A Sudden Wild Magic

Just like that, there was an empty, stained space on the floor. Oh my God! What a way to kill someone! Flan’s legs jumped straight, ready to carry her away, quick. She knew she was going to throw up. But the ritual was by no means over. Like the rituals she had taken part in at home, it had to be wound down. She was forced to wait there, retching, gulping against her bloodied knuckle, while the lines of power were drawn in reverse, and the music stopped and each mage relaxed and turned to his neighbors, chatting, laughing a little, as if this were all in a normal day’s work. Normal! By Flan’s watch, the entire ritual had taken a bare twenty minutes, but it felt like a lifetime. She scrambled up and ran. When the veil still did not 1er her through, she was sick on the veil, uncaring, and it parted with a shiver as if it were disgusted. Flan bolted forth and ran again.

3

Zillah went like a sleepwalker through bare blue halls and down impossible ramps. Marcus, she could feel, was a long way below and quite safe. She would go there presently. For now her mind was straining to contain that dissolute image in the High Head’s mirror. When she tried to put Mark as she had known him beside this other, this Herrel, it seemed almost more than she could do. Mark’s image, like a pale moon, would keep sliding behind Herrel’s bearded face, and only appearing dimly through. She supposed it must be that they were both only half the person they should be. Mark was all solemnity, seriousness, and responsibility, and the face in the mirror had nothing but humor, wickedness, and sly malice. Both half the person — both halves of a person. Well, there was no knowing about analogues, of course, but if you thought of them as identical twins — Analogues were like twins in a way — twins brought up apart from each other — the same person put in a different environment, so that different aspects of his personality were enhanced. No, because it was known that identical twins turned out quite alike all the same. With these two, Zillah thought that each must have repressed at least half of himself. Mark certainly had. Zillah bitterly recalled her vain search for humor in Mark — the sheer fun that instinct told her was really part of Mark’s character — and her frustration when he seemed to be constantly withholding it from her. With Herrel, she suspected she would search equally vainly for any kind of seriousness— but it must be there! Yet now Zillah could not rid herself of a feeling that there had never been any humor in Mark to find. She was sure of it, having seen this Herrel — as if she had stumbled on the missing half of Mark.

At this, it came to her like a bolt of electricity, Why not?

The question jolted her out of her sleepwalking state. She looked up and around the curved blue corridor where she found herself, to find it ringing faintly, as though the bolt of electric thought had somehow struck it physically. She could smell ozone.

And here, around the corner, just as if the striking bolt had called her up, Flan Burke came hastening. Or maybe a better word was fleeing, or scuttling. Flan’s face was pale, and her manner uncharacteristically dithery. “Oh, thank God!” she said. “Zillah! I thought I felt you around. Zillah, something awful’s happened to your friend — I’ve just seen the nastiest little ritual — he was your friend — I mean that dapper little fellow with the slightly smart-ass air — you know—”

“Tod,” said Zillah. “You mean Tod?”

“Yes, I think I mean him — the other one you go round with apart from the centaur boy and the kid with big feet—”

“Yes. Tod,” said Zillah. Flan’s eyes had dark bags under them and she reeked of sweat. What was the matter with her?

“Yes, well, High Horns and my Ritual boys have just disappeared him,” Flan said. She gulped back a retch and leaned against the wall, shaking. Her teeth chattered. “It was — awful. They dragged him to the middle — he was looking absolutely stunned — I don’t know what they did to him — not before, I mean. The ritual was all living lines of power — I saw that — and it was quite short really — it just felt like several lifetimes. But, Zillah, first he — sort of changed — he kind of melted into something gray and lumpy and slimy — and they boiled him — I knew it hurt — and then he went. He wasn’t there anymore, Zillah. Then they all packed up as if it was all just one more job in the day and left. After that I didn’t care if High Horns saw me. I ran. But, Zillah, what did they do?”