“They live on low-band energies,” Tod explained. “He’s had plenty. He looks to be thriving.” While he was speaking, Jimbo took his revenge on Tod for recognizing him by reciting to his extraordinary bead-hung and feathered companion Tod’s full name and titles. “But I’m Tod to my friends,” Tod told Gladys hastily. And he told Jimbo, “Come off it, ether monkey. You knew I was bound to suss you. You heard me say I’d been properly educated. You come from a spoke of the Wheel that—”
Jimbo did not want Tod to say where he came from. It was somewhere quite near hell, Gladys had always believed. “Yes, and he wasn’t any happier there than you were in this place you call Arth,” she said. “He had an enemy. That’s why he left. Now, if you don’t mind, I have a bit of work to do before we go on.”
From the moment she stepped into this meadow, Gladys had been feeling a brightness and exhilaration beyond anything she knew from Earth. There was a cleanness. Some of it was, no doubt, simply the air, which smelled infinitely less polluted than Earth’s. Tod, as he stepped back respectfully to let her work, was taking deep, long breaths of the air and smiling. But there was more to it than that. The lines of force, as Gladys tentatively reached for them, were far stronger and easily twice as clear as those of home. It was going to be a pleasure working with them. So why did she feel, at the back of all this glowing strength, that something was badly wrong?
“Hm—more than high time I came here,” she remarked. “Let’s ask a few questions.”
She took firm hold of the forces. They almost fell into her hands, so plain were they and so ready for use. What a world! She envied Tod. He must have been able to do this in his cradle! Selecting the correct line, and holding the others she might need ready and wrapped around the little finger of each hand, she softly exerted her power—gently, not to offend here where she did not belong. There was instant response. Oh, what a world! Politely and deferentially, she requested, “The Being who has care of the physical level here—I apologize for not knowing your name—may we speak?”
There was a slight troubling of the air in front of her, a whitening and ruffling of the meadow grass, and the Being was there, sliding into visible existence as if from a great distance that was at the same time only an arm’s length away. He hung before her as a narrow, vibrant man-shape in a robe of kingfisher blue and orange. His wings, like a stained-glass butterfly’s, were of blue and vermilion lozenges, outlined in jetty black.
“You are welcome!” he said. His eager voice fell into the brain and rang there, oscillating.
Gladys narrowed her eyes against the vibrancy of his form. It was febrile, it seemed to her. “Are you well, Great One?”
“Not quite,” the oscillant voice answered her. “But I am not sure what is the matter. The sea rises and the earth heats, and not according to the usual pattern. There seems no way to stop it.”
“Ah,” said Gladys. “I’ve met that problem too. When did it start, here with you?”
This was a mistake. The Being did not measure time in a way it could communicate to Gladys, and vibrated anxiously.
“Put it another way,‘ Gladys said quickly. “Why did it start?”
“Your pardon, powerful visitor,” the Being belled. “I came to you for the answer to that. Have you no answer?”
“Hm,” said Gladys. “Overtaxed in some way, aren’t you, My Lovely? Yes, of course you shall have your answer as soon as I can get it. But first, I need to speak to the One who rules the level beyond yours. Bear with me for a while. And, if you would be so good, put in a word for me with that One.”
“Willingly,” the Being oscillated.
Gladys gently released the lines from her little fingers, and with them, another respectful request. The second Being appeared instantly and eagerly. He was apparently in the air, several yards above the glowing first one. This Being, Gladys was intrigued to see, had the form of a white centaur, and he greeted her as gladly as his beautiful companion. But he was not beautiful himself—though she rather thought he ought to have been. There was a bloated look both to his torso and to his barrel, and the legs looked thick and stiff.
“Something wrong here too, I see,” said Gladys. “And I greet you also, Great One. Tell me what is wrong and how I can help.”
Tod looked and listened to all this with increasing awe. Never had he seen glowing, butterfly Asphorael appear so clearly. Even Tod’s tutor—a better mage than any he had met in Arth—had never conjured Asphorael as more than a colored cloudy shape. But this old woman with the mad jingling robe and the big, hairy feet had done it just like that! And now she had summoned Cithaeron as easily and equally clearly. He wished he knew what the Great Centaur was saying to her—but even Asphorael’s voice had seemed to be at some frequency almost beyond him. Raise his birthright as he would, Tod could not reach the Centaur’s voice, and he was beginning not to hear Gladys either. He could only watch the Centaur’s eager, anxious face, its features curiously small and delicate compared with its bloated body. The face reminded him strongly of another face, a mundane one. Josh? No. Where had he seen those same small, fair features? He had it—that mage who had patched Josh’s eye, the High Brother of Healing Horn—Edward, that was the name. Now, that was very strange.
Gladys’s voice came to him, faint and distant. “So that’s the way of it! How do you suggest we balance it out then?”
Something is wrong with my world! Tod thought. And I never knew! Asphorael was hovering tenderly, almost imploringly, toward Gladys. “It’s all right, My Lovely,” Tod heard her say. “We shan’t let it go on now we know.” And beyond Asphorael, beyond the Great Centaur, in distance that was not the usual distance, or at least not physical distance, Tod was awed to see other shapes. They were faint, mostly manifest as bright, watchful eyes, or great, trembling wings, but he knew them for the Guardians of all the bands of the Wheel, all watching and listening, or maybe adding their words to those of the Centaur.
The Centaur faded. Tod seemed to notice the fact at the moment of his disappearance, when he was simply a white trace against the white clouds of the sky.
Asphorael had retreated, but he was still there, dissolved into the meadow around them, a tremulous presence. But it was not over yet. Gladys looked a trifle disconcerted at what she had started. She turned and bowed as a tall figure with a high head crowned with antlers stalked from the wood toward her. Hurl! Tod thought. And seems damned angry! Another, within an indigo cloud, was rolling in from across the meadow like mist from the sea. Ye gods! thought Tod. Now the gods come! And here was yet another, blazing down the path of the sun. Tod dropped hastily to one knee, and in so doing, lost count of how many gathered around the glittering blue figure beside him. But there was one more that he did notice, because She noticed him and came to Tod after greeting Gladys. Tod was aware of this one mostly as pearl or azure and a light blazing from the forehead. She was very angry too, though She was not angry with Tod, and She had good cause to be. She gave him instructions, without using words. What the Goddess said to him, Tod could not have expressed. He only knew that, after She was gone, and the rest with Her, he stood up again in the bright, empty meadow with certain things in his head that had not been there before.
He and Gladys stared at each other. “Phew!” she said. “What about that!”
Tod said, feeling unusually humbled and ignorant, “How did you do it? Everything so solid and clear.”
“Do it?” she said. “I only did it the way I usually do. Your world is a pleasure to work with, that’s all. When I think of mine—well—it’s all muzzy and twisted beside yours. You must have some marvelous magic users here.”
“None as good as you,” Tod said frankly. And looked up in alarm. Someone else was coming, and he was not sure he could stand any more manifestations.
* * *
4
« ^ »
It was only a centaur, real and solid and mundane, cantering toward them over the meadow. He was grizzled and largely black and not in the
best of tempers. Tod thought they were probably on this centaur’s land and he was coming to order them off it. Tod braced himself, ready for polite speeches. But the centaur stopped short with an angry skid to his haunches and glared down his nose at Gladys.
“You must be the woman,” he said. “Damn it to hellspoke! I’ve lived ninety years and never troubled the gods, and they never troubled me. Now I get a whole spatch of them. I’m supposed to make sure you get to Ludlin to the king.”
“I know. Gods are like that,” Gladys said. “I’ve got to see the king and someone else on the way.”
“I don’t know about the someone else,” snapped the centaur. “The king was all I was told.”
“The other one’s bound to turn up,” said Gladys. “It won’t take us out of our way.”
“Women!” the centaur grumbled. “Can you get yourself on my back? I was told it was urgent, and it’s bloody miles to Ludlin.”
Tod, with a good deal of difficulty, managed to boost Gladys onto the centaur—who stood quietly enough but made not the slightest effort to help, which Tod thought was decidedly ill mannered of him. But then, this was a surly centaur. When Tod lifted the chittering Jimbo, too, and tried to put him in Gladys’s arms, the centaur shied irritably. “I’m not carrying that thing!”
“Yes you are,” said Gladys, “or you’re not carrying me. And we know what the gods would think about that, don’t we?”
The centaur shook both fists in the air, possibly at the gods, but he said nothing and allowed Tod to dump the ether monkey onto Gladys’s beaded knees.
“Good-bye, then, Tod,” she said. “I think I’ll see you again, but they gave me the idea you’ve got things to do now. It was nice meeting you, dear.”
“You too,” he said. He waved as the centaur leaped into a racking canter and bore her away across the field. It felt very lonely without her, odd as she was. Tod walked slowly in the opposite direction, wondering how on earth he was going to carry out what seemed to be his part in the gods’ plans. There was no centaur for him, evidently, and he did not even know whereabouts this was in the Pentarchy. It looked as if he was meant to steal another car—preferably one with a map in the glove compartment.
The meadow, though huge, did eventually end in a hedge, in which was a gate leading out into a deep country road. Tod let himself out into the road and stood between its hedges, wishing there were some means of telling where he was. The place was wholly devoid of landmarks—although, in looking for those, he did notice for the first time that it was spring here. Spring again, or spring still? Tod wondered gloomily. Have I been away a year? A week? Two years? When the gods leave you, they seem to leave everything low and flat. He was glad to be back in the Pentarchy, but this did not prevent him feeling as lonely and ill-used as he had felt in otherworld.
There seemed nothing for it but to start walking and hope to get a lift with a car or a cart.
Tod determined from the sun that turning right probably took him more southerly than turning left did, and he turned that way because it seemed to be correct. He had not gone more than a few steps when—joy!—he heard a car coming up behind. He spun around. It was a big old car, beautifully maintained, idling along with its top down. It looked to be a Delmo-Mendacci too, of all things, like Tod’s own cherished, beloved, beautiful vehicle. It was even the same shade of subtle green. The gods provide after all! Tod thought, as he stepped to the center of the road and waved.
Between hedges bright with new leaf and cow parsley in lacy drifts along them, the car rolled to a gentle halt a few yards from Tod. And behold! it was not any old Delmo-Mendacci! It was Tod’s very own car! Tod’s cherished Delmo that he had left under wraps in the garage of his father’s castle, with strict instructions that it was not to be touched—not by anyone—until he returned from service on Arth. Driving it was Tod’s mechanic, Simic.
The gods provide indeed! Tod thought. He found himself with both hands on the Delmo’s glistening square hood, leaning over the shining eagle on the end, staring grimly at Simic. Simic stared back. Tod saw it cross the man’s mind that he could simply drive on, let in the clutch and plow on over Tod—So sorry, Your Grace—devastated—terrible accident—wasn’t expecting—didn’t recognize the young master—thought him on Arth—squashed him into the road—meat jelly—
“Don’t even think it!” Tod said.
Simic had regretfully abandoned the idea anyway. He opened the door, jumped out, and became voluble, in one smooth movement. “Well, this is a surprise, sir! You may wonder what I’m doing, sir, but it is a fact—you know and I know, sir—that machinery deteriorates something dreadful if it lies unused, and so I took the liberty, sir, of giving this car of yours regular exercise, in the manner of a dog, sir, to preserve it, entirely with your own good in mind, sir—”
“Poppycock,” said Tod. “Fish feathers. Most of all about my own good.” And as Simic then became seized of another perfect excuse and opened his mouth to begin on it, “I don’t want,” Tod said, “to know whatever lie that was going to be. I know you’re bent as a centaur’s back leg, and you know I only employ you because you’re a genius. The fact is, you’ve been using my car to go cockfighting or girl chasing, or whatever it was—and last I knew, you had two perfectly good cars of your own—”
“Sold them, sir,” Simic said sadly.
“Bad luck,” said Tod. “I hope you lost on the deal, but I bet you didn’t. How far are we from Archrest Castle?”
“About twenty miles,” Simic admitted cautiously.
Any figure Simic ever admitted to, you automatically adjusted. Make that fifteen at the most, Tod thought. In which case, this featureless but comely road was one he had raced down countless times in this very Delmo. Good. They were in central Frinjen. “How much money do you have on you?”
“Hardly any, sir,” Simic said pathetically.
“Show,” said Tod. He held out an implacable hand, and Simic, with a look of real pain, slowly produced and laid in that hand an extremely fat wallet. “Won on the cocks, did you?” Tod said pleasantly. He counted himself off a hundred in ten-shield notes, which was about a fifth of what was there, and held out his hand again. “Pen and paper, and you get the wallet back. Come on, a betting slip will do.” When Simic produced one, and a ballpoint pen, Tod handed back the wallet, laid the slip on the Delmo’s hood and wrote:
Respected progenitor,
I happened back unexpectedly early and ran into Simic—you owe him $100, by the way—and have to rush south. You can probably get word of me from Michael this evening, but rest assured that I am fine, though Arth may have the law on us soon. Love to Mother.
Yrs. Tod.
August would recognize this as unquestionably from his son and heir. Tod handed the note, but not the pen, back to Simic. Given the means, Simic would infallibly tamper with the sum owed him, in an upward direction. “There. If you want your money back, all you have to do is walk to Archrest and give this to my father. Are the keys in the Delmo?”
“Yes—Walk?” said Simic. “I’m wearing my driving boots!”
“Bad luck,” said Tod. “Maybe you’ll flag a lift.”
“But it’s occurred to me, sir, that you could be rusty at driving after a whole year, sir, and if I were to take the wheel and drive until you became accustomed—”
“Nice try,” said Tod, “but you’re out of luck again. It’s only been three months over in Arth, and I’m not in the least rusty—just proved it, actually. So either get walking or get the sack. The choice is yours.”
Leaving Simic standing resentfully among the cow parsley—his boots were pointed and shiny and probably pinched every toe he had, and serve him right! Tod thought—Tod swung himself into the warm polished leather bliss of the driving seat of his own car and drove away, fast. Simic would certainly get to Archrest somehow in order to reclaim his money. Mother would worry—but then she always did. And August would be warned that Tod had broken his service. He might be furious, but he would
get his lawyers onto it at once. So. Tod gave himself up to the full, throaty purring of the best car in his world.
He hurtled down to a crossroads, which proved to be one he knew well, and turned south. Shortly he turned again, into the main southbound highway, and cut in the overdrive. The unlucky Simic had provided both tanks full of fuel. The gods were good. Tod sang—rather badly—as he drove. He bore Simic no real malice. In fact, he had often thought that he and Simic were rather alike, with the slight difference that Tod had been born with gigantic birthmagic, and Simic with an equally large affinity for machines. Simic usually seemed to see it like that too, though no doubt at the moment he was calling curses down on Tod’s head.
For all his bliss, Tod was aware that this was the merest interlude. Something was urgent, there in the south. He drove faster, bypassing town after town, some of which, he had to admit, were as ugly in their way as towns in otherworld; but there were also a few places where he would have liked to stop for lunch, peaceful, picturesque places. But he did not stop. Consequently, by the time he reached the coastal marshes between Frinjen and Leathe and turned off toward Michael’s manor of Riverwell, he was feeling unreal and time-lagged and as if today had gone on for twice as long as it should. And so it had, he realized. He had been ejected from Arth in the late afternoon, arrived in otherworld in the early afternoon, where he had spent most of an evening too, and now he had had most of a day in the Pentarchy.
The marshes were crossed by a myriad drainage cuts, each of them with its several humpback bridges. Tod took the bridges at speed, so that the big car almost jumped, while he tried to calculate just how many hours he had lived through since he got out of bed in Arth. And it was still only late afternoon here. The sun hung quite high behind him in the west. The car seemed to tread on its own shadow at every bridge. But he was nearly there. There was the stand of mighty old willows in the distance, all a vivid new green, and among them the great peeling yellow manor Michael had inherited. The large new sheds stood out to one side among younger willows. These were where Michael designed and built boats—most of them out of a new and wondrous fabric called fiberglass, the formula for which had been sent down from Arth.