“Only after your year’s up,” said Tod. “This place is inimical. I wish I was anywhere else most of the time. The only good thing to happen here is Zillah.”
Zillah laughed, but she had never been able to handle compliments, and she had to change the subject. “Is the king the same as the Gualdian?”
“Good gods, no!” the three native Pentarchans cried out together. Philo explained, “The Gualdian is only for gualdians.”
And Tod added, “Clan chief, sort of. The king is for everyone. He’s an odd fellow, our monarch, very modern type. Wears thick glasses and likes to trot out shopping with a string bag. To look at him, you wouldn’t think he had an ounce of birthright.”
“But he must have,” said Josh, “or he wouldn’t be king.”
“At least,” Philo said, with his chin resting on Zillah’s shoulder, “our Gualdian looks the part.”
“And renowned for his silver tongue,” said Tod. “They say he once sweet-talked an archangel—or was it Asphorael?—into fetching his newspaper every day!”
Philo shot straight beside Zillah. “That’s a lie!” She could feel his body almost twanging with anger. And though there was no apparent change to that body, in the glass of the reservoir, Philo’s reflection blurred. It seemed to be flaring and shimmering around the edge. Was this what made him gualdian and different?
“You still haven’t said,” she interrupted hurriedly, “what makes a gualdian a gualdian. How would I tell a gualdian woman, for instance?”
“She’d be stunningly beautiful for a start,” Tod said, and Zillah had no idea if he knew how offended Philo was. “One of my uncles married a gualdian lady, and she’s still stunning, even though my cousin Michael’s the same age as me. Otherwise you’d think she was human. She’s not the kind to go round telling everyone she was born with second sight. She—”
Tod had known, Zillah saw. Philo forgot his anger and inquired with great eagerness, “Which branch of us is she?”
Josh winked at Zillah. “Now, that’s typical gualdian. Family, family.”
“Frinjen,” said Tod. “Town-gualdian from the estate at Haurbath. But you might just know her. Her family has estates in the north too. Hang on a moment. With all this glass to reflect off, I can easily project you a likeness.” He stepped back and drew upon his birthright.
To Zillah, still wondering at the way everyone here took magework so much for granted, it looked as if Tod shook his shoulders a little and then—possibly—thought hard. Josh shifted a hoof, sparing it, quite unconcerned. Even Amanda, Zillah thought, never took witchcraft so calmly, and it had been part of her life for twenty years now.
“Look there,” Tod said, pointing.
An image grew in the glass, brighter than their own reflections and somewhat above them. It was the head and shoulders of a radiant woman with long black hair and the most striking dark eyes—all so dense and real that the shoal of pinkish fish swimming behind the image was all but hidden.
Marcus’s hand became a starfish, pointing. “Badder!” he shouted. Zillah, equally astounded, first looked around to see if Amanda was standing somewhere behind and above, and then, finding nothing but dark blue wall, had to struggle with tears. Oh Lord, I miss Amanda! Why did I leave? That really might be her.
Philo added to her shock by saying, “Oh, Amanda. She’s my second cousin. Is she really your aunt?”
“By marriage,” said Tod. The way he said it made it clear to Zillah’s shocked, heightened senses that this Amanda had somehow conferred an honor on Tod’s family—which surely, unless she had gravely misunderstood, was itself one of the highest in the land—simply by marrying into it.
“She’s been a widow for years,” Philo said, as if this excused the lady. This made Zillah struggle to replace Philo—and perhaps the whole gualdian race with him—in a social bracket above Tod’s.
“Yes, but she just remarried, did you know?” said Tod.
“I did. The second man was not gualdian either,” Philo answered, with unmistakable strong disapproval.
Marcus all this while continued to bawl, “Badder!” at the bright image. Josh swiveled his torso around in the way that was natural to a centaur but which made Zillah’s vertebrae ache every time she saw it, and silenced Marcus with a small shake. “What’s the matter with him?” he asked Zillah.
The tears in her eyes ran off down her cheeks. Her voice cracked as she answered. “That—that lady’s the absolute image of my elder sister. She—she’s called Amanda too, would you believe?”
Something belligerent vanished from Tod, and so did Philo’s stiffness. They both turned to Zillah. “Oh, great Goddess!” said Tod. “Analogues! What a pity my Amanda doesn’t have a sister, or you might get to meet yourself.” Philo, seeing Zillah’s tears, started to put his arms around her. Tod pushed his reaching hands aside. “No, you clinging vine! It’s my turn this time.” He wrapped his own arms around Zillah in a hearty embrace. “It’s quite all right,” he prattled. “You’re the sister of my favorite aunt—or you would be if she had one. Don’t cry. Please. I’ll take you to see her as soon as this horrible year’s over and we can get on a transport.”
Distress, homesickness, the relief of being comforted, caused Zillah to put her head on Tod’s shoulder and cling to him. Her tears leaked into the prickly blue cloth of his uniform. The warmth of him suffused her. She had not felt this warm since Marcus was born—as if she had been perpetually two degrees in arrears.
Tod found her frank leaning on him a decidedly sexual experience. Her body was the most satisfying shape to have his arms around and to have pressed against his. At the edge of his senses, he noticed Josh moving away with Marcus, probably so that Marcus should not be upset by his mother’s misery. Philo followed him, shrugging, rather annoyed. Tod waited until both his friends were out of sight on the next downward ramp and then fell to comforting Zillah like anything. Though he was quite aware that comforting was all Zillah would let him do, this did not stop him kissing her ear and her cheek, and then moving her around, gently but forcibly, so that he could at last kiss her mouth.
He had reached this stage, and the image of Amanda that had caused the kiss had faded away—Tod having forgotten entirely by then how he came to start—when Brother Wilfrid advanced down the ribbed passageway, accompanied by his own righteously triumphant reflection in the glass of the reservoir and, with a flick of sanctimonious fingers, froze Zillah and Tod in place while an image of them was transmitted to the mirrors in the office of the High Head.
“I knew this was what I would find!” said Brother Wilfrid, and his voice trembled with what Zillah and Tod both detected to be a variety of unhealthy emotions.
* * *
VII
Arth
* * *
1
« ^ »
The High Head felt put upon. Breakfast had been too rich. Maybe it was the nagging of an overtaxed stomach, or maybe genuine anxiety, but he knew today that things were not right in the citadel. Those quickening vibrations bothered him. If they had been caused by the onset of the tides, they should have stopped when the tides began, late in the watches of the night. But the tides now ran full, message channels were open to all parts of the Pentarchy, and the rhythms still continued to quicken.
He was inclined to blame it all on their six unwanted guests. The sooner they could all be sent back wherever it was they came from, the better it would be for everyone. But Observer and Calculus Horns, though professing to be hard at work, were producing only increasingly obscure and contradictory results. As for the women, he began to suspect that Flan and Helen at least had unexpectedly expertly shielded minds. All they gave him was the same inane story. Zillah now seemed a dangerous mystery. Her child—well, he had long ago given up there.
To add to his troubles, Edward, on whom he was accustomed to rely for sane and self-effacing advice, seemed thoroughly out of sympathy with any of his worries. Take breakfast that morning. The two of them had as usual arrived in
the spare blue room to find it reeking of coffee. Edward had sniffed the stuff as if it were nectar, poured himself a great mugful, and announced, “It’s even better than yesterday! Goddess, it’s years since I tasted good coffee!” After this he had eagerly snatched the silver cover off the heated dish on the table to reveal a great mound of buttered mushrooms, nine-tenths of which he had eaten as if he actually enjoyed the things. Then he had set about the hot bread, wrapped in a crisp blue napkin. “Reprimand Brother Milo?” he said, with evident astonishment, when the High Head suggested it. “Why? He’s working miracles! Try some of this ginger conserve.”
Nor did Edward seem to feel any urgency about the women. “They’re doing no harm,” he said, and then, leaning forward eagerly, with his face slightly flushed, “Besides—did I tell you?—the live ones have rather interesting physiology. I haven’t by any means got all my results yet, but it’s beginning to look as if all of them have what we’d call gualdian blood. The pretty one—Zillah—would probably count as eighty percent gualdian in our terms. That’s quite unusual, you know—or it would be in the Pentarchy. Gualdians make a great thing about the purity of their race, but the fact is that they’ve been interbreeding with humans for centuries. You hardly get one who’s as purebred as he likes to claim. In fact, the nearest thing to a purebred gualdian I’ve ever come across is that latest serviceman—what’s his name?—Philo, and I think he may be some kind of throwback. He doesn’t look like modern gualdians at all.”
And to the High Head’s suggestion that half a dozen well-shielded alien gualdians might be more than enough to disturb the vibrations of Arth, Edward simply laughed and advised his friend to center himself.
The High Head had no leisure to do that. Once in his office, he found his daily routine constantly interrupted by urgent calls from the Pentarchy. Everything poured in with the tide. Trenjen reported that the passet crop had failed and required an instant review of expected climate changes for next season’s planting. The King in Council sent majestic formalities and, embedded in them, a disturbing request to Arth to match the observation made by the Orthe surveyors which suggested that the energy flows of the Pentarchy were becoming seriously deranged. And of course, there was Leathe. Leathe Council came on the ether several times in the persons of various High Ladies wishing to know if there was any progress yet in the experiment with otherworld.
The High Head answered the ladies politely and wished he knew too. It nagged at him increasingly that he must plant another agent there, and soon; and, since otherworld seemed to have located at least two of his best, this agent would have to be both exceptional and cunningly planted. But naturally he did not betray this anxiety either to the ladies or to Lady Marceny. Lady Marceny wanted to know as badly as the rest—probably more so, because her aim was transparently to get him to tell her ahead of the rest of the Pentarchy. She gave strong hints that she might impart the secret of her private experiment with otherworld in exchange. But since she left the talking to that wretched son of hers, the High Head doubted if she had any such intention. What Lady Marceny knew, she always kept to herself. This was just as well, because the High Head knew he would have been sorely tempted by now. He looked with disfavor at the vitiated face of her son in his mirror and promised him results soon. Rumor had it that the young man was half-gualdian, but if so, his mother had put him beyond sympathy.
To meet the various demands of the Pentarchy, he was forced to draft more mages to Observer Horn, rearrange schedules, interrupt and curtail routine rituals—He worked through lunch, dourly ordering himself a plate of the parched passet he so sorely missed. It came with honey on the side, which he ignored, with contempt. His temper was already very badly frayed when the news came from Brother Wilfrid.
He stared at the simulacrum of Tod embracing Zillah. Behind them a small, lazy shoal of fishes swam, fluttering gauzy fins, opening foolish mouths, and for a moment the fish seemed to have all his attention.
He pulled himself together and gave the required orders. “Bring the serviceman here at once, and use the strongest mages for the guard. Remember the man has Pentarch birthright and could be dangerous. Keep the young woman apart. I’ll see her when I’ve dealt with the serviceman.”
That Zillah could stoop to make love to Tod really hurt. The High Head was not aware of hating Tod particularly, but he saw—with passionate relief—that here was his chance to get rid of him in a way most profitable to Arth.
The real stumbling block was the inevitable reaction from the Pentarch of Frinjen. The High Head was careful to keep abreast of affairs at home. He was well aware that Tod’s father, August Gordano, despite being a fool, had, if he chose to use it, enormous clout in the Pentarchy. Even Lady Marceny referred to August as “that bluff old sweetie” and seemed—surprisingly—to value his opinion. Furthermore, Roderick Gordano was Frinjen’s only son. Even Arth was not free to deprive a Fiveir of its sole heir. That would bring the king in, heavily, on Frinjen’s side.
With thoughtful eagerness, the High Head contacted Records Horn and had them send the Gordano family tree through to his main mirror. It was headed by August wed Amy Adonath and followed by no less than six daughters preceding young Roderick into the world.
The High Head shuddered a little at such crude persistence. The good Amy must be nothing more than a brood mare. He moved the display with a gesture, searching for males to whom the birthright could also descend. Five of the daughters had sons, any of which were likely—but Pentarchs never did favor the female line. The High Head was in sympathy with that, though he could at a pinch argue—Ah! This was better. Going back a generation, August’s father had married twice. One son survived from this second marriage (though with the symbol alongside his name that suggested dubious personal morals). The younger son of this marriage was long dead, having wed a gualdian woman. Interesting. His son, however, survived: Michael Gordano, born within a month of Roderick.
That settled it. Tod had a cousin supremely well qualified to hold the birthright. August Gordano could shout all he liked, but no one could say Arth had left Frinjen without an heir. Arth had its laws. Gordano had been caught breaking them. No one could bully Arth into false leniency.
He banished the display as Brother Wilfrid entered, breathless but very ready with his version of the matter.
“And that’s about the size of it, High One. I’ve known all along the fellow was subversive. He’s been brought up to think himself entirely above the law—and for that we should pity him, of course—but his total levity is all his own. He regards Arth as a joke, High One. As for that unclean woman—!”
The High Head looked into Brother Wilfrid’s pale face and saw it quivering with prurient hate. “Center yourself, Brother Instructor!”
Brother Wilfrid did so—or at least contrived to control himself a little—with obvious effort. “The centaur and the gualdian servicemen are down there, too, somewhere, sir. We don’t know their exact role in the affair, but they certainly connived at it. They missed parade without excuse and are now hiding. We’re looking for them now.”
“Scared, I suppose,” said the High Head. In the normal way, a centaur and a gualdian would form a powerful combination. But—he thought of the pallid horse-man, birthmarked and knock-kneed, and skinny Philo with those enormous hands and feet—not those two. “Send them to me as soon as you find them. I’ll see Gordano now.”
Before Tod was marched in, the High Head made efforts at least as strenuous as Brother Wilfrid’s to center himself. He thought he had. Therefore, it was quite a surprise to him that the mere sight of Tod’s jaunty figure and cool gaze brought him ablaze with anger—though why the anger should be accompanied by deep hurt puzzled him more than a little.
“Well, serviceman,” he asked, “what have you to say for yourself?”
“Nothing,” Tod said frankly. “I was doing what I was doing, and Brother Wilfrid came along and saw me, and that’s all there is to it really.” There seemed very little else he could say.
But he did not deceive himself that his frankness pleased the High Head. He could feel anger beating off the man, like the heat when you open an oven. He saw that the result of this anger would be an even heavier penance than he had been expecting: fasting, compulsory prayer, maybe a very stiff term of solitary confinement—or perhaps worse. There were whispers, he remembered, of extremely horrible punishments of a secret nature—but here Tod found he had lost all desire to speculate and simply composed himself to receive whatever it was.
The High Head thought, You think your birth makes it impossible for me to touch you, don’t you? “In short, you admit to being taken in oathbreaking.”
The angry grind in his voice caused Tod to jump slightly and find he was not as composed as he thought. “Only after a fashion, sir. With respect, I’d like to point out that as a serviceman, I haven’t taken any Oath to break.”
“But you were made aware that you are legally required to follow the laws of Arth during your year of service, and that the Oath is an important part of those laws,” the High Head stated. “You must also be aware that your sensual dallying has seriously disturbed the rhythms by which Arth survives.”
Damn it to hellspoke, I only kissed her! Tod thought. For a base moment he thought he would tell the High Head some of the rumors that were going around about the woman in boots—and she could be disturbing the vibes, even if only half of it was true—but the next moment he rightly concluded that the angry High Head would only see that as a whining attempt to incriminate others. “No,” he said. “At least, I suppose the rhythms must be wrong if you say so.”