Диана Джонс - A Sudden Wild Magic

“For the Goddess’s sake!” the High Head exclaimed. “What in hellband’s use is that?” And he sent messages along the threads. Get them moving. Tell them the effect is going to double in their next decade.

Then he teased out the threads from the Islands. The magecraft of this site was usually among the strongest. Arth had run various tests recently and proved it currently to be in excellent working order. This was why Observer Horn regularly focused there. The High Head had great hopes of results here soon. First he focused again on the spot where observers had reported activity, but fine-tune it as he might, he found he could receive precisely nothing. Interesting. Every place in otherworld normally put out a certain amount of meaningless activity. The spokes of the Wheel were full of it, and junior mages had to learn to tune it out. But this area was not even putting out that. Most interesting. They must be using wards at least of the strength Arth had used against Leathe. Sadly, every single one of his Island agents was outside this area of silence, but this did not unduly perturb the High Head. This was the Islands pattern. When big mageworkings were afoot, they always closed down. Something was really happening at last!

In strong excitement, he flicked his two most important agents aside from the cluster. The first was serving as lover to a female known to be at or near the center of any magework performed. His image materialized in the reflector much as the High Head had seen him last on Arth — though this probably had little to do with the way the agent looked now, and was almost certainly simply the man’s image of himself. Strange transmogrifications befell those who made the transition and became one with otherworld. This agent was — in his own mind at least — somewhat unshaven, bored, and a little drunk.

“Gods of the Wheel!” this agent said. “All I needed was you! What do you want?”

The High Head indicated he needed anything that might cast light on the area of silence slightly to westward of his agent. Was magework afoot?

“Do you indeed?” said his agent. “Then you’re as wise as I am. It’s obvious something’s up. Bloody Maureen’s pretending to have something wrong with her shoulder so that she can keep going off to that hag’s place in Herefordshire, but that’s all I know. You’d think someone who talks as much as that girl does would give something away, but not she! She’s also collecting money. Cash is pouring in from all over the country — I’d no idea witches were good for so much. But she says it’s for her new Green World Campaign — products made in conditions that don’t hurt the ecology — you know the sort of thing. They’re supposed to be buying a derelict factory somewhere up in the Midlands. Then they make green soap. The gods know if that’s true or not. I’ve not been allowed near the factory — or the money, worse luck!”

He was, the High Head indicated, to investigate the factory.

“All right, all right! I know I should, and I’ve been trying. The bitch keeps putting me off. If I get you stuff on the factory, can I get shot of Maureen and come home? I really hate this world!”

The High Head of Arth forbore to indicate, even by so much as a flicker in the most distant spoke of the Wheel, that this agent was not coming home, ever. When a man underwent the ritual to make him one with otherworld, a change happened that seemed to be irreversible — but one could not let an agent know this, naturally. Instead, the High Head reminded his agent that he was serving as observer in the field as the result of misdemeanors as yet unexpiated and — because agents must be humored — inquired what exactly was so hateful in his position.

“I have to work in this music shop. I hate their music!” was the reply. “Let me tell you—”

The High Head cut into the stream of complaints he knew was about to follow by promising that, once the agent had firm information on the Maureen-female’s purposes, the waves of the correct spokes would adjust themselves so that all would be well. He was careful not to promise that the agent could then come home, although he was well aware that he left the agent with that impression. Such prevarications were a regrettable necessity. He cut the agent off, still grumbling, and turned to the second one, the one set to monitor the most important male mageworker.

He had far less hope of anything concrete from this one. The inescapable fact that the Brotherhood of Arth was an all-male company made it impossible to place this agent as a lover. This male mageworker was decidedly heterosexual. So the agent had been attached to the mageworker’s female partner instead, which was easy to do, because on Arth the agent had been blond, smooth, and handsome. As the image formed on the reflector was as handsome as ever, the assumption was that, whatever this agent had become, it still counted as good-looking in other world terms.

“I’m awfully afraid I can’t give you very much to go on yet, sir, more’s the pity,” this second agent said. He was always very polite. He was one of those who hoped to ingratiate himself in order to get forgiven and recalled to Arth. Poor misguided Brother. “The woman I watch complains her husband is always away and too tired to talk when he comes home.

She thinks he’s got a new lover.”

The High Head requested his agent to play on the female’s fears to make her find out where the male really went.

“Oh, I did, sir,” the agent said eagerly. “It doesn’t take much doing, actually — she wants to know as much as we do. Last time he went, she took rather a risk, to my mind, and tried tracing him by witchcraft. But all it told her was that he seemed to go to that old woman’s house in Herefordshire, and she didn’t believe that for a moment. It looks as if he’s being too clever for us, sir.”

This house in Herefordshire, mentioned by both agents, unquestionably was the site where Observer Horn had pinpointed the recent activity, and, the High Head mused, the elderly female equally unquestionably was the center of it all. He had many times attempted to tag her, but she gave him no hold, no excuse to plant an agent, nothing. She was wily. She slipped away from contact. She was powerful. There had been one occasion, when he was a good deal younger and less experienced, when he had made a rash attempt to broach her consciousness. She had risen up in anger, through every band and spoke of the Wheel, majestic and horrible, and threatened to kill him if he tried that again. Since then he had treated her with great caution. So if they chose her house for their activity, what they were doing was very important.

He was recalled from these thoughts by the agent saying piteously, “Sir? Sir, I would welcome it very much if I could be removed from this assignment. I’m not at all happy in it.”

The High Head asked considerately wherein his unhappiness lay.

“It’s not just that I have the feeling Mark Lister suspects me, sir. I think I can handle him. But I really hate that woman. His wife, sir. I really do!”

What was wrong with her? the High Head inquired.

“She’s hard and mean — and stupid with it, sir. I think she’s probably the most selfish creature I’ve ever known. I’ll take any assignment you care to give me, sir, if only I needn’t put up with her anymore. She makes me ill, sir!”

The High Head suggested that this seemed to describe all females. But since the agent was truly distressed, to the extent that his smooth face in the reflector was distorting in surges, the High Head made haste to assure him that he would be replaced as soon as another agent could be activated.

“Oh, thank you, sir!” said the agent. “You don’t know how much this means to me!”