A Sudden Wild Magic

“He’s turned off! We can cut him off! Take the next right. Here—this one!”

Paulie swung the wheel. The little car dived around and plunged into a narrow road running uphill. It was going too fast. Paulie’s effort to brake sent it into a series of skids, swooping from hedge to hedge, wilder and wider, as Paulie lost her head, swore at Mark, and turned the wheel against the skid. They ended nose-down in a ditch at the top of a hill.

“You stupid wimp!” Paulie said. “This is your fault. What did you have to shout at me to take this road for?”

Mark cursed. He could feel Tod accelerating away into the distance.

They disentangled themselves from the tilted seats and climbed out into a half-dark landscape bare of anything but a line of pylons against the sky. A keen wind moaned through the hedges, flapping hair and plastering trousers to legs.

Paulie shivered. “This beastly little car! The steering’s shot to blazes. Is it badly broken? I’d hope it was, only that’d mean we’d be here all night.”

Mark squelched down into what proved to be a very muddy ditch and took a look. The motley car had both front wheels and its snout plunged into the mud, a terrier digging out a rat, but he could see no obvious damage. Lucky Deau Chevaux were so light. “I think if we both got down here,” he said, “we could lift—”

Paulie said, “Mark!” She sounded calm, but there was a strident note of panic underneath. “Mark, something very odd is happening.”

“What?” he asked, heaving at the buried bumper.

“Those pylons,” she said. “They moved—they’re moving now!”

The wind took her voice. Mark could not believe what he thought he heard her say. He stood up irritably. The line of pylons, dark against the lead-dark sky, stretched away out of sight over the hilltop. They were just pylons — skeleton steel towers with stumpy arms at the top to carry the cables — standing like a row of stiff giants across the fields. But as Mark looked, ready to ask Paulie not to add to their troubles by imagining things, he saw another pylon rise into sight from behind the hilltop. What? he thought. His eyes shot to the nearest, halfway across the field on the other side of the road. And he saw it take a waddling stride nearer, and another. Behind it, the whole line of tall metal towers swayed in unison as they strode, and strode again.

He watched without believing it for a second. Then it got through to him that a line of metal monsters — and they seemed to be bearing God knew how much voltage of live cable — was steadily and unstoppably marching toward him. He leaped around the car’s buried hood, seized Paulie, and dragged her away down the road. He felt the foremost pylon turn slightly to reorientate on him as he ran.

“Down!” he yelled at Paulie.

They dived into the ditch together, treading on each other, wet to the knees, almost waist-deep in mud as they crouched around to watch the nearest metal giant arrive in the road in one clanging, swaying stride. Mark could feel it search for him. Not Paulie, for some reason, just him.

“Protection,” he said. “Put up protection for both of us. I can’t. They’re homing on me.”

Paulie was uttering small, yammering sounds of terror, but she did her best. With his senses heightened by terror, Mark saw the warding grow around them in a gentle blue haze, glowing faintly in the half-dark. In the road the foremost pylon took another crashing stride and then stood, towering, at a loss. With the same heightened senses, Mark felt the strength and nature of the sending that activated it. God in heaven! It was wild magic. Someone hated him enough to harness that which no one should have been able to control at all.

“Turn it — turn it away!” he whispered.

“I can’t — it’s wild — it’s strong!” Paulie whimpered. He could feel her pushing weakly, so weak against the mighty thing, and wished he dared help. But he knew without a shadow of doubt that if he used the slightest power himself, those things would know and home in on it.

Clang. Paulie’s push had been enough to start the thing moving again. Or perhaps it was the pressure of the pylons advancing behind. The line continued stalking forward, curving slightly now from its former course, striding solemnly and mindlessly across the road, through the hedge, and on downhill. The first passed twenty yards away, the second ten. The third tower strode straight upon the motley car with an appalling tinny rending, and swayed, held up only by the cables strung from its stumpy arms. This brought the rest striding so near that Paulie and Mark both lay flat, faces in their arms, feeling the earth vibrate, the crunch of tarmac torn from the road, and the wail of wind in struts and cables. With that was mixed the acid-blast of magic full of violence and hatred, which in turn mingled with heat and thick fumes as what was left of the motley car caught fire and blazed against the hedge.

“They’ve stopped,” said Paulie. “They’ve lost you.”