A Sudden Wild Magic

“We went up the walls on one side, and over the middle and down the other side,” Zillah explained. “And you know how wide the citadel looks— as if it ought to have a flat base miles wide underneath? Well, it hasn’t. We went right underneath twice, and each time there was just a blink— only an instant — before we were rushing up the other side again. I think the fortress narrows to a point there. High Horns — I mean your High Head — told us that the place was made out of a piece of ground that belonged to the Goddess. And I think that just there, just at the narrow point, it could still be joined to your world — anyway, I know it ought to be.”

Philo and Josh looked at each other again, with a slow, stunned sort of hope growing through their anxiety. “Josh,” said Philo, “how do you stand with the Goddess? I’ve never dared ask, but I hope I haven’t offended. It may depend on that, whether we—”

He was interrupted by the echoing shuffles of a search party descending the nearest ramp. Josh started into motion with a curvetting leap that threw Marcus forward against his torso. Zillah saw his arms come back to steady Marcus as he vanished into the dimness ahead. Philo seized her hand, wrapping it completely around with his own hand, and they sprinted after Josh together. Behind them, there was silence. The search party had stopped moving to listen, in order to locate the sounds of their feet. Zillah and Philo both ran on tiptoe to cut down the noise, but they both knew they were being heard. They dared not stop. Josh was moving so fast, ahead in the dimness, that they had to keep running or lose him.

They ran, guided by the soft beat of Josh’s hooves and the occasional faint glimpse of his white whisking tail. Behind them they could hear the pursuit closing in a multiple rubbery hammer of feet. Philo was gasping before long. Zillah guessed that fear was making him hyperventilate. She grew increasingly anxious. Josh was not on the path she could see so clearly, and they were deviating more from it with every second. She wanted to shout to him about that, and about Philo, but she dared not let the pursuit guess they were in trouble.

Then, to her immense relief, Josh accidentally cut back into the right path by swinging down a ramp, and they caught him up at last. It was so dark down this ramp that Zillah could only see Josh because of the pallor of his coat. He seemed to have his knock knees braced while his hind legs nervously trampled, and he had been forced to spare a hand from Marcus to hold himself up with against the wall. This ramp was unusually steep. Zillah put a hand out to brace herself, too, and found, to her surprise, that the barely seen wall was rough and dewed with water.

“Philo,” Josh said, sliding awkwardly downward, “put a whole heap more protection round us — quick. They’re doing some kind of strong location magework on us.”

Philo’s hoarse breathing slowed down and he whimpered slightly with some kind of effort that Zillah could not detect. But she detected the result almost at once. In the same soft, yearning way that Philo liked to wrap his arms around her, something seemed to wrap all four of them in. The dark and narrow ramp went suddenly safe. They crept downward in a calm stronghold, pillowed by something intangible and rather sweet.

Marcus felt it and immediately became very jolly. “Dart,” he remarked loudly. “Diting. Ort go dlidder-dlidder.”

“Hush, love,” Zillah said.

“Doesn’t matter,” Josh panted. “Philo’s good at this — in short bursts. They’ve lost us completely again.”

Zillah wondered how Josh knew. The result, for her, of whatever Philo was doing was that she lost even the faintest sounds from the pursuers. It was like having her head wrapped in a bolster. They slid slowly downward into what seemed a wormhole that grew darker with every step, and warm and wet. All she could hear was Philo’s breathing and the somewhat frantic scraping and backpedaling of Josh’s hooves.

They rounded yet another corner, and Josh did not go on.

“Dop!” Marcus announced.

“What’s the matter?” Philo asked.

“I don’t know,” said Josh from below. “There doesn’t seem to be anywhere to go to.”

Zillah found this hard to believe. No one would carve a ramp out of stone that led nowhere. The path she could see in her mind lay clearly onward down there, below Josh’s braced hooves. Perhaps it was too narrow for a centaur. Then they were stuck. She unwound Philo’s hand from hers, put her back against the rough and curving wall, and pushed past Josh. Dark as it was, she could feel that the passage continued to spiral down beyond him, and it was no narrower than before.

“See?” said Josh. She could feel the panic behind his voice. He would have to back himself upward, and he was not sure he could. “We’re stuck!”

“Nonsense!” said Zillah. In a surge of irritation at Josh’s pointless panic, she snatched the hand he had braced against the wall and hauled him forward. He came with a startled trampling.