A Sudden Wild Magic

It isn’t going to work! Zillah thought. What a fool I shall look! Oh, go, go, go, go! She pushed, urgently and wildly in her mind, at the solid lump of the bus. Again some wild part inside her rose to her need. She felt it flare around her as she pushed. But this tin box full of people was so heavy! Oh, go, go, go, go! she told it.

Then came the heart of the ritual. Lights blazed in many hundred circles, and fire streamed in high places. Inside the capsule, there was a sudden definite sense of floating, almost of weightlessness.

“This is it!” someone said.

As the last great effort went out, Gladys, wearing her Aspect of the Old Woman, turned to Amanda in her Aspect of the Mother and gave a slight nod. The effort was double-phased. The first was intended to send the capsule off — and there was not a soul participating who did not feel that something had moved, been sent, gone — and the second phase was to raise the Great Wards around the British Isles and — if possible — around the world. Mark felt the Wards of Pridain rise. He, too, nodded at Amanda. Now nothing of evil intent could penetrate the country; but no one could tell if the world was warded. It had never needed to be done before.

3

It was an exhausting night. Maureen was tottering with weariness by the time she climbed the stairs to her London flat. Dawn had come already. Unnatural-seeming sunshine filled the street. A few hours sleep, Maureen thought, setting her keys into the locks with unsteady hands, and she might be all right for dance practice this evening. It ought to be all right. Her weariness was mostly the weariness of elation. That great gale of power that had lifted the capsule and the wards together kept blowing through her mind, exultingly. What a feeling! It was the feeling that she dwelt on, though it had been good, too, arriving at the warehouse to find the capsule gone. Maureen was rather pleased that she had had the forethought to visit the place when the capsule was still there. She at least knew that there had been something there to vanish. It was not so with the nine of the Outer Ring.

They had gone there in a procession of cars. The nine had been very annoyed. And hurt. And incredulous. Koppa’s strident voice still rang in Maureen’s ears. Why had they not been told? What traitor? They were welcome to take her to any sphere of truth they pleased, and they would see she was At One with the Ring. Etcetera. And to be shown an empty warehouse convinced nobody of anything. Maureen kept remembering Paulie standing beside Mark in a white fury. Luckily Amanda had had the sense to take some photographs of the capsule, but what with Amanda’s total incompetence with a camera and the emanations of power in the warehouse, the prints she handed around were both blurred and crooked, and they mollified no one. Amanda had further irritated Maureen by the way her head went up and an expression of woe and worry kept crossing her face whenever she thought no one was looking. Amanda thought something had gone wrong. Did she now? Amanda would claim this special sensitivity — and most of the time when Maureen checked up on her worries, she found Amanda was just making a great fuss about nothing.

In the end Maureen left Mark and Amanda to deal with the Outer Ring and drove home. She absolutely had to sleep. Not even a cup of cocoa first. Just fall into bed.

She opened her door into a blue cloud of cigarette smoke. The curtains of her living room were drawn and the lights on. Faugh. And there was bloody Joe sitting on her sofa leering at her with a can of beer in his hand and a loaded ashtray between his feet. He’s been drinking again, she thought. She hadn’t the energy to cope.

“Out,” she said, holding the door open with one hand and gesturing with the other. “Come on. You’re going. I need to sleep. How did you get in here anyway?”

He shook his head. “No. I’m not going. Neither are you. We’re staying here together.”

“Don’t give me—” Maureen was beginning, when the door moved heavily under her hand and shut itself with a dull boom. She whirled toward it. There were wards down on it, preventing her from touching it. Strong wards, weird ones, ones she did not know. She whirled back.

Joe continued to grin. There was something odd about his face. “You won’t find you can break those wards. They’re the wards of Arth. I’ve got them all around this flat. Nobody’s going in or out, and nobody’s going to hear any kind of call you make for help. So you might as well tell me all about this project of yours now. It’ll save us both a lot of trouble.”