A Sudden Wild Magic

by Diana Wynne Jones

  “Oh, shut up!” said Flan. “You’re worse than High Horns. Your stern work my left buttock! Zillah got it right. What this fortress wants is a little fun for a change!”

  “I’m not staying here to be insulted,” said Roz.

  “Go away then,” said Flan.

  Roz marched out. The door veiled and there was quiet. But not peace, Flan thought. Maybe she was having a nervous breakdown. She couldn’t seem to get that horrible ritual out of her mind. It sapped her of all desire to do anything but curl up in a corner and listen to the pulsing of the citadel—or it could be just the pulse in her own ears. At the moment, citadel or ears, it was a sulky, sick bumping, as insistent as Roz’s voice, which seemed to be hating all these rituals, every one of them, and urging Flan to do something to give them both some peace. Flan was fairly sure the sight of Tod turning gray and oozy had sent her mad.

  There was a sort of sigh, and a feeling of release, followed by multiple movement like an army breaking step to cross a bridge. Flan raised her head. Yes, there were footsteps and voices in the distance. The latest ritual was over. Good. Roz had called for action. Let’s have some action then. But better catch them before they all went to meditate or whatever.

  Flan sprang up and ran. Burst out through the door veil, raced down blue corridors. Shot past mages in groups and pairs coming the other way. Plunged through the veil into the main hall of Ritual Horn. Her friends from Ritual were mostly still there, either standing about looking jaded or packing chalices away in caskets. Nearly everyone turned to greet her. Most smiled. Even Brother Nathan, far from descending on her with more blackmail, kept over the other side of the hall, where he smiled at her anxiously and rather diffidently. How nice, Flan thought. They all like me!

  “Had a good ritual?” she said. There was a glum, dead silence. “And how are the vibes?” There were shrugs. Not good, evidently. “Well then,” said Flan, “how about a bit of fun to take the taste away?” The way everyone reacted, they would have liked fun, but they thought High Horns might have forbidden it along with most other things. “There’s no harm in it,” Flan said. “It’s a very simple dance. Here, let me show you.” And, quite in her old manner—or perhaps a little more feverishly—she seized the four or five who were always ready to have a go and put them in a line with their arms around one another’s waists. She put herself at the head of the line and wrapped the arms of good-looking Alexander firmly around her. “Now, just do as I do. Four bouncing steps—left-right-left-right. And right leg out. That’s it. And again, people. Let’s all do the conga—ah! Again! Let’s all do the conga—ah!” She led the line around the hall. “Come on, people. You sing too!”

  They got the idea. The conga is probably the easiest dance ever learned. “Let’s all do the conga—AH!” the five shouted, capering and shooting out legs in unison. The others, Brother Nathan among them, took up the rhythm, clapping.

  “Join in!” Flan shouted.

  They did. It was so easy and harmless and a great relief besides. Before Flan had made one full circuit of the hall, everybody in it was rushing to seize the waist at the end of the line and join in—step and step and step and step and leg out. Their trained voices rose lustily. “Let’s all do the conga—Ah!”

  Flan, capering energetically, led them out of the nearest door and up the ramp beyond. “This is what you’re supposed to do!” she panted. “Conga, people!”

  Halfway up the ramp, she knew she had got it right. She was not sure quite what was right, except that she knew it was. Mages were racing down side passages and leaping onto the ramp to join the line, laughing at the absurd dance and seizing the chance to express frustrations by being harmlessly silly. The bouncing, singing line was twice as long when it left the ramp and bounced and shot its legs out into Records Horn. By this time, Flan knew it was more than that. The sullen vibrations of the citadel were changing, rising to meet the rhythm she was making. Bursts of energy came to her in glad gusts. She knew that if need be, she could conga for the next twenty-four hours.

  They swept up the mages from Records and congaed on toward Calculus. There Sandra, sobbing inside a concerned crowd of mage-calculators, looked up, saw the line, and shouted, “Yes! Conga him out, man!” And the entire Horn joined in. Warm and rhythmic, they bounced and shot legs out, downward to collect the cadets next. To Sandra, with her arms wrapped around Brother Gamon and her face in the prickly blue cloth of his uniform, it was as if life suddenly became new and clean and simple. By the time the line had collected the servicemen and bounced on to sweep in Maintenance Horn and Defense, the surprising pain of love, of the conflicting loyalties Sandra felt at all times, had melted simply to rhythm and song and to Brother Gamon bouncing in front of her, as if difficulties had never been. Absurd mirth flooded her as they swept down on Alchemy Horn. The cadets and servicemen, like a lusty shot in the arm, were roaring out what they thought the words were.

  “Bets and balls and bonkers—AH!”

  In fact, since the line was now a quarter of a mile long, there was the usual difference of opinion as to just what the words were. Alchemy Horn was certain they were “Can’t stand it all much longer—AH!” and Crafting sang, “Wronger still and wronger—AH!” while Observer Horn, when the mages there found the capering line roaring through their midst, joined it eagerly under the impression the words were “The High Head is a plonker—AH!”

  Roz stood for a minute aghast, then for another minute with her arms folded and her lip curled—it was unbelievably silly and nonserious—but, as the blue-clad capering line receded from her down the corridor, where the front of it was already jolting and singing up and around the ramps on the next level, Roz was aware she had a choice. It seemed to be handed to her by the citadel itself. For the first time she became conscious that the place did indeed have vibrations, potent and awesome, like a voice. It spoke to her. Either she could join in this unusual and crazy piece of magic and become part of it, or she must stay aside and remain aside forever. She was suddenly aware there were others refusing to join in. She sensed Brother Wilfrid for one, hiding in a cupboard full of spare uniforms, and the obdurate Horn Head of Defense, who was still single-handedly guarding Arth from nonexistent invaders. Roz could be like those, the citadel told her, or—But Roz was always one who could not abide to be out of things. She sprinted after the capering line and flung herself onto the end of it. Step and step and step and step and boot in! And yelled out her own individual words. “If you can’t beat ’em join ’em—Ah!”

  On the upper level the line was snaking through dormitories and recreation halls, where it swept up any mages who happened to be there and went snaking on down to Kitchen. Some accompanied the line as outriders and spectators. There were a number of mages up there too elderly to dance, and these followed excitedly, the way people follow processions, limping hurriedly through corridors parallel with the dancers in order to intercept them as they went bouncing and yelling uproariously through the kitchens and gathered in everyone at work there.

  Brother Milo fled the line, to an alcove in the corridor beyond, appalled and shaken by the fierce new vibrations the dancers brought with them. But in the alcove he found himself pressed against the angular warmth of another body. He sprang around to find it was Helen. “What are you doing here? I thought you were banned from Kitchen?”

  “I am indeed,” she told him, “and if you notice, I’m not in there. Your bloody High Horns made it physically impossible for me to cross the threshold.”

  “No doubt he knows best,” Brother Milo piously said.

  Helen’s reply was blasphemous, but Brother Milo was saved from hearing it. The conga was upon them, and past, and still going past, and continuing to pass them, an apparently endless line of blue-clad bouncing, yelling mages, a mere body-width away in the corridor. “Hellband fall on wrong ’uns!” Brother Milo heard. But next second the words seemed to be “Spells are all much stronger—ah!” or were they really singing, “Helen’s food will conquer—ah!�
� or was it again “Blessings fall upon her—ah!” Helen, he noticed uneasily, was jogging to the time of the ditty, with her widest, coolest smile. She bent down to him to shout, “I want you to join in this!”

  He shouted back, “Are you trying to seduce me again?”

  “No!” she bawled. “I gave that up days ago. I know you’re a saint!”

  “Naturally celibate,” he yelled reprovingly. “I told you—I keep my Oath.”

  “I’m not asking you to break your damned Oath!” she roared in his face. “I’m just asking you to dance! Is that so bad? I want to—I will if you will!”

  It did look fun, Brother Milo thought, wistfully watching joyous faces prancing past. And nothing in the Oath said anything about dancing. The end of the line was coming past now. He could hear himself speak when he protested, “I don’t know the words!”

  “Nobody ever does,” said Helen. “Make some up.”

  And here came the end of the line, the two kitchen cadets, out of step and shooting the wrong leg out and roaring, “Cesspits are for honkers—Ah!”

  “Oh, all right,” said Brother Milo. He seized the waist of the hinder cadet and joined in, lustily singing, “Decline and fall and conquer—Ah!” He felt Helen seize his waist, but there really was no harm in it. “And conquer—Ah!” they both bellowed, dancing toward the main ramp. Some latecomer joined in behind Helen. As soon as she felt her waist grasped, it was clear to her that Brother Milo had given in to more than dancing. He would break his Oath with her as soon as they stopped. She felt as much sadness as triumph—which was ridiculous, since this was one of the things she was here for, for God’s sake! “Decline and fall and conquer—Ah!” She resolved that he should enjoy it tremendously. It seemed the least she could do.

  Halfway up the main ramp, bouncing tirelessly at the head of the line, Flan felt as if she were in a dervishlike trance by then. It was wonderful. Almost every mage in Arth was coiling up the main ramp behind her toward Healing Horn, some upside down, some sideways, each singing for all he was worth, and the whole fortress vibrating with it. She was dimly aware that the rhythms were fiercer. The line of heads apparently jogging above her as they came up after her were singing something different now. Flan changed her own song to match the change. “I came I saw I conquered—Ah!” Flan sang, too loud in her own ears to hear that the mages coiling up the ramp were in fact singing, “Let’s pull the High Head’s legs off—Ah! Let’s finish the old bastard—Ah!” No one knew where this began, but once begun, it overtook and replaced even the servicemen’s new words, which were very dirty indeed. “LET’S KILL THAT BROTHER LAWRENCE!” they roared, and pounded upward to do it.

  Edward looked up from Judy’s face. The citadel was vibrating very oddly indeed—joyfully, fiercely—tum-ti-tum-ti-tum-tum-TAH, in a way he had never known it to do before. Listening, he could hear a huge, rhythmic roar, from the throats of many people.

  “What is it?” said Judy. “It’s like a football crowd.”

  It was nothing Edward had heard before, a strange, uplifting, and decidedly threatening sound. He went and took a look out of the doorway. Beyond the veiling, the words were gigantic and unmistakable.

  “Wait here a moment,” Edward said to Judy. He wasted no time in efforts to project to a mirror: he ran, ran in huge, long-legged strides, downward and along a corridor that gave him, every so often, arched glimpses of the roaring blue line snaking up the main ramp. The citadel pounded around him like a drum. He threw himself through the veiling of the High Head’s outer office, bursting between the two elderly mage-clerks there who had been timidly peering out to see what the noise was, and dived into the sanctum itself. It was, as usual, sunny, quiet, and serene. In here there was no hint of the beat or the roar.

  The High Head looked up with placid annoyance. “Edward—I was going to send for you to explain these reports—”

  “No time for that now, Lawrence!” Edward gasped. “You’ve got to get out of here! Those women are all witches from otherworld. They’ve managed to harness the vibrations against you. Every mage in the place is on the way up here roaring for your blood!”

  The High Head found it impossible to grasp the enormity of what Edward was suddenly telling him. If it had not been Edward, he would have dismissed it as a joke. “But the vibrations are normal!” he said. “For the first time for—”

  “They’ve got the citadel on their side,” Edward said impatiently. “You have to believe—”

  “The citadel’s not a conscious entity,” the High Head interrupted. “Otherworld? Are you sure? How did they change their shapes?”

  The vibrations were suddenly with them. The room shook to the enormous rhythm, rackingly. The blocks of the walls ground together, jolting in time to it, filling the room with regular clouds of fine blue dust. The High Head stood up and stared slowly around.

  “It is conscious?”

  “Yes, and they didn’t change shape—they’re as human as we are!” Edward gabbled. “Go now! You can just get to the secret way from your back ramp, if you go now!”

  The singing became audible, huge and throaty, as if the stones of Arth themselves were chanting. The High Head dithered toward his inner door, still incredulous. “Leave everything? If I were to talk calmingly to—”

  “They’d tear you apart!” Edward said, pushing him. “Go! Run!”

  The High Head looked yearningly toward his mitre and sword-wand on their stand beside his desk; but the chanting was now so near that he could feel the words even through the grinding of the stones. “What about you?” he said, coughing in the blue dust. “That’s murder on its way—I can feel—”

  Edward knew with fatalistic certainty that he was now cut off from Healing Horn. “Never mind me. I’m not High Head. Run!”

  To his relief, the High Head wasted no further time and dived away through his inner door. Edward, coughing and resigned, ducked his way out into the clearer air of the outer office, where the roaring was louder yet, and joined the two clerks at the veiling. Given luck, the avenging mages would assume he was simply kicking his heels here, waiting to see the High Head. But they would be furious to find the High Head fled, and they all knew Edward was the man’s one friend.

  That man, friendless now, was speeding giddily down a steep blue stair, with its walls beating the murderous rhythm around him. Ramp was a courtesy title: there had never chanced to be a centaur High Head, and therefore no need to adapt the secret way to hooves. Stairs made unfamiliar going. He knew he dared not waste time stumbling. Every Horn Head was given the secret of Arth’s peculiar umbilical connection to its parent universe when he assumed office. With it, in case of emergencies that had never yet arisen, they were given the Ritual of Egress. The High Head saw he dared not assume that the chanting crowd baying for his blood contained no Horn Heads. He had angered them all too much. Therefore he galloped, wondering if his knees would hold out, wondering just how long it would be before some Horn Head discovered the hidden archway in his sleeping quarters and led the baying multitude down after him.

  He had just reached the point where the stairway turned to ramp as it was joined by secret ways from other Horns when he knew that they were after him. The steady vibrations broke up. Though the joyful, idiotic rhythm of the conga kept on beneath the rest, there were other rhythms above it, angry and chaotic at first, then steady and trochaic—a sort of yammering double beat that reminded the High Head hideously of some Lady’s hounds in Leathe when she had a manhunt on. It filled him with fears from childhood he had hoped never to feel again. He swung into the ramp and sprinted, thankful it was all downward, blessing the memory of the founder-mage who had decreed regular exercise for every mage in Arth, and overwhelmed with humiliation. That he should be the High Head around whom Arth broke up! So shaming. He was even more shamed to think he had been afraid of the wrong group of women. Give me Lady Marceny any day! I’d trade her for that Roz and that Helen! he thought, to the regular slamming of his feet. How many Oaths broken?
Edward’s for one. With whichever woman it was who had contemptuously told Edward the truth. The bitches had got inside and rotted Arth from the core. What did it matter then who knew?

  He swung into another ramp that spiraled down among the reservoirs. The mages were closing. They must have sent the younger ones after him. They were too many for him, even with his superior magecraft, and with the vibrations all on their side—

  His feet skidded, and he only just saved himself on the wall. The ramp was awash with running water. Here was a further horror. What those women had done to the vibrations had cracked a reservoir. A crack, with that weight of water behind it, only took bare moments to become a large split. Shortly a wall of water would be rolling down this ramp on his heels. The terror of it was such that the High Head spared effort from running to levitate. He heaved himself up an inch or so and sped on. Goddess, the double effort was tiring! And on the next ramp down, his raised feet were splashing, sending up great gouts of spray. He was forced to send himself up another foot and run crouching through the air under the lowered ceiling. He could feel—hear!—the rumble of escaped water following him now. He cringed against the ceiling and tried to put on a spurt, scrambling like a crab. Down and around. Down in front, the water was dimly banking, dammed by the secret portal, banking higher every scrambling step he took. The following water was close to thunder. Gabbling the Rite of Egress, he dived, praying for safety.

  * * *

  2

  « ^ »

  Gladys had discovered the centaur’s name was Hugon, but their relationship was still far from cordial. Nor was he comfortable to ride. She reckoned that if he had been a real horse, he would have been dogmeat years ago. They were jolting across apparently interminable wide fields. Every time she spoke to him, she bit her tongue, but politeness kept her trying.