A Sudden Wild Magic

Just as if he were a mongrel after scraps! The High Head retreated hastily. Her strength was such that his face stung with it and a vile vibration shook him from neck to coccyx. He had to sit still for a moment, recovering. But it was worth it! They knew they lived in a multiverse, though they had showed no sign of knowing that before this. As he picked his way through her ramblings, he gathered they were choosing a team— surely of those with the strongest magics — and about to take some action that must somehow involve the whole cosmos. Blowed if he could see what action, but otherworld could be relied on to take some bold, wild way — perhaps something on the lines of manipulating the tides between universes? This could well be it. Anyway, Observer Horn would soon be able to tell him. And meanwhile there were the new servicemen to talk to. Jovially he picked up his wand and his mitre and left for the exercise hall.

3

The two sparse rows of young men hastily came to attention as the High Head swept in, smiling, in all the awesomeness of the uniform of his office. Blue and silver glittered on him. The short cloak flared gracefully off one shoulder, jutting over the silver sword-wand, half concealing the great moon-badge on his chest. On his head, the great horned mitre raised him a kingly foot above men of mere mortal stature.

Even the centaur felt this, and shifted his hooves, thinking he was looking up into a man’s face for a wonder, instead of the other way around. The High Head of Arth was a legend to all of them. Therefore they all looked carefully, trying to see the man within the legend.

He was tall and moved with a brisk grace which carried the uniform well. They understood that grace. It came from a lifetime of the exercises they had just been put through. Most of them were still panting. The High Head looked a heavy man, but moved as if he were not. They were impressed by that and by the authority living in his face. It was a round- featured face, but not fleshy or commonplace, and seemed genial. They were impressed that he could smile, and even more impressed by the way that smile died away as he ran his eyes across them. His eyes were remarkable.

Loving Goddess! the High Head thought. Edward didn’t tell me half of it! His eyes raced over spindly legs, narrow chests, feeble chins, at least one potbelly, a stoop, several thick, brutish faces — one with a broken nose — and a lad with glasses. The only normal one was the short, square-built young man who had to be the Pentarch of Frinjen’s son. That one wore his new blue uniform quite naturally, as if he were used to regalia, and he was the only one not panting. Quite an athlete from his build — though to judge by his shoulder-length cone of carefully styled hair and his jaunty little mustache, he tried to conceal the fact. The young man’s face, as the High Head’s eyes met his, was neutral, not quite casual. He showed nothing of the discontent Edward said he felt. But Edward seldom got men wrong. I think we may have a troublemaker here, the High Head thought. He was speaking his usual words of welcome as these thoughts went through his head, and would have been very much surprised to know that the Pentarch’s son was thinking much the same about him.

Ay, ay, I think we have a sticky one here! Tod thought. (He had a whole string of names and titles, including that of Duke of Haurbath, but he was Tod to himself and his friends.) In fact, his thought continued, our High Head looks a right swine!

“As you know, you’ll be here for the next year, training with the cadets and the regular Brotherhood, eating with us and sharing our duties. This, of course, means sharing our rules,” said the High Head. “I know the rules have already been read to you, so I won’t bore you with them again. I would just like to impress on you that these rules are here to be kept.”

His eyes passed on to the gualdian lad, standing gawkily beside the centaur. The boy looked like the runt of his race, fragile, white, uncertain. His new uniform stood around him like drainpipe he had got into by mistake, and chin-high though it was, it somehow revealed that this lad had none of the usual thick body hair. The High Head’s eyes moved involuntarily to the boy’s feet. Had he two left ones? Something was odd there. The boots were huge. So were the great white hands. And gualdians usually ran to thick red or chestnut hair, but this one’s hair was mousy blond, and thin with it. Perhaps the only true gualdian feature about the boy was the eyes. Here their eyes met, and the gualdian boy’s great shining eyes widened and lit with amazement as he saw that the High Head had gualdian blood too.