A Sudden Wild Magic

“I’m awfully afraid I can’t give you very much to go on yet, sir, more’s the pity,” this second agent said. He was always very polite. He was one of those who hoped to ingratiate himself in order to get forgiven and recalled to Arth. Poor misguided Brother. “The woman I watch complains her husband is always away and too tired to talk when he comes home.

She thinks he’s got a new lover.”

The High Head requested his agent to play on the female’s fears to make her find out where the male really went.

“Oh, I did, sir,” the agent said eagerly. “It doesn’t take much doing, actually — she wants to know as much as we do. Last time he went, she took rather a risk, to my mind, and tried tracing him by witchcraft. But all it told her was that he seemed to go to that old woman’s house in Herefordshire, and she didn’t believe that for a moment. It looks as if he’s being too clever for us, sir.”

This house in Herefordshire, mentioned by both agents, unquestionably was the site where Observer Horn had pinpointed the recent activity, and, the High Head mused, the elderly female equally unquestionably was the center of it all. He had many times attempted to tag her, but she gave him no hold, no excuse to plant an agent, nothing. She was wily. She slipped away from contact. She was powerful. There had been one occasion, when he was a good deal younger and less experienced, when he had made a rash attempt to broach her consciousness. She had risen up in anger, through every band and spoke of the Wheel, majestic and horrible, and threatened to kill him if he tried that again. Since then he had treated her with great caution. So if they chose her house for their activity, what they were doing was very important.

He was recalled from these thoughts by the agent saying piteously, “Sir? Sir, I would welcome it very much if I could be removed from this assignment. I’m not at all happy in it.”

The High Head asked considerately wherein his unhappiness lay.

“It’s not just that I have the feeling Mark Lister suspects me, sir. I think I can handle him. But I really hate that woman. His wife, sir. I really do!”

What was wrong with her? the High Head inquired.

“She’s hard and mean — and stupid with it, sir. I think she’s probably the most selfish creature I’ve ever known. I’ll take any assignment you care to give me, sir, if only I needn’t put up with her anymore. She makes me ill, sir!”

The High Head suggested that this seemed to describe all females. But since the agent was truly distressed, to the extent that his smooth face in the reflector was distorting in surges, the High Head made haste to assure him that he would be replaced as soon as another agent could be activated.

“Oh, thank you, sir!” said the agent. “You don’t know how much this means to me!”

Know your men and keep them happy, the High Head thought, in considerable distaste at himself, as he cut the connection. That agent would now obtain him real information, quickly and in quantity. But since it did not do to play too many games with an agent’s feelings, the man would have to be replaced — just as he was likely to be most use. Pity. The High Head sighed as he detached all the threads of thought from the spindles and left the agents to themselves again. He stayed in the Wheel himself, however, for he still had his contact to make with the third important female. She was almost as hard to tag as the old one. He had discovered she had a life-partner, but, to his chagrin, the two seemed perfectly faithful to each another. All attempts to plant a lover had been wasted. He had no success in tagging her mind, either. It was not so much that she resisted his efforts as that she seemed totally unaware of them. He just slid off the surface of her mind.

But in the course of his attempts to tag her, he discovered that she had young. This was excellent. None of the young knew very much, but they served to inform him when the female was moving, and if there seemed to be any unusual excitement brewing. They had been most useful in charting the response to Arth’s last big test. The female had indeed been distracted by the small act of war Arth had organized, but when the noxious fumes had started drifting in from the continent — where the response of mageworkers had been surprisingly patchy — the young had told him that their dam had suddenly become alert and raced off to cooperate with the old female. The old one was known to them as “Auntie Gladys.” They seemed to like her. They were disposed to like the High Head too. They thought of him as “Earth Angel,” and they treated him with trust.

Then their usefulness had ended abruptly. The High Head had moved in on them as usual one day on a routine check. And found himself confronted with a sudden wild magic, passionate and strong. It was partly taught — enough to be conscious of itself — but hardly tamed, and it flung fluctuations all over the Wheel with a force that a full-blooded gualdian could hardly have equaled.