A Sudden Wild Magic

A ring of truth there, thought the High Head. “Where—”

Brother Milo re materialized in the middle of the room, still holding Marcus by the hand. Saved by the bell! thought Zillah. Tears were rolling dolefully down Marcus’s cheeks. “What is it, Marcus?”

The High Head lifted his chin and expressed his irritation in a venemous look at all three. “Why are you here again, Brother?”

Brother Milo was harassed. “I do beg your pardon, sir. The little fellow is getting very upset. I’m afraid none of us can understand what he’s asking for. He keeps saying he wants damages.”

Zillah bit the inside of her cheek in order not to laugh.

“Damages?” the High Head said irately.

“Damages, sir,” said Brother Milo.

Both of them looked at Marcus. Marcus was exasperated at their stupidity. “Damn bitches,” he enunciated, his whole body shaking with the effort to communicate. “Damn damn bitches.”

The High Head’s astonished face turned first to Brother Milo, then to Zillah. She unclenched her teeth from her cheek. “He’s asking for jam sandwiches,” she said, rather impressed to find her voice was quite steady.

The two mages of Arth stared at her much as they had stared at Marcus. “Could you perhaps explain what a sandwich is, my lady?” Brother Milo asked helplessly.

“You take two slices of bread,” said Zillah. “You do have bread, do you?” Both nodded. “Then you spread butter on each slice and a lot of jam on one — Do you have jam?” They looked blank. “Marmalade? Preserves?” Zillah asked, beginning to see how Marcus had become so upset in the kitchens. They looked enlightened at “preserves.” They nodded. “Then you put the two slices together and give it him to eat,” she explained patiently.

“Oh!” said Brother Milo and looked at the High Head, who said almost simultaneously, “Oh! She means a buttie — or that’s what we used to say in Leathe. Didn’t you call them that in Trenjen?”

“No, sir. We used to call them slathers,” said Brother Milo. Jolly with relief, he looked down at Marcus. “Come on, my fine fellow. You shall have a red slather and a yellow one and see which you like best.”

“Dyke dead buds,” Marcus announced confidently as he was led away into nothingness.

The High Head took a second to recover from all this. Zillah looked up at the thick-framed window while she waited. He’s not so bad, she thought. Just not got a clue about toddlers. They all seem to mean well here — I don’t understand it. Amanda was sure everyone in this place was out to destroy the Earth. I’d expected to find a whiff of downright evil somewhere at least, and nothing’s even sinister. If you look at him without that costume, High Horns is more like the director of a big company, or perhaps a cardinal — one of the worldly ones. I’m sure he thinks of himself 3.S 3. good man.

Through the window, apart from the corner of a blue tower, she could see only clear pale blue sky. No birds of course. Insects? How do they pollinate those gardens I saw? Come to think of it, what do they use for a sun? I must find out. And how funny that they didn’t know what a sandwich was. At this point she remembered that sandwiches were the invention of the Earl of Sandwich, who ate them rather than leave the gaming table for a meal — which surely had to be something entirely local to Earth.

So much had her confidence been restored by the incident with Marcus that she said, before the High Head could ask her further awkward questions, “Please could you tell me why it is we both speak so much the same language? We don’t even come from the same universe.”

He answered with surprising readiness, “It’s fairly simple. This cluster of worlds develops in parallel, with parallel influences — this applies to many other things beside languages. It is clear that you come from a world in this cluster, or we would not be able to understand one another.” He was happy enough to explain. It was a surprise — he could almost say a treat — to deal with a woman who was simply asking for information, as a cadet might do, instead of using questions to trip or manipulate like the Ladies of Leathe.

Zillah realized she had stumbled on a way to divert him whenever his questions became too difficult. Thereafter, whenever she needed time to think (what kind of place had she implied Logres was?), or when he pressed too hard (why did he keep asking what kind of work she did?), Zillah simply asked the High Head some of the things she genuinely wanted to know. She learned in this way that plants had to be pollinated by hand or by magecraft, depending on type; that Arth’s light source was a small star, maintained by mageworks and veiled by a special ritual each evening; that atmosphere was contained in a mage-net; that most research in Arth was directed toward otherworld, because it was a debased image of the Pentarchy; and that the starchy potato-rice was called passet.

Here the High Head confounded Zillah by projecting, with a gesture, a dazzle in the air like a Rorschach blot. She blinked at it.