A Sudden Wild Magic

“Possibly,” the king cut in. “Possibly you were unknowing victims. But I cannot otherwise account for the fact that Leathe has, for the last decade, been receiving a constant stream of ideas and inventions which the rest of the Pentarchy has never been allowed to have. Nor could I rid myself of a suspicion that the activities of Arth were actually causing the rising of the sea here.”

“Oh, they were, Majesty,” Gladys said. “This is what I came about. Your Great Centaur—”

The king turned his focused spectacles on her. “Then I think you should tell me now, Mrs. — er—”

“Gladys. Well, Majesty—”

“But first tell me about the invasion of Arth,” said the king. “I can’t imagine a person of your powers having no hand in that.”

A shrewd man, she thought. She told him the whole story, aware as she spoke of the unfortunate High Head becoming alternately enraged and desolated in the chair opposite. Len would have managed his feelings better, she thought, though Len was always a bit inclined to be hidebound too. It must go with the man. Having told the king about the capsule, she gave him the facts as she had had them from the Great Centaur. “He was sick,” she concluded. “It was the ideas that did it. He told me that ideas transpose matter — energy — in the most concentrated form there is. Your universe is bloated by this time, Majesty, and ours is getting drained. As I told Lawrence here, it does no good for Arth to trigger this global warming thing with us, because your world is getting filled with what you get from us, and to pull in just another idea from us is going to do more harm than good. It might help more for you to tell us what to do about our trouble.”

“It might,” the king agreed intently.

“But there’s more,” Gladys said. “I’m glad we’ve had this talk, all the four of us together, and you happened to mention Tod, because things are really falling together in my head now. It’s what you said, Majesty, about Leathe getting this whole stream of stuff. I saw that stream, back in the early days. It’s like a great mains sewer, and I’m afraid I know what it is. You see, Tod told me he was set to spy on the man in our Inner Ring— he’s called Mark Lister, and he came out of nowhere suddenly with powers you wouldn’t believe, which always did puzzle me, but I was only just widowed then and I’d other things on my mind, like a row with my daughter, and who was to replace Len in the Ring, and so I kind of let him pass, if you know what I mean. Anyway, Tod said our Mark was the image of a man called Herrel in Leathe—”

“Stop there,” said the king. “I see. Herrel Listanian’s been puzzling us for some time. So not only has the woman Marceny committed an abomination, but she’s poisoned our world doing it. Good. Then I can safely close down Marceny.”

“It seems to me you’d do well to close down this Leathe as well,” Gladys observed.

“Unfortunately I can’t,” said the king. “The ex-High Head here will tell you how Leathe was legally established as the demesne of female mages soon after Arth was established.”

“I could go on for hours about it,” the High Head said bitterly. “It may have started as a safeguard, believe it or not, to separate male and female mageworkers. Now, to cut a long story short, Leathe is established by every magical and legal method possible. It would take a major revolution to unseat those women.”

“You never know,” said the king. “My hope is that it’s begun.” He sat forward. “I’m glad you came to me. Our Powers know what they’re about. As it happens, I am in a position to complete the picture. A regrettable part of our situation with Leathe is that I, too, have agents who spy for me. And reports came out of Leathe this morning that a centaur, a gualdian, a small child, and a young woman have suddenly arrived on the estate of Lady Marceny.”

The High Head and Gladys both cried out together.

“One at a time,” the king said mildly. “Brother Lawrence?”

“It’s impossible!” said the High Head. “I was going to say they couldn’t get out of Arth — but if there’s wild magic in question, I suppose I — But, Your Majesty, you know what they do to gualdians in Leathe. I’m one of the products of it — I know.”

“Yes, indeed,” the king said. “I have Philo very much in mind. My agent has instructions to assist him in every way. And you, madam?” He turned to Gladys.

She had her hands to her face. Jimbo was chittering and nudging her beaded knee. “Poor Zillah,” she said. “Majesty, she’s in love with Mark Lister, and she has power. The moment she sees the other half of Mark, she’ll know. And she’s going to try to put him together again. Majesty, Mark knows all the secrets of the Ring, and he’s a computer expert. That’s too many ideas.”

“It is,” agreed the king. “She’ll have to be stopped.”

“She will be,” said Gladys, and the grimness of her Goddess Aspect came over her. “I must get there at once and stop her.”

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