pityingly. He added with a surly trace of pride, “That was one of the ideas the Brotherhood of Arth handed down here — before I was born, that was.”

“Then,” said Gladys, “I think — ouch — train would be quicker. Why didn’t you mention it before?”

“Because,” Hugon snarled, “I’d have to pay, wouldn’t I? Or do you have money?”

Gladys fingered her handbag. There was only a handful of change in there. Naturally it would not look like this country’s money — though she was strongly tempted to put an illusion on the tea bags and tell him it was her train fare. But to do that, she needed to know what his money looked like. “No,” she said regretfully, “but I’m — ouch — the king would pay you back.”

“That stingy sod?” said Hugon. “Forget it.”

They argued. Gladys persuaded. Bit her tongue. Gave up. Was on the point of deciding simply to put a compulsion on this obstinate creature when he said grumpily, “All right. Who else can you get money off if the king won’t pay me?”

Easy. “Tod,” Gladys said thankfully. “The young man who was with me. Roderick Something. He told me he was heir to the Fiveir of Frinjen. That do? It sounds wealthy to me.”

“Garn!” said the centaur. “That makes him Duke of Haurbath and the gods know what-all. And he’d have to have birthright magic. He show you any?”

“Plenty,” snapped Gladys.

That seemed to work the trick. Hugon grudgingly changed direction and began to fumble defensively with the pouch slung from a belt across his shoulder. “I may not have enough,” he said, “for both of us.”

“You can put me on the train, then, and go back to whatever you were doing,” Gladys pointed out.

“Not likely,” he said. “I stick to you until someone pays me.”

Gladys sighed, bit her tongue again, and listened to her beads rattle with the uneven rhythm of his pace.

They had been going for about five minutes in the new direction when they were suddenly in a strong shower of rain. Pelting water obscured the featureless fields all around them. Jimbo whimpered. Hugon’s somewhat greasy hair was wet through in seconds. Gladys pulled her pink shawl around herself and Jimbo. The centaur slowed, trotted, walked, stopped.

“I don’t like this,” he said. As Gladys was about to agree and urge him on, he added, “I’ve never known it rain out of blue sky before. Those gods don’t want us to take the train. I know.”

Gladys looked up and found that beyond the fierce slant of rain, the sky was indeed bright, cloudless blue.

“Raining fish too,” Hugon said disgustedly. “Alive. What in hellband is this?”

Gladys bent forward and stared at the large trout flopping and twisting in the grass beyond Hugon’s gnarled front hooves. “Does this happen ofte—?”

She and Jimbo and Hugon were all hit simultaneously by something heavy traveling at speed. There was a good deal of noise, mostly from Hugon and Jimbo, but among the shouting and squealing, Gladys heard another voice crying out too. She let her natural defensive magic take over and landed on her feet in the wet grass. When her confusion had passed, she realized that the person who had hit them must also have natural magic — well, he would have, she realized — because he was also standing unhurt, towering over her. He was tall and well set up, though not young, wearing a blue uniform of some kind. Across his wet forehead and streaming hair she saw a habitual dent, as if he usually wore a headdress of some kind. But how well she knew the features beneath it!

“Leonard!” she exclaimed. “Oh no, you can’t be!”