A Sudden Wild Magic

Nag, nag, nag! He could see them now, all the pretty faces gathered about his conference table, all the expensive and no doubt fashionable clothes, each one assaulting his nose with her own particular thick perfume — not to speak of assaulting his psyche with their dozen individual soft accusations. All claiming he had hurt them, for the Goddess’s sake! Didn’t they think he could see into their souls at least as well as they could see into his? Hurt, indeed! He knew them all to be as hard as nails, each one softly and inexorably set on having her own way. Well, they commanded in Leathe maybe, but not here in the separate small universe of Arth.

When he learned that this year’s high-tide transfers would be bringing the entire Inner Convent of Leathe to see him, he rightly interpreted it as another attempt by Lady Marceny to get his soul under her domination. Report had it that she, and her mother before her, had possessed his predecessor in soul and mind too. The High Head had no doubt that the report was true. Marceny was the hardest and most inexorable of all the women of Leathe. She possessed most of the power in Leathe, but she was not satisfied with that, nor with having made a vicious puppet out of that son of hers. Not she. She wanted Arth as well.

The High Head had taken precautions, swiftly. Not only did he evoke the strongest possible wards for his own soul, but he made sure that every soul under his command was equally well protected. Arth’s citadel had hummed with the application of powers — he could feel the wards pulsing away into the etheric spokes of the Wheel at this moment, withdrawing now the need for them was over. Unfortunately, the nature of the tides between universes meant that the ladies would have to stay overnight. The High Head made sure that they only came into contact with the strongest minds Arth could muster. Only those with a truly armored integrity were allowed to wait on them. This went for personnel from Maintenance Horn to clerks, cooks, and those who waited at table— everyone. He had even had to debar his friend and deputy, the Horn Head of Healing, from any dealings with the ladies and give his duties of attendance to junior mages. Poor Edward had deep uncertainties where females were concerned.

“You have surrounded us with woman-haters, Magus dear,” was almost the first thing Lady Marceny said, opening her blue eyes wide and injured in his face. “Why?”

It was the first salvo of the hostilities. He bowed, smiling. “Oh, I don’t think so, my lady. Just an average cross section of the men. You’re simply sensing the pride we here in Arth take in keeping to our Oath.”

“Really? You have made such changes since dear Peter’s time, Magus,” she replied, all honey and perfume and wide, wide eyes.

Thereafter it was assault and battery. Assault of the soul and battery of the mind, the High Head thought, running his hands through his hair. His hair was thinning and caught in strands between his fingers. He rather feared it grew thinner every time he had any dealings with Lady Marceny. There was something peculiarly avid and hungry in her that seemed to draw and suck the life out of you. Though the conditions of Arth tended to prolong a man’s life far beyond the usual, he was sure Lady Marceny would have him old well before even home time. He sighed.

The first complaint on the ladies’ agenda was that there had been so few results from other world. The High Head was naturally ready with figures. He pointed out that a steady stream of innovations was now flowing between otherworld and the Pentarchy, things both technological and magical. Particularly magical, he stressed. Since his predecessor, Magus Peter (under prompting from Lady Marceny’s mother), had so cunningly reseeded the otherworld with the principles of magery, it had responded with a burst of fertility.

The ladies did not deny this. But the Lady Istoly, who was spokeswoman for home affairs, said reproachfully that the dear Magus seemed a little out of touch with the needs of the real world. “While you live peacefully here on Arth, the Pentarchy is in ever greater trouble,” she told him. “I won’t bore you with accounts of the other continents, but you do know — do you? — that at home the Sea of Trenjen has now joined up with Corriarden Bay in the north, making us into an island continent. Unless we can find some way to stop the oceans rising, the Pentarchy as we know it may vanish over the next century or so.”

To which Lady Katny added, in dire, deep tones, “Leathe is beginning to erode.” And Lady Moury spread papers on the table, saying, “I have here an outline of your plan to perform parallel mageworks on the otherworld, to cause waters to rise there by affecting its climate, and thereby elicit a solution to our own flooding. What became of this plan, Magus? Surely we should be getting some results by now?”