Диана Джонс - A Sudden Wild Magic

“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 north 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?

Gladys wondered worriedly. She just had to hope Tod had found her.

“I see all this has to be royal,” she remarked to the High Head.

He whirled around irately. She saw, with sadness, that he had meant to get rid of her. “There’s no need,” she told him. “I really could get quite fond of you if you’d let me. After all, I married you once.”

The dark blood of fury suffused the High Head’s face. He glared. Perhaps it was lucky that the Grove Guard arrived then. They advanced precisely from all sides, twenty or so men and one or two tall women in red and gold livery. Strong-eyed they all were, Gladys saw. A lot of power among them. The man — captain? — who came up to the High Head looked at least as much of an adept as he did.

“Your names, and your business in the Royal Grove,” this man said coldly.