It was entirely derisive. “That a friend of the king’s!” someone behind Zillah said, and the satin-clothed lady beside her said, “Lord of Forests! She’d better not pick me for a mother—not with that!” As she said it, the woman gripped Zillah by the elbow and propelled her toward the dais. Zillah hastily took hold of Marcus’s hand, or he would have been left behind, staring after Philo.
“Bilo god?” he asked in doleful bewilderment.
“Hush, love.” Zillah had known she would be unable to deal with Lady Marceny from the moment she saw those eyes of hers. Now Lady Marceny leaned forward, and those same eyes urgently, deeply, and precisely stared into Zillah’s, exploring for the wincing innermost tender parts of her with a power that was almost like tenderness, but was not.
“Now you, dear,” Lady Marceny said. “Perhaps you can explain a bit more clearly than the little gualdian. I’m very puzzled about you all. How did you arrive in my grove?”
Follow Philo’s lead, Zillah thought. Talking about the king seemed to have done no good. But Philo, for some reason, had shown her that he did not want the woman to know they had been on Arth. And she was so bad at lying—and always worse with eyes like that searching into her. Mother could always screw the truth out of her. She had a moment of ridiculous homesickness, wishing she were back in Arth being questioned by the High Head. He had powerful eyes too, but never seemed to use them this way.
“I really haven’t too much idea,” she said. “We were all in the king’s grove one minute, and next minute we were in yours. I really do apologize—”
“Bilo god?” Marcus asked again.
“Quiet, love—I’ll explain later.” Zillah was glad of the interruption. It enabled her to free her eyes from Lady Marceny’s and turn them down to Marcus clinging to her leg. It gave her a respite in which her mind might work. Would she tell the story she’d repeated to the High Head in Arth, or—? No. But what, then? Something nearer the truth, perhaps. It was said that the best lies were near the truth. “It all seems to be some mistake—er—my lady.”
“Really?” Lady Marceny said, with sweet touches of disbelief. “Well, naturally any young woman is more than welcome in Leathe. What is your name, dear?”
“Zillah Green.”
The lady’s beautifully arched eyebrows rose higher. “Indeed? What a strange name for a gualdian! You are gualdian, aren’t you, dear?”
“Oh no, my lady.” Being unable to look at those eyes, Zillah looked past Lady Marceny’s carefully arranged hair, with what she hoped was perfect frankness. “I come from another country.”
“Azandi?” said Lady Marceny. “Surely not? Everyone there is black, dear.”
“I know—but there are other countries,” Zillah said, hoping this was true, hoping some warning might come from Herrel if she went too far astray. He was sitting a yard away—too close for comfort—staring vaguely into space, and she had him in the corner of her eye the whole time. “My country’s quite a small island in the southern hemisphere.” She looked past Lady Marceny’s face and thought limpidly of New Zealand.
“Oh—Pridain or one of those places!” The way the lady said this suggested that such an island counted as Third World—or Fourth World, if that was possible. Marceny turned abruptly to Herrel. “Isn’t she gualdian?”
Zillah very much did not like the way Herrel’s face turned mechanically to Lady Marceny’s, allowing his mother to stare into his eyes. Like that, the lady seemed to drink him in, quaff him, in great drafts. He shriveled slightly with it. Zillah did not like that at all. “No,” he said. “Not gualdian—a slightly similar strain, but without the power, and no training at all.”
Marcus picked up Zillah’s uneasiness. “Bilo god?” he demanded again. The treatment of Philo was really worrying him—as well it might, Zillah thought.
“It’s all right, love!” she whispered protectively, and swore to herself—probably, she thought, in her usual far too belated way—that, whatever happened, Marcus was not going to come out of this damaged in any manner whatsoever. That was top priority now, even above Herrel.
Herrel turned away, swung his legs to the dais, and crouched there. He fetched out a handful of smooth pebbles with which he began to play a game somewhat like jacks, throwing from his palm, catching with the back of his hand—his left hand, Zillah noticed: Mark was right-handed. Herrel was very good at the game, no doubt from long practice. It was as if his mother’s quaffing reduced him to childhood. I have just seen, Zillah thought in a sort of weak, angry horror, a kind of vampire at work. She faced Lady Marceny again, eyes and all, feeling implacable.
“So if you come from that far away,” Lady Marceny said, “I don’t understand what you were doing in my grove—either of the groves—with a gualdian and a centaur.”
Go on with the nearly-lie. No help for it. The eyes tried to quaff from her too. “I came to this country,” Zillah said, “to look for Marcus’s father.” She felt Herrel flinch, although he did not drop a single pebble. “I knew he came from this—the Pentarchy, but I didn’t know any more. The king was very kind to me and said of course I must look for him, and he gave me—Amphetron and Josh for guides and let me use the grove.” She kept a corner of her eye on Herrel, in case this was an unlikely thing for the king to have done—and it probably was, she thought. He’d have to be a king like King Arthur to do that. But Herrel never paused in his smooth throwing and catching. Maybe it was all right.
To her relief, Lady Marceny seemed to accept this story, although with a certain irony. “Far be it from me to go against the king,” she said dryly, “but the dear man ought to know better than to interfere in Leathe. But then perhaps our beloved king didn’t know he was. I take it the Goddess obliged, dear, by sending you here. Have you seen the little boy’s papa at all?”
I have not seen Mark, Zillah told herself, looking into those searching, searching eyes. “No. I told you. I think there must have been a mistake.”
Again her uneasiness communicated to Marcus. He shook her leg and raised a booming shout. “BILO GOD, Dillah?”
Lady Marceny frowned, a gracious crimping of pearly maquillage. “What does that little beast keep shouting about?”
Marcus might have been a dog. There was no doubt Herrel led a dog’s life. Anger fired up in Zillah. “He’s reminding me that the god of my country is here with us, my lady.”
Lady Marceny turned her eyes to Marcus, who glared up at her resentfully. “Oddy dady bake Bilo god,” he told her frankly.
“Dear, dear!” said the lady. “Whatever that means, child, you’ll have to learn to put those powers of yours respectfully to the service of ladies, or you’ll find yourself being punished. I really can’t be bothered with your god. Leathe can always speak to the dark side of him if necessary.” Her eyes returned to search Zillah again. “My dear, I can see you’re full of wonderfully strong feelings for this man of yours. I’m so sorry he seems to have let you down and run away. He must have quite a strong antipathy for you, if he went against the Goddess and got you sent to the wrong grove. But I understand why the dear king took up your cause. He’s a sentimental man, of course, but he must have seen as plainly as I can that your child has the most interesting potential. How very sad. Naturally we’ll make every effort to find your man now you’re here—I’ll lead the search myself.”
Zillah thought that this was the least reassuring assurance anyone had ever made her.
* * *
3
« ^ »
Gladys plodded forward through the wood muttering to herself, or to Jimbo—it was not clear to either of them which. At first the trees were wet and spilled gouts of water on her finery, but soon they became dry and tightly packed and thorny. The light was the louring storm light she had left behind in her own garden. It was light enough for her to see the thorns and, with mutter or gesture, set them aside, but it was not enough to see the way altogether clearly. Here Jimbo, as she had suspected, proved invaluable. With a scrabble here at her leg, o
r a pull at her dress that set all its beads clacking there, he directed her always to the easiest path, where the undergrowth was thinnest and the thorns fewest. The marvel was to Gladys that there was a path at all. Among the fierce thorns and formidable defenses it was always there, as if someone or something kept it there for a purpose.
Before long she thought she could detect hints of brighter day ahead. “Jimbo’s worth his weight in gold,” she muttered. “But don’t pull so—I’ve got to save my feathers.”
Here, quite suddenly, Jimbo ceased pulling or even moving.
“And with good reason, I’ll be bound,” Gladys muttered, and kept still too.
Somebody else, a little over to the left, was fighting through the woods as well. She could hear the crackle of feet stamping brushwood, the slashing of branches, and the dragging rasp of thorns across cloth. The sounds had considerable violence, and that was increased by a certain amount of swearing. Gladys listened. The voice was unquestionably male. She was not sure she wished to have anything to do with its owner. He sounded angry and exasperated as well as violent. The mere fact of his being here bespoke powers rather uncomfortably equivalent to her own. On the other hand—
“Missed the path, hasn’t he?” she muttered to Jimbo. Jimbo, in his own peculiar way, agreed that this was so. Gladys sighed. At her long-ago initiation she had been made to understand that power was hers only so long as she never passed by anyone in need. This was need. Her fellow traveler, though he might not yet know it, was in deep trouble.
“Over here!” she shouted. “Work your way over to your right!”
The threshing and crunching ceased. “Who are you?” the voice bellowed back. A young male voice. It reassured Gladys a little. These young fellows might surpass her in sheer strength, but she could make up for that, every time, in experience.
“Doesn’t matter!” she bawled. “Just come on over—the path’s here!”
He was desperate enough—or trusting enough—to obey her at once. His trampling and threshing changed direction. She kept him going right with a shout or so whenever she felt him veering, and it was not long before he burst out of the thorn brake beside her. He proved to be quite small. The light was not good enough for her to see more than that he was only an inch or so taller than she was, though she could tell he was chunky. But he was not as trusting as he seemed.
“If you’re some kind of interworld Lorelei mark-stepper,” he told her airily, if breathlessly, “you can just dispel. But I can accept it if you’re—” And, quite casually, he spoke a word, called her a name that made Gladys positively jump for its potency and accuracy.
She approved of that. She chuckled. “Well spoken, young man. And I am, in my way. We can take it we’re no harm to one another. I’m Gladys. Who are you, and what are you doing in this neck of the woods?”
“Trying to get home, of course,” the young man answered. His manner was still airy, but a strong quiver of indignation now underlay it. “People have been pushing me about lately, all over the place, and I got sick of it. And what are you doing here?”
Gladys replied without hesitation, “I’m on my way to look for the sister of a friend of mine.” Her sense was that it was important for her to be open with this young man—although she noticed he was not quite so open with her: he had cautiously avoided giving her his name. “A young woman called Zillah and her—”
“Zillah!” he exclaimed eagerly. “Zillah Green?”
It had been important, she thought. “Yes, Zillah and her Marcus. Her Marcus and I took a fancy to one another when his auntie brought him over to tea. He calls me Ardy Baddish. So you’re a friend of Zillah’s, are you?”
He laughed a little. “Probably—I think I still am, even though I got shoved into otherworld just for kissing her.”
“Thereby hangs a tale, I guess,” Gladys said, moving forward along the way Jimbo was indicating. “Suppose you tell Auntie Gladys.”
He had, as she could see, a lot to get off his chest, and he proved, too, to have a naturally chatty disposition. He talked, merrily and freely, as he pushed through the wood beside her. As he talked, he fended aside, almost absentmindedly, thorns, boughs, and creepers, and went forging through the resistance that although it did not come from trees or undergrowth, was part of the very nature of this place—all almost as if he did not notice it at all.
“Remind me,” Gladys murmured to Jimbo, “never to get on the wrong side of this one.” His name was Tod, as she soon gathered.
“My misfortune,” he told her, “is to be heir to a Fiveir, you see. It’s not my fault I was born with this great lump of raw magery. Everyone in my family is, more or less, or we wouldn’t hold the position we do. And my old father may be a fool in many ways, but he did make sure I was trained to use my birthright properly—which made it all the more annoying when I got to Arth. I should perhaps explain that Arth is a tiny universe attached to the Pentarchy, full of mages who are supposed to protect the Fiveirs—”
“So Laputa-Blish is really called Arth,” Gladys remarked to Jimbo.
He said a great deal about Arth, and a certain Brother Wilfrid. He also talked of various Horn Heads and the High Head who seemed to be set above them. His account was not loving. Gladys sopped up all of it, and extrapolated more, while they edged through the next bank of prickles. So the girls were trying to carry on, bless them! It didn’t sound as if those mages of Arth were quite as clever as they thought they were. Centaurs, eh? What were gualdians? And what the flaming hell was Zillah doing, letting this boy make love to her when she was breaking her heart over Mark Lister?
“It was only because I gave her a shock, showing her a seeming of my favorite aunt,” he explained, just as if she had asked. Perhaps, in this place, she had. “It seems she’s the spitting image of her sister—and they’re both called Amanda, oddly enough. Analogues, I think. Zillah was shaken to hellband, and I tried to comfort her, that was all, but Brother Wilfrid walked in on it, and I got marched away and put through this ritual that sent me to otherworld. I should explain here that everyone on Arth is positive that otherworld is a kind of degenerate copy of ours, full of subhumans. With respect to you, madam. I was totally paralyzed with horror that they’d turned me into some kind of reptile to send me there, and I didn’t start to think of using my birthright until after I got confronted with a terrible creature called Paulie. I was supposed to be her lover, and spy on her. But there was this strong feeling of Leathe that I couldn’t place—”
So Paulie is our leak, Gladys thought. Not surprised.
But Tod paused, hand out to waft aside a long trail of vicious thorns, and the briar paused too, held in the shock he was evidently feeling. “Great gods!” he said. “The Wheel down in hellband! I know why I kept thinking of Leathe now! That woman’s husband—whatsis, Mark! He was the very image of a perfectly horrible creature I met in Leathe—if you take the horrible man’s horrible beard off. Man called Herrel. He’s the son of the Coven Head of Leathe, and he’s a sort of evil extra hand to the woman. Something so wrong with him, it makes your flesh creep. This Mark man was the same. I suppose it was another pair of analogues.”
“I’m not sure,” Gladys said somberly. “Given what I know of Mark Lister, I don’t think so. I’m more inclined to think someone has been very wicked indeed—not that Mark ever quite makes my flesh creep. But I know what you mean. So what did you do? Run?”
She chuckled heartily when he told her how he had changed cars. “Well, it was a lovely car,” he said defensively. “And I miss my Delmo-Mendacci. As soon as I got it on the road, I realized I hadn’t been properly happy for months. And your world turns out to have decent countryside after all. I sang for miles. Then I ran out of fuel, and I even had plenty of money to get more. There was so much money that I decided to spend the rest on food. I thought Arth owed me a decent meal. The roadhouse there did steaks almost as good as you get in Frinjen—but about the time I was thinking of choosing a liqueur, I realized that they were follo
wing me. And there was a big sending coming up from somewhere—”
“There was, wasn’t there?” Gladys agreed. “I’m afraid I left that for Amanda to deal with.”
They were nearly out of the wood. Daylight streamed around them, making gold-green slantings through the leaves of what were now mighty forest trees.
“Young man,” said Gladys, “is everyone in your world like you?”
“No,” he said. “Most of them are taller.”
“I meant,” said Gladys, “are they all so immoral—or do I mean amoral?”
“Well,” Tod said, “my father’s like me, and my uncle’s viler. But my cousin and at least two of my brothers-in-law are quite saintly really. Why?”
“Because,” she said, “I expect to fit in quite well.”
The next moment they were out, truly into Tod’s world, into a wide, moist meadow, where, by the light, it seemed to be midmorning. Gladys looked with interest at the small, chunky young man beside her, with his dapper little mustache and his neat cone of hair. He was looking at her with—well—politeness, and plainly wondering if she could possibly fit in anywhere. Indeed, as his eyes fell on the yeti boots, she could see it cross his mind that these were actually her own furry feet and that she might indeed be some kind of subhuman species. Gladys drew herself up. Every bead of her finery rattled. “Young man—”
“You’ve got an ether monkey!” he exclaimed. “I’ve never heard of anyone taming one of those!”
Gladys forgot her reproof and looked down at Jimbo. Jimbo, realizing he was in the presence of another person who could see him as she did, stopped his defensive scratching and sat up in the long grass with all his hands held out and his bright black eyes ruefully on hers. Not my fault, Gladys. “Is that what they’re called?” she said. “But he’s not tame, you know. He just decided to live with me soon after I was widowed. He never eats. It worries me.”