And how do I? she wondered. Power. They all had power. Tod’s was trained, but it seemed to be running wild in anger at the moment. Josh and Philo had certainly been taught, but the tuition in Arth, it had always seemed to her, had been beside the point for both of them. Whatever they had was almost untrained. As for herself, anything she had was as feral as a wild animal.
Well, then we call it wild, she said, and called.
Wild it was. It lifted her in an exultant sheeting gust so long and so far that she lost all sense of time, or of her own body. She was all mind for a nano-second that seemed to last a thousand years. Understanding filled her. This was why she had always ducked out, refused training in witchcraft, run from Amanda’s kind of education. The restraints of knowledge harmed this wild power. In order to use it, Zillah could not know what it was. It would only answer a being as untrammeled as itself. It was wildness. Zillah hung in its exultant aurora borealis, exulting herself, because she had always known this about wild magic really. The instant, and the knowledge, extended infinitely. Her forgotten body sheeted across time with her, or shrank to the smallest instant, most strangely. Sometimes she had been a giant for hours, and then a small blob for a century. The knack, she discovered, was not to let it distract you. After a millennia-long instant, she was in a house she only remembered seeing once before, where a wild sending stalked around the borders of its safety, rattling windows, howling in the chimney, and snapping trees. There was a jungle of huge potted palms. She thought she had found the wrong place, until she heard her sister’s voice.
“I know, Paulie. But whoever sent it has harnessed wild magic. Part of the strength is the wild magic objecting. I can’t stop it, and I don’t think any of us dare go out, even if it is only after Mark.”
Gladys’s house, but most oddly empty of its owner. Amanda was there, standing by the hearth, and Mark was a little aside, staring at the potted trees. He looked pale even for him. Zillah took the wild magic prowling around the house, united it to her own fourfold power, and promised it freedom shortly.
“Mark,” she said. “Come with me quickly. I need you back with Herrel.”
Amanda straightened. “The sending’s gone! I—Zillah! Zillah, what do you want?”
“I’ve come for Mark,” she said. “He has to go back. It’s necessary.”
The frown Zillah knew so well collected above Amanda’s nose. “Why is that?”
She might have known, Zillah thought, that things would not be easy with Amanda in it. Mark was now somehow on the other side of Amanda, looking puzzled. “Mark,” Zillah explained, “is half of another man from another universe.”
“We know,” Amanda said, and turned to speak to another presence whom Zillah could only dimly discern. “Yes, but be quiet, Paulie. It’s Zillah. She wants Mark.” At this, the other presence seemed to raise an outcry, but Amanda turned impatiently back to Zillah. “Zillah, are you in this other world?”
“Yes, and in terrible trouble. That’s why we need Mark.”
Amanda raised her head and became more than herself. “Zillah, this man is badly flawed. For one thing, he’s been spying on us.”
“Not intentionally, or voluntarily,” Zillah said.
“There are other flaws,” Amanda answered. “Do you really want him?”
“The other half is even worse,” Zillah protested. “I love him both. Amanda, he must come, or I’ll die, Marcus will be enslaved, and Mark will probably die, too, when Herrel’s killed. Please.”
Amanda’s head was still raised. She said, with unearthly sadness, “Zillah, I’m sorry, but taking Mark makes a terrible imbalance. You could destroy two worlds.”
“Then I’ll balance!” Zillah cried out. “You help. Wait a second.”
The next second, or maybe at the same time, she had taken wing on the fourfold wild magic—some of which protested and was soothed—and was in the presence of Amanda again, only with a difference. This Amanda walked through a strange room with painted panels, and her hands were nervously clasped to her mouth.
“I tell you I can’t see at this juncture,” she said to someone out of sight. “It could go any way. How I wish I hadn’t let them all go off! Or I should have gone too. What a hellbound coward I am!”
Amanda should always grow her hair that long, Zillah thought admiringly. It looked beautiful. “Amanda!”
The woman jumped and turned. “You need help?”
“Badly. Take on your Aspect and balance. Balance for your life! Here.” Zillah tossed the woman she hardly knew what—a thread, or a spark, or a skein—and to her relief and gratitude, the woman made dismissing motions to the person she had been talking to and seized what Zillah threw in competent hands.
“A moment,” Zillah heard her say. “I’m summoned as Priestess.”
She was back with her sister, flinging her another version of the thread or spark. “Balance.” This Amanda, not so used to balancing, needed Zillah’s attention more. Zillah hung between the two, holding, helping, while energy poured and thundered. It dinned around her, fell in avalanches and slid like lava, smoking and roaring. The wild magic of the sending fled shrieking upon it and was gone. Clouds scudded like boulders. When it stopped, it seemed too soon, but Zillah was spent. She hung in front of her sister, knowing she was only there on energies Josh and Philo and Tod were lending her to use.
“Amanda, let me have Mark now. Please. I’ve done all I could.”
“I know.” Amanda was holding on to the mantelpiece with one hand. She looked exhausted. She waved the other hand wearily at Mark. “You have to ask him, Zillah. He’s not a pawn.”
“Mark,” she said faintly. “Come home with me? Please?”
Mark seemed to see her for the first time. “Zillah? You want me?”
The look on his face set the other presence squalling again. “… about the insurance?” Zillah heard. “All those bills and our mortgage…”
“Always,” she said, holding out her arms through the noise.
He walked into her arms gladly.
* * *
9
« ^ »
I don’t get on with all this transposing, or whatever they call it,” Gladys grumbled to Jimbo. They had no sooner arrived in the grove and seen all the great rumps of those centaurs rushing away than they were somehow ahead of them, on a lawn lit by a set of barbecues and standing beside another centaur. This one was smaller and whiter, as far as she could see. She could hear the High Head muttering something about how little light there was.
The king’s seven mages appeared to agree. They all raised light—something she would have given her toes to be able to do—great pearly blue globes of it between each man’s hands. Then she realized they had arrived in one of those utter stillnesses which meant the working of magic was in progress. What she saw, the female in bloodred, the child on the table, and the knife, nearly caused her to rush forward and interrupt. But the king raised a warning hand, and she saw it was a different stillness.
It was over in that instant. A girl—Zillah—sagged onto the end of the table. The small white centaur started forward, and so did two other people from the terrace-thing at the back. The red woman seemed about to bring the knife down, but the man dressed like a jester calmly leaned over and took the child off the table.
“Not this time,” he said. “Not him too.” The red woman stared and then screeched, “Herre!!” The jester-man turned away. “Give me his clothes, Aliky. He’s freezing.”
At this moment Jimbo vanished from Gladys’s arms. She cried out, “Jimbo!” and cried out again when she saw him briefly on the table where the child had been. He loomed like a mad spider in the queer light, and the shadows gave him far too many arms. In another jolt of movement, he was on the red woman. His voice beat and howled through her head, “WRONG GREED! FOUL EATER! GREED!” with such force that Gladys nearly fell over, although she knew Jimbo was not shouting at her. She saved herself on the flank of the white centaur and stared at him attacking the woman.
She had never known Jimbo do such a thing before.
The woman screamed. It looked as if she hid her face in her arms. Then she grew other arms and flailed at the ether monkey. An instant later it was clear that there was another thing, many-armed like Jimbo, emerging from the woman’s substance to fight back. There was, for another instant, a scrawl of flailing limbs and a hideous low howling, before the fabric of that world seemed to become too flimsy for the creatures, and for the woman too. Everything elongated around them, blurred and stretched, so that the tearing and howling was going on in a deepening pit composed of lawn, table, house, terrace—until it tore under the strain and snapped back, leaving a vibrating bare space.
* * *
10
« ^ »
Wrapped together in the nightmare bodiless intimacy of the sepia space, Joe-Maureen looked up and screamed. A fighting tangle of glossy black limbs, with something fraying and shredding among them, plunged toward them, filling the whorls with senseless howlings. He-she struggled aside, threw herself askew, and then threw himself backward. The tangle plunged wailing past, barely missing them, and vanished on downward, spraying them as it went with hot acid redness, that lashed them agonizingly with salt.
“Blood!” screamed Maureen. “That was real matter!” Joe’s reply was “I want out. Up this way?”
“I don’t care anymore,” she said. “I’d do anything.” He said, “You might have to. You realize we’re stuck with one another after this, do you?”
She knew he was right. The nightmare enwrapment meant that she knew he knew a myriad small, disgraceful things about her, for instance, the way she had pushed poor old Flan Burke into going in the capsule just in order that Flan might not rival her in the troupe. And she knew the same things about him. What he had done to that man Wilfrid in Arth, for example. Wilfrid may have deserved it, but Joe had been vile, just vile. These and thousands of other pieces of knowledge bound them so tight that nothing short of murder could release them—and even murder was out of the question, for what one thought, the other would know. “I’ll settle for that,” she said.
“Me too,” he said. “Up now. I think this is how. It’ll take a while.”
Eventually there was a sense of rising. Altogether elsewhere, in the sealed flat, their two flaccid bodies stirred on the sofa.
* * *
11
« ^
Gladys was crying. “I’m all right,” she told everyone mendaciously. “I knew Jimbo had an enemy. I thought he was running away from it, but I see now he was just waiting his chance to come here. But he was a good friend of mine—Oh, good God, my girl! Haven’t you ever dressed a child before? Let Auntie Gladys. Put him down on the table. Give me his clothes. Is this all he’s got? Lord, it’s filthy!”
She was briskly heaving Marcus back into his pyjama suit when the other centaurs charged in among the trees and galloped shouting across the lawn, overturning the fire tripods as they came. She turned around. Her face was fit to look at by then. “If someone doesn’t do something, I’ll—!”
The king, in some tranquil, unguessed manner, contrived to surround the table in a bubble of peace. His mages gathered into it. Against a dark background of running centaurs all intent on smashing things, pursued hither and thither by a redheaded young man in wellies, who seemed to want to stop them, the king looked at the weary company gathered around the table. Tod was sitting on it with his arms around Josh.
“I don’t think we have broken the law,” Josh said aggressively.
“Not at all,” said the king. “It is a year since your service began. Besides, things have changed, over in Arth.” He nodded pleasantly to the girl who had tried to dress Marcus. “Thank you, Miss Aliky. I think you’d better return to Ludlin with us. Your cover is probably blown.” His round glasses went on to focus on Philo, leaning on the end of the table in the rags of a green cotton dress. “I take it you were able to help this young gualdian?”
Aliky giggled. “Not that much. He’s better at illusion than anyone I’ve ever met. All I did was put the idea in his head, Your Majesty.”
Philo grinned, soft but tired. “I almost had fun hunting the mansion for myself—but I was scared silly really, sir. I think only Zillah gues—oh!”
Everyone glanced at Zillah and Herrel perched face-to-face on the corner of the table, and saw that they were lost to everyone but each other.
“That makes two good women gone,” Tod murmured regretfully to Josh.
The king had looked on to Paul. “Hallow Isle?” Paul nodded in a way that was near a bow.
Gladys by now had done up every snap on the pyjama suit. “There. Dirty but warm. Majesty, there is the matter of stopping this one’s mother from—”
“Too late,” said the king.
Gladys glanced keenly at Herrel. The jester’s clothes now enclosed a normal man, with an air of Mark to him. “I see what you mean. Now what?”
“Things are actually much improved,” the king said. “Zillah, I think, must have had the sense to call on someone to balance. And that abomination which inhabited Lady Marceny had sucked up a surprising amount. I felt a great wad of something tear loose when it went. This has made things a great deal better, although a little still remains. Zillah and her son, for instance. Excuse me, sir.”
He tapped Herrel’s shoulder, firmly. “Yes, you. Would you mind telling me your plans for the future?”
Herrel turned reluctantly, saw who it was, and stood up. “My idea was—well, Zillah wants to live here, and I suppose the estate is mine now. I’d like to secede from Leathe and make Listanian part of the Orthe. Is that possible, Your Majesty? It’s been a dream of mine ever since I was a boy.”
“It seems a good idea,” said the king. “But—” He sighed and shook his head at Gladys, because Herrel had already turned back to Zillah. “So we are still less than balanced. I take it you are returning, madam?”
“Of course,” said Gladys. “I’ve more than twenty cats—unless that daughter of mine has put them in the pot. There’s no knowing with that girl. Yes, I am going back—just as soon as someone’s told me what I do about global warming when I get there. That’s what started all this—the mess Arth made of my world—and I tell you straight, I don’t go without an answer, Majesty.”
“Here is your answer,” said the king. “You must take the ex-High Head of Arth back with you.”
At this Gladys said, “Oh, look here! The poor man!” and the High Head said, “Your Majesty, I refuse.”
“You may not refuse, either of you,” the king said. “Magus Lawrence has in his head all the lore of Arth, which is a very great weight of ideas. He also started your global warming. It is therefore just that he try to put it right.”
“Your Majesty, I don’t know how—” the High Head was forced to confess.
“Then you must go there and try,” the king said. “It is my will. Go now.”
Tod had never felt the king raise his will before. The force of it astounded him. Everyone stirred under it, like trees in a breeze. The High Head bowed. Gladys stood up in a clack of beads and held out her hand to him. “Come along, dear.”
He took her hand and they walked away toward a wood in the distance, not quite in the space where the centaurs still rushed about. “I have foresworn women,” everyone heard the High Head warn Gladys as they left.
“That’s all right, Lawrence,” her voice answered. “I’ve been a widow for years. But you’ll have your stomach cared for. I hope you like cats.”
The going of Gladys deprived Marcus of someone to talk to. He was warm now, and no longer frightened, and beginning to feel lively. He looked hopefully at Tod, but Tod, for some reason, was doubled over in fits of laughter. He looked at Philo and Josh and saw they were in the not-just-now-I’m-tired mood. Aliky didn’t know enough; nor did the serious men holding lights. He looked at Zillah. No, she and the man who walked on ceilings were not-now-I’m-busy. That left only one. Marcus pulled the king’s sleeve and pointed a st
arfish hand at the busily galloping centaurs.
“Ort bake ow,” he remarked. “Bad doubt.”
The king stared at him. “I do beg your pardon. I didn’t quite catch that.”
—«»—«»—«»—
diana wynne jones is the critically acclaimed author of several charming novels for younger readers. She lives in Bristol, England.
—«»—«»—«»—
[ an article DWJ wrote for Medusa about writing this first fantasy for adults - hilarious! http://www.suberic.net/dwj/medusa.html]
[scanned anonymously in a galaxy far far away]
[A 3S Release— v1, html]
[October 20, 2007]
A Sudden Wild Magic Page 34