A Sudden Wild Magic

They had all expected her to manifest, if she was visible at all, somewhere among the plants where they had left space for her to come, but she manifested instead in the middle, hovering over the candle like a tall, streaming nimbus, causing the skin of them all to prickle with the haunting energy of her. She had not been, perhaps, very beautiful in life, but she was beautiful now. She had, Mark remembered, manifested like a flame at her death. She was all flame now.

I knew you’d call, her voice gusted. I waited. I had to tell you. I knew you didn’t know.

“Which of us are you speaking to?” Amanda asked quietly.

The man I came to this otherworld to find, she said. The one who called me. Herrel Listanian.

“His name is Mark Lister,” Paulie said. “You mean he’s an analogue?”

No, the gusty voice insisted. The man who called is Herrel Listanian.

Paulie drew breath to argue. Amanda’s eyes caught the candlelight and glinted off the substance of the ghost as she stopped Paulie with a look. “Please explain,” she said.

His name. His mother gave him a new name when she broke him in half and sent this half here to otherworld, the dead girl gusted. Forgive me. I helped her. I thought it would save him. But she used both halves as her puppets just as she always did. Mark could feel her presence orientate on him. The candle flame streamed toward him, imploringly, and guttered with the flickering voice. Forgive me. I helped put you here to spy for her, and now I can feel her pursuing you with a sending. You must have disobeyed her. Forgive me. The only good that came of it is that she stopped punishing you like this for a while.

“His mother is who?” Amanda asked.

Marceny, chief Lady of Leathe, the reply came, but the candle flame still streamed toward Mark. She sent you to rule the magework here and tell her what you knew. I helped because I thought it would save you. It was done for pity and love. Forgive me.

“How would it save him?” said Amanda.

To have the best half of yourself free, the voice gusted pleadingly. And you were free, and I saw you didn’t know. So I had to come to tell you, to atone, but I died too soon. Forgive me. Let me go.

Mark could hardly move. His face, and his tongue, were stiff, but he managed to croak, “I — forgive you,” and the words of release.

She gave a small, gusting sigh. The nimbus faded away, and the candle flame burned straight.

“Mark!” squawked Paulie.

Amanda gave her another quelling look. “Who was she, Mark?”

“Colny Ventoran, my mother’s best assistant,” he answered without thinking. “She always was rather an intense little—” He stopped, seeing the way they were both looking at him.

“Then you’re from the pirate universe?” said Amanda.

“I rather fear I must be,” he agreed.

IX Arth and Pentarchy

1

“You what?” said Edward.

“Come from otherworld,” Judy repeated, speaking very muffled, with her head down to twiddle the tapes of her medical gown. “We all do — the whole capsule did.”

Edward, as always, did not react in any way she expected. Instead of demanding to know more, exclaiming, repudiating her, or racing off to inform the High Head, he simply turned away to the blue embrasure of the window, where he stood gazing out at the blank blueness and tapping the fingers of his large, agile right hand on the sill. Judy waited, long, long minutes. Before the wait was over, she was fighting herself not to say — in what she knew would be a girlish whine — Don’t you love me anymore now? Edward had this ability to make her behave — and feel— like an insecure schoolgirl. Perhaps, she thought, this was because it was what she was deep down and naturally. Before she knew Edward, she had never, not once, felt natural with any man.