A Sudden Wild Magic

She looked at Herrel frequently, pretending to be anxious about Marcus, who was placidly fingering Herrel’s beard as he rode in Herrel’s arms. The few words Herrel said were all to Marcus. “Don’t pull it out, fellow — it’s not grass, it’s hair.” He smiled as he said it with a sort of inane, contemptuous hilarity, as if life were to him nothing but a continuing silly joke. It was not a reassuring smile. It was possibly not quite sane. Zillah saw that Herrel’s face around the smile was even paler than Mark’s, and full of habitual creases of strain that had nothing to do with the smile. He looked deeply diseased. It began to be borne in upon Zillah that this fag-end left of Mark was not a man you could trust. Perhaps he had even intended someone to overhear him whispering to her — or at any rate, he had not cared.

But Marcus liked him. Zillah clung to that. Just as Marcus had taken to Tam Fairbrother and then Tod, he had taken one of his calm fancies to Herrel. Perhaps all was not lost.

They approached a stand of tall evergreen oaks. The path led around the trees to a shallow flight of steps, really a set of terraces climbing to a lawn. At the back of the lawn, bowered in the trees, was a mansion. It was built in a style so foreign to Zillah that the most she could have said of it was that it was gracious, and probably a good deal bigger than it looked. Palladian was the word that came to her, but she knew that was quite wrong. It was elegant, reposeful, and breathed out a menace so total that she gasped. Something crouched inside there that was implacably hungry and full of hatred. Marcus felt it too. He turned and looked at the building with his lower lip stuck out. But to everybody else it was obviously just the house. Their pace quickened and they crossed the lawn in a businesslike huddle, sweeping Zillah, Marcus, and Philo with them. Philo was carrying his arm and looking as scared as Zillah felt.

Up more shallow steps, among pillars and along a cloisterlike passage, they were swept, and finally into a small, lofty room paneled in some strange greenish wood. There was a dais at one end where Marceny was sitting, strumming at a small, painted harpsichord. As the double doors opened to let the party through, she smiled, nodded, and swung around on her stool to face them.

“Oh, good,” she said. “I’ll talk to the gualdian first.”

While Philo was being pushed toward her, Herrel quietly dumped Marcus on the floor beside Zillah and moved away to sit on the edge of the dais at his mother’s feet. Just the position, Zillah thought, that went with his jester’s clothing. Marcus leant against Zillah’s legs, thoroughly and unusually subdued.

“What’s your name, my boy?” Marceny asked Philo in a clear, kindly voice.

“Amphetron,” Philo said. Zillah tried not to let her surprise show. Philo knew this world and its dangers, and she did not. She realized she had better watch Philo’s responses closely and take her lead from him.

“And how did you come to be trespassing in my Goddess grove, Amphetron?” Marceny asked.

“I’ve no idea,” Philo answered. “We simply all found ourselves there.”

“You should call me ‘my lady’ or ‘Lady Marceny’ when you speak to me, you know,” Marceny pointed out, still in the kind and reasonable manner one might use to a small child. “And I really don’t think you should tell me naughty stories either, Amphetron. We all felt you coming for hours and hours before you arrived. One of you was using quite terrific power in order to get here.”

“And I suppose that gave you time to set up magework to disguise yourself — that, if you don’t mind my saying so, was a low trick,” Philo said. Zillah had not realized he could be so bold.

Marceny smiled. “Oh, I don’t mind your saying so if you feel the need.

It was thoroughly simple mental magecraft, purely designed to fetch you all out of the grove, and it took me no time at all — nothing like the power you people were squandering. I notice you haven’t somehow confessed about that yet.”

“There’s nothing to confess. I don’t know what the power was,” Philo said. He seemed totally frank about it. “It must have come from outside us. We were in one grove and we suddenly found ourselves in yours. I apologize for alarming you.”

“One grove where, Amphetron?” Marceny asked.

“The king’s grove in the Orthe,” Philo said.

Zillah thought, from Marceny’s reaction, and Herrel’s, and the slight murmur from those around her, that Philo had played a bold stroke here and named a very important place. Marceny said, with distinct caution— though her eyebrows were raised ready to disbelieve—“The king is a friend of yours, is he?”

“No, of my father’s,” Philo said, and his voice rang with truth. Philo, be careful! Zillah thought. She’s bound to check!

“Dear me,” Lady Marceny responded, with delicate incredulity. “Then the king and your no doubt eminent papa are going to want you back, aren’t they? Which of them would you prefer me to get in touch with?”