Tod had an uneasy thought here. If some of the things he had half caught from what the Great Centaur was telling Gladys were true, then Arth could be destroying the Pentarchy by milking otherworld for things like fiberglass. It could be that he was speeding toward Riverwell to put an end to his cousin’s livelihood. The barony was not rich. He could see the sea now, flat beyond the flat marshes, and a distant golden hump that was the seacoast of Leathe. As always, he wondered how anyone could live somewhere so flat and damp and so infested with Leathe and mosquitoes, and as always, as he whomped over the last bridge and swept in under the willows through Michael’s ever-open gates, his heart lifted. Amanda lived here.
Around the corner of the drive, he had to brake hard. The place was full of centaurs. There were crowds of them, milling across the drive and the lawns and seemingly surrounding the house. Tod had not known there were so many centaurs in Riverwell. None of them looked happy. It was clear that something was going on that made fiberglass, at least for Tod, a side issue. It was quite a relief. He turned off the engine and shouted to know what was happening.
The centaurs seemed altogether too anxious to notice him, but the nearest somehow crowded aside to let a worried black-haired woman fight her way to the car.
To Tod she looked more glorious than Asphorael. She was—though he could not know the irony of it—wearing blue-gray like Lady Marceny, but her dress was linen and loose, with the merest sketch of the fashionable panniers in the form of flying panels which streamed behind her as she ran toward the car.
Tod gave a great shout of “Amanda!” and sprang down to hug her.
She was taller than him—many women were. “Oh, Tod!” she said. “I’m so glad you’ve got here! I knew you would.”
She was, Tod discovered with a quite irrational touch of jealousy, pregnant. After all, it was a year since she remarried. He found tears in his eyes. He was always ashamed of how easily he cried. “What’s going on here? Why all the centaurs?”
“They’re all terribly worried,” she said. “There’s been a ghost centaur haunting our grove all day, and it’s obviously in trouble, but none of us know it, so we can’t hear it speak. Our centaurs keep sending for more and more distant cousins, hoping that one of them will know who it is, and none of them do. But I knew you were coming, and I thought that with your birthright—”
She was interrupted by Tod’s cousin Michael trudging through the centaurs in big rubber boots, grinning all over his white, freckled face. Michael was tall and rodlike and had shaggy red curls. From head to toe he took after his mother’s gualdian family, with none of the Gordano chunkiness. Seeing him now, Tod was struck by how like Philo he was. He might have been Philo with red hair. “Tod!” Michael yelled, and beat Tod affectionately on the shoulder. Again Tod nearly cried. He had missed this. “Mother told you about our ghost?” Michael said.
“Yes, but I don’t understand,” Tod said. “My birthright doesn’t make me a medium—”
“It may not be a ghost—” Michael started to say, and was interrupted in turn by Paul, Amanda’s new husband, as tall nearly as the centaurs who moved to let him pass. Tod had a moment of jealous dislike, which dissipated as Paul’s big, warm hand grasped his and Paul smiled down into his face, slow and kind. Paul was a good man—a good sailor and boatbuilder too, by all accounts.
“They’ve told you?” Paul asked. “I don’t think it’s a ghost. It looks more to me like a sending from someone in really bad trouble, but it can’t seem to talk.”
“Oh, I see!” said Tod. “In that case—”
“I’ll take you,” Michael said. “Come on.” He seized Tod’s arm and dragged him among the great, hairy centaur bodies, shouting above the deep clamor of centaur voices, “Let us through, please. My cousin’s here. He’ll take care of it.”
The centaurs seemed to know at once which cousin Michael meant—the one with the birthright. They fell back respectfully, and most of them stopped talking. In near-silence, Michael dragged Tod around to the other side of the house, where there was a narrower lawn—if possible, even more crowded with centaurs—which gave onto the marshes. The grove was a small hill crowned with silver birches, reached by a narrow causeway, about a hundred yards out into the marsh. Pushing among all these silent, staring centaurs, the cousins were embarrassed at saying anything private. Neither spoke until they had passed the last few centaurs stamping and wheeling at the end of the path and had hurried out onto the causeway. Then Michael said, “Ye gods, I’m glad to see you! I simply didn’t credit my mother when she said you’d be coming. After all these years! And I still don’t really believe she has Sight! Silly, isn’t it?”
“No,” said Tod. “I find it hard to believe too. When did this ghost-thing appear?”
“Midmorning. One of my centaur boat hands saw it and raised an outcry. And you know the way centaurs look after their own—there are centaurs here from the Neck of Orthe now—but I don’t blame them. It is worrying. You’ll see. And by the way, where did you get that peculiar hairy garment you’re wearing?”
Tod plucked at Brother Tony’s large sweater. He had forgotten all about it. “This—otherworld.”
“You’re joking!” said Michael.
“I assure you,” Tod said, “I am not. I was in otherworld this morning, or last night, or something. Appalling cold, wet place full of beastly buildings. This thing’s called a jumper. If you can lend me some proper clothes, you can have it as a souvenir.”
“Thank you,” Michael said. “It looks perfect for sailing in.”
They reached the sandy hill of the grove and scrambled up it. From the time he was halfway up, Tod could see the white transparent figure of a centaur within, among the white boles of the birches. It was weaving and trampling this way and that, distressed, mindless, neurotic—something was wrong, that was plain. Tod hurried. The bodiless state of the apparition made the mad effect worse as he got nearer. The weavings and duckings took the centaur-shape straight through trees and even through the small altar by the pool, although the soundless hooves never once touched the bubbling waters of the spring itself. Mad or not, the specter was reverent. It was, Tod thought as he trod cautiously between the peeling white tree trunks, the shape of a centaur naturally white or gray. There was no dark on it anywhere, except perhaps—The apparition wove around toward him, and he saw that half its face was dappled.
“Josh!” he exclaimed. “Josh, what’s wrong? Are you dead?”
To his great relief, the transparent eyes focused on him. The face broke into a worried smile, and the misty torso sagged. Josh’s voice came to him, faint and far away. “Tod! Thank the Goddess! Can you hear me?”
“Clearly but small,” Tod said. “Where are you?”
“Just a moment,” said Josh. The apparition stood still, closed its eyes, and frowned. As it did so, it became milk-thick, then thick as whitewash, almost solid. Josh’s eyes opened again. “That’s better,” his voice said, and he sounded much nearer and stronger. “I’ve been sending myself to all the groves I could reach,” he said apologetically. “And trying to face in all directions while I did it. I’m nearly worn-out. No one seems to hear me. Tod, I’m in trouble. I’m in a grove in Leathe, on the estate of a woman called Marceny—”
“Marceny!” Tod exclaimed. “Josh, she’s the very worst! What in hellspoke are you doing there?”
“Zillah got us out of Arth—the Goddess alone knows how she did it,” Josh told him. “She used some kind of wild magic, and it was so strong that they all knew and were waiting for us. They’re besieging me in the grove now. They keep trying new ways to get me out, and they’re damned strong—”
“And Zillah?” Tod interrupted. “With you?”
“No,” said Josh, at which Tod’s stomach behaved as if he were crossing a hump bridge. “No, they got her, and the baby, and Philo—and you know what they do with gualdians—”
“I’ve heard—ye gods!” Tod was afraid he might be sick. But that would do Josh no good.
“Hang on,” he said. “Don’t waste any more strength with sendings. Just stick in that grove like a leech, Josh, and we’ll find some way to get you out. There’s half a thousand centaurs here who can’t wait to help. We’ll do something. Just hang on.”
“I will,” said Josh. “I’d be all right if I wasn’t having to send. I was praying that they’d recall you. I’m so glad they did.”
“Recall me?” said Tod. “They didn’t. I came back by myself. I’m thoroughly illegal, and my father’s going to have to bail me out, but it won’t stop me getting to you.”
“You’re not illegal,” Josh said eagerly. “At least, I’m fairly sure you’re not. I’ve been thinking through Arth Service Laws to stop the people outside getting to my mind—and I started wishing I could tell you. Banishment’s not legal for servicemen. They shouldn’t ever have sent you!”
* * *
X
Arth, Earth, Pentarchy
* * *
1
« ^ »
The High Head was gloomily aware that he had made almost every soul on Arth extremely unhappy. But, he told himself, he had to do something about the wild disorder in the vibrations, and the only way, with the culprits seemingly still at large in the bowels of the citadel, was to order a massive clampdown. This was now in force. Servicemen and cadets groaned under double parades and compulsory rituals. The lower-order Brothers were required to attend mass meditations and cleansing rituals four times a day, while their seniors, when they were not on duty for these, were under orders to meditate alone in their cells. The buttery was closed, so that even the dubious consolation of passet beer was denied.
As a further precaution, the High Head went in person to inspect each Horn. This, he was not unaware, caused considerable panic. He had uncovered a stupefying number of hastily concealed irregularities. In Observer Horn, for instance, he was forced to order them to reperform all viewings made in the last six weeks.
“Regardless of the fact that we can’t!” a junior Brother told Helen in Kitchen. For some reason, everyone came and told Helen things. Her cool, accepting manner had come to be regarded as wisdom. No one knew Judy very well, and Roz was wisely keeping out of sight. So was Sandra, after the High Head inspected Calculus.
There the High Head found such chaos that he concluded High Brother Gamon was insane and demoted him to the ranks. To do him justice, the High Head did not at that stage connect any of the disorder with the women—apart from Zillah, that is. He went on to censure Maintenance for allowing Rax and seven other servicemen to sit in a storeroom breathing glue and oxygen. “And we didn’t even know they were there!” a Duty Mage told Helen. Rax and his friends had been stealing a number of foodstuffs to sell too, which caused Housekeeping to be hauled over the coals as well. Ritual Horn was then found to be skimping, cutting corners and gabbling formulae. “But if we didn’t do that, we’d never get through all the stuff he’s piling onto us!” Alexander complained to Helen. Flan was mysteriously not to be found, so her handsome young mage came to Helen like everyone else.
And while Alexander uttered these complaints, the High Head was proceeding through Records, to demote two senior mages; and to Defense, where he arraigned almost everyone for overzealousness and rigidity. Even Healing Horn did not escape, for Edward had unaccountably failed to make proper records of his healing of Judy.
Finally, having dealt out penances to nine-tenths of the population of Arth, the High Head advanced on Kitchen. Unfortunately, he arrived to find Helen surrounded by an indignant crowd from all over the citadel. He sent every man of them about his business, with further penances, and then laid a geas on Helen, banning her from entering Kitchen again. After that, he did what he had really come to do and ordered a diet of passet henceforth for every meal. No fried food, he decreed, no spices, no sauces, no roast. Meat stewed in water only, with passet, was to be eaten from now on, and bread must be kept for two days before it was eaten.
Someone told Helen that Brother Milo wept. All the other High Brothers were equally upset, for the ordering of discipline in their own Horns was traditionally theirs. This had been the custom for four hundred years, regardless of the fact that the law was on the side of the High Head. Brother Nathan declared that the High Head had been unpardonably high-handed. Brother Gamon added that the man was a soulless traditionalist without a spark of human feeling. “And without a stomach either,” snarled Brother Dewi.
“He has been, at the very least, unpardonably impolite,” stated the Horn Head of Alchemy, who was so relieved to have escaped reprimand that he could afford to be angry on behalf of the others. “We have been slighted. We are annoyed.”
It would not have cheered them to know that, when the High Head returned to his office and tried to get on with the normal business of the day, he was no happier than they were. For one thing, he had acted like a tyrant, and he hated it. For another, the vibrations continued in unabated wild fluctuations. He promised himself revenge on Zillah, not to speak of the gualdian and the centaur, when the search parties finally ran them to earth. They had been lurking down there for three days now. True, there was unfortunately plenty of food in the depths—but surely it was only a matter of time before someone tracked them down! When they did, he would find it a pleasure to make them pay for all this necessary tyranny. The whole of Arth would revile them. And meanwhile, with all this going on, all the experiments with otherworld were in almost complete abeyance. He would have Lady Marceny on his tail any minute now. He groaned at the thought.
In their own quarters, the women groaned too. “More wasting time!” Roz strode angrily up and down the bare blue room. “I’m sick of you lot sitting about like a wet week! What are all these rituals about? You realize they’re excluding us, don’t you?”
“We don’t count as mages,” Helen said dryly. She was sitting upright against the wall, twiddling her long thumbs.
This irritated Roz. Most things irritated her by then. “I count myself a perfectly good female mage,” she said. “When I think of all I’ve learnt—”
“Have you learnt a way to get home?” asked Sandra, slumped beside Helen.
“Well, no,” Roz conceded. “But that’s obviously a closely guarded—”
“I’ve told you,” Flan called from her corner. “The only way to get home is to get turned into a reptile. I saw—”
“Flan!” Helen said warningly, and sighed. Sandra was in tears again. Tears rolled down her face, across her mouth, and dripped unheeded off her chin.
“I want to go home,” Sandra said. “I didn’t mean for him to lose his post for being mad. I liked him—a lot. He’s a nice guy once you get used to—”
“Oh, do please bloody well spare me your nervous breakdowns, you two!” Roz snapped. She was not happy either. It was bad enough to have to hide in here for doing the job she had been sent to do, but she did not deserve the way the cadets were behaving. Whenever any of them saw her now, they fell into lockstep behind her. And they seemed to be whispering something like “Haw, haw, haw!” Roz refused to be paranoid about silly boys, but it was horribly depressing that there did not seem to be any real way home. And—
They all looked up as Judy came in, wandering among the veils looking obscurely nervous. Flan was galvanized, and uncurled from her corner with a bounce.
“At last! Did he know what happened to Zillah?”
Judy shook her head, and Flan curled up again.
“So where have you been?” Roz demanded. “It can’t have taken you two whole days just to make sure he didn’t know!”
“Nowhere,” said Judy. “With Edward. And wandering. Thinking. I decided in the end I’d better come and warn you. We may be in trouble when Edward decides what to do. I told him we all came from the otherworld.”
“You what?” said all four as one woman.
“Told him where we come from,” said Judy. “I was sick of pretending. Edward thinks he’ll have to tell High Horns.”
“Christ!” said Roz. ?
??And didn’t you even have the nous to swear him to secrecy first? Honestly! What kind of a bunch of women have I got myself mixed up with? Not one of you has a scrap of patriotism. Not one of you even has a spine! Sandra goes and falls in love—in love!—with the man she’s supposed to be seducing in order to save her world. And our poor world goes out of the window at once. Flan sees a ritual and thinks Zillah’s been put through it, so Flan curls up and decides to die. Our world goes out of the window again. Helen gets turned out of the kitchen, so what does Helen do? Helen sits and twiddles her thumbs. Our world goes out of the window a third time. And then, to crown it all, little Judy goes and prattles to her Edward about exactly where we come from. World out of the window for good. Lord! Are you lot trying to be traitors? Well, I’m not. I’m a patriot. I love my world. I came here to do a job, and I want it done. Thanks to Judy, we’ve got a real crisis on. So let’s have some action, shall we?”
“Speech!” Flan murmured rudely. “What a lot of good you did!” Judy simply turned around and walked out of the room again. Sandra got up and bolted after her, sobbing.
Helen unfolded herself and advanced on Roz. “And what action do you suggest? Haven’t you noticed that we’ve all worked like stink in our own ways, and it’s all come to nothing? That’s what’s the matter!” She stalked past Roz and out through the veiling too.
Flan was still curled in her corner, so Roz turned to her. “Worked? Who’s worked? None of you except me. I’m the only one who seems to know the meaning of the word! I’ve worked. Good stern work! That’s what this fortress responds to. I can feel it responding. And it’s responding to me. Me working. Keeping our mission going single-handed. You don’t catch me moping in a corner doing nothing. You don’t—”