A Sudden Wild Magic

“As if Arth could bring anything out in anyone!” Tod said. “The Gualdian must be senile to think it could. Here, Zillah, we have the first of Arth’s main reservoirs. Enough water to last the citadel for years. And, since the Brotherhood sometimes amazes the rest of the Pentarchy by being practical from time to time, they use their reservoirs to breed fish in.”

Zillah was already staring at a high glass wall behind which, in nightlike gloom, swam a shoal of small silver fish. Other bigger fish stirred in the dimmer distance. The lighting down here was just bright enough for her to see their five twilit reflections murkily mirrored in front of the fish, Philo all hands and feet and clinging, limber movements; herself and Tod both neat and quick; and Josh’s great silver body, which seemed to draw all the light to itself and focus that light on the small, vigorous figure of Marcus on his back. Marcus liked the glass surface and the fish. He made Josh go close so that he could push the boat from his Charity Bag across it.

“Voom-voom,” he murmured, happily ignoring the fact that his boat had sails.

At intervals along the glass wall were curious faucets, which Tod explained were fish traps. You drew the fish into them by magework. “I’d show you, if I only knew what we’d do with the fish once we got it,” he said. “But no one’s going to notice if we pinch some mushrooms for Josh on the next level.”

“I’d kill for fresh mushrooms!” Josh told Zillah. He moved slowly along beside the glass for Marcus to push his boat. It was warm and secret there, with only the half-seen fish and their own reflections, and it made Josh as confidential as Philo. “It was the same for me,” he said, “as it was for Philo, really. They said a weedy centaur with knock knees has no excuse for existing unless his natural magecraft is something unusual. Mine isn’t — but I’m sure that’s why the king ordered me to Arth. I was lined up with rows of really good specimens, and he chose me. He said he expected great things.”

“Only after your year’s up,” said Tod. “This place is inimical. I wish I was anywhere else most of the time. The only good thing to happen here is Zillah.”

Zillah laughed, but she had never been able to handle compliments, and she had to change the subject. “Is the king the same as the Gualdian?”

“Good gods, no!” the three native Pentarchans cried out together. Philo explained, “The Gualdian is only for gualdians.”

And Tod added, “Clan chief, sort of. The king is for everyone. He’s an odd fellow, our monarch, very modern type. Wears thick glasses and likes to trot out shopping with a string bag. To look at him, you wouldn’t think he had an ounce of birthright.”

“But he must have,” said Josh, “or he wouldn’t be king.”

“At least,” Philo said, with his chin resting on Zillah’s shoulder, “our Gualdian looks the part.”

“And renowned for his silver tongue,” said Tod. “They say he once sweet-talked an archangel — or was it Asphorael? — into fetching his newspaper every day!”

Philo shot straight beside Zillah. “That’s a lie!” She could feel his body almost twanging with anger. And though there was no apparent change to that body, in the glass of the reservoir, Philo’s reflection blurred. It seemed to be flaring and shimmering around the edge. Was this what made him gualdian and different?

“You still haven’t said,” she interrupted hurriedly, “what makes a gualdian a gualdian. How would I tell a gualdian woman, for instance?”

“She’d be stunningly beautiful for a start,” Tod said, and Zillah had no idea if he knew how offended Philo was. “One of my uncles married a gualdian lady, and she’s still stunning, even though my cousin Michael’s the same age as me. Otherwise you’d think she was human. She’s not the kind to go round telling everyone she was born with second sight. She—”

Tod had known, Zillah saw. Philo forgot his anger and inquired with great eagerness, “Which branch of us is she?”

Josh winked at Zillah. “Now, that’s typical gualdian. Family, family.”

“Frinjen,” said Tod. “Town-gualdian from the estate at Haurbath. But you might just know her. Her family has estates in the north too. Hang on a moment. With all this glass to reflect off, I can easily project you a likeness.” He stepped back and drew upon his birthright.

To Zillah, still wondering at the way everyone here took magework so much for granted, it looked as if Tod shook his shoulders a little and then — possibly — thought hard. Josh shifted a hoof, sparing it, quite unconcerned. Even Amanda, Zillah thought, never took witchcraft so calmly, and it had been part of her life for twenty years now.

“Look there,” Tod said, pointing.

An image grew in the glass, brighter than their own reflections and somewhat above them. It was the head and shoulders of a radiant woman with long black hair and the most striking dark eyes — all so dense and real that the shoal of pinkish fish swimming behind the image was all but hidden.