“Oh, not that car!” Paulie said as she turned away to the fridge, thus inadvertently admitting to more knowledge of Tony than she had ever admitted before.
Mark pretended not to hear, in order not to have to remind her that she always said of Tony, “I hardly know the man—I don’t even know what car he drives!” He hurried about finding biscuits and apples and adding them to the basket of food on the counter. And he felt cold, and lonely and empty.
Five minutes later, locking the house and making sure the wards of protection were back in place, he wondered why he was bothering. The house was a heartless shiny box. He did not care if someone broke in. He did not care if he never saw it again. But he supposed Paulie would mind, and so he made it safe, meticulously.
Paulie meanwhile inserted herself into the dishrag seat behind the wheel of the motley car, bemoaning her fate. “This is an awful car, Mark, even awful for a Deux Chevaux!” She turned the key and wailed as the thing began to chug and clatter. “Christ! Pieces are falling off, Mark! Next door’s looking at us—I’m ashamed! Where to, if it will move?”
“Make for Herefordshire the usual way. He’s still heading there.”
Paulie slammed the little monster into reverse and went grinding backward up to the road. She made further piteous cries as soon as she got it into forward gear. “God, Mark, we’ll be lucky if this gets us to Gladys by tomorrow! It won’t go above forty! I’m not sure it’s intended to!”
“Just keep going,” he said patiently. “Your acquaintance doesn’t know we’re following him, and he may not hurry. He thought too little of me to notice I got a link to him.”
“I don’t understand how you can be so calm! Paulie said. “When I think how much that car of ours cost—!”
She repeated these remarks at intervals over the next thirty miles. The little car got caught in the beginnings of rush hour, and it took them an hour to cover that much. Mark sat with his arms folded, and endured. Most of the time he was wondering, and not for the first time, why he had come to marry Paulie when he disliked her so much. He could not remember ever liking her. But she had looked after him in those early days, and it had seemed quite natural, as if she were what he was used to…
And from there to Zillah, who was and always would be the only one he wanted. Up to now he had not dared to let himself consider how easy it would be to find her. He had not even dared to ask if Zillah was indeed the sister Amanda had living with her, though he had suspected it for some time. Somehow he had known it would do no good. For no reason that he could fathom, Zillah had closed him out, dropped the bar on him as if he were a game of pool in a pub, and he knew she was not about to reconsider. But now it was out in the open. Amanda, in her agitation, had said Zillah’s name on the phone. He could let himself think of her and of her habit of ducking out and of Amanda’s precognitive fear that Zillah was in deep trouble. If he could find her and rescue her, then he might for the first time have some hope…
The little car chugged on like an ineffectual terrier running at a rathole. An hour later, luck turned Mark’s way.
“Ah!” he said. “Your friend’s stopped. He’s run out of gas. I was hoping for that.”
Paulie put her foot down. The small monster roared. “Tinker with our car then. Make sure he can’t start it again.”
Mark sat back after five minutes of effort. “No good. He’s got protection on it I can’t break.”
“We’ll never catch up!” Paulie wailed. “Oh, I hate this car!”
Five minutes later, Mark said, “He still hasn’t gone on. We may be in luck.”
“Probably seducing the cash girl,” said Paulie. “I hope she gives him AIDS!
For whatever reason, Tod remained stationary for the next hour and a half. By this time, Paulie had entered straight roads in the chalk country, which she knew well. And the little car seemed to have warmed to its work. Though its sloping hood showed a tendency to rise and then clang back into place, like a terrier snapping at flies, and its parti-colored wings kept up a continuous rapid flapping, as if it entertained the illusion that flight was a possibility, it attained sixty miles an hour and kept that speed up. Mark watched a stormy yellow sunset gather among big indigo clouds against the wide western horizon and began to think they might actually catch the man. He blocked out a buzzing headache, which was probably due more to the gathering storm than to the noise of the little car, and concentrated on drawing in all the power he could muster. He was going to have to use Paulie’s power, too, in order to defeat Tod. This part of England was a network of old, strong places. Mark could draw on those, but by the same token, so could Tod.
It puzzled Mark that someone of this man’s power had not made himself known before. It was as if a sudden wild magic had come into their midst from somewhere else entirely. And he could not understand his own reaction to it. Why had he, Mark, who was normally secretive and circumspect to a degree that irritated everyone, not only Paulie, even himself at times, felt compelled to babble of Gladys and Amanda in front of this man? When he saw the fellow cheerfully stealing his car, he had felt a jolt of horror that had nothing to do with the theft. He had known his nemesis. He had known that if he could not stop this rogue magician reaching Gladys, he, Mark, was finished. And that was hard to understand too.
Tod was moving again, though not so fast. “We’re closing on him,” Mark told Paulie. She nodded. They roared along a nearly empty road that seemed at the top of the world.
“Do I need lights yet?” she said. “I’ve no idea how they go on.”
The yellow sunset was being sucked away inside the advancing storm clouds, leaving a twilight trying on the eyes, gray road merging into gray-green downs on either side. “I’ll get them on for you,” Mark said.
He was leaning forward, fiddling with a knob that turned out to be the heater, when Tod suddenly and inexplicably swung northward, perhaps mistaking the route. Mark sprang upright.
“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 hil
ltop. 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.”
Mark risked standing up. The blazing car cast orange light along the ditch, showing it steaming, and it was hard to see beyond. He could just pick out the line of giants standing slanted downhill toward the main road. One stood like a sentinel against the fading light of the sky not far away. “They’re waiting,” he said. “Thanks for turning them.”
“I had help,” Paulie said gruffly, “but I don’t know whose. Why is Roddy after you like this?”
“No idea.” It took a mere flick of power to trace Tod, and Tod was, to Mark’s surprise, very far away and quite unconcerned with Mark. Then why—?
The nearest pylon lurched and began to advance on Mark.
“Oh God! They found you again!” Paulie staggered up. Mud sucked and she exclaimed with disgust. “Sorry, Mark, but I’m off. They’re after you, and you can cope on your own.”
Mark caught her arm as she set off downhill. He needed her for protection. It shamed him, but he dared not let her go. Their whole marriage was like this. “Don’t be a fool. No one’s safe from the wild magic. There’s a small stone circle quite near. It’s strong. It might help.”
Her eyes rolled sideways to the metal giant. “Which way?”
He pointed, and they fled that way, leaving the car burning, bursting through rolls of smoke, clumsily jumping the torn-up tarmac and then the broken hedge. They ran, panting and choking, up beside the deep-gouged tracks the advancing pylons had made in the turf. Paulie stumbled trying to look back. Mark jerked her upright, wrenching his arm. The foremost pylon was looming past the flames, towing a crescent of more distant striding giants with it. Paulie’s breath came in shrieks as they reached the top of the hill, and Mark could barely breathe, but neither dared slow down. They careered down the slope beyond, mostly rough grass, and crashed through the narrow end of a black, spiny coppice.
Below them lay a small meadow, hard to see in the near dark, with the white ribbon of a hedged lane, and a gate into the lane beyond that. The small stone circle was a warm emanation in the center of the meadow, faintly seen beside the dark blot of a parked car. They pelted for the ring of stones, invoking—imploring—assistance if any was to be had, and threw themselves within it, each clinging to a separate stone and heaving for breath.
“That car,” Paulie gasped. “Could we?”
Above came crashing as the first pylon marched into the coppice.
Mark looked at the dark, deserted car. A BMW. He looked again, unbelievingly. It was his own car. He could sense it, feel the habitual little protections he always used around it in traffic. Beyond it, the gate was shut. There was no sign or feel of Tod anywhere near. With the warmth of the stone under his hands and its safety suffusing him, he was free to see that the things waddling down the hillside at him had nothing to do with Tod. They were a sending from quite another quarter. The unknown was angry and drawing on an associate who came from somewhere very dark and low indeed.
Mark was sprinting toward the car as soon as he saw this. It was a godsend—too good to be true—there had to be a catch! Christ, I hope he left the keys in it! At the very least, it was bound to be locked. But when he seized the door handle, the door opened. When he grabbed for what he knew would be an empty keyhole, his hand encountered the dangling tab of his own keys. Thank God! He hurled himself into the seat and thrust it back to its usual position, turning the keys as he did so. And—another miracle—the engine purred, and the gas gauge swung around to full. He almost blessed Tod.
“Get that gate open!” he bellowed to Paulie.
Paulie ran again, a weary, rolling trot, as soon as she heard the engine. She dragged the gate wide and left it that way, regardless of cattle. Mark threw the door open for her as he bumped past into the lane. Somehow she scrambled in and somehow she got the door closed as he accelerated back to the main road.
“Don’t ever let me in for anything like that again!” she sobbed.
The pylon halted in front of the stone circle like a cat faced with water. But the line was pressing downhill on either side of it. Slowly it moved again, sideways, giving the circle a wide berth, and seemed to set off striding mechanically. It had reached the lane when it stopped, and stood trailing cables, as the sending left it and moved on after its object.
* * *
6
« ^ »
It was an awful journey. They could feel the sending pursuing them, taking on other forms as it came. The storm howled around the car, purposefully, and brought rain increasingly heavy as night fell. Once a tree came down in the road just after they had passed it. Mark had to ask Paulie to keep up constant protection, and she was soon tired out and angry.
“Must we go all the way to Gladys’s?” she demanded.
“Yes,” he said. “Even if I hadn’t promised Amanda, that house is the one place I know that can keep out this sending.”
Paulie could not argue with that. When they finally arrived under Gladys’s storm-torn trees, to find another car parked on the verge and the gate fallen down, she refused to move. “I’m past caring about any of you,” she said. “Leave me be.” Mark had to drag her out of the car. “I just want to lie down and sleep!” she wailed as he hauled her through the pelting rain and up the muddy path. But she cheered up at seein
g dim lights coming from the house. “There! She’s perfectly okay in spite of all your fussing!”
When Mark tremulously clattered at the ring on the verandah door, it was opened by Amanda. She was carrying an oil lamp, which she held high to see who they were. She seemed pale by its light, and her eyes very big and dark. “Good Lord!” she said. “You two look as if you’ve been through it!”
“We have,” Mark said. “Let us in and shut the door quickly. There’s a sending after me. And is there any coffee? Paulie’s about had it.”
Amanda stood back to let him guide Paulie through to a seat in the jungle room and then shut the door—both doors—with firm claps. There was a sense of something wrong. Mark realized that the dim light in the room came from a row of candles on the mantelpiece. He could have done without the shifting, clawing shadows they made among the jungle.
“The power’s out again,” Amanda explained, casting more shadows, huge, walking ones, as she came back with the lamp.
“That figures,” Mark said, thinking of the pylons.
“Oh, does that mean there’s nothing hot to drink?” Paulie moaned, putting her draggled head in her muddy hands.
“No. She’s got those gas cylinders,” said Amanda. “The kettle’s just boiled, but there’s only tea bags.”
“That’ll do,” said Paulie.
There was still a sense of something not right—a sort of silence and emptiness that was there in spite of the frustrated storm roaring around the house. “What’s wrong?” Mark asked. “Maureen?”
“Gladys,” said Amanda. “Vanished. And she seems to have taken the cats. Have you noticed there isn’t an animal in the place?”
That was it, of course. Mark had never known this house without the soft prowling of cats—and usually the rhythmic scratching of the beast Jimbo too. If Gladys had removed her animals, she had indeed gone. “Didn’t she leave a message?”