A Sudden Wild Magic

by Diana Wynne Jones

  “How far—ouch—is it to the king?”

  “Four days,” he said. “I don’t intend to go on through the nights.”

  “Four days!” The time scheme the various Great Ones had laid on her had not allowed for that.

  “What did you expect?” Hugon asked jeeringly. “Even the train takes nearly a day.”

  What I am, Gladys mused, is insular. I keep thinking this country’s only about the size of Britain, even though I can feel it around me, much bigger than that.

  The size of Europe with half Asia attached, Jimbo informed her.

  So big? “Train?” Gladys asked aloud. “You did say train?”

  “Sure. Things that go chuff-chuff,” said Hugon pityingly. He added with a surly trace of pride, “That was one of the ideas the Brotherhood of Arth handed down here—before I was born, that was.”

  “Then,” said Gladys, “I think—ouch—train would be quicker. Why didn’t you mention it before?”

  “Because,” Hugon snarled, “I’d have to pay, wouldn’t I? Or do you have money?”

  Gladys fingered her handbag. There was only a handful of change in there. Naturally it would not look like this country’s money—though she was strongly tempted to put an illusion on the tea bags and tell him it was her train fare. But to do that, she needed to know what his money looked like. “No,” she said regretfully, “but I’m—ouch—the king would pay you back.”

  “That stingy sod?” said Hugon. “Forget it.”

  They argued. Gladys persuaded. Bit her tongue. Gave up. Was on the point of deciding simply to put a compulsion on this obstinate creature when he said grumpily, “All right. Who else can you get money off if the king won’t pay me?”

  Easy. “Tod,” Gladys said thankfully. “The young man who was with me. Roderick Something. He told me he was heir to the Fiveir of Frinjen. That do? It sounds wealthy to me.”

  “Garn!” said the centaur. “That makes him Duke of Haurbath and the gods know what-all. And he’d have to have birthright magic. He show you any?”

  “Plenty,” snapped Gladys.

  That seemed to work the trick. Hugon grudgingly changed direction and began to fumble defensively with the pouch slung from a belt across his shoulder. “I may not have enough,” he said, “for both of us.”

  “You can put me on the train, then, and go back to whatever you were doing,” Gladys pointed out.

  “Not likely,” he said. “I stick to you until someone pays me.”

  Gladys sighed, bit her tongue again, and listened to her beads rattle with the uneven rhythm of his pace.

  They had been going for about five minutes in the new direction when they were suddenly in a strong shower of rain. Pelting water obscured the featureless fields all around them. Jimbo whimpered. Hugon’s somewhat greasy hair was wet through in seconds. Gladys pulled her pink shawl around herself and Jimbo. The centaur slowed, trotted, walked, stopped.

  “I don’t like this,” he said. As Gladys was about to agree and urge him on, he added, “I’ve never known it rain out of blue sky before. Those gods don’t want us to take the train. I know.”

  Gladys looked up and found that beyond the fierce slant of rain, the sky was indeed bright, cloudless blue.

  “Raining fish too,” Hugon said disgustedly. “Alive. What in hellband is this?”

  Gladys bent forward and stared at the large trout flopping and twisting in the grass beyond Hugon’s gnarled front hooves. “Does this happen ofte—?”

  She and Jimbo and Hugon were all hit simultaneously by something heavy traveling at speed. There was a good deal of noise, mostly from Hugon and Jimbo, but among the shouting and squealing, Gladys heard another voice crying out too. She let her natural defensive magic take over and landed on her feet in the wet grass. When her confusion had passed, she realized that the person who had hit them must also have natural magic—well, he would have, she realized—because he was also standing unhurt, towering over her. He was tall and well set up, though not young, wearing a blue uniform of some kind. Across his wet forehead and streaming hair she saw a habitual dent, as if he usually wore a headdress of some kind. But how well she knew the features beneath it!

  “Leonard!” she exclaimed. “Oh no, you can’t be!”

  The High Head stared at this dumpy elderly female, at the damp and drooping feather on its head, at its beaded gown the color of Arth, and particularly at its great white furry feet. The edge of his vision took in an irate centaur with an ether monkey crouching beneath its belly, and the shower of water receding across the meadows. “My name is Lawrence, madam,” he said, and wondered why she was staring at him as if he were a ghost. Probably because he had seemingly fallen out of the sky. He sensed she had power. Therefore he asked politely, “You are a Goddess Priestess, perhaps?”

  “In a way.” Gladys still had her face tipped up, staring. “I’m from the place they call otherworld here.” The eyes of the High Head sped involuntarily to her white, woolly feet. “No, they are not my feet!” she told him crossly. “I’m as human as you are! And you’re the very image of Len—my husband. But Len died years ago now, so I reckon you’re just his thingummy—analogue—aren’t you? Where did you spring from?”

  “Arth,” said the High Head with grim dignity. “And I take it you are another piece of the otherworld conspiracy?”

  The girls, Gladys thought, have managed to pull something off, bless their hearts! “In a way,” she admitted. “But there’s no good in glowering like that at me, my friend. Len never could get the better of me, and I’ve learnt a lot since then. So who are you? Your gods and Powers set me to meet someone on my way, and you must be the someone.”

  He shot her a grimmer look still and turned to the centaur. “Centaur, I’m the High Head of Arth, and I need to get to the king urgently.”

  “Oh no, not another one!” Hugon growled. “Have you any money?”

  “Well, naturally, not at the moment—”

  “Then go whistle!” said Hugon. “I’m paying her train fare because the damn gods will have my guts if I don’t, but I’ll be raped if I pay for you too!”

  The High Head, to his exasperation, was forced to look pleadingly at Gladys.

  “Yes, I’ve got to get to the king too,” she said. “That’s gods for you. I’ve never known them be entirely practical. Hugon—”

  “No,” said Hugon.

  Surly brute, thought the High Head. He could argue all day and the centaur would probably still refuse. And he knew he had to get to the king and have him raise his royal power on behalf of Arth today. Given the time difference between here and Arth, those alien witches would have pulled the citadel apart by tomorrow. The High Head dithered for a moment, contemplating knocking the centaur out, putting the woman under stasis—which might not work, because she need not have been bluffing that she could best him—and running for the nearest train with the centaur’s pouch. But there was that ether monkey crouching between the centaur’s hooves. Its round black eyes were fixed on his, knowingly. He was not sure whose side it was on, except that it was probably not on his. No one in Arth or the Pentarchy had ever been able to fathom the powers of an ether monkey, but they were generally suspected to be considerable. He saw he would have to stoop to negotiation.

  “Madam,” he said, selecting Gladys as marginally the most rational of the three, “since it seems we have the same destination and somewhat the same problem, would you agree to some measure of cooperation?”

  “I might,” she said. “It depends what you want.”

  “There is,” said the High Head, “an alternative means of reaching the king which, being from another world, it is possible you do not know. I would be willing to instruct you in this method, provided you would agree to perform no hostile act until we stand before the king. I would, of course, agree to the same truce on my part.”

  “Suits me,” Gladys replied readily, “though I don’t see why you should be on about hostile acts. I bear you no malice, Mr Lawrence. I ne
ed to see your king about both our worlds, as it happens.”

  “Then you agree?” he said.

  “I do.”

  “In that case,” said the High Head, “perhaps this good centaur could guide us to the nearest grove of the Goddess?” He turned to the centaur in his most majestic manner, which hid both hope and apprehension: hope because it was always possible the centaur would show a little belated patriotism and offer him the train fare; apprehension because Hugon might realize what he was up to and give him away.

  The centaur, however, merely looked relieved at not having to spend his money. “If you want,” he said. “The nearest grove’s a good mile over that way. But you’ll have to walk it.”

  “I’ll walk too,” Gladys said. “I need to talk to you,” she explained to the High Head. Besides, she was tired of biting her tongue.

  “I fail to see what we have to talk about,” the High Head said haughtily as they set off toward a gate in a distant hedge, with Hugon jogging ahead and the ether monkey silently scuttling behind.

  “Oh, come on!” Gladys said. “You’re not stupid! But I can see you’ve had a shock, dropping out of the sky like that, and you may not have taken in what I said. You did hear me mention your gods and Powers, did you?”

  “Of course,” said the High Head. “People tend to mention the gods when they wish to persuade someone that their argument is important.”

  “Ah,” said Gladys. “Then you’ve never seen them?”

  “It is a very rare privilege which I confess I have not had,” he told her stiffly.

  “Asphorael?” she asked.

  “Not for years.” He felt irritable. He had a feeling he was failing some kind of test. “Madam, you must remember I have been on Arth for many years, and Arth is not this universe. Asphorael does not manifest on Arth. But in my youth my tutor did once or twice cause him to appear mistily before us.”

  “What does he look like?” Gladys asked sharply.

  “As always—brightly colored and somewhat anxious,” said the High Head. “I fail to see—”

  “And the Great Centaur?” Gladys pursued.

  He looked down at her in astonishment. “I am not sure he has ever been seen.”

  “Fair enough,” she said. “I don’t see my lot that often in my own world. I always think we may be too used to them to notice them. Can you do me a favor and make an effort to see the Great Centaur now?”

  He stood still and stared at her. “My good female, that would take a daylong ritual even to—”

  “No it won’t,” she insisted. “Not when he needs to talk to you. Go on. Go for it. Jimbo will help you.”

  He glanced at the ether monkey. So it was with her. He would do well to remember that. Meanwhile he supposed he had better humor the woman. He braced his feet and began to summon the threads of the Wheel. A little way off, Hugon had reached the gate and was holding it open for them, pawing with impatience. The High Head sympathized. He was quivering with shock and desperate to reach the king—and now he thought about it, bruised all over—and yet here he was instead somehow at the beck and call of a fat little—little dame covered with beads like a savage. And Edward had said the folk of otherworld were one hundred percent human! If Edward had met Gladys, he might have doubted that.

  Gladys watched the strange gestures he made and tried not to shake her head. He was working beside the lines of force instead of along them, and on a level she would never have chosen. But then, Len had always done things his own peculiar way too, she thought affectionately, and Len nearly always got results. This one was just the same. His gestures—with some extra manipulation from Jimbo—had caused a troubling in the air above their heads. Gladys sighed. She was only able to see white filigree whorls. That reminded her of Len too. But it was clear that the High Head, for a few instants, saw. He whirled around on her, his face pulled into a grimace of awe and anger.

  “What is this? What have you done? The Great One is dying! What has otherworld done to us?”

  “Nothing. It’s not our doing. But come along and I’ll try to explain.” Sadly and sedately, Gladys went through the gate and turned the way Hugon pointed up the rutty road beyond. The High Head hurried after. Hugon banged the gate shut and strode ahead again.

  “You have a great deal to explain, woman!” the High Head panted, catching up with Gladys in the cloud of dust Hugon raised. “The Great One—the Pentarchy—is drowning in poison from your world! And you say it’s not your fault!”

  “I didn’t say that,” Gladys said. “I do blame myself. If I’d known, I’d have done something earlier. I just hope it’s not too late now we do know. The trouble is, it’s been going on for centuries now, ever since those magicians up in that pocket universe of yours—Arth, do you call it?—spotted that my world had a lot of ideas theirs didn’t have. I expect at first they just took a look, then copied what they saw. But then they got the notion of making us get ideas for them. If they made us uncomfortable, or worked us around into having a war, or needing a new way to get about, then we set to and invented things to help us out. And they took the inventions and the ideas and sent them down here for people to use here. I reckon they’ve had everything from steam trains to penicillin and magic, for years and years now. No doubt they justified it by telling themselves that otherworld people weren’t really human.”

  Heat flooded the face of the High Head. “This is certainly true,” he said. “That is—we were accustomed to rely on otherworld to initiate methods of supplying the needs of the Pentarchy. But I assure you that the whole matter was studied and the experiments most carefully controlled. It was understood from the outset that what we took from your universe must be balanced by something from ours. I was always particularly careful to do this. It was my custom to plant men from Arth in otherworld, whose real physical presence—”

  “So I gather,” Gladys said dryly. “And they acted as spies for you. And they sent ideas back. Didn’t any of you think? It’s the ideas that do the damage. Magic is mostly ideas—they’re the strongest thing there is! And you took ideas, a lot of them magical ideas—so many, they fair poured into your world—and you never once gave a single idea back. Now you wonder why your seas are rising and your lands are getting poisoned!”

  “This is one idea we certainly put back,” the High Head retorted. “I personally supervised a scheme to make the same situation arise in your world.”

  “So that you could learn—you thought—from something that isn’t the same and doesn’t have the same causes,” Gladys said. “What you did to my world was physical, and it’s not going to help you, whatever we do. One idea takes the-gods-know how many physical tons to balance it—” She broke off and thought, with her face wrinkled gloomily. “Oh, Mother!” To the High Head, it sounded like a prayer. “Oh Mother! If none of you had that idea before, then I’ve just fed this world another dose of poison. Let’s hope someone did.”

  “I—” the High Head began to say, and then stopped. He did not believe a word of this. The whole physically based teaching of Arth was behind him, not her. And Arth worked. Or it had, he thought angrily, until six alien witches arrived in a rogue capsule. “I take it, madam, that you had some hand in the recent invasion of Arth.”

  “Well, we had to do something,” Gladys said. “Did you expect us just to sit there while you played games with our climate?”

  And she blandly admits it! the High Head thought. I rest my case! His anger grew, but he centered himself and controlled it. Meanwhile Hugon turned off into another lane, this one without hedges. The High Head saw stretching ahead of him the familiar straight causeway that led to a Goddess grove. The grove itself, a small, gracefully rustling clump of birches, was a bare hundred yards off. What a glad sight, he thought—a first real touch of home! Soon he would be rid of this creature. He looked at it, trudging along with its extraordinary woolly feet stained with grass and mud and its beads clacking, and permitted himself a thought as to where he would send it. Somewhere in nort
h Trenjen where the white bears roamed. It would fit in there. And the ether monkey could go with it.

  They reached the small clump of trees in silence. Hugon backed aside as they came up. “I’m not going in there,” he announced. “I’ve had my fill of gods.”

  “That’s all right, dear,” Gladys said. “They only used you because you were the nearest one. I expect they were rather annoyed that you were the best they could do.”

  The centaur glowered at her.

  “Thank you anyway,” she said.

  He grunted. Dust spurted and his hooves drummed as he made off back along the causeway.

  “Well, that’s that,” Gladys said. “I hope your other way to get to the king really works, because the gods are going to throw fits if it doesn’t.”

  The High Head strode among the trees. “It’s quite simple,” he explained. “The Goddess permits travel between any of her groves, and the king maintains a Royal Grove outside Ludlin. It does, however, take the power of at least two adepts to move from grove to grove.”

  “Ah,” Gladys said to Jimbo as she gathered him into her arms, “I knew he needed us for something.”

  Within the trees, a spring dripped into a mossy stone bowl.

  “That’s pretty,” Gladys murmured. “Peaceful. Nothing fancy.”

  Primitive place, the High Head thought. Bowl cracked and full of moss. “I’m going to put into your head my memory of the Royal Grove,” he said, “and you must will us there. Is that something you can do?”

  “I should hope!” said Gladys.

  The High Head smiled and envisaged in professional detail the Royal Grove, such a contrast to this one, with its beautifully tended turf, marble bowl and statue, and its noble trees. Gladys took it at once and held it steady. In some ways, he thought, the creature would be a pleasure to work with. He smiled again and willed her sharply to a frosty grove in the north.

  To Gladys, it seemed that the quiet little grove tipped about in a fuzzy turmoil. No matter. Working with Len had sometimes been like this too. She clutched Jimbo and held her will steady. Jimbo chittered and, almost certainly, put his contribution in. After a moment, everything settled down as it should. Gladys gazed around with pleasure at the large and beautifully tended grove. The trees tall and healthy, she noted, and that statue of the Goddess as Mother was truly lovely. It gave Her quite a look of Amanda’s sister Zillah. And where was that girl?