A Sudden Wild Magic

“I don’t know.” Anger scoured Zillah — a different form of electricity. So High Horns had punished Tod. He has punished Tod and turned me loose with just a caution! The injustice of it filled her with rage, and the clean blast of that rage seemed to make a whole lot of things clear to her. She had wondered that this place did not seem evil. Now she knew that evil was here. How stupid — how innocent—of her not to have remembered that evil seldom appeared to be evil! “I’m sorry, Flan,” she said. “I’ve got to go. I must find Marcus.”

“Go?” Flan wailed. She did not want to be left alone. “Can I come with you?”

“No, you stay here and go on spoiling the vibrations,” Zillah said. “From what High Horns said, the place is practically rocking on its moorings. Push it right over. Have fun. Now I have to go.” She sprinted away down the nearest ramp with a speed that surprised Flan.

“Damn!” Flan said, sinking to a crouch against the wall. “Have fun, she says! I could cry. I want to go home. I think I hate magic.”

Zillah ran. She fastened her mind on that place where she had always been conscious that Marcus was and continued downward towards it, ramp after ramp. She was aware, as she ran, that this did seem like her usual habit of ducking out as soon as things got nasty. But it was not, not this time. Perhaps all the other times she had ducked out were simply a preparation for this time. She could do nothing about Tod, not here, not now, but she could help his friends, and after that she could go on to fight her own battle.

Down she went, where the lights got dimmer. Among the pat-pat of her own feet, she heard the beat of others. Brothers in search parties seemed to be everywhere. Blue uniforms hurried past below the next ramp. There were more in the distance at the end of a corridor. A further ramp down, blue uniforms milled in a storeroom beside her. They bothered Zillah not in the slightest. She was somehow aware that there was a path, twisting and intricate, between all these searchers, and timed to miss every single one, and she took that path. It led her, a breathless ten minutes later, to a corner behind a deep fish reservoir where Philo and Josh lurked with Marcus.

She heard Philo’s whisper before she saw them. “No, it’s only Zillah, Josh.” She rounded a corner and found them. Josh was backed right into the corner, more or less wedged into a space only just big enough to contain him, with Marcus crouched between his front legs and Philo behind, right underneath. They all relaxed as they saw her.

“Dare Dillah dum!” Marcus proclaimed. The tone of his voice was I told you so!

“What’s happened?” Philo whispered, peering out above Marcus. “The place is full of Brothers hunting for us. Are we in big trouble?”

“I think you may be,” Zillah said, and she told them what Flan had told her.

Their faces twisted into almost identical worried horror. They were quite at a loss. Philo crawled out from under Josh and mechanically planted Marcus on Josh’s back. “Goddess!” he kept whispering. “We are in trouble!”

Josh protested, “But I’ve never heard — no one ever said anything about that kind of ritual!”

“But it’s what they meant,” said Philo, “when they talked about punishments.”

“Then what shall we do?” said Josh.

“What I’m going to do,” said Zillah, “is to leave Arth. There’s someone I’ve got to see, over in your main world. Why don’t we all go there?”

Josh and Philo looked at each other and then back at Zillah. “Zillah, I don’t think you understand,” Josh told her kindly. “There’s no way to get to the Pentarchy except by personnel carrier when the big tides are running — and the next tides aren’t going to be for months.”

“Not to speak of the fact that Josh and I would be breaking the law if we go back before we’ve served our year out,” Philo added.

“But if you stay—” Zillah began. There was no point in going on. Along with the mere words, Flan had put into Zillah’s mind a strong image of what she herself had seen — Tod melting into something alien and obscene. It was as if Flan had not been able to help conveying it. Zillah knew that both Josh and Philo had received that image in turn, from her. What Zillah found almost impossible to convey to them was the fact that the twisting, intricate path she had seen leading to Marcus was still with her. It led on from Marcus to Herrel. But it was such a strange and delicate thing that there was no image of it that she could convey. It would be like asking them to look at an invisible thread. She simply knew it could be traveled. And she could only try to explain. “Have you been right under this citadel? I mean, when your carrier brought you here, did it orbit the place the way our capsule did?”

“No. It came straight to the entry port,” said Philo. “What do you mean?”